It always irks me when a company acquires another one and promptly announces that nothing will change. Of course, it will! It is simply a case of when and how much. We just passed the month milestone since our acquisition by OceanSound Partners was announced to the industry and it is exactly one month since Tim Reed was announced as taking the helm.
Virtualization technology, whereby multiple operating systems can be run on shared hardware, is extremely well understood if somewhat inefficient in its use of resources. The original virtualization architecture system was based on the implementation of a number of virtual machines (VMs). Every VM has to run its own instance of an operating system, resulting in a duplication of responsibility. It is also hard to manage such an infrastructure as there are multiple servers which are all independent virtual machines.
Containers, like Docker and Kubernetes, try to achieve the same concept as virtual machines but eliminate duplication of effort between machines. Instead of loading an entire operating system for an app, containers use the kernel of the host OS while allowing them to sideload app-specific libraries and programs. By adjusting the container and its image, it is possible to fine-tune the specific libraries and configuration your app will use. This results in performance gains without the overhead of running an entire OS.
The container-based approach has its downsides. The software has to be adapted for usage in containers (containerized), and this can get tricky, especially with legacy codebases. Containers have many more configurations for resource allocation and interop capabilities, so it is quite easy to misconfigure them.
The next logical step in the progression from VMs to containers is unikernels, which try to push the concepts of containers even further. Unikernels are effectively a set of pre-built binary libraries and do not handle resource allocation. A hypervisor handles direct hardware interoperation. All application-specific system calls are pushed as close to the app as possible. Lynx views unikernels as being able to deliver the security strengths of VM level partitioning with the speed and footprint size benefits attributed to containers.
The Mission Critical Edge (MCE) is at a transitionary or “coming of age” stage in its lifecycle. Note that this is a Lynx term that I had coined two years ago. If you see references to “Mission Critical Intelligent Edge”, they really round the same phenomenon. Mission Critical Edge refers to the infrastructure required to design, develop, deploy, and maintain mission critical systems such as avionics, satellites, autonomous vehicles, and critical infrastructure. The mission critical systems are making the transition from being inherently embedded to now requiring the best of both embedded and edge worlds:
Embedded
Deterministic real-time and immutability, safety certifiability, and security compliance, delivered as standalone operating systems based or bare-metal workloads
Edge
Combining embedded and with cloud connected and dynamic workloads such as machine learning, security monitoring that require immutable virtual machines running next to containerized or bare-metal based applications
As Voltaire once said (and Peter Parker’s uncle in Spiderman repeated), “With great power comes great responsibility.” The data that can be gleaned from sensors is incredibly powerful, however, with the prevalence of network hacks, there is considerable risk of actual revenue loss and corporate reputational loss for systems that are compromised. In the early days of IoT, people gave little thought to security. What’s the worst that could happen if someone gained access to a connected toaster or toilet? The 2016 Mirai attack changed that mindset, as companies like Twitter, Spotify, PayPal, Ticketmaster, and others experienced DDoS attacks initiated by DVRs that had been reprogrammed by hackers.
As the world enters a new era of remote and hybrid work, the risks to network security become more complex. Over the last 18 months, the pandemic has created an unprecedented shift in the modern workforce. Employees, avoiding COVID-19, have found themselves more vulnerable to a different type of virus. From phishing to ransomware, highly sophisticated cyberattacks have targeted employees both at home and in the office. With the rapidly growing cybersecurity threats, it is crucial now more than ever to understand the risks from working at home versus working in the office and employ strong security measures wherever you choose to work.
This spring, Lynx Software issued a survey to gauge consumer interest in autonomous vehicles and their confidence in their safety. The findings? Despite one in four respondents admitting to breaking the law on a daily basis while behind the wheel, a whopping 80% had more trust in human drivers than a self-driving automobile. The findings did show an overall hope in the promise of autonomous vehicles -- with more than half (52%) of respondents expressing excitement at the idea of self-driving cars, but the industry still has a long road ahead before most consumers will feel comfortable with no one behind the wheel.
