What you need to know about spear phishing
Unlike spam or phishing emails, which involve a broad and varied range of targets, spear phishing is a highly-targeted email attack against a specific group, organization, or even person.
The main aim of a spear phishing attack is either to obtain unauthorized access to sensitive data, whether this is intellectual property, financial data, trade or military intelligence, or to get the recipient of the email to act on a command, whether this is to transfer money or share confidential data.
What's the most popular ransomware?
Ransomware is something like the digital version of Kanye West -- everyone hates it, but its popularity just keeps on growing. And it takes your money for things you really don’t want to buy.
The news about the rising popularity of ransomware was confirmed by security firm Kaspersky Lab, which released its quarterly report into the state of malware.
DevOps means Test Automation (too)
You have started down the road to DevOps. You have re-structured your teams and you are experimenting with DevOps tools and processes. You now understand that DevOps is a continuum that starts with planning and development and ends with deployment into operations. So where do you start your DevOps initiative?
DevOps projects tend to start in only one part of the continuum. Often, DevOps teams start with application build automation (development) or they start with automating the deployment of apps into operations. When the driver for DevOps is in the test organization, it is called Continuous Integration. However, it is also important to work to continuously expand automation across the continuum because for DevOps to pay off, there needs to be continuous automation from development all the way through to operations.
EU GDPR: Get your data privacy act together
The moment of reckoning is on its way for companies that collect or store data on European Union citizens. Last week EU legislators signed data privacy regulations into law, creating what may be the most stringent data protection law in place today. The requirements will not be easy for many companies to meet and will demand financial and personnel resources. There is sure to be criticism that the EU stifles technology innovation. In reality, the GDPR demonstrates a progressive approach to data transactions and the digital economy. The introduction of the regulation states, "The protection of natural persons in relation to the processing of personal data is a fundamental right…".
Essentially, the law codifies the concept that data transactions come with responsibility on the part of the collector. As technology continues to advance, establishing this foundation of trust is a necessary step. Complying with the regulation may seem onerous, but think from the consumer’s perspective. Organizations gather more data than ever. Huge headaches and hardships arise when data is stolen or lost. The regulation puts in place best practices to ensure companies offer a necessary level of security and treat personal data with the respect it deserves.
Five ways to take your passwords to the next level
World Password Day is apparently a day for “taking our passwords to the next level”, so here are five traditions the crooks and password crackers really, really don’t want us to start.
In 2007, Dinei Florencio and Cormac Herley at Microsoft Research looked into the password habits of half a million users in their large-scale study of website password habits. They found that the average user needed about 25 distinct passwords but only had about six.
BBM finally gets video calling on Android, iOS
In an effort to remain competitive with rival messaging platforms, BlackBerry has decided to bring video calling to its cross platform BBM messaging apps.
Last week, it was unveiled that the Android variant of BlackBerry Messenger would be receiving the ability to make video calls as a beta feature. Now the company has announced that this feature will also be appearing on Apple’s iOS.
Microsoft buys Internet of Things company Solair
Microsoft has just announced that it has acquired the IoT service Solair -- based out of Italy -- though the financial details surrounding the transaction have yet to be released.
The company was founded in 2011 and it uses Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to deliver its services. This will allow Solair to easily be integrated into the Azure IoT suite.
Tech companies could disrupt financial industry
People would gladly take banking services from tech companies such as Google, Amazon or Facebook, a new survey has shown.
According to a new Europe-wide study by Fujitsu, the digital transformation keeps disrupting the financial industry, and if traditional service providers fail do adapt on time, tech disruptors will step in.
Nearly half of OS X devs want to learn Swift
Almost a quarter (25 percent) of OS X developers don’t use file sharing in the cloud -- at all, according to a new survey.
German-based Fournova surveyed more than 7,000 OS X developers in more than 100 countries to see which tools, services and technologies are the most popular ones.
An open letter to the IoT community: Lessons learned from the Revolv shutdown
Over the last month, Nest has been under a lot of scrutiny over their decision to shut down Revolv, as made famous by a viral Medium post earlier in April. The discussion around this issue raises an important question: what are IoT companies' obligations to their customers?
If you make a hardware product that is connected to the internet and relies on a web service for its operation (i.e. an Internet of Things product), you’ll likely see that reliance as an asset. "We have an ongoing relationship with our customers", you might say. "We can improve the product's functionality, we can deliver new features, we can fix bugs, and we can generate customer insights to make the product better over time". This feels like a win for both your company and for your customers.
Messaging apps provide a false sense of security
In the last couple of weeks we have seen consumer messaging giants WhatsApp and Viber retrospectively add end-to-end encryption technology to their communications platforms. The notion of providing users with improved security is certainly to be applauded, and seeing messaging apps adopt encryption as a necessity as opposed to simply a nice-to-have feature, is long overdue.
However, the manner in which providers are increasingly introducing encryption technology within apps as an afterthought is potentially providing a false sense of security to the billions of people that use them on a daily basis.
Wearables are likely source for security breach
The Internet of Things (IoT) opens up a sea of new opportunities for revenue and growth, but it is also a security challenge, IT pros have said.
If the new Spiceworks IoT report is to be believed, 85 percent of IT professionals in the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, Africa) believe IoT will create new security and privacy issues in the workplace.
Just 30 percent of UK companies experienced a security breach in 2015
Almost a half (43 percent) of UK companies did not experience a security breach in 2015, a new report suggests. Released by IT management software provider SolarWinds, it includes answers from 109 IT practitioners and managers from small, medium-sized and large UK companies.
According to them, just 30 percent suffered a breach last year. Quite surprising.
Hackers now targeting victims with country and culture-specific malware
Hackers are targeting specific countries with their malware now, new research from security firm Sophos shows.
The security firm analyzed millions of devices worldwide and has come up with the conclusion that it seems to be more lucrative if the malware is specifically designed to target certain cultures or countries.
Security needs monitoring to function
IT trends often come and go, some dominating the hype cycle for years, others exiting the mainstream with more of a whimper. Security is having a moment right now in which it is dominating the market in terms of press, thought leadership and excitement. But, in this case, it’s no trend, it’s reality.
As long as there have been networks, there have been concerns over security. That is true now more than ever, as networks have grown larger, more complex, and crucially, more critical to business function.
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