Fairhaven’s very own Jibo was named in the Boston Business Journal’s “Five top startup stories of 2014”

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CRN has named our very own CounterTack and Prelert as “The 10 Coolest Security Startups Of 2014”

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BY JAMES TEMPLE ethics bio articles

The engineers and scientists spilling out of Greater Boston’s world-class universities built the foundations of the modern computing era and amassed the densest cluster of life sciences companies in the world. The region lost some of its most promising startups to Silicon Valley, famously including Facebook. But business is booming — and researchers and entrepreneurs there are aiming far higher than the next social network. This Re/code special series takes a closer look at past, present and future innovation in the region.

The MIT Media Lab’s Personal Robots Group flanks the soaring atrium on the fourth floor of the Wiesner Building, a wall of metal panels along the southern edge of Cambridge, Mass.

The space looks like the set of an ill-advised Terminator-meets-the-Muppets crossover. Mechanical arms, grippers and eyeballs clutter workbenches alongside colorful anemones, fairies and teddy bears, machines that defy sci-fi conventions demanding robots look like rolling trashcans or hard-shelled humans.

Another stereotype buster, named Jibo, sits on the edge of the desk in researcher Cynthia Breazeal’s cramped office. It’s 11 inches, six pounds and stationary, and resembles nothing so much as a desk lamp. But Breazeal believes it could be the first machine to fulfill the potential of personal robotics, offering average consumers a friendly, affordable helper.

It speaks in a childlike voice, swivels its screen in the manner of a puppy’s head tilt, and winks with a cartoonish eye. It can read to children, snap pictures, flag upcoming appointments, facilitate video chats and order up Chinese delivery.

In many ways, Jibo represents the culmination of decades of research for Breazeal, who pioneered the field of social robotics in the late 1990s.

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“Unprecedented” cyberattack no excuse for Sony breach, pros say

If the security industry can’t save you, it will apologize for you.

by Robert Lemos

The security company investigating the attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment has reportedly penned a letter that seemingly holds the entertainment firm blameless for the breach of its systems—a move that has opened up the investigating firm to criticism by security professionals.

The letter—to SPE’s CEO Michael Lynton from Kevin Mandia, the head of FireEye’s Mandiant, the incident response service the company hired to investigate the attack and restore its network—calls the attack “unprecedented in nature.” Mandia states that the attack would not have been detected by antivirus programs, and the attackers used non-standard strategies to cause damage to the company.

“In fact, the scope of this attack differs from any we have responded to in the past, as its purpose was to both destroy property and release confidential information to the public,” Mandia states in the letter, which was leaked to media outlets. “The bottom line is that this was an unparalleled and well planned crime, carried out by an organized group, for which neither SPE nor other companies could have been fully prepared.”

Yet, security professionals aren’t buying it. Within 24 hours, several security experts had criticized the statements and refuted Mandia’s characterization of the attacks.

“We have tremendous respect for Kevin Mandia and the team he’s assembled at FireEye’s Mandiant, but we completely disagree with the statement he made over the weekend,” Ken Levine, president and CEO of security service provider Digital Guardian, said in an e-mail sent to Ars. “He is clearly offering Sony the opportunity to hide behind the veil of advanced persistent threats.”

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Digital Guardian was included in the Gartner EDR Competitive Landscape Nov ’14. CounterTack and Cylance were also mentioned.

To purchase the report, click here: https://www.gartner.com/doc/2926318/competitive-landscape-endpoint-detection-response

Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company. We deliver the technology-related insight necessary for our clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, we are the valuable partner to clients in over 9,100 distinct enterprises worldwide. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, we work with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, USA, and has 6,600 associates, including more than 1,500 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries.

For more information, email info@gartner.com or visit gartner.com.

RAMP will help brewing company maintain unique corporate culture by quickly and securely disseminating engaging corporate communications and training video content to distributed workforce

Boston, MA – December 8th, 2014 – RAMP, the industry’s leading provider of next-generation search and online media experiences, today announced that it has been chosen by New Belgium Brewing for its RAMP Video Management for SharePoint solution.

Using RAMP Video Management for SharePoint, New Belgium, an employee owned company, can now securely and efficiently deliver timely videos to distributed field personnel and all internal employees for communications, employee training, and employee knowledge sharing.

Because RAMP integrates with SharePoint and is infused into existing SharePoint workflow, New Belgium will be able to leverage its current investment in SharePoint, ensuring videos are secure with Active Directory credentials and SharePoint authorization and authentication. The company can now also distribute secure video streaming to mobile devices. Additionally, New Belgium Brewing will be able to increase engagement on its intranet through increased video views and increased engagement with the videos.

“We needed a simple and cost-efficient way to quickly distribute communications videos to employees in the field, on site, and our future brewery in Asheville, NC that enabled us to promote our very tight-knit employee owned beer culture,” said Tye Eyden of New Belgium Brewing. “The fact that RAMP had a video solution already integrated with SharePoint meant we could use our existing, secure content platform and now quickly upload and distribute training and corporate videos to better communicate with more than 500 employees located across our sales territories.”

“Businesses like New Belgium that have a distributed workforce are relying more on video as an effective communications and training tool,” said Tom Wilde, CEO of RAMP. “Because we have a solution already seamlessly integrated with SharePoint, these companies benefit from native security and collaboration features like Active Directory, SharePoint Groups, and Yammer, and now have an all-in-one solution for quickly and securely sharing important corporate videos to employees regardless of location.”

RAMP was recently placed in the “Visionaries” quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Video Content Management, on the strength of its native integration to enterprise CMS systems like Microsoft SharePoint. Complimentary access to the 2014 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Video Content Management is available here: http://connect.ramp.com/gartner-magic-quadrant-enterprise-video

For more information about RAMP Video Management, visit here: http://www.ramp.com/applications/video-management/
You can also download a free trial of RAMP Video Management for SharePoint at the Microsoft Office Store: https://store.office.com/ramp-video-management-WA104137890.aspx?assetid=WA104137890

About RAMP
RAMP provides a next-generation media content platform, making it easy for companies to manage live and on-demand video and audio content across a wide range of industries, from media and entertainment to enterprises in every vertical including financial services, pharmaceutical and healthcare, energy, technology and more. RAMP’s end-to-end, cloud-based video and audio content platform delivers a total solution for data-driven viewer experiences with the best ROI of any video platform. Companies benefiting from RAMP’s solutions include Janssen, Energy Transfer, Entercom, Levi’s, EyeforTravel, FOXNews, Golf Channel, Meredith and many more. Learn more about RAMP at www.ramp.com, and follow us on Twitter at @RAMPINC.

Endpoint Security Makes Quantum Shift

We can’t stop every attack, so we need a new mantra: Detect and respond. Here are the essential tools, skills, and processes.

Rest in peace, antivirus. You had a good run for a security technology — 1987 to 2014.
In case you missed it, in May, Symantec called time of death for antivirus software. It did so not because AV technologies suddenly became less effective. Rather, the company finally acknowledged that it’s not a matter of if, but when, an organization will be targeted and that antivirus products will stop only some attacks. Plenty of security bloggers and pundits reacted with glee, given that antivirus software reportedly represents 40% of Symantec’s revenue.

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Boston Business Journal mentions Jibo as one of the gifts “For the person who has everything…”

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Drizly, the Boston-based maker of an on-demand alcohol-delivery service mobile app, has inked a deal with Chicago-based beer brand MillerCoors to offer free beer delivery service in four major cities.

The deal is historic, because it’s the first time an American brewer has partnered with an e-commerce company to sell its beer online, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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