IT Security Industry Veteran Larry Link Brings Unique Understanding of the Next-Generation Security Challenges Facing Today's Enterprises

SAN DIEGO, CA, Apr 08, 2014 (Marketwired via COMTEX) -- DB Networks, an innovator of behavioral analysis in database security, today announced that it has named Larry Link, former Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales for Palo Alto Networks, to its Board of Directors. In this new role, Mr. Link will provide insight and counsel based on his deep domain experience as the company expands its market for its behavioral analysis based IT security products.

Larry Link brings 25 years of experience as a Senior Operating Executive with an extensive experience in the enterprise market to his role on the Board of Directors at DB Networks. Mr. Link also is on the Board of Directors at Mojave Networks and NetCitadel, and is an investor and advisor to several startups targeting the enterprise market. Mr. Link's security industry experience includes serving as Senior VP of Worldwide Sales for Palo Alto Networks, growing the company from its first sale in 2007 to IPO in July 2012 at a run rate in excess of $400M per year.

"Larry is a strategic addition to the DB Networks board," said Brett Helm, Chairman and CEO of DB Networks. "He brings a unique mix of executive leadership, security industry savviness and entrepreneurial experience, which collectively makes him an excellent addition to the DB Networks board."

"The IT security industry is rapidly moving away from traditional signature based black list / white list technologies toward highly intelligent products that are instead based on behavioral analysis," said Mr. Link. "I am very excited about this opportunity to work very closely with the DB Networks' board and executive team as the company rapidly expands."

Mr. Link's operating experience spans three decades and includes leadership roles at four successful startups. Most recently he was SVP of Worldwide Sales for Palo Alto Networks. Prior to Palo Alto Networks, Larry was SVP of Sales for Silver Peak Systems. He ran Worldwide Sales at Neoteris from inception through its acquisition by Juniper Networks in April 2004. Prior to Neoteris he was Vice President of Enterprise Sales for Excite@Home from its launch in 1996, through IPO in 1997, and its subsequent merger with Excite in 1999. He earned a BS degree in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University.

About DB Networks DB Networks is innovating behavioral analysis technology in the field of database security. Developed for organizations that need to protect their data from advanced attacks, including Zero-Day attacks, DB Networks offers effective countermeasures against SQL injection attacks. Database attacks happen rapidly -- in a matter of minutes -- and bypass traditional perimeter security measures. DB Networks' unique approach uses behavioral analysis technology to automatically learn each application's proper SQL statement behavior. Any SQL statement dispatched from the application that deviates from the established behavioral model immediately raises an alarm as a possible attack. DB Networks is a privately held company headquartered in San Diego, Calif. For more information, see http://www.dbnetworks.com , or call (800) 598-0450.

DB Networks is a registered trademark of DB Networks in the United States and other countries. All other company and product names are either trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

MENLO PARK, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/04/14 -- Ayasdi (www.ayasdi.com) today announced that it is certified on Cloudera Enterprise 5. This certification ensures that Ayasdi's solution has been tested and validated to work with Cloudera Enterprise 5, Cloudera's platform for big data built on Apache Hadoop.

From a technical perspective, Ayasdi leverages CDH 5's Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) for managing large amounts of customer data and uses HBase for storing some of its operational metadata that is randomly accessed and frequently updated.

"Most large global organizations require that their real-time data streams are always available because shortening the 'time to insight' from massive amounts of data is what sparks ideas that drive innovation in today's fast-paced competitive environment," said Shane Paladin, Vice President, Worldwide Sales at Ayasdi. "Working with Cloudera is a natural fit given that we have many joint customers who want to leverage the best of both platforms. Together, we look forward to helping them discover cures to diseases, new sources of oil and energy, identify new sources of fraud, and beyond."

"We welcome Ayasdi into the Cloudera Connect partner program as the company provides a unique solution," said Tim Stevens, Vice President, Business and Corporate Development. "With Cloudera's tools, resources, and deep domain expertise, Ayasdi's customers can now leverage Cloudera Enterprise to build an enterprise data hub -- one place that provides robust security, comprehensive data management, corporate governance, and open support -- to uncover the hidden insights in their data, without formulating queries or models."

Ayasdi is transforming how the world uses data to solve complex problems. Founded in 2008 after a decade of research at Stanford, DARPA, and NSF, Ayasdi is pioneering a new approach for enterprises to automatically discover and operationalize insights from their data. Ayasdi's Insight Discovery platform uses Topological Data Analysis (TDA) combined with an ensemble of machine learning techniques to enable data scientists, domain experts, and business people to achieve value from their data without the need to write code, queries, or ask questions. Funded by Khosla Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners, GE Ventures, Citi Ventures, and FLOODGATE, Ayasdi's customers include General Electric, Citigroup, Merck, Anadarko, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), and Mount Sinai Hospital. To learn more, visit www.ayasdi.com or follow us @ayasdi.

Ayasdi helps the world's biggest and most sophisticated organizations discover breakthroughs that change how we all live and work. People who share this passion can view Ayasdi career opportunities here.

Awhile ago, the awesome Jeffrey Way created a tool called Prefixr which was meant to help with the onerous task of managing vendor prefixes in your stylesheets. It worked by analyzing your stylesheet and automatically adding the vendor prefixed version of different rules into an output that you could then paste into your file. It was a pretty slick tool.

Unfortunately, now that the site has gone the way of the dodo bird and after having several users ping us about it, we wanted to provide some alternatives that can help provide similar capabilities.

The Express Prefixr Library

The first option which is closest to the functionality of Prefixr is a site called Express Prefixr. This was created by the awesome TJ Holowaychuk who apart from being an expert on Node.js development, also created the Express web application framework for Node.js.

With Express Prefixr, you're presented with two textarea fields, one for entering your styles and the second to receive the prefixed output from the service. This is very similar to the way that Prefixr worked:

To test this out, I'm taking the same code sample that Jeffrey used in his original article:

.box {
       opacity: .5;
    }
     
    .container {
       box-shadow: 20px;
       -moz-transition: box-shadow 2s;
       -webkit-border-radius: 4px;
       animation: slide 1s alternate;
       background: linear-gradient(top, #e3e3e3 10%, white);
    }
     
    @-webkit-keyframes "slide" {
       0% { left: 0; }
       100% { left: 50px; }
    }
    

Then pressing on the "Prefix it!" button, I can immediately get my prefixed styles sent to me:

Here's the complete result:

.box {
        -webkit-opacity: .5;
        -moz-opacity: .5;
        -ms-opacity: .5;
        -o-opacity: .5;
    }
    
    .container {
        -webkit-box-shadow: 20px;
        -moz-box-shadow: 20px;
        -ms-box-shadow: 20px;
        -o-box-shadow: 20px;
        -moz--webkit-transition: box-shadow 2s;
        -moz-transition: box-shadow 2s;
        -ms-transition: box-shadow 2s;
        -o-transition: box-shadow 2s;
        -webkit--webkit-border-radius: 4px;
        -moz-border-radius: 4px;
        -ms-border-radius: 4px;
        -o-border-radius: 4px;
        -webkit-animation: slide 1s alternate;
        -moz-animation: slide 1s alternate;
        -ms-animation: slide 1s alternate;
        -o-animation: slide 1s alternate;
        background: linear-gradient(top, #e3e3e3 10%, white);
        background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #e3e3e3 10%, white);
        background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #e3e3e3 10%, white);
        background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #e3e3e3 10%, white);
        background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #e3e3e3 10%, white);
    }
    
    @-webkit-keyframes "slide" {
        0% {
            left: 0;
        }
    
        100% {
            left: 50px;
        }
    }
    

Taking this further, Express Prefixr also provides an API that you can leverage to integrate into your applications or use third party tools like curl. So taking the following snippet:

curl http://expressprefixr.herokuapp.com/api/processor -d css='body { border-radius: 10px}'

And pasting it into my terminal window gives me the following results:

reys-mbp:~ rey$ curl http://expressprefixr.herokuapp.com/api/processor -d css='body { border-radius: 10px}'
    body {
        -webkit-border-radius: 10px;
        -moz-border-radius: 10px;
        -ms-border-radius: 10px;
        -o-border-radius: 10px;
    

One final great thing about Express Prefixr, is that the code is available on GitHub allowing you to easily fork it and customize the software to your needs.

The Autoprefixer Library

The next option is actually designed to integrate more so into your workflow, rather than being a visual UI tool. Autoprefixer does in fact add prefixes where appropriate by using rules provided by the popular site, Can I Use. Autoprefixer's slogan is:

"Write your CSS rules without vendor prefixes (in fact, forget about them entirely)"

And it holds true. What this means is that in your stylesheets, you can focus on using the standards-based syntax and Autoprefixer will handle adding in the prefixed rules if necessary.

Let's look at some code:

:fullscreen a {
        transition: transform 1s
    }

The above code will be updated by Autoprefixer to the following:

:-webkit-full-screen a {
        -webkit-transition: -webkit-transform 1s;
        transition: transform 1s
    }:-moz-full-screen a {
        transition: transform 1s
    }:-ms-fullscreen a {
        transition: transform 1s
    }:fullscreen a {
        -webkit-transition: -webkit-transform 1s;
        transition: transform 1s
    }
    

Take a close look at the syntax. Notice that the transition rule was pretty much left alone except for the addition of the two Webkit-specific entries. That's because Autoprefixer only applies vendor prefixes when it's appropriate. In this case, transition is widely supported in modern browsers and doesn't really need to be prefixed.

But, the :fullscreen pseudo-class is still evolving and does need to be properly prefixed. Autoprefixer, using the Can I Use data, is smart enough to determine when to prefix something based on a browser's level of support for a feature. Very cool!

The thing to note is that Autoprefixer is meant to be incorporated into your normal deployment workflow. It's not a client-side library and you leverage it via any number of third party integrations. This includes:

• Grunt via the grunt-autoprefixer plugin
• Compass via the autoprefixer-rails gem
• Stylus via the autoprefixer-stylus plugin
• Broccoli via the broccoli-autoprefixer plugin
• Sublime Text with the sublime-autoprefixer plugin

And so many more options. Even the new Atom Editor now has the atom-autoprefixer package which shows that Autoprefixer is well-maintained.

If you'd like to see Autoprefixer in action, jump on over to the following demo and add a bunch of CSS rules that you've traditionally had to vendor prefix and see how it works for you.

The -Prefix-Free Library

The final option is a great client-side library by Lea Verou called -prefix-free. Lea's been a long-time advocate of cross-browser development and built this library to, as a bit of a shim, ensure that your site uses all of the proper vendor prefixes. She built it at a time where, unfortunately, many web developers were simply forgetting to add all of the appropriate prefixes, causing sites to not render properly across all modern browsers.

The key difference between this and the two others I mentioned previously is that -prefix-free is a JavaScript library that looks at your stylesheets in runtime and adds the vendor prefixes when needed.

Using the library is as simple as adding the following line to the head of your page:

<script src="prefixfree.js"></script>

No, seriously. That's it. The library handles the processing of every stylesheet in link or style elements and adds a vendor prefix where needed. This is especially useful for sites that are already deployed and it may not be possible to go back and update it.

It also has solid browser support being compatible with IE9+, Opera 10+, Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4+ and Chrome on desktop and Mobile Safari, Android browser, Chrome and Opera Mobile on mobile.

Hoping Vendor Prefixes Go Away

It's great to have alternatives to Prefixr and these solutions certainly fit the bill. Ultimately, though, vendor prefixes have become more complicated than they're worth and with many developers not respecting the original intent of them (for example, to designate experimental features) and leveraging them in production systems, hopefully they'll go away in the near future. 

Thankfully, Google mentioned when they announced their Blink rendering engine, that they would be shifting to a feature-flag model which would hide experimental features behind hard-to-set flags which aren't accessible via code. Thank goodness!

A recent project for Sloan Kettering Institute included a 3D printed mold fabricated by Potomac Photonics. The new method for microfabrication of this integral part eased a bottle neck in the research process. 

The 3D molds are used for poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) microfabrication. In the past, development of these microfabricated devices, which are used for biology and biomedical applications, has been a bottleneck because it required expensive equipment and long process cycles, according to Maxime Deforet, the Program Director at Sloan Kettering Institute. In contrast, acrylic 3D printing allows rapid prototyping of microfluidic assay.

This project was partly funded by Potomac Photonics Educational Manufacturing Initiative which is a program, focused on creating robust partnerships with universities and research institutes in order to develop new products and manufacturing technologies. 

“The Broad Institute has described GATK 3 as a shift in the way they approach problems in NGS data analysis, as well as a shift in the scope of problems the toolkit can tackle,” said Trevor Heritage, vice president of corporate development and strategy at Appistry. For instance, a collection of enhancements to the GATK speeds the analysis of the large sample sets typically associated with observational clinical studies (cohorts). This is accomplished through two main updates:

• An optimized algorithm achieved through a collaboration between the Broad Institute and Intel. The Broad says the optimization will enable scientists to conduct variant discovery three to five times faster than with prior versions of the GATK and to analyze a whole genome in one day rather than three.

• A new pipeline that better supports large, multi-sample analysis. Rather than re-calling data for all samples in a study when new samples are added, scientists can now analyze the new samples as they are sequenced and combine these results with the stored results from the rest of the cohort.

Additionally, the GATK for the first time includes best-practice recommendations for calling variants from RNA sequencing, which has emerged as a critical source of information on cellular function and activity. The initial best practices focus on data processing and variant calling steps; recommendations for other key analysis steps will be introduced in future releases.

(Photo by Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary and Mary Margret / Flickr)

Sometimes, it’s the little things that power a web designer to produce a remarkable project.

For Dan Mall, all it took was a little inspiration.

For other designers, a unique project stems from creative freedom, or even a great typeface. But, while their methods differ, these designers are unified by a desire to create original and interesting projects, often done through firms they have started themselves.

One of Mall’s most interesting projects took place about two years ago with a nonprofit, Reading is Fundamental. When Mall walked into his meeting with the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, he had a pretty good feeling the project had the potential to become one of a kind.

Free trial on Treehouse: Do you want to improve your mobile and desktop design skills? Click here to try a free 14-day trial on Treehouse.

Mall, a design director who started SuperFriendly, a company that matches designers’ expertise with the right projects, had no idea his first meeting with Reading is Fundamental, which ensures all kids have access to books, would set him on a new path in his design process.

The motivational meeting did just that.

That meeting two years ago kicked off with a hug from the nonprofit’s vice president of marketing and communications. The Reading is Fundamental group was fun, creative and open to the suggestions made by Mall and his team — which left him feeling invigorated and innovative.

His team left that day with one mission in mind: to design a great website for Reading is Fundamental, which gave Mall some great feedback to kick-start the project.

“They were using all of these great explanatory words, like ‘electric,’ ‘heart’ and ‘bubbles’,” Mall says. “So, the next day I opened Photoshop and did something I’ve never done before.”

Energizing Meeting Leads to New Design Approach

Mall began putting all of his different ideas for the new website into one Photoshop collage, which he now calls an “element collage” and uses on all of his projects. He found the element collage helped gather detailed feedback from the Reading is Fundamental team. This empowered Mall and his team to present a site beyond what the nonprofit imagined.

A portion of Mall’s “element collage” for the Reading is Fundamental project. Click to see a larger size. (Image courtesy of Dan Mall)

Mall’s element collage is an abstract way to document design ideas, which he describes as an assembly of pieces that don’t have a specific logic or order, but help capture all of his thoughts on a project as he gets them. A collage also provides as much visual imagery as possible from the get-go, serving as a point of reference during conversations between Mall and clients.

“Creating element collages started with the Reading is Fundamental project,” Mall says. “Now I use it on every project I get.”

And, sometimes it’s the people Mall collaborates with who make a project unique. About a year ago, Mall worked on a project for a large technology company, collaborating with Jamie Kosoy, the founder of Arbitrary, a digital agency.

For that project, Kosoy created about 30 prototypes, each designed to solve one specific problem. The project’s goal was to have the browser appear as if it were tilted in 3D space. Mall sketched the idea, and Kosoy began to create prototypes to address problems designing the site.

“Each prototype would ask one question: Can I do this part with a div? Can I make the design rotate? What if I add a little texture here?” Mall says. “[Kosoy] was solving really small problems — each took an hour or two. But, when we started to put it all together, he had already solved what the client wanted through his prototypes.”

Unique is exactly what most clients seek. According to marketing company Neolane, 69 percent of North American marketers say dynamic, personalized content is important for their website; only 5 percent saying it’s of low importance.

Unique Projects Mean Getting Creative — and Learning New Skills

For designer Brian Casel, noteworthy projects happen when designers create it from the ground up. And a project that forces him to rely on all of the skills he’s built up over his years as a designer has a serious potential to succeed.

“When I’m doing a project for myself rather than clients, I get to ask the question: ‘What can I dream up next?’” Casel says.

For Casel, unique means challenging, and it pushes him to use every skill he’s honed as a designer — and some he hadn’t yet discovered.

“With these types of projects, I’m able to use all of the skills I’ve built up over the years to create products that I have full control over,” Casel says.

A screenshot of Casel’s Restaurant Engine site. Click for a larger size. (Image courtesy of Brian Casel)

The first was Restaurant Engine, a startup Casel created that builds websites for restaurants. Restaurant Engine is SaaS-based and built entirely on WordPress — unique for the fact that there aren’t many sites like that around, he says.

Strange as it may seem, Casel says the real challenge behind his project didn’t have anything to do with design.

“I had to learn a lot about marketing and sales,” Casel says. “When you own projects, writing copy becomes part of that transition.”

A screenshot of Casel’s “Design for Conversions” landing page. Click for a larger size. (Image courtesy of Brian Casel)

Another Casel original involved his book, “Design for Conversions,” another series of firsts for him. Aside from writing his own book, he designed and formatted an eBook and created the landing page. It took calling upon all of his design skills, as well as newly learned ones such as copywriting.

His advice for designers hoping to create a project that moves away from a mainstream template? It’s simple — start small.

“Try small things, make a bunch of mistakes, learn from them, and then apply those to your next project,” he says.

In some cases, all a designer needs to concoct a new project is a great typeface. Put a new type or two in front of Brian Hoff, founder and creative director of Brian Hoff Design Inc., and his creative juices will start flowing.

“Different types of [leading] and styles wave into inspiration for me,” Hoff says. “Colors and styles — that paves the way nicely and gets me excited.”

One of Hoff’s standout projects was a design he created for AAA, which targeted roadside awareness. The unique part for Hoff was the opportunity to work with another design team and collaborate on the project.

A snapshot of the AAA project worked on by Hoff. (Image courtesy of Brian Hoff)

Another project, which hasn’t yet launched, forced Hoff to focus on redesign strategies. His goal? Taking what was already there and simplifying it, without losing the website’s fundamentals.

Unique projects have a tendency to push a designer. But that’s the part Hoff loves.

“I really enjoy the beginning of a project,” he says. “It’s scary and liberating at the same time, and I actually like that. That first draft you send to a client — that’s nerve-racking. But, it also gives you the chance to bring something new to the table.”

The post For Designers, a Little Inspiration Goes a Long Way appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

Meet Cheli. She is a Chemical Engineering major and her research explores the microscopic world of Filamentous fungi. She hopes to hypothesize that hyphal branching is, in part, regulated by autophagy; a cellular-level recycling process that occurs in a wide range of species from fungi to humans.

How did you find your mentor for year research project?
During my first semester at UMBC I received an email from my ENES 101 instructor saying that Dr. Marten was looking for new undergraduate researchers. I sent him my resume and high school transcript (I did not yet have a UMBC transcript), and I was accepted a couple weeks later, and have been there ever since.

How much time do you put into it?
I generally put in 12-15 hours a week for research but it varies depending on the experiment I am conducting.

How did you hear about the Undergraduate Research Award (URA) program?
My predecessor in the lab was a URA scholar, so my research mentor suggested I should apply as well.

Was the application difficult to do?
The application was straightforward. I would say that the most difficult part was making sure it did not exceed the page limit.

How much did your mentor help you with the application?
My mentor was the last person to review my application before it was submitted.

What has been the hardest part about your research?
The hardest part about my research has been trying to understand unexpected results. Often, in research, you can reach a road block and the difficult part is trying to figure out if this is the result of human error, an error in theory, or an error in the hypothesis.

What was the most unexpected thing?
Although I was told communication is a key component of research, I was surprised at how much time I spend using this skill. The importance of spending time to communicate results has become increasingly clear, whether it is explaining individual experiments in lab notebooks and weekly reports or developing larger-scale presentations for team members or conferences.

How does your research relate to your work in other classes?
As a chemical engineering major, I have to take classes in a wide variety of fields, and the work inside the lab has really helped me understand the importance of interdisciplinary studies. Genetics, Cell Biology, Statistics and Organic chemistry are all directly related to my field of research, and help me to fully understand the theory behind my research. On the other hand, the work I have done in the lab has given me skills in experimental design (a crucial component of ENCH 225) that I would not have had otherwise.

What is your advice to other students about getting involved in research?
Find your personal motivation to do research and talk to people who are currently involved in your field of interest. Once you have done that, make sure you can find the time in your schedule. This is often the most difficult thing to do, but with the right motivation, it is usually possible. Find research that gets you excited and apply to work in that laboratory. It is always possible to find time to devote to doing something you love.

Read more about her research here.