Software engineer Joshua McKenty had worked on enough open-source projects by 2010 to know that the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) was not on a path to being open source.

With stints at NASA, Netscape, and a consultancy leveraging open-source tech, McKenty had experience designing publicly collaborative code, using a shared, continuous-release philosophy known as Agile.

He and the earthquake scientists knew their teams could use a little Agility.

Helen Crowley, former researcher and GEM’s secretary general, said scientists at the time only thought they knew the definition of open source.

“For us, it meant maybe you would make your software available somewhere at the end, once it was ready for other people to look at. But I think what Josh really explained to us is that it had to be developed in the open as well,” Crowley said.

For more on GEM and the importance of working in cross-functional teams, keep reading here.—BH

Summer is the time for travel, fun, and relaxation—and, if you’re a threat actor, cyberattacks.

Hotels are under real threat. New research from security firm VikingCloud shows that attackers are targeting lodging. North American hotel IT and security executives surveyed reported that attacks surge in the summer. Jon Marler, VikingCloud cybersecurity evangelist, told IT Brew that while there’s awareness of the problem, solutions are hard to come by.

“Hospitality is prioritizing cybersecurity, they’re spending more,” Marler said. “One of the things that surprised me was how much they are spending—but they’re not getting good results.”

The results the industry has seen thus far are not encouraging—82% of North American hotels were attacked in 2024, with 58% seeing upwards of five attempted attacks during the summer holidays. Marler said that the survey used a broad definition of attack, including receiving phishing emails and malware, even if it was discovered immediately, in order to capture the breadth of the threat surface more than the specific danger in each case.

Why everyone on staff needs training to be ready for these threats.—EH

Google is continuing its push into the cloud service provider ecosystem with its latest contract with digital workflow management platform ServiceNow.

According to Bloomberg, citing an anonymous source familiar with the deal, ServiceNow will spend $1.2 billion over the next five years on Google’s cloud computing services.

The deal follows ServiceNow’s partnerships with other cloud providers, the company shared in a statement to Bloomberg, which was also provided to IT Brew. ServiceNow declined to reveal specific details of other contracts, including who they are with.

Yahoo Finance pointed to Google’s recent partnerships with companies like Salesforce and OpenAI as evidence for its “growing influence” in the cloud market, despite the historical dominance of AWS and Microsoft.

For more on the deal and how it expands an “existing partnership,” keep reading here.—CN