[Video] Intel Confirms Launch Of “Westmere” Server Chip Mid-March, Details Cloud Security Functions

March 2, 2010

Intel server chip chief Kirk Skaugen confirmed the imminent release of the company's first 6-core chip since the ill-fated Dunnington

At a security event last night in San Francisco, Intel vice-president Kirk Skaugen confirmed the release date of Intel’s next-generation lineup of 32-nm Xeon server processors, including the first six-core Xeon chips since 2008 (Dunnington).

“In about 2 weeks it’s highly anticipated that we’ll be announcing this Westmere processor… When you buy that [chip], you should be able to get your return in about 5 months. But we’re probably most excited about – relative to just another crank of energy and performance – is the security features that are going into the processor,”told Skaugen to reporters during a media event hosted by security company RSA.

Scheduled in March 16, Intel will release a dozen dual-socket, 32nm Xeon processors as well a workstation version (Core i7) of the six-core chip.

“But what probably we’re most excited about – relative to another crank of energy and performance – is the [2] security features that are going into the processor,” added Skaugen.

The 2 new security features included in the Westmere line are:

  1. 7 new instructions call AES-NI, that will deliver encryption and decryption up to 9 times faster and up to 2 times more SSL functions than in the past;
  2. Trusted eXecution Technology (TXT) that is integrated in the processor, the chipset and Intel motherboards. “So for example, if you’re using VMotion to dynamically move a workload from a server to another, you want to set policies that say “I’m only going to move a workload to a server I know the secure root of trust has been verified… So, if I’m on a non trusted server I won’t be allowed to run [an application] on a trusted server, and vice-versa… all these kind of policies can be set up at the cloud level through the software that will be enabled on top of these new hardware,” said Skaugen.

Intel claims cloud domination

The Intel executive also provided reporters with some interesting statistics:

  1. a little under 40% of the world’s servers today are still single core;
  2. Xeon servers represent about 90% of the cloud infrastructure.

“With this new chip, everything that you know and love about Intel on energy efficiency, you’ll still get. So you can retire 15 single core servers and put in one Westmere server that is going to have the same performance, but you also going to get the trusted execution technology that can deliver that new secure root of trust,” concluded Skaugen.

Follows is a video excerpt of Skaugen comments:

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[Video] RSA, VMware, Intel Unveil Trusted Cloud Vision

March 2, 2010

EMC collaborates with VMware and Intel to deliver proof of concept for business-critical security, compliance and control in the cloud

RSA Chief Art Coviella at the conference media reception

At a media reception tonight, RSA president Art Coviello unveiled a proof of concept for measuring and monitoring the security of a cloud infrastructure.

The concept that will make its debut tomorrow, at this week’s RSA Conference in San Francisco comprises of a hardware root of trust provided by Intel in its next-generation server processor (Westmere), a secure virtualisation environment and a security information and event management.

“What is more important, because this is about virtualisation (the enabling technology for the cloud infrastructure), is that we are building the security in [the cloud infrastructure] before we have massive deployments of cloud infrastructures. That was not happening 14 or 15 years ago. That, I think, is the biggest news that is coming out of this conference,” explains Coviello.

The goal is to:

  1. provide a better visibility into actual conditions within the bottom-most layers of the cloud, within physical and virtual machines, giving organizations the ability to verify secure conditions in what was formerly the “black box” of the cloud;
  2. enable finer controls to enforce differentiated policies in private clouds, such as what types of physical hardware virtual machines may run on and which tenants or business units may co-reside and share resources;
  3. streamline Compliance by providing automated processes for collecting, analyzing and reporting infrastructure-level activities and events.

Follows, a video excerpt of Coviello’s introductory comments.

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Want Publicity? Start Your Own Blog, Media Site

April 29, 2009

As the old French adage goes, “One is never so well served as by one-self.”

And for PR pros that could also mean becoming… a publisher!

“Don’t underestimate the potential of self-publising and developing your own powerful blog or media site,” said Dell’s Vice President of Large Enterprise Marketing and Online, Andy Lark. 

Speaking today at PRSA’s event on “PR Secret Strategies For Success” Lark argued that the vacuum created by the collapse of publishing – Fortune Small Business magazine was just taken off the stand -and in particular in the high-tech sector, left Oracle magazine and Dell’s Power Solutions magazine as the 2 most distributed tech magazine in the world, ahead of IDG’s InfoWorld.

“Increasingly the “private label” publications is starting to dominate the media landscape with deeper reach and richer content,” added Lark.

For Lark, there’s no reason why even a small startup can not become a large publisher, with a site that agregates content and finally end up with a bigger circulation very quickly than any of the tradional media sites.

I agree this can be true for companies launching publications focused on their core market. Like Seagate’s blogs on digital storage or RSA’s security blog.

But I find hard to believe that these “private label” blogs will provide a fair and balance view of competitors, flaws, etc…

And there will always be a room for high-quality reporting, in “traditional” media, blog or whatever you want to call it.

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How RSA Security Defies Recession

April 23, 2009
RSA Security President, Art Coviello, explains the secret behind the companys success despite the economic downturn

RSA Security President, Art Coviello, explains the secret behind the company's success despite the economic downturn

Despite the current financial services meltdown, RSA Security managed to increase both overall revenue and its market share within the finance category.

“In a record [fourth] quarter with the financial services industry down, we had the higer percentage than ever in financial services,” explained RSA President, Art Coviello, in a fireside chat late yesterday with other RSA and VMware executives.

So is computer security recession-proof?

When asked, Coviello came up with 2 reasons:

  1. Return on investments, as RSA products help finance institutions reduce the amount of fraud, giving them an immediate ROI;
  2. And cost effectiveness.

“The security vendors that will be successful during this financial crisis will be the ones that can offer both cost efficiency with their solution and some level of ROI through fraud reduction,” adds Coviello.

Here’s a short video excerpt of my conversation with RSA President, Art Coviello:

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With Fraud As A Service, Online Fraud Becomes Mainstream, RSA Security Expert Warns

September 25, 2008

Online fraud was long considered to be not for everyone.

First, because thankfully only a fraction of the population actually dream to become fraudsters with all the gains but also the pains this illegal activity brings.

But also because it’s just not easy as it looks to become a “good” thief and steal people’s online identities or hack into their online bank and/or credit card accounts.

“Believe it or not, when you enter the online fraud community, you have to make a career choice”, says RSA security expert Uri Rivner (pictured) speaking at yesterday’s EMC Silicon Valley briefing. “Either you specialise in harvesting or phishing for identities (social security numbers, bank accounts, etc…) or you specialise in cashing-out on those identities i.e. using them to get cash or buy products. And it’s very hard to do both, because it requires different skill sets.

Read the rest of this entry »

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