Apple news website 9to5mac.com reported that the leak included company usernames and passwords. Even the company’s top employee wasn’t spared, with data revealing login information for Terry Gou, Foxconn’s chief executive officer.

On Twitter, hacking group Swagg Security took responsibility for the operation, leaking access to the compromised data on website Pastebin.

Swagg Security cited “hilarity” as their main reason for carrying out their actions, all while admitting they were “disappointed of the conditions of Foxconn.”

“Foxconn did have an appropriate firewall, but fortunately to our intent, we were able to bypass it almost flawlessly. Of course with funding ourselves we did have our limitations. But with several hacking techniques employed, and a couple of days in time, we were able to dump most of everything of significance,” stated Swagg Security when discussing the matter.

The hackers appear similar to other hacking groups participating in antisec, a hacking movement based partly upon political motivations. Last year, popular hacking organizations including Lulzsec and Anonymous successfully carried out high-profile security breaches on top companies and government branches.

Foxconn has a wide range of global operations, manufacturing products for tech giants including Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Cisco, Amazon and Intel.

In China, the company has been hit with scathing criticism regarding its treatment of workers with detractors arguing that Foxconn overworks its employees with minimal pay. Criticism has been backed by a number of high-profile suicides by employees at the factory campuses over the past few years.

Apple especially has been noted for its work with Foxconn due to the company’s production of popular tech devices including the iPad.

Last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook directly addressed criticism of Foxconn in an email to company employees, defending Apple’s work with the company. “We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern,” Cook stated.

Cook also said Apple routinely inspects the factories of its manufacturers and pointed to “progress and improved conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers.” Globally, Foxconn maintains facilities in continents including Asia, Europe and South America.

Manufacturer Foxconn Breached Amid Criticism

o2o’s IT had been focused around a single set of offices and one server room in Norwich as a legacy of its days as part of Her Majesty’s Stationary Office (HMSO). However a series of acquisitions over the last few years saw it grow to such an extent that its IT environment became extremely fragmented.

Vincent Cassidy, Group IT Director for o2o, explained: “As we made new acquisitions I knew we needed to reduce our risks and put in a scalable platform. Essentially we needed to evolve from a traditional IT department that was just keeping the lights on, to a flexible IT infrastructure that added value for our customers, enabled us to adopt more modern technological processes and allowed flexibility for future growth. We wanted to get to the point where our IT was having a positive impact on our bottom line.”

o2o decided that the only way forward was to fully outsource its IT and selected iomart Hosting to carry out the rationalisation.

Vincent Cassidy said: “The iomart team invested a huge amount of time and effort to understand our business and the challenges we face, through regular site visits and assessment of our existing estate. This meant that when it came to the proposal they could address our specific requirements in detail. It really set iomart Hosting apart from other potential service providers.”

A large migration was undertaken which involved moving over 200 servers into iomart Hosting’s London data centre. The resulting group-wide virtualisation has vastly reduced o2o’s server hardware. There is a large VMware platform with built in backup, which provides the group’s DNS services, Active Directory plus SAN storage. There are also two dedicated database servers – an MSSQL Cluster and MSSQL Mirror.

“It was quite a complex migration but it’s been a smooth and comfortable process,” explains Vincent Cassidy. “The support we’ve had from iomart Hosting has been excellent. The technical staff have been very responsive, superb in fact.”

Sarah Haran, managing director of iomart Hosting: “What we have created for o2o is a resilient and secure environment which supports its on-demand business model and which mitigates the risk of unacceptable loss of IT systems which support its business critical functions. We have reduced the complexity of its IT environment and provided a platform that allows for greater group-level consolidation which should significantly reduce o2o’s existing internal operating costs.”

o2o announced in August 2011 that its largest subsidiary Banner Business Services Limited had been awarded a £37m annual contract to be sole provider of office products and services under a new framework contract to supply Central Government departments.

Vincent Cassidy said: “The decision to outsource our IT infrastructure to iomart Hosting came at just the right time. As we win bigger and more complex contracts it’s great to know that we have got a hosting partner that is prepared to go that extra mile for us and adapt as our requirements change. The relationship we have with iomart Hosting is crucial for our business and how it develops. We are already looking at cloud services and are talking to iomart Hosting about the potential to use other services like email in the future.”

iomart Hosting is a subsidiary of iomart Group plc (AIM:IOM) which was named Scottish Digital IT Company of the Year 2011, and ranked as one of the best web hosting companies in the world by HostReview.

For more information on iomart Hosting, please visit: http://www.iomarthosting.com/

iomart Carries Out Virtualisation for office2office

“Verne Global is scaling its colocation and wholesale data centre campus to meet the tremendous demand from both Western Europe and North America as more companies look to benefit from its state-of-the-art facilities to power their data centre programmes,” said Gunnar Guojonsson, CEO of Opin Kerfi. “Our rich history, dedicated IT support team and established relationships with leading solution providers such as HP, Microsoft, Cisco and others will help ensure that Verne Global’s customers have the support needed to succeed.”

Opin Kerfi has consistently and successfully provided innovative and efficient services to its clients, focusing on consultation, integration, operations and solutions within IT, communications and newly emerging data centre sector. Opin Kerfi is an HP Gold Partner and the sole distribution and support centre for HP in Iceland. Opin Kerfi is a certified Cisco Silver Partner, and as both a Microsoft Distribution Partner and Microsoft Gold Partner, it is the largest combined sales and support partner for Microsoft products and solutions in Iceland. Furthermore, the company has a strong competence in open source solutions as well as selling and supporting solutions from various other vendors such as Eaton, Apple, RedHat, VMWare and few other specialised software vendors.

“Verne Global’s service partnership with Iceland’s premier system integrator will help ensure our customers can take full advantage of our strategic location to extend their data centre programmes,” said Tate Cantrell, CTO of Verne Global. “In addition to the services that Opin Kerfi provides to Verne Global, we are excited to act as Opin Kerfi’s infrastructure provider for their key managed service accounts.  With Opin Kerfi’s consolidation into the Verne Global facility, we have forged an ideal partnership that will support Verne Global and our customers as we expand our campus and add new services.”

About Verne Global:
Verne Global is developing the data centre industry’s first carbon neutral data centre campus.  Verne’s mission is to develop data centres in optimised geographic areas that offer companies the best total cost of ownership and 100% renewable power without a price premium.  Currently in the first stage of development, Verne Global is constructing a 44 acre campus on the former NATO Command Center in Keflavik, Iceland. With Iceland’s favorable natural attributes and renewable energy resources, Verne Global can save customers as much as $100 million in ten years on energy costs alone.  For more information, please visit http://verneglobal.com.

Verne Global Selects Opin Kerfi as IT Partner

This one-day event, which takes place on February 15, 2012 at the National College of Ireland in Dublin, focuses on practical case studies and discussions about online measurement including sales and social media. The event is targeted at companies and organisations that already use social media who want to learn more about the metrics as well as individuals in marketing and communications.

Irish registrar and hosting company Blacknight have a strong history of promoting and using social media. Winners of several blogging awards, Blacknight lead the domain industry in progressive use of social media to connect with customers and other businesses.

Michele Neylon of Blacknight states: “We love social media so it was an obvious choice for us to sponsor Measurement.ie. We are strong believers in what social media can do for your business and think it is fantastic that Measurement.ie is providing the tools for companies to learn to wield its power more steadily. Having tons of Twitter followers and Facebook fans is just the tip of the iceberg. It is incredibly important to understand the value of the numbers.”

The conference, which emphasises a departure from traditional social media basics, includes panel topics such as: “Value of a Facebook Fan and Twitter Follower,” and “Future of Measurement.”

“Social media is maturing as a practice with general acceptance in most companies as a useful tool,” states Measurement.ie organiser Damien Mulley. “For companies now to get maximum value out of it, it will need to be measured and standardised within an organization. This conference is about the next step after implementation, which is measuring effects and giving organisation-wide feedback. We’re fortunate that we have some of the best people in Ireland and the UK presenting at this event.”

Speakers include Stephen Jio, Dell’s Global Manager for Online Mobility and SoHo products and Laurence Veale, Google Analytics and tracking leads and sales. The MC for the event is beloved Internet awards MC, Rick O’Shea.

Tickets for Measurement.ie are now sold out. For more information, visit http://www.blacknight.com or http://www.measurement.ie

About Blacknight:

Blacknight are an Irish based, ICANN accredited domain registrar and hosting company. Recipients of several awards for their revolutionary use of social media, Blacknight are one of Europe’s most cutting edge Internet companies. Blacknight constantly seek to lead the way by introducing innovative solutions for its client base and provide dedicated servers and colocation as well as a comprehensive range of Microsoft Windows and Linux based hosting plans and domain name registration services to business globally.

Blacknight Sponsors Measurement.ie Conference

VPS.NET cites consumer demand and market research as the leading factor in choosing where to place the new clouds. “These new clouds strengthen our commitment to our US and EU customers offering new locations for extra redundancy. Coupled with this, the introduction of our Singapore cloud mirrors the growth we are seeing in the Far East,” said Rus Foster, Managing Director of VPS.NET.

The launch of the new data center locations highlight why VPS.NET is a dominant force in the cloud services industry. Additionally, this expansion demonstrates the commitment to existing VPS.NET clients by expanding the infrastructure into new markets.

“We’ve always been really proud of our ability to deliver an extremely flexible cloud infrastructure to our customers. By giving our customers even more options, it really adds a tremendous amount of value to our product offering, and our customers really appreciate that,” said Terry Myers, Chief Evangelist at VPS.NET.

VPS.NET plans to have new locations available starting in mid-March, with full scale implementation by April 2012. The new locations will substantially increase the VPS.NET global footprint in the competitive cloud services industry.

ABOUT VPS.NET

VPS.NET operates one of the largest cloud hosting systems in the world. It offers affordable cloud hosting to everyday users, while giving enterprise users the flexibility they need to adequately scale, and handle their growing IT demands. VPS.NET is a division of the UK2Group, which provides domain registration and web hosting services to thousands of customers globally through its family of hosting brands – UK2.net, midPhase.com, WestHost.com, 100TB.com, Anhosting.com, Resell.biz, and VI.net. VPS.NET is committed to providing secure and reliable products and services underpinned with excellent support. For more information about VPS.NET, please visit http://www.vps.net.

VPS.NET Expands with New Cloud Locations

While still currently in Beta, Chrome for Android can be downloaded through the Android Marketplace.

However, there is somewhat of a catch. Mobile system requirements call for Android Version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Computer magazine PCWorld was quick to note that only 1% of mobile devices currently use that version of Android (Statistics were made available via the Android Developers website).

Meanwhile, majority of Android users are still relying on version 2.3 Gingerbread as of the first of February.

Chrome for Android provides users with the ability to sync Chrome from their desktops to their mobile phones or tablets. Doing so allows them to carry over bookmarks and browser tabs. Other features include link preview (the loading of web pages as you’re typing in search) and incognito mode.

Currently, users with Android-based mobile devices access the Internet through an app icon simply titled “Browser.” Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether Chrome could become Android’s default browser in the future.

Google launched Chrome in 2008 and since then, the web browser has highly increased in popularity.

In December, tracking site StatCounter reported that Chrome had passed Mozilla Firefox in usage. However, both browsers are still ranked after Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Android’s main competitor in the mobile market is Apple’s iOS, made available on devices such as the iPad and iPhone. For more information regarding Google’s release of Chrome for mobile, view a post on the Google Blog here (google.blogpost.com).

Google Makes Chrome Available Via Android

In the world of hosting, the spam police might show up at your virtual door with a DNS blacklist with your IP address on it. If you truly have no idea why, there is a good chance that a spammer has found a way to exploit your server or VPS, and an open relay could be the culprit.

An SMTP server is the part of your mail server that handles sending. Any outgoing mail has to be processed by the SMTP server. Ideally, that server has some security measures in place that keep unknown users from exploiting it. An open relay is an SMTP server that allows anyone to use it. Spammers can use it to send mail, and it will appear as though it came from you, even if you have never actually sent anything.

DNSBL (blacklists) will identify open relays and inform other mail servers to deny them. As a result, if your server ends up on a blacklist, you may not be able to send mail to other mail servers that use a blacklisting service. Once you fix the open relay, the blacklists will eventually remove you, but it may take some time.

Open relays are easy to fix with proper SMTP authentication, and you can find online tools that will test your mail server to see if it has an open relay. With that in mind, there is no reason to delay fixing this potentially dangerous security issue.

Understanding the Dangers of Open Relays

The SmartDesign approach simplifies the complex environment of data centers by bringing together the most comprehensive power, precision cooling, monitoring and infrastructure management technologies. It also extends the Emerson Smart Solutions benefits into data centers requiring room-scale power and cooling configurations. Each data center configuration utilizes intelligent, integrated infrastructure systems that are efficient, economical, simplified and controllable—not only today, but in an ever-changing IT future as well.

SmartDesign Approach Leverages Industry Best Practices
Every SmartDesign recommendation leverages several or all of the following best practices:
1.    Maximize the return air temperature at the cooling units to improve capacity and efficiency
2.    Match cooling capacity with IT loads
3.    Utilize cooling designs that reduce energy consumption
4.    Select the power system that optimizes your availability and efficiency
5.    Design for flexibility using scalable architecture that minimizes footprint
6.    Enable performance-enhancing data center infrastructure management, monitoring and control
7.    Leverage local data center design expertise and technical assistance

To demonstrate the effectiveness of the SmartDesign approach, the company has developed a number ofreference designs to show examples of multiple infrastructure technologies configured in various arrangements. Each reference design includes operating expenditure (OPex), total cost of ownership (TCO) and power usage effectiveness (PUE) metrics along with the corresponding technology configuration. Users obtain directional comparisons with other SmartDesign scenarios in the areas of efficiency, availability, capacity and scalability. The initial reference designs cover 180 kW to 1,300 kW.

New Designs that Deliver Efficiency without Compromising Availability
According to a 2011 industry report, it is essential that organizations not fixate on making existing data center designs efficient without also considering new innovations. The “InformationWeek Analytics State of the Data Center Report” points out that today’s data center designs can deliver high efficiencies, but that many in the industry often get tied up in making older designs work better. The challenge, according to the report, is to overcome the conceptual inertia of old designs.

SmartDesign approaches combine the value of local expertise with the deep technology portfolio of Emerson Network Power. Depending on configuration, a SmartDesign infrastructure can reduce cooling system energy consumption and costs, increase available capacities, manage high heat loads that can limit computing flexibility, maximize space utilization by supporting higher equipment densities, and help ensure availability of high-density equipment.

The SmartDesign infrastructure is supported by local data center experts and the industry’s largest service organization working in tandem with industry planners, engineers and contractors to properly apply best practices and leading technologies so that data centers can achieve the performance, total cost of ownership, uptime and efficiency levels demanded.

Quotes attributable to Jeff Sturgeon, vice president/GM global solutions, Emerson Network Power:
–    “Data centers need a level of design that addresses their unique requirements for optimizing performance. Concepts that resemble an off-the-shelf approach or others that require elaborate build-out and untested integration efforts may not contain the best practices needed to increase efficiency, availability and capacity.”
–    “Our goal with the SmartDesign approach is to give data center professionals and consulting engineers proven insight to more effectively and efficiently use the technologies and best practices available today to design the right data center for today and tomorrow.”
–    “The beauty of the SmartDesign approach is that it encompasses the full range of power, cooling, racks and infrastructure management technologies available today, but it ensures a level of preparedness for future IT needs that is unmatched in today’s data center industry.”
–    “Other Smart Solutions from Emerson include the SmartRow, SmartMod and SmartAisle offerings, which bring together best-of-breed technologies and industry best practices to enable cost-effective management of capacity, efficiency and availability through interoperable systems configured to reduce costs, speed implementation and adapt to change.”

Quote attributable to Go Daddy Critical Facilities Manager Rene LeBlanc (Go Daddy, the world’s largest provider of Web hosting, domain name registrations and net new SSL Certificates, adopted the SmartDesign infrastructure approach for recent projects.):
–     “We are always looking for ways to make our services more efficient for our customers and SmartDesign helps us get the job done.”

Related Links(emersonnetworkpower.com)
SmartDesign Overview Brochure
SmartDesign Reference Designs
Seven Best Practices for Increasing Efficiency, Availability and Capacity: The Enterprise Design Guide
Cyber Development Group International case study
DataCenter.BZ case study
Sarasota County case study

About Emerson Network Power

Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson,delivers software, hardware and services that maximize availability, capacity and efficiency for data centers, healthcare and industrial facilities. A trusted industry leader in smart infrastructure technologies, Emerson Network Power provides innovative data center infrastructure management solutions that bridge the gap between IT and facility management and deliver efficiency and uncompromised availability regardless of capacity demands. Our solutions are supported globally by local Emerson Network Power service technicians. Learn more about Emerson Network Power products and services at http://www.EmersonNetworkPower.com.

About Emerson

Emerson, based in St. Louis, Missouri (USA), is a global leader in bringing technology and engineering together to provide innovative solutions for customers in industrial, commercial, and consumer markets through its network power, process management, industrial automation, climate technologies, and tools and storage businesses. Sales in fiscal 2011 were $24.2 billion. For more information, visit http://www.Emerson.com.

Emerson Network Power Introduces SmartDesign

“These volunteers will be key to ICANN’s effort to assure that the less-developed parts of the world are able to participate in the new Domain name program,” said Kurt Pritz, Senior Vice President. “The panel members will make a real impact in ensuring that the opportunities for innovation and economic development created by the Internet are open to everyone.”

The volunteers will be chosen for their background and experience in areas such as running a small business, operating in developing economies, analyzing business plans, serving in the public interest, managing a domain name registry service, or awarding grants.

The financial assistance component of the Applicant Support Program offers a limited number of qualifying applicants the opportunity to pay a reduced evaluation fee of $47,000 instead of the full evaluation fee of $185,000.

The selected volunteers will assist in the evaluation of financial support applicants in the context of established public interest, financial capabilities and financial need criteria as outlined in the “Financial Assistance Handbook.”

Those who are interested in applying, should review the criteria, time commitment and other expectations, which are detailed here:http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/candidate-support/sarp-eoi-request-03feb12-en.pdf

• To learn more about the Applicant Support Program, go here:http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/candidate-support.
• To read the New gTLD Financial Assistance Handbook, go here:http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/candidate-support/financial-assistance-handbook-11jan12-en.pdf
• To learn more about the New gTLD program, go here: http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/about/program/materials

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Brad White
Director of Global Media Affairs
Washington, D.C.
Tel. +1 (202) 570 7118
brad.white(at)icann(dot)org

Andrew Robertson
Edelman Public Relations
London, U.K.
Tel. + 44 (7811) 341 945
andrew.Robertson(at)edelman(dot)com

About ICANN: ICANN’s mission is to ensure a stable, secure and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer – a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn’t have one global Internet. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers. ICANN doesn’t control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn’t deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet’s naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. For more information please visit: http://www.icann.org.

ICANN Seeks Volunteers for TLD Evaluations

With DotNetPalnel, resellers will be able to decrease 80% of work time and 80% of empowerment for the clients.

The DotNetPanel Control Panel does not only the best and has the most advanced features of Windows Hosting Control Panel. But it also allows unlimited reseller. This feature allows a customer to become a reseller and the reseller’s clients can become resellers, too and so on. There is no limit on the depth of the reseller plan. In DotNetPanel, a reseller can resell domain, resell hosting addons and resell hosting plans since the control panel is completely anonymous.

The unlimited tier reseller hosting system has made reseller hosting business into one of the most profitable form of online business. A reseller can profit vastly from this particular area in web hosting business by accumulating the amount of clients as many as possible. Plus, reseller hosting business only needs low start-up capital and minimum technical skills. This leads to easy and quick income, particularly with the increasing numbers of internet users each day globally.

Windows reseller hosting plans from Webhostforasp.net offers another unique advantage: resellers only have to implement limited system to support their clients. Award winning technology from Webhostforasp.net allows resellers to eliminate 80% of all support-related issues. This means each client of a reseller will have to do the 80% work on their websites through a reseller-friendly Control Center. However, most of the technical issues are already presented clearly and comprehensively in the Knowledge Base, which is complemented with the Control Panel. With this advantage, resellers will be able to save time and money in other areas of business, such as marketing, advertising and so on.

Clients also can gain beneficial features provided by resellers from the reseller hosting plans. Clients will be provided with domain-level logins which will allow them to manage their own websites, taking mundane tasks out of the reseller’s hands and have their own authorization. The reseller hosting plans from Webhostforasp.net start from $20.50 per month, available from 10 to 40 DotNetPanel. For more information on Reseller Hosting Plans from Webhostforasp.net, visit

About Us

Webhostingforasp.net currently owns and operates two state of the art data centers in Dallas, Texas, offering complete redundancy in power, HVAC, fire suppression, network connectivity, and security. It runs Windows 2008 Server which support asp.net hosting and all of its staffs have knowledge and certification in Windows Server. For more information, visit them at http://www.webhostforasp.net.

Webhostforasp.net Launches Reseller Plans