How UK tech companies could comply with Snoopers Charter
It would be hugely ironic if the UK government’s plans to help it seize back control of the digital age actually pushed technology firms even further down the path of encryption.
The second version of the Investigatory Powers Bill -- or Snoopers Charter, as it has been colloquially dubbed -- was published by the Home Office on March 1. This came in light of criticism of the first version -- published in December -- from three parliamentary joint committees: the Science and Technology Committee, the Intelligence and Security Committee, and the Joint Committee for the bill itself -- which made some 86 recommendations alone.
Many Brits now do not trust online banking
Almost half of people living in the UK (48 percent) fear either their identities, or their banking data will be stolen. Those are the results of a new survey from financial technology company Intelligent Environments. According to the report, the fear is well founded, with 20 percent of Britons being victims to some type of cyber-crime, either identity theft or bank details theft.
The report reveals a cybersecurity map of Britain. In it, it says that Birmingham is most concerned with cybersecurity, with 57 percent fearing banking information theft, and 59 percent identity theft. Birmingham is followed by Newcastle and Cardiff.
The right PC can improve job satisfaction
Do you want satisfied workers? Give them a well-designed PC, a good and secure mobile device, and let them work when they want to, where they want to. Those are, in a nutshell, the results of a new research by Redshift Research, which had polled 1,016 people, across France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland.
For 90 percent of IT decision makers, device security is a current concern, because in the last 12 months, a quarter of Europe’s businesses have been breached. That has resulted in less than a third (32 percent) being completely confident in the level of security offered by their current devices.
Enterprises should prioritize availability, not backups
With today being World Backup Day 2016, many companies are rightly preaching the importance of regular backups. However, Veeam is bucking the trend by saying that -- in the enterprise space -- just backing up is no longer enough.
The company thinks that the most important question for enterprises now should be "are we always available?" and has thus declared today as "World Availability Day". The argument is that for consumers, just having backups in place is sufficient, but enterprises are expected to be up and running 24/7 and downtime is no longer tolerated in today’s fast-paced world.
Foxconn buys Sharp for $3.5 billion
Last month Sharp announced that Foxconn would be acquiring the company for $6.2 billion. However Foxconn was concerned with the financial future of Sharp and decided to put the deal on hold in order to renegotiate some of the terms.
Now the deal is finally complete and Foxconn has acquired a 66 percent majority stake in Sharp for around $3.5 billion. This is the largest overseas investment in a Japanese company to date and its proposal caused quite a stir in Japan.
Would you like a digital passport on your smartphone?
I’m sure most of you will be familiar with the frantic scrabble to find the correct documents at the airport, resulting in a mild heart attack when your passport isn’t where you thought it was. FYI, it’s probably in your back pocket.
Well, this could soon be a thing of the past thanks to a company called De La Rue, which is working on creating digital passports on your smartphone that can be used at airport immigration, making travel an entirely paperless experience.
Businesses want their infrastructure in the cloud, but it will take time
IT management software firm SolarWinds recently polled 166 IT practitioners, gaining valuable insights into business cloud adoption, security concerns and new and valuable skill sets. The results are quite interesting -- 92 percent said cloud adoption is important to their business, while 27 percent said it was "extremely important".
However, despite cloud technology growing rapidly, businesses are not eager to place their entire infrastructure in it -- 43 percent believe half or more of their infrastructure will be in the cloud within the next three to five years. Sixty percent believe their organization will never fully migrate.
FBI issues warning over MSIL/Samas ransomware
The FBI has began seeking the assistance of companies in the US to streamline its investigation on an increasing ransomware threat in the country.
The FBI is looking into a strain of ransomware called MSIL/Samas, which has been encrypting data across entire networks rather than single computers, Reuters reports. The ransomware infects machines before encrypting data and asking for money in return of the access.
Samsung Pay arrives in China
Samsung Pay made its debut last year in South Korea in August and then launched in the US in September. At the end of 2015, the company announced that it was bringing its mobile payment service to China.
After a one month beta period, Samsung Pay is now available for local users with a Galaxy S6 edge Plus, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge.
Two key challenges of using open source in the enterprise
A myriad point-tools are involved in every organization's software production. Some of our enterprise customers report using over 50 tools along their pipeline, from code development all the way to releasing into production. For the majority of development organizations today, these tools are comprised of a mix of commercial and open source technologies.
Existing open source tools can be found throughout your software development and operations teams -- from programming languages, infrastructure and technology stacks, development and test tools, project management and bug tracking, source control management, CI, configuration management, and more.
How to mitigate ransomware risks
Ransomware has already caused businesses real trouble this year and recently, security firms have warned about a sudden surge in junk mail messages containing this kind of malware. It seems that organized criminals are now increasingly targeting businesses, which can offer them bigger returns than going after individuals.
The first wave of ransomware started in 2005 and was called Trojan.Gpcoder. Now the security industry (and many unfortunate users) are discovering new variants almost every day. For example, a strain called Locky, discovered only two weeks ago is now the second most prevalent form. Currently, it asks for three Bitcoins (about £885) as payment for the decryption key.
The implications of remote working for GDPR compliance
Every day across the UK, around 1.5 million professionals work from home; and are more productive, happier in their role, and measurably less stressed, perhaps. At the same time, however, they may be increasing the risk to your sensitive business data.
Since the government has recently given all employees the right to request flexible working, the number of home-workers, and the associated information risk, looks set to increase -- just when the stricter EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) are set to come into force.
7 words to never use in your emails and their replacements
It is estimated that in 2014, 191.4 billion emails were sent and received each day with about 108 billion of those being from the business sector. If you are a business owner, there’s a good chance that you’re a part of that ever-growing statistic. Emails are becoming one of the most common forms of communication between businesses and clients, so it makes sense that we brush up on our etiquette every so often.
With the knowledge that a few choice words could make or break your chances at making a potential connection or client, it’s safe to assume that just about everyone wants to avoid these costly word mistakes.
IT budgets will mostly go towards buying mobile devices, security
IT budgets for businesses in the US will be mostly spent on security, and mobile devices allowing employees remote working, a new survey has shown.
According to a new survey by Wakefield, 30 percent of US businesses will spend most of their IT budgets on network and data security, and 28 percent will spend it on mobile devices allowing employees to work remotely.
The benefits and challenges of building a hybrid cloud
The growth of cloud computing over the last decade has been unprecedented. From a relatively unheard-of concept, the cloud has become a key part of the boardroom conversation amongst CIOs and IT directors at companies across industries, sizes, and revenues for its promise of organizational transformation.
A large amount of enterprises have already built their own private cloud networks, hosting essential applications and providing anywhere, anytime access to mission critical data for employees scattered across the world. In many cases, the effort pays off, resulting in increased productivity, reduced costs and ease of access.
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