BetaNews Staff

Disaster 411: Is your business prepared to fight back?

disaster plan

On the heels of September’s National Preparedness Month, an effort sponsored by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Americans are being encouraged to take extra precautions to safeguard their homes, businesses, schools, and communities against disaster -- long before disaster strikes!

According to The National Federation of Independent Business, nearly one-third of small businesses will experience a natural disaster. Even more striking, 25 percent of businesses do not re-open after a natural disaster, and 43 percent do not re-open after catastrophic data loss, according to FEMA.

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Migrating to Windows 10: Why and how you should do it

With Microsoft unveiling its latest operating system earlier this summer, many businesses are faced with a difficult choice about whether or not to take the plunge and migrate to Windows 10.

It’s a decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly, and it seems that many companies are hesitant about making the move. A recent survey found that 71 percent of businesses polled were looking to wait at least six months from its release date before migrating.

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How to minimize the risks in cloud collaboration

Cloud risk

Gartner predicts that cloud office systems will account for 33 percent of the overall office market by 2017. This is a big step considering a few years ago collaboration in businesses typically involved emails, phone calls, and perhaps a few instant messages (IMs) exchanged within the company.

However, nowadays the arrival of cloud computing and all the remunerations that come with it have shaped the path for collaborative cloud-based services, reforming how businesses work over the internet. Many collaborative services target a specific business need, such as social networking, productivity apps, storage, or good old fashioned email.

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The security implications of a cyber-insurance policy

insurance key

The recent cyber-attack on TalkTalk has reinforced a common perception that cyber-attacks are the work of shadowy figures operating from bedrooms or basements, attempting to mimic the work of James Bond’s arch rival, Spectre. The reality -- and a lesser known fact -- is that the majority of attacks (55 percent) involve insiders.

These insider-inspired attacks may not grab the headlines in the same way as attacks by 15 year-olds do -- in fact for obvious reputational reasons, they rarely make the newspapers at all -- but they do give the IT departments of the organizations that have suffered the attack just as big a headache.

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Businesses store a lot of irrelevant data in the cloud

Businesses are spending tons of money to keep their data in the cloud, but only a small portion of that data is actually business-critical. The rest is completely redundant, increasing their costs and putting their cyber-security at risk.

These are some of the conclusions seen in a new report by Veritas Technologies, backup and recovery solutions firm. The report, entitled Databerg report 2015, looked at how European organizations across the public and private sector manage their data.

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Apple Pay to arrive in Australia, Canada this year

Apple Pay is set to expand beyond the US and the UK, and before the end of 2015. The news was confirmed during the presentation of Apple’s fiscal results, by the company’s CEO, Tim Cook.

However you’ll need a particular card in order for the service to work.

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Oracle intros new IaaS products

Oracle announced a new set of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) products earlier this week, going head to head with the likes of Amazon with its Web Services.

Among the new sets are the Oracle Elastic Compute Cloud, two new Storage Cloud services, as well as a number of technology stacks on the Oracle Cloud.

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IBM goes into the weather business -- no, really

IBM logo

IBM’s artificial intelligence computer Watson is expanding into the weather forecast territory. According to the company, it is buying The Weather Company’s B2B, mobile and cloud-based web properties, including WSI, weather.com, Weather Underground and The Weather Company brand.

The TV segment -- The Weather Channel -- will not be acquired by IBM, but will license weather forecast data and analytics from IBM under a long-term contract, the company added.

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OnePlus now has the X factor: hands-on first impressions of the OnePlus X

On 23 April 2014, a small Chinese company called OnePlus got a lot of press attention when it introduced the OnePlus One, an Android phone with flagship specifications for the amazingly-low price of $299 for the 16GB variant and $349 for the 64GB model.

OnePlus introduced the world to its second flagship phone earlier this year, the OnePlus 2, during a virtual reality press event. Once again, OnePlus impressed reviewers with great specifications at a great price. Now that we have quickly gone over OnePlus's past, let's come to the present day and the launch of the company's latest Android phone, the OnePlus X.

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Comcast to launch MVNO using Verizon's network

Comcast has just invoked a three years old agreement with Verizon which allows it to use its network. According to Comcast’s Chief Executive Officer Brian Roberts, the network will be used to test a wireless service.

Roberts said during the earnings call on Tuesday that his company plans to "trial and test some things".

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Millennials don't want a job in cyber-security

Those 800,000 IT experts Europe will be missing by 2020 won’t be that easy to find, as the new study suggests that Millennials are not really crazy about a career in cyber-security.

These are the results of the annual study of millennials entitled Securing Our Future: Closing The Cyber Talent Gap. According to the study, young adults are not really interested in cybersecurity, but what’s even worse -- the number of young women in the US interested in a cyber-career is five times smaller.

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Chase Pay mobile payments service arriving in 2016

JP Morgan Chase announced its own smartphone payment platform on Tuesday, called Chase Pay. The platform, due to make its debut mid-2016, will be a direct competitor to the likes of Apple, Google and Samsung.

Chase Pay is built upon the Current C, a retailer-led mobile payment system that has largely been written off by Silicon Valley techies for its reliance on barcodes rather than the more sophisticated NFC (near-field communications) technology adopted by its competitors.

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EU Antitrust Commission might still investigate Google

Google might have changed its name to Alphabet, but the stand-off it has with the European Union’s Antitrust Commission won’t go away.

In an extensive interview for The Wall Street Journal, European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager explains she still has the company in her sights.

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The expectations of instant service: Uber-important

We live in the "instant service" era, ushered in by constantly changing on-demand technologies. Businesses, across verticals, that are technologically nimble and harness the power of "instant" are among the success stories. Uber, Instacart (instant groceries) and Drizly (instant alcohol) are examples of companies that swooped in with instant service models, and now it’s a consumer expectation. CEOs and startups that aren’t figuring out a way to incorporate "instant" into business strategies -- whether it’s the core of the model, or a design principle for building out product features or communication with customers -- won’t remain competitive. Investors are keener than ever to it, and the money doesn’t lie -- instant service is what comes to mind when perusing the largest startup funding rounds of the last two years.

But, entrepreneurs and startups need to differentiate between the hype and real business opportunities in the tech landscape to establish lasting power. It takes a combination of flexibility, on-demand service, convenience and transparency to catch fire with an audience after instant gratification -- and to catch the eye of investors.

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Anonymous threatens to reveal identities of 1,000 Ferguson KKK members

Anonymous declares war on Lizard Squad after DDoS attacks on game networks

One thing no one seems to understand is that you don’t mess with Anonymous. Not unless you want all your dirty laundry publicly exposed on the plains of the digital world.

This time around, Anonymous has set its crosshairs at the KKK, or to be more specific, the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (TAKKKK) of Ferguson. It plans on revealing the identities of 1,000 of its members.

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