BetaNews Staff

Most employees use smartphones for private tasks during work hours

iPhone left

Smartphones, even personal ones, are no strangers to the workplace. With the increase in adoption of BYOD initiatives, more and more employees are using their smartphones for everyday job tasks.

However, according to a new report by LaptopsDirect.co.uk, British workers are also using personal smartphones for private communication, during work hours, as well.

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The buzzwords that will take 2017 by storm

buzzwords

The technology industry is full of jargon and buzzwords, which, if you’re not in the club, can often feel like a foreign language. When it comes to communicating new technologies and processes to other parts of the business, IT professionals need to be careful when translating these buzzwords into human-speak if they want to avoid a confused, blank look. It’s this confusion that results in a data breach, shadow IT activity, or missing out on investment in new IT equipment.

Whether it’s to educate yourself or others, we’ve de-coded the buzzwords. Now the next time someone asks you "what the blockchain you’re on about," rather than giving them SaaS, you can breakdown the meaning, benefit, and importance.

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Business 2020: A clear and connected vision for the future

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According to Walker Information’s Customers 2020 Report, by the year 2020, customer experience will be the number one competitive differentiator for brands. With just three years to go, brands still have some work to do to get smarter about their customers, and to learn how to quickly keep pace with the numerous technology changes ahead.

From smart technology, artificial intelligence and multi-channel customer communication, technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace. As devices, customers and companies become even more connected, prioritization is the key to customer experience success. Here are five ways brands can stay ahead of the 2020 curve.

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Lessons learned from a ransomware infection

Ransomware

Since October, Datto has been conducting testing designed to quickly detect ransomware in backup data sets. Here’s why: it has become a major threat to individuals and businesses over the past few years, and the cyber extortionists behind these attacks operate with increasing sophistication. SMBs can be particularly vulnerable to attacks and are more likely to pay a ransom to get their data back than large businesses.

In many cases, these attacks are conducted by large criminal organizations using wide-reaching botnets to spread malware via phishing campaigns. Victims are tricked into downloading an e-mail attachment or clicking a link using some form of social engineering. Fake email messages might appear to be a note from a friend or colleague asking a user to check out an attached file. Or, email might come from a trusted institution (such as a bank) asking you to perform a routine task. Sometimes, ransomware uses scare tactics such as claiming that the computer has been used for illegal activities to coerce victims. When the malware is executed, it encrypts files and demands a ransom to unlock them.

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How AI can offer much-needed relief to UK's National Health Service

UK NHS

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the NHS budget will need to increase by £88billion over the next 50 years if it is to keep pace with the rising demand for healthcare in the UK. But with the 2017 Budget showcasing a massive leaning towards building up its Brexit reserves and allocating a mere £100 million for 100 onsite GP treatment centers in A&Es across England, the NHS is justifiably bracing itself for a painful future.

With £20billion worth of cuts scheduled by 2020, combined with fierce warnings that the UK’s health services are on the edge of an unprecedented crisis, the urgent call for solutions to be brought to the healthcare table has incontrovertibly intensified.

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Microsoft and Nvidia unveil HGX-1 hyperscale GPU accelerator

MOD-74902_Hyperscale-GPU-Acelerator Nvidia Microsoft

Blueprints for a new hyperscale GPU accelerator have been introduced recently, jointly by Microsoft and NVIDIA. The two companies are saying the accelerator would "drive AI cloud computing."

The accelerator is called HGX-1 hyperscale GPU. It is released in conjunction with Microsoft’s Project Olympus, as an open-source design.

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Why you need cyber security checks during a merger or acquisition

Security

2016 was a record setting year for data breaches and hacks. In the last few months of the year Yahoo began making headline news for all the wrong reasons with two stories around how it was the victim of the largest cyber-attack in history, which saw one billion accounts being compromised. Making this situation all the more worst for Yahoo, was the fact that it was in the process of being acquired by Verizon.

This hack in fact has resulted in Verizon paying $350 million less for Yahoo and receiving confirmation from Yahoo’s board that any future legal costs or reparations will be jointly covered. The bad news of companies across the globe is that Yahoo’s attack is likely to only be the beginning. As cyber attacks escalate in both their volume and size the dangers to companies looking at acquiring others rises.

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What small businesses need to know about Enterprise Resource Planning software

ERP

For many business managers who are making their first foray into researching ERP software, the subject can see daunting. Search the internet for "ERP software" and you’ll be inundated with dozens of pages of information and opinion; it’s a big subject and there is no shortage of commentators, experts and marketers, all vying for your attention and, of course, a share of your IT budget.

The good news is that despite the technical acronym, the basic principles of ERP software are easily defined and once understood, a business manager is in a solid position to begin considering the different options available to their company.

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Using machine learning to secure identity and access management systems

Machine learning

We’ve been losing the war on cybercrime for some time. Research firm Forrester reports over a billion accounts stolen in 2016 alone, and these data breaches are going up, not down. We are having to wade through more incident data, and people cannot keep up. Could machine learning help solve the problem?

For years, researchers hoped that artificial intelligence would produce human-like machines. Now, they focus on a subset of AI that can solve more realistic and useful challenges. Machine learning cannot do everything a human can, but it doesn’t have to. Instead, we can train it to be good at narrowly-defined tasks -- even better at them than humans, in some cases.

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One in five websites uses insecure SHA-1 certificate

Security breach lock

More than a fifth (21 percent) of all websites are still using an insecure certificate, which is leaving them open to different types of cyberattacks. This is according to a new report from cyber security experts Venafi.

The report says many sites are still using the SHA-1 certificate, which means they’re vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, brute force attacks and collision attacks, all of which can expose the site’s sensitive data.

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Avaya sells networking business to Extreme Networks

Handshake cloud

Extreme Networks agreed to acquire Avaya’s networking business for roughly $100 million. Avaya, a company that went private in 2007, is struggling with bankruptcy. It filed to restructure under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January. It also said it was looking for ways to monetize some of its assets.

Extreme Networks said Avaya’s networking business is in line with its strategy for growth, and that it will help broaden its portfolio across different verticals.

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Tech Deals: Get the XPS Tower 8910 i7 Silver Edition desktop with 16GB RAM for only $750

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Why pay full price for a new laptop, desktop PC, or Surface Pro tablet, when you can get one for a fraction of the cost?

Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains we have yet another selection of superb deals to tempt you. Offers include fantastic savings on new Dell laptop and desktop PCs, HD and 4K TVs, electronics and components, and much more.

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HPE buys Nimble for $1bn

HPE logo sign

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) says it came to an agreement with Nimble Storage to acquire it for approximately $1 billion in cash.

HP Enterprise should assume, or pay out, Nimble’s unvested equity awards, with a value of $200m, at closing. According to Wall Street Journal, the deal has roughly a 41 percent premium to Nimble’s $700m market value.

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TeamViewer unveils web conferencing solution for enterprises

Blizz by TeamViewer

TeamViewer is looking for a piece of Amazon Chime's pie as it introduces a competitor, Blizz by TeamViewer. It is a dedicated web conferencing and collaboration solution, aimed at the needs of small and medium sized businesses and mid enterprise organizations.

The product is available right now, and comes in three plans with different functionalities.

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AMD details Zen-based Naples server processors

black_amd_logo

After the successful launch of its new Ryzen processors last week, AMD has announced the first details of its upcoming Naples CPUs intended for servers and data centers.

These processors were designed around the same Zen architecture as Ryzen though they will be a great deal more powerful. AMD has described them as having "superior" memory bandwidth and some models will even feature up to 32 cores in order to handle a more demanding workload.

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