ABI Research Blog

OTT viewing is making a drastic shift from being focused on video-on-demand (VOD) content to live, including large amounts of viewing for flagship events. This puts additional pressure on network technology as well as origin servers. At the same time, the content is destined for the cloud – which is one reason why cloud-hosted workflows are such a natural fit, and the market is evolving so quickly to support live demands. From the commercial perspective, content availability and service launches of live video are driven by many significant factors, especially:

Quantum computing and information theory could therefore create powerful computers, capable of staggering processing speeds and incredibly accurate measurements, as well as enabling the foundation of a highly secure communication infrastructure. However, this same type of power presents dangers as well in that it could just as easily break many of the cryptographic technologies in use today.

"We were doing V2V ten years ago, before V2V became cool!"

The rapid spread of the Petya ransomware is unfortunate yet unsurprising. The WannaCry attack should have been a wake-up call for organizations worldwide of the ease with which malicious actors are profiting from increased connectivity and shoddy cybersecurity. Instead, it provided a valuable case study to cybercriminals about the widespread damage even a mediocre ransomware campaign can inflict. While the components of WannaCry ransomware itself (such as the use of the NSA’s EternalBlue exploit) were sophisticated, the kill switch revealed its Achille’s heel; and one that was inadvertently discovered by security professional MalwareTech relatively early into its global infection.

Phishing attacks continue to be one of the most popular methods of illegitimately obtaining funds, identities, and credentials.  Social engineering, at its best, can entice users to pay over large sums of money, and provide access to private and confidential data that is normally locked down.   The activity has evolved significantly over the years, and today, complex and targeted phishing attacks can be difficult to detect by even the savviest IT professionals. Phishing is not just attractive for financially motivated cybercriminals, but also for state-sponsored threat actors. The Callisto Group, uncovered by F-Secure, is particularly adept at setting up sophisticated phishing infrastructure for cyber espionage purposes targeting high-profile groups, including military personnel, government officials, think tanks, and journalists.

Zombie computers, botnets, DDOS, DNS attacks, ransomware - all can be fueled by hordes of insecure devices and malware-infested systems. Devices that have been infected with a specific type of malware which allows stealing of personal data, controlling critical functions, has keylogger and remote access capabilities is usually refer to as a “zombie”. Controlled by fraudsters, clusters of zombie devices forming their own robot network and working in unison for any number of malicious activities are referred to as a “botnet”.

On March 8 (2017), Sprint became the first U.S. mobile carrier to officially test the Gigabit LTE service along with partners Qualcomm and Motorola at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans. The Gigabit LTE service demo launched on its commercial LTE Plus network. The Sprint Gigabit LTE service currently utilizes three channel carrier aggregation (CA), 4x4 MIMO, and 256 QAM. As Sprint continues to trial and roll out its Gigabit LTE service, it also plans to deploy massive MIMOs to further gain coverage and capacity benefits of the technology. A key element of this launch was the forthcoming Motorola Snapdragon 835-based LTE Cat 16 smartphone. Although there are no Gigabit LTE smartphones commercially available currently, there are a few smartphones on the horizon that were recently announced. ZTE and Sony announced Snapdragon 835-based phones at MWC 2017 for launch later this year, and over the course of 2017, we can expect to hear more vendors making a similar announcement. By conducting an official test on a live network with an upcoming Gigabit LTE ready smartphone, Sprint became the first carrier to do so.  The Gigabit LTE demo specifically comprised of three Motorola smartphones streaming 4K video simultaneously. Analysts could live test speeds on the demo Gigabit LTE smartphones while its LTE Plus network carried its regular commercial traffic. This was impressive, especially at the Smoothie King Center during a live game when it would be reasonable to expect short-form video data traffic along with other multimedia data traffic. During one test, Motorola smartphones clocked 180.11 Mbps, 192.89 Mbps, and 209.26 Mbps—much higher data rates than what is normally experienced in commercial 4G networks. Although Gigabit speeds may not be achievable in real-life conditions, these tests illustrate that the availability of Gigabit technology increases user data rates significantly.

The RSA Conference is one of the largest conferences globally for the cybersecurity industry (if not the largest), and I attended this year’s event with interest once more. It provides a great opportunity for analysts such as myself to take the pulse on the industry and see where the technology is going. This year, there were over 600 vendors present, and I believe cybersecurity as a discipline is settling in nicely into the mainstream of media attention.

People, I have fallen hard for the new Lenovo Phab 2Pro, inappropriately on Valentine’s night. I’m talking full-on even-channel-4-wouldn’t-make-a-program-about-it love. When I should have been cuddled up on the couch with my wife enjoying gin cocktails on Valentine’s day, I was instead scanning walls and objects, measuring furniture and even trying to figure out if instead of making marks on a wall I could track my little daughters changing height in 3D.