BetaNews Staff

Smartphone theft affects most organizations

Did you ever consider that keeping sensitive business files on your mobile device could be risky, as your device could be lost or stolen? Did you consider protecting those files, or the mobile device in general, with a password?

A new research by Imation looked into this idea and the results are quite disappointing. According to the study, 44 percent of organizations believe a member of their senior management has lost a mobile device in the last year, whilst 39 percent say senior management had a device stolen.

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Moving legacy apps to the cloud: Why and how you should do it

With shrinking IT budgets it is crucial that businesses ensure they are spending their IT budget wisely. As a result, organizations are already taking advantage of the economies of scale that cloud computing offers.

However, despite the benefits being clear, businesses still have applications running on legacy environments. Moving legacy applications to the cloud is one way to reduce operating costs and relieve staff from managing tasks that are better served in the cloud, freeing them to focus on tasks that contribute to business growth.

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A quarter of all websites run WordPress

WordPress and other CMSs are 'inherently insecure'

Out of all websites on the entire internet that have any sort of content management system (CMS), WordPress powers more than half.

Considering the fact that half of the internet doesn’t use any recognizable CMS system, it brings us to the conclusion that WordPress, the open-source content management platform, powers 25 percent of the entire Internet

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US has three months to come up with an agreeable Safe Harbor 2.0 deal

Exactly a month after the Safe Harbor agreement was struck down by the EU Court of Justice, the EU has called for the US to make the next move in the creation of an alternative solution.

The Safe Harbor Agreement, which is now defunct, represented a legal framework within which US companies could extract data of EU citizens. It was ruled invalid for not providing sufficient legal safeguards.

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What's the real cost of the UK's Investigatory Powers law?

The Home Office has issued an Impact Assessment, looking into the price of the proposed Investigatory Powers law, which would allow government agencies to intercept digital communications.

Secretary of State Theresa May’s department estimates a price of some £247m over a 10-year-period to cover the costs of the spy law, but according to The Register, which calls upon industry sources, little to no consultation has taken place so far. The true price of the bill can be significantly larger and can go up to £2 billion, with the bulk of finances going to telecom firms to cover the costs of storage.

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Most IT pros are against UK's Investigatory Powers bill

Data encryption

Late last week, the UK government introduced a new Investigatory Powers bill, which requires Internet service providers to keep a record of the Internet activity of everyone in Britain, as well as cracking down on encryption and increasing government surveillance.

The initial reaction from industry professionals was mixed, but a new survey from Swiss data bank Artmotion has found that a massive 87 percent of IT leaders disagree with the government’s plan to reduce the strength of data encryption.

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Major tech companies don't care much about your privacy

Sixteen of the biggest tech companies out there, eight internet firms and eight telecoms, were analyzed in terms of how much they allow their users to express themselves, and how much they protect their users’ privacy.

None passed the analysis with flying colors.

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People care more about hacker attacks than break-ins

People feel more violated when someone hacks into their computer, than when someone breaks into their house, a new research has shown.

The research, done by American multinational software Citrix, polled 2,000 full-time workers in the UK about hacking and private files they keep on their computers. The poll shows that 48 percent of young people, aged 16 to 24 have more than one private file on their computers which they want to remain secret.

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Pebble doesn't see Apple Watch as a threat -- sales double year-over-year

Pebble, one of the first tech firms that jumped into the smartwatch foray via a Kickstarter campaign, has been unaffected by the competition brought by the Apple Watch, says the company CEO Eric Migicovsky.

Migicovsky revealed that the company’s sales has improved, which experienced a double year-over-year growth. Apple Watch had "no material impact" on the company, Migicovsky claimed, adding that this is due to the difference in the market the companies tap.

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How many users are actually paying for Dropbox?

Stat attack: Dropbox has more than 400 million users worldwide. Out of that number, some 8 million are business users.

From those 8 million, there are more than 150,000 paying ones. Those are the numbers given by the company’s chief executive officer Drew Houston, during the Dropbox Open conference, held in San Francisco yesterday.

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My OS X El Capitan and Windows 10 upgrade woes

frustrated

What’s the next step after an operating system upgrade on a Mac or PC? To see if you can work with your existing applications. When moving to OS X El Capitan and Windows 10 I got off to a rough start, which left me frustrated.

Let’s address the El Capitan problems first. Did the upgrade install? Yes! Was I able to work? Nope.

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Should your business make the move to Windows 10?

Deciding whether to upgrade your operating system is always a big decision. It is one that should not be made lightly, especially when it is a major upgrade like Windows 10.

Over the years, there have been mixed reviews regarding Windows upgrades. I just need to mention the word 'Vista' and some IT folk breakout into a cold sweat!

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Kaspersky Lab discovers 320 hour long DDoS attack

Kaspersky Lab has released a new report on the evolution of distributed denial of service (DDoS) and it shows some interesting figures, including the fact that a server was targeted for 320 hours straight.

The Kaspersky DDoS Intelligence Report Q3 2015 is based on the constant monitoring of botnets and observing new techniques utilized by cybercriminals. It shows that DDoS attacks remain highly localized, with 91.6 percent of the victims’ resources located in only ten countries around the world, although Kaspersky Lab has recorded DDoS attacks targeting servers in 79 countries total.

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How publishers should tackle ad-blocking

There’s no avoiding it; ad-blocking is a direct result of consumer demand. Adland has had its own way for too long and now the traffic is two-way we should view this as an opportunity to hit the reset button.

Let’s get this in context however; announcements such as Apple’s recent iOS9 update may have raised the profile of ad-blocking, but uptake is far from exponential. We’re not facing the Adpocalypse here, what we’re looking at is the balance being redressed.

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A new 4-inch iPhone is in the cards for 2016

People who are already awaiting the 2016 Apple iPhones may see a new all-metal, four-inch device, along with the iPhone 7, according to an analyst from KGI Securities.

Ming-Chi Kuo said he believes that the tech giant is currently working on a four-inch iPhone that "resembles an upgraded iPhone 5s" with an A9 processor.

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