Statistics show that IT sector will bring promising number of jobs in 2015. Employers will be adding professionals in business for expansion and growth. In today’s competition, businesses will need to add value to end user by developing new tools and services. Organisations have changed their standards for hiring strategy in this year. They are looking for skilled talent to increase company’s depth and management capabilities. Here are four things that employers are looking for while hiring IT professionals in 2015.
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1. Third Platform Skills:
Companies that are offering Big Data and cloud services are looking to expand their third platform capabilities to meet clients requirements of social and mobile needs. The competition for professionals with third platform knowledge is intense. Statistical reports suggest that third platform will acquire over 50 per cent of IT sector by 2020. Employers today are looking for talented professionals who can build, implement and manage data analysis platforms like Hadoop. The demand for data scientists and analysts is going to high in this year.
2. Middle Managers:
The demand for middle managers is rapidly increasing. Few years back, the availability of middle engineers was high but there was no demand in job sector. In today’s market, organisations have goal of scaling the company, they are looking for middle managers with engineering expertise. IT consulting firms have growing demand for technology executives. IT organisations believe that experiences leaders can help in scaling up the company. Employers are looking for professionals with emotional intelligence who have collaborative nature and technical expertise.
3. Leadership, Teamwork and Problem Solving Skills:
The demand for project managers, team leaders and line managers is growing. Employers are looking for professionals with fundamental knowledge of data science and engineering. Mid-size organisations are looking for professionals with qualities like, leadership, teamwork ability, communication skills, analytics and problem solving abilities. Communication skills and ability to work in team are on the top of employers' hiring attributes these days.
4. Diversity:
Diversity is a major initiative for tech companies. Google has just 17 per cent female employees, other major tech companies like Hispanic, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, eBay and Pinterest are also followed by law enforcement. Intel recently announced its plan to improve gender ratio within company’s U.S. operations. The company has kept the budget of 300 million dollars for next five years to achieve the gender and racial diversity. Companies are coming up with sponsorship and scholarship offerings to meet the target of gender diverse workforce.
Software professionals spend a lot of time in coding. That's why they get specially attached to their keyboards. There are some keyboards which reduce repetitive stress injuries while others encourage touch-typing. Developers have affinities for different keyboards. Here are eight models of keyboards which are most popular among programmers:
1. Das:
Launched in 2005, Das keyboard encourages touch-typing which boosts typing speed and perfection. The Cherry MX switches also provide audible feedback. These keyboards help type faster.
2. IBM Model M:
This keyboard was first introduced in 1984 and it has spring key design which offers audible feedback too. Its keys are switchable and it also allows different keyboard layouts. It's a durable model too. This keyboard is popular for its solid response and it allows typing for long hours without any stress. It also ensures lesser typos as it's very easy to type on this keyboard.
3. Kinesis Advantage:
This keyboard, launched in 2002, has an ergonomic layout and some common non-letter keys are placed centrally on this keyboard. It helps reduce repetitive stress injuries while coding and its keys can be reprogrammed too. The keys can be switched between QWERTY and Dvorak. Kinesis suits perfectly with finger structure and it also offers built-in rests for wrists.
4. Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000:
Launched in 2005, this keyboard gives a natural feel to its users as it has padded palm rests and helps reduce wrist pain. Programmers find this model extremely comfortable to use.
5. TypeMatrix:
This keyboard model was launched in 1997. Its keys are placed in straight vertical columns and it helps reduce hand movement and repetitive stress. On this keyboard, the Enter and Backspace keys are placed within reach of index fingers and not thumbs.
6. DataHand:
It's again an ergonomic keyboard model which allows custom hand placements. It allows easy access to key-switches to each finger and also use the integrated mouse. The movements on this keyboard are almost similar to QWERTY and it's the most ideal for those coders who love coding all the day.
7. Microsoft Comfort Curve:
It's born in 2005 and it's ergonomic too. It's not as expensive as Microsoft’s Natural Ergonomic keyboards. Its keys are very low-profile which is another reason behind its popularity. Its curve makes a difference and it allows striking keys from any angle.
8. Apple Aluminium Wireless:
It's a very popular keyboard among Apple fans and it's loved because of its slim design, aluminium case and also the MacBook-like key layout. It helps prevent fat-finger mistakes and it gives the feel of a laptop keyboard. Its design is quite compact and beautiful too.
Courtesy: IT World
There have been several software bugs which get detected after their long-time presence in the software. Other vulnerabilities in the same library might get fixed, but these latent bugs keep silent over years. For decades, these critical bugs simply go unnoticed and it's quite a common factor now. There are many reasons why a bug stays undetected or sometimes ignored too. Here we present a list of five such bugs which have lived for a long time without the knowledge of developers.
1. OpenBSD’s head bug:
This bug was present in the software for 37 years and two months before it got fixed in October, 2014. The bug is actually quite older than OpenBSD, which was born just 18 years ago. Though it was fixed, the bug remained in some BSD derivatives like NetBSD and the bug was present when OpenBSD was created in 1996. The problem was fixed in October 2014 after the previous fix was merged into OpenBSD.
2. Excel’s year 1900 problem:
This 27-year-old bug is not resolved yet. When Microsoft was creating the first version of Excel for Windows in mid 80s, it was competing against IBM's Lotus 1-2-3, the dominant PC spreadsheet of that time. Microsoft ported spreadsheets from Lotus, copying a Lotus bug as well into Excel and it started treating 1900 as a leap year. To make the date calculations easier, Lotus engineers ignored this bug as it was considered as a minor issue. This behaviour was followed in Microsoft Excel too and the bug is still present 27 years later, as fixing it would lead to several problems.
3. Bash’s Shellshock vulnerability:
This vulnerability was fixed in September, 2014. Bash shell was created in 1989 as a part of the GNU project. It was aimed to replace Bourne shell and over a period of time it became an integral part of all Unix-based systems, ranging from BSD to Linux and also Mac OS X. It contained a severe vulnerability which remained unnoticed for decades. In 2014 the bug was detected by Linux developer Stephane Chazelas asnd it was named Shellshock. Web servers were at huge risk and it would also allow hackers to take remote control over a server and create botnets. The first patches were released in September, 2014.
4. Windows’ NT Virtual DOS Machine problem:
When Windows NT, the first 32-bit system by Microsoft, was released in 1983, the Windows NT Virtual DOS Machine allowed all the 16-bit software to run on 32-bit NT computers. 16-bit programs and DOS were well-accessible on the 32-bit versions of Windows NT, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2009 and Windows 7. Then 16 years later Google researcher Tavis Ormandy discovered a severe bug in the NT VDM code which could allow a hacker to enjoy privileges to the SYSTEM level. The issue was fixed in March 2010.
5. IE6’s Flash exploit:
Microsoft's Internet Explorer version 6 became the dominant web browser after its launch in 2001 and grabbed 90 per cent of the market. Naturally it became a popular target for hackers. It was highly vulnerable to exploits and it was named one of the worst software ever. Vulnerabilities are still there is IE6. In April 2014 a Flash exploitation was detected in IE6 which could allow remote code execution by hackers.
Courtesy: IT World
A security researcher has disclosed random 10 million passwords along with usernames. The researcher has claimed that the dumped passwords have been sourced from websites like haveibeenpwned and pwnedlist, which are used by users to check if their accounts have been compromised.
Earlier in a blog, the researcher Mark Burnett posted, "Today I am releasing ten million passwords" gave reasons why he published the article and also explained that "a carefully-selected set of data provides great insight into user behaviour and is valuable for furthering password security." Burnett has also ensured that all the passwords are “dead” now and added that they "cannot be defined as authentication features because dead passwords will not allow you to authenticate."
Burnett has also explained why he released the passwords and usernames in the public domain, "Frequently I get requests from students and security researchers to get a copy of my password research data. I typically decline to share the passwords but for quite some time I have wanted to provide a clean set of data to share with the world. A carefully-selected set of data provides great insight into user behaviour and is valuable for furthering password security. So I built a data set of ten million usernames and passwords that I am releasing to the public domain."
Burnett had to clarify why he posted the leaked passwords in the public domain to ensure that it's completely for research purpose and not to attack anyone. His blog further reads, "I think this is completely absurd that I have to write an entire article justifying the release of this data out of fear of prosecution or legal harassment. I had wanted to write an article about the data itself but I will have to do that later because I had to write this lame thing trying to convince the FBI not to raid me."
BGR has also reported that a site has been created based on this data and it's live now. On this site, anyone can check whether their accounts have been compromised or not. The website, allows you searching the usernames and passwords to make it sure that your username and password is not on the list.
