TaoSecurity Blog

Earlier today I happened to see a short piece from the Bloomberg Businessweek "The Year Ahead: 2016" issue, titled The Best Places to Build Data Centers . The text said the following: Cloud leaders including Amazon.com, Microsoft, Google, IBM, and upstart DigitalOcean are spending tens of billions of dollars to construct massive data centers around the world. Microsoft alone puts its total bill at $15 billion. There are two main reasons for the expansion: First, the companies have to set up more servers near the biggest centers of Internet traffic growth. Second, they increasingly have to wrestle with national data-privacy laws and customer preferences, either by storing data in a user’s home country, or, in some cases, avoiding doing just that. The article featured several maps, including the one at left. It notes data centers in "Virginia" because "the Beltway has massive data needs." That may be true, but it does not do justice to the history of t...

Last week the Christian Science Monitor published a story titled  How North Korea built up a cadre of code warriors prepared for cyberwar . It contained the following section: North Korea is faced with tremendous limitations. All of its Internet connections go through servers in China, for example. But it soon may find other ways to connect to the outside world. North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this year in a bid to, among other things, begin running networks through Russia, too. This caught my attention. Years ago I bought a giant map of Asia for my office at Mandiant. I was fascinated by the small part of the world where Russia and North Korea share a border, shown below. If you zoom into that area, you see the following. China, Russia, and North Korea share a common border near the Russian town of Khasan . From that location, Russia and North Korea share a border dividing the Tumen River, approximately...