Millennials and their motors: 5 predictions for 2019 and beyond
Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes, and an article appearing daily in the news either slating or praising millennials. Millennials, or Generation Y, are the group of people who were born between 1981 and 1996. Opinions of millennials range from those claiming that they are everything wrong with our changing society, others that they are saving it. Millennials are arguably the most influential generation of consumers today, making smart, considered decisions all the time.
One such decision is their method of transport. Reports suggest that millennials are buying fewer cars than older generations, with 43 percent of them saying that having a car was a hassle. Cars used to be the ultimate status symbol, so why are so many millennials avoiding them? Is it sustainable living? The rise of Uber and Lyft? Are they holding on for connected cars? Or do they simply just not want to drive?
LiFiMAX is a new kind of high-speed internet... that runs on light
During this year’s recent CES conference in Las Vegas, attendees got a preview of the evolution of high-speed internet. It's called LiFiMAX and offers an internet connection based on invisible light.
It gives a 100Mbps downlink data rate and 40Mpbs uplink rate, making it ideal for use in a professional setting.
What does IT performance really mean?
IT is moving into the future, growing beyond its traditional role to become a center of innovation -- so then why are conversations about IT performance stuck in the past?
Too often, the discussion starts with the hard numbers of quantitative performance, what I call "speeds and feeds": details like what kind of processor, memory size, disk I/O or throughput. The problem is that using these metrics to evaluate the performance of your IT -- whether solutions, service providers or the organization itself -- comes hopelessly short of determining the value that IT is bringing to its new task of leading digital transformation.
In defense of private companies: Creating a cyber risk-aware culture
Each year, the amount of investment organizations -- big and small -- are making to protect their most valuable assets with technological and physical safeguards continues to grow by staggering amounts. Yet, with just one click or touch, an unsuspecting employee can expose a company to cyber spying, ransomware or outright theft.
Private companies are aware of various risks posed to their businesses both from external threat actors (e.g., business/political rivals, organized cyber criminals) and from their own personnel (e.g., disgruntled employees). This year, 38 percent of mid-market and private leaders ranked cybersecurity as a top information technology (IT) investment priority according to Deloitte’s annual mid-market technology trends report. What are they investing in? New information security capabilities, monitoring and detection, and employee education initiatives.
Email: Year in review 2018
2018 is has come to a close. Many experts are making predictions for 2019, but I think it’s important to learn from the past. Let’s take a look back at all of the major email industry events of 2018.
There were plenty of changes amongst mailbox providers that kept marketers and deliverability professionals busy. Providers like Gmail and Oath (AOL, Yahoo and Verizon mail) went through significant changes this year, including:
How AI will -- and won't -- dominate customer service in 2019
Is artificial intelligence the future of customer service, or is it the jump-the-shark moment that slows our society’s reliance on technology and automation? It’s fair to say that 2018 didn’t make the answer any more evident. In 2019, most businesses will seek a balance between the added efficiency and responsiveness that AI customer service can provide and the human touch that customers still value.
There are two significant areas where businesses are finding success with AI in customer service: chatbots and data. Expect to see both areas grow in 2019 as companies look for ways to serve their customers more efficiently and intelligently.
Is the QA lab dead?
Quality assurance is changing. Internal teams too often don’t have the resources necessary to get releases to market on time, on budget, and without bugs. And offshoring comes with its own share of issues like irrelevant results and inefficient testing. In its current form -- with traditional lab and outsourced testing -- traditional QA is dying.
There are more than 45,000 unique mobile device profiles on the market today. And that’s just the mobile devices. Forget about desktop computers, connected devices, or any of the other places apps can live and be used on a day-to-day basis. Then add in all the different operating system and browser variations and it becomes clear internal teams need help to test on a massive breadth of devices.
Add an additional layer of website security with the Emsisoft Browser Extension
Although we’d regard ourselves as technically proficient, even we can get caught out online. Over the New Year period we were searching for a product from a reputable brand, seeking the best price available through Google search.
Browsing through the shopping results, we found an official store which sold this brand and was offering a discounted new year sale. Looked legit. But the discount was too high and it was tricky to find any definitive location information. The online store was either selling fake products or simply extracting funds with no intention of shipping. Most people trust sources such as Google Search, but unless individuals report fake or phishing websites, it’s easy to get caught out.
Major Avast and AVG update adds 64-bit support, drops XP/Vista
When an existing user purchases a new activation code, they often have problems installing the 'latest' version of their security suite because they often overlook that as part of their subscription they will always have the latest version.
This is why the likes of Avast and AVG dropped year version numbers, making it more difficult to know when a major release has been made available. Earlier today Avast released the 19.1 editions of their security products and this is a significant update.
4 critical steps to building an IoT network
The biggest mistake often made in building an IoT network for the first time is in underestimating the complexity of IoT network design, operation and management -- and believing that legacy network technologies and engagement models will support the requirements of large-scale IoT deployments.
Building an IoT network is not as easy as it sounds and the process of building your own tends to break down when confronted with massive scale. What may seem to be an easy task of deploying gateways and managing device provisioning and connectivity quickly becomes challenging with respect to scaled site and network operations. Some may also find challenges with sourcing and qualifying end devices for their applications, device configuration and management, implementing encryption and security services, and ultimately generating contextualized data for their use cases. Taking the following four steps to develop your IoT network buildout is essential.
The elements of cybersecurity hygiene and secure networks -- Part 2
The blackhat hackers are evolving as quickly as technology is. To protect their sensitive information, companies can put documents in a public cloud. Why the public cloud? While it might seem that public cloud solutions are less reliable than traditional IT platforms, the reality is that they’re actually more secure. With the cloud, a company’s security team is able to monitor network audit logs more closely to detect any abnormalities. Furthermore, audit data can be easily centralized without having to navigate through inconvenient firewall interfaces and other closed proprietary systems. These components are essential for improving security procedures.
The public cloud also allows for more thorough security analyses after an audit. Cloud data analysis systems allow the audit data to be inspected in a more efficient, cost-effective way. These systems take in large quantities of information and are available whenever they’re needed. Real-time monitoring and automated alerts also allow for an immediate response in the event of a security breach. This can dramatically reduce the impact of security incidents and help pinpoint areas that need to be addressed.
Reporting from the other side: Why journalism needs VPNs
Getting news out of hostile territories can potentially be extremely risky, but it is key to making sure that suppressed voices are heard, and that the wider world is aware of what is happening in war zones and regions with unstable leadership.
While the rest of us worry about data security because we’re shopping and banking online, for journalists, an increased focus on this type of security is critical -- particularly for those operating in dangerous regions of the world. As valuable as digital data trails can be to an investigative reporter, they can also work the other way, resulting in a journalist’s identity and stories being revealed. Not only can leaked information limit a journalist’s ability to report the truth, it could also put them and their sources at significant risk.
Krisp reduces background noise on conference calls
The rise of homeworking means one thing, trying to focus on work whilst the family and daily chores are going on around you. Get on a conference call and you have to try and eliminate background noise to sound professional. When you’re on a call you suddenly realize how much noise is going on around you.
Get in the car and head to a coffee shop and you'll find there are people talking around you -- it’s no better at all. You just cannot seem to get away from surrounding noise. And that’s if you can even get a fast enough internet connection and a stable enough call to make it worthwhile and professional enough to impress the other callers.
Quickly migrate your user account to a new PC with the latest PCTrans 10
Boot into your brand new PC and you find you’re welcomed by rather a vanilla operating system, perhaps with a few key default apps installed by the manufacturer.
Although it’s initially interesting to start with a blank canvas, you soon realize not only do you have your most important applications installed but the settings and preferences all need to be setup again from scratch.
Digital workplace disruption in 2019: How job roles are shifting in the professional services industry
In 2018, digital workplace transformation across the professional services market finally began to take hold. Today, applications for professionals across accounting, insurance, consulting and other industries are actually providing anywhere and anytime access, seamless collaboration, intuitive experiences and smart capabilities.
For years, those who worked in the professional services market expected these capabilities from their applications, having used consumer tools like Google, Facebook and Amazon that provide a consistent, easy-to-use experience across every device, allow for straightforward collaboration with trusted friends and family, automate tedious tasks and anticipate needs based on preferences and past behavior. After first resisting these demands and then struggling to deliver such capabilities, 2018 saw the wide-scale emergence of comprehensive technology platforms that deliver mobile, intuitive, collaborative, secure, automated and smart digital workplaces. The digital transformation of the professional services market made professionals’ day-to-day tasks easier, reducing training and other costs for firms, increasing productivity and empowering professionals to be more creative.
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