BetaNews Staff

Edge computing changes everything, including your mobile strategy

Edge computing

It’s tempting to think of edge computing or the Internet of Things (IoT) strictly as something new that you’ll be adding to your enterprise architecture in the coming years. Your company has an enterprise architecture, and now thanks to the IoT revolution you’ll be adding lots of new internet-connected devices, which, depending on your line of business, might be actuators on a factory floor, sensors in a power station cooling tower, or GPS units on a fleet of tractor trailers.

But in reality, IoT and edge computing are not capabilities that are added separately to a company’s existing IT architecture and landscape. Rather, they need to be integrated into existing architectures to deliver on the company’s desired business outcomes.

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Robocalls on the rise: What you should know

Smartphone owners are increasingly accustomed to picking up their phones and hearing recorded voices on the other end, meaning they've received robocalls.

Often, the recordings are threatening and mention taking action to avoid arrests or financial penalties. A human representative never comes into the equation unless the person receiving the call wants further information, usually by pressing a button on the phone's touchscreen.

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Develop cross-platform apps using Google's Flutter

Speak to most app developers and they’ll tell you it’s much harder, more complicated and less interesting to produce an Android app, compared to iOS. Indeed, ask for a quote and both will be priced separately as both require separate development time and teams.

This might all be about to change with the final first release of a new cross-platform development tool from Google. Imagine a toolkit that you can use to program the functionality, allowing the UI framework to be provided to you separately and seamlessly.

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Uniblue closes its doors for good

There are some firms you look at with a kind of wary admiration primarily because they were a marketing pioneer of their time. Or that’s what we thought.

Uniblue is one of these companies and, you should believe this is no understatement, it used to be major software developer, with adverts in every location, as little as eight years ago. Before it all went horribly wrong. Now Uniblue has closed the company for good with no prior warning whatsoever.

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True Key by McAfee uses facial recognition to securely store your passwords

After listening to years of security advice, many of us now use different passwords to access various websites. Problem is, how do you store and synchronize this data across your devices? You can’t remember every unique password.

The secret is a password manager which enables you to store a central 'master password' (which you can remember) and then gain access to this securely stored data on any supported device. Problem is, can you trust a centralized password manager after previous security issues?

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The future of project management technology

Emerging technologies are set to revolutionize project management. That won’t come as much of a shock to the average reader -- there’s been plenty of media coverage about the extent to which new technology like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and the Internet of Things (IoT) will transform industries from the bottom up.

However, people often struggle to isolate the challenges that emerging technologies will solve, and the specific practices they will change -- even within their own industries. There’s a tacit assumption that change will come -- but the 'what', 'how' and 'when' of these seismic shifts remains unclear. Project managers want to tackle the challenges and grasp the opportunities of today’s workplace faster and better than their competitors. It’s vital, therefore, that project managers not only understand the potential of emerging technology, but how to use it to best effect.

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How I infected my phone with a virus

Virus alert on Android phone

Smartphones are still shrouded by various myths. Reports say that long telephone conversations may cause tumors, your signal may weaken if you move too quickly, and strong signals from base stations could kill people. Whether or not these things are true remains a mystery, but one thing that we do know is real is the threat of mobile malware.

Malicious programs are able to steal funds from your bank account, extract personal information, lock your phone screen, and render a smartphone useless, among other things. According to Statista, as of March 2018, "the total number of Android malware detections amounted to over 26.6 million programs." All of this got me wondering about how easy it is to infect the phone with a virus, so I decided to try it out and document my journey.

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5 sure-fire ways to kill your company's innovation

Innovation is difficult to come by. It is a fleeting concept that eludes most companies. In fact, the odds of a new product idea reaching full commercialization are less than 4 percent. And that is the best case.

But, there are 5 sure-fire ways you can make certain innovation never sees the light of day at your company:

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The future of analytics: 6 predictions

crystal ball

Analytics have become an important part of the decision-making process for many companies in the past few decades, particularly with corporations using data assets as a core competency and point of origin.

My work in the past few decades in the data and analysis field have brought forward six predicted trends to watch for in the near future:

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Don't be a data dinosaur

In today’s pressurized environment, decisions not only have to be right, but they also have to be made quickly. But with so much information coming from numerous different sources, it can be hard to pinpoint the important data.

Since its launch in 1985, Excel has undoubtedly transformed the way businesses operate. However, over 30 years later it has not evolved to meet the speeds and efficiencies of other, more automated, solutions. Recording, analyzing, categorizing and reporting thousands of changing data points back to stakeholders is far more complex than plugging numbers into a table. Consequently, the cutting-edge technologies of yesterday are now seen by many employees as archaic and prehistoric when compared with today’s instant digital information experiences they have come to expect in their personal lives.

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How cybersecurity systemization is changing financial institutions today

Cyberattacks are a global epidemic today. They target organizations, critical infrastructure, and governments around the world with timely, sophisticated attacks. Examples of this include ransomware attacks like Petya and WannaCry. These put some of the world’s most critical functions on hold for a while.

Another example was the Equifax data breach that affected about 143 million Americans. With the persistence of these attacks many people believe that by 2021 cybercrime will cause $6 trillion in damages.

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Latest AV-Test October 2018 report rates Malwarebytes as the poorest performing security suite

The entire point of purchasing a security suite is so you know it has your back. You want it to be assured the company has invested heavily in development to make sure it can counter the latest threats.

German-based independent security institute AV-Test regularly tests the latest security suites, pushing them through a range of measures including performance against the latest threats, plus how they impact your system. You don’t want a security suite to slow your PC.

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The industries that can expect to see the most from XR in the next 4 years

For many years, Virtual Reality was seen as just a futuristic concept, but in 2010, the prototype of the Oculus Rift was released, before eventually being rolled out for general consumption in 2012. Since then, other companies have followed suit, including Samsung, Sony (PlayStation) and HTC (Vive). The use of Augmented Reality has also started to rise, both in the gaming world and in many other sectors. Both technologies are now being referred to as Extended Reality (XR), and there are huge plans afoot to develop them for a range of industries.

Here are the industries that will be utilizing XR technology the most in the next four years:

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Keep your software up-to-date and one eye on the latest downloads with Update Scanner

How many of us have time to keep an eye on every website, especially when you need to track the latest news, promotions, offers and deals? Some of us dislike all-in-one apps such as iTunes, but at least they bring together a range of sources within one handy tool.

With this in mind, we’ve created an Update Scanner for our Downloadcrew website, which enables you to follow the latest software releases, check for updates against your installed desktop apps, the latest news, store promotions and whether there’s a full software Giveaway available.

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Stop focusing your information security efforts on the wrong things!

There once was a time not all that long ago when security teams could plead ignorant to IT security risks, with minimal possible consequence in terms of any significant damage coming to the company. Those days are long gone. We’ve reached an era where the "I see nothing" perspective no longer works for network security. In today’s era of advanced cyberattacks, information security is too important an element of business success to dismiss.

In fact, ignorance of information security matters is prohibitively costly, as regulators can use it to justify the imposition of fines. Take GDPR’s penalty scheme, for example. Is ignorance of digital security worth €20 million or 4 percent of an organization’s global annual revenue? That’s just one data protection standard -- others such as Australia’s Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme and the NY Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) Cybersecurity Requirements for Financial Institutions come with their own fines and penalties. Given that we’re also in the era of insufficient resources, the challenge for security teams is how to deploy limited resources to have the greatest impact. As the title of this post makes clear, the obvious answer is to stop spending time on the wrong things.

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