In a recent Linux Foundation blog post titled "Preventing Supply Chain Attacks like SolarWinds," the foundation's Director of Open Source Supply Chain Security, David A. Wheeler, adamantly pushed the need for software developers to embrace the LF's security recommendations. Given the magnitude of the SolarWinds hack, LinuxInsider asked Wheeler to dive deeper into how supply chain security standards might benefit from the LF's latest advice.

Cybersecurity experts predict that in 2021 there will be a cyberattack incident every 11 seconds. This is nearly twice what it was in 2019, and four times the rate five years ago in 2016. The rapidly growing increase in cyberattacks worldwide comes at a hefty cost for businesses in order to better protect their computer networks from intrusions. Cyberattacks not only are increasing in frequency, but they are costing victims larger financial losses.

I participated in a group analyst event several weeks ago about companies converting their offices into collections of meeting rooms. We couldn't picture people who have been meeting remotely for so many months suddenly concluding that the long commute to and from the office was worth meeting in person; given they are now okay with using solutions like Webex or Microsoft Teams.

Cyberattacks are increasing in frequency, ramping up the data privacy threats they pose to government agencies and businesses alike. Governments both domestic and foreign need to step up efforts to pass legislation that bolsters technological defenses this year, warn privacy groups. Stiffer privacy laws are gradually being reviewed and signed into the U.S. market. But that process is mostly taking place at the state level.

The incoming presidential administration has proposed an extraordinary increase in support of federal investments in high technology. As part of the administration's plan to deal with the economic impact of COVID-19, the proposal includes $10 billion for various federal information technology programs.

In the early part of 2020, the pandemic forced companies around the world to rethink their practices and determine how to accelerate the adoption of technologies that would enable remote work. After closing out on a tumultuous year, many business leaders admit where they may have gone wrong. Here are some ways they would approach a shift to remote work, if faced with the crisis all over again.

Maintaining and increasing research and development spending in the COVID-19 era is critical for high technology vendors to deliver new solutions and services, continue to innovate, and position their businesses to rebound from the negative effects of the global pandemic. Analysts, financial advisors, and investors concur that, wherever possible, vendors should continue to aggressively invest in R&D.

The PC market ended 2020 with a big bang, as shipments during the final quarter rose 25 percent over the same period in 2019, according to a report by research firm Canalys. Much of the market growth during the year was driven by notebooks and mobile workstation shipments, which increased 44 percent over 2019, reaching 235.1 million.

More than 80 percent of 650 cybersecurity and IT professionals surveyed by Check Point Software Technologies in July said their traditional security solutions either do not work at all, or only provide limited functions in the cloud. This indicates that organizations' cloud migrations and deployments are racing ahead of their security teams' abilities to defend against attacks and breaches.

Downtime can cost enterprises that depend solely on a data center's ability to deliver IT and networking services to customers -- such as e-commerce companies -- up to $11,000 a minute. The cost to businesses, entrepreneurs and individuals who use subscription services in their work has yet to be calculated.

Machine learning, which has disrupted and improved so many industries, is just starting to make its way into software testing. Heads are turning, and for good reason: the industry is never going to be the same again. Let's delve into the current state of affairs, and explore how ML techniques are radically changing the software testing industry.

CRM giant Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to purchase enterprise communications platform Slack. "Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world, said Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO, Salesforce.

The @ Company wants to give you a more secure and human-centric Internet built on providing you with true ownership and control of your personal data. To that end, the company has launched an app built on its new privacy protocol. This new standard will attempt to change how online vendors and companies wheel and deal with the personal information of billions of Internet users.

The Linux Foundation today announced at KubeKon that it is hosting the Servo web engine, an open-source, high-performance browser engine. "Servo is the most promising, modern, and open web engine for building applications and immersive experiences using web technologies," according to Mike Dolan, senior vice president and general manager of projects at the Linux Foundation.

A report by open source security and license management company WhiteSource explores various factors contributing to the siloed software development culture and what steps are needed to achieve agile, mature, DevSecOps practices. TechNewsWorld discussed with David Habusha, vice president of product at WhiteSource, the state of DevSecOps in light of the report.

Apple pulled the wraps off its first computer models based on its new Apple Silicon chip at an online event aired Tuesday. The Mac Air, Mac Mini and 13-inch MacBook Pro are all being refreshed with the company's new ARM-based M1 chip. The move is the beginning of a transition, expected to take two years, away from Intel chips and to Apple Silicon.

Although DIA can have a steep price tag and some installation complexity, most companies will opt for a dedicated connection at offices or data centers with mission-critical operations. Let's explore the benefits of a DIA circuit, as well as some potential considerations and drawbacks, to help determine if dedicated Internet is something your business should consider.

The Linux Foundation is doubling down on open source collaboration to drive more innovation in technology that uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning. The LF AI Foundation and ODPi merged on Oct. 25 to form the LF AI & Data Foundation. This new organization will build and support an open community and a growing ecosystem of open source AI, data, and analytics projects.

More than 90 percent of IT leaders surveyed for a recent report expect to expand their cloud services in the next one to three years. Despite this testament to the benefits of cloud adoption, enterprises may find a lack of qualified IT workers to fill those positions. A majority of cloud team leaders identified a lack of internal skills and knowledge as a top barrier to cloud success.

Powerful events and product launches by Cisco, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Qualcomm promise to make our future brighter. From more effective courts and legislators, to flexible and intelligent robots, to tools we can use to improve remote productivity, to validation that our justice system works -- last week was remarkable.

The Linux Foundation and learning platform edX have released the latest open source jobs report which shows that, despite the pandemic, demand for open source technology skills continues to be strong. The 2020 Open Source Jobs Report reveals a spike in demand for DevOps talent, along with a continued lack of applicants with open source skills.

The BizOps Coalition hopes to bridge the gap between technology investments and business outcomes through an effort called the BizOps Manifesto. The BizOps movement has gained traction with leading organizations, helping them to better align IT with business outcomes. But more needs to be done. That led to the Manifesto's creation.

Red Hat, a major provider of open source solutions, has never had a comprehensive document guiding associate participation in open source projects, until now. Perhaps under the influence of its recent purchase by IBM, Red Hat recently announced the external publication of its open-source participation guidelines. The company released the guidelines on GitHub under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

The U.S. government's policy to restrict federal agency exposure to products and services associated with Huawei Technologies and other China-based companies has gained the support of the U.S. information technology industry. However, a wide swath of U.S. companies, including those in the IT sector, registered significant concerns about federal regulations designed to control the employment of China-sourced products by federal agencies and government contractors.

Some of the world's largest, most regulated, complex and centuries-old industries have several essential things in common with today's rapid development, bleeding-edge innovation. They are all dependent on open source software, and they are building open source into the fabric of their R&D models.

The Linux Foundation last month announced its intent to form the Linux Foundation Climate Finance Foundation to empower investors, banks, insurers, companies, governments, NGOs, and academia with AI-enhanced open-source analytics and open data to address climate risk and opportunity. Allianz, Amazon, Microsoft, and S&P Global have committed to be founding members.

Instead of legacy security models that differentiate a "trusted" interior from an untrusted external one, zero trust instead assumes that all networks and hosts are equally untrustworthy. Once this fundamental shift in assumptions is made, you start to make different decisions about what, who, and when to trust, and acceptable validation methods to confirm a request or transaction is allowed.

Earlier this month, a woman with a life-threatening condition passed away after hackers crashed the IT systems of a major hospital in the city of Dusseldorf. Incidents like this raise the question of why corporations do not patch vulnerabilities as soon as software manufacturers issue a fix.

At Microsoft Ignite last week, the breadth and focus that Microsoft demonstrated were arguably well beyond what any other company is capable of doing. This lesson is worth remembering because Microsoft, unlike its peers facing antitrust action, is showing how to become powerful without becoming a threat. The result is far more powerful and far less risky than the company's prior path.

Even in these changing times of shuttered shops and pandemic-driven corporate layoffs, a flood of tech jobs goes unfilled due to a lack of Linux skills among IT workers. That combination is contributing to a slowdown or delay in enterprise plans to migrate their local computing base to public cloud operations, as an already existing Linux tech pool gap has widened since the pandemic.