Beware of good programs behaving badly
Users of popular software programs are increasingly discovering that programs which are otherwise very useful are acting in a totally unacceptable manner. Note the following examples:
Adobe Reader can create 257 unique folders under c:\programdata\adobe\arm\reader_11.0.00\<username> each containing the exact same four executables:
How to protect your business against data breaches
According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales published this October by the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS), the official crime rate all but doubled in the year ending June 2016 after the inclusion of online crime figures for the very first time. In fact, card fraud was cited as the most common crime in the UK. John Flatley, head of crime statistics and analysis at the ONS, stated that members of the public are now 20 times more likely to be a victim of fraud than of robbery.
The Numbers Are Soaring!
Employee engagement is crucial to a modern CEO
The recent proposed Green Paper, and in particular its element on "stakeholder engagement", called for the voices of employees and customers to be heard in the Boardroom. It followed the PM’s U Turn on her commitment to put employees on company boards, but echoed the Chancellor’s sentiments on UK productivity.
As Mr Hammond reminded us in his Autumn Statement, UK productivity lags behind that of the US and Germany by some 30 percentage points. According to research from Qualtrics, British workers think a third of their working day is wasted. Giving employees a "voice", however, dramatically improves outcomes, because low productivity and dysfunctional employee engagement are two sides of the same coin.
Hybrid clouds make it easy to deploy new technologies
According to IDC, by 2018 at least half of IT spending will be cloud based, reaching 60 percent of all IT Infrastructures, and 60 to 70 percent of all software, services, and technology spending by 2020.
As cloud has become a standard way of doing business, organizations globally are using it as a tool for innovation and business transformation. Those who successfully use the cloud to achieve growth will have a mature, strategic view of how best to implement and integrate it across their organizations. All approaches to cloud have advantages. From the straightforward simplicity of public cloud services, versus the increased security and control of a private cloud, there is a cloud environment to meet every organization’s needs.
The benefits of a multi-cloud strategy
Multi-cloud has been discussed within the cloud computing industry for a while, but there is still confusion and disagreement about what it is. What most can agree on is that multi-cloud is about mixing and matching the best-in-class technologies and services from different cloud providers to create the best possible solution for a business.
This flexibility is what will define the industry in the coming years, allowing organizations to leverage the relative advantages, price-points and geographic locations of the solutions to their best advantage. However, the transition to a multi-cloud solution can be fraught with risks if improperly managed. As a result, enterprises looking to gain advantage through this technology are seeking expert help in the form of third-party managed service providers.
How to not get hacked
We found out last week that one billion Yahoo accounts were hacked in 2013, only a couple months after we learned about a separate hack, that took place in 2014, which compromised an additional 500 million accounts. Combine that with the 360 million compromised MySpace passwords, 117 million from LinkedIn, 65 million from Tumblr, and 32 million from Twitter, and you can almost guarantee that you or someone you know was affected by the mega-breaches announced in recent months.
Being as most people use the same password over and over, these breaches give hackers access to multiple accounts. In a proactive security screen this fall, Netflix found a number of users whose Netflix passwords were compromised as part of another company’s breach. These instances do not simply let attackers tweet on your behalf; they can affect all of your accounts. How many people use the same password for LinkedIn or Yahoo as they do for their corporate email? An unsettling number.
Smart machines will become mainstream in the enterprise by 2021
If Gartner’s right, smart machines will become a business mainstream by 2021. Its new report, entitled "Smart Machines: Consulting and System Integration Services Market Forecast and Opportunities", says smart machines will see a 30 percent adoption in the next five years among large enterprises.
Gartner says cognitive computing, artificial intelligence (AI), intelligent automation, machine learning and deep learning are all considered "smart machines". By becoming mainstream, smart machines will open up an entirely new industry, which is expected to be worth approximately $29 billion (£23.3bn) by 2021.
Only one in three consumers install firmware updates right away
Less than a third (31 percent) of consumers in the UK perform firmware updates on their devices as soon as they become available, a new report by Ubuntu Core, a Canonical company working on connected devices, says. Four in ten (40 percent) have never updated the firmware on their devices, ever.
This leaves them extremely vulnerable to attacks, as firmware updates are also designed to patch security holes. What’s also interesting is that a significant number of consumers don’t even think it’s their responsibility to keep their devices up-to-date and protected.
What's next for AI in 2017?
In the sci-fi film Ex Machina, reclusive inventor Nathan Bateman foresees a bleak future, telling the movie's protagonist, Caleb, that "One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa".
When we don’t understand something, we tend to fear it; which is one reason popular movies like Ex Machina and HBO’s nail-biting new series Westworld like to imagine futures in which artificial intelligence plots to destroy humanity.
Tools to help businesses prepare for GDPR compliance
The data processing landscape has seen huge changes since 1995, in May 2018 the EU is replacing the Directive with a new regulation, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Enforceable from May 2018, organizations have had to take account of their responsibilities under the DPA for many years now.
Many have mature and well-considered data management policies in place that already address elements of the GDPR. Nonetheless, with the threat of significant penalties for data breaches under the GDPR it would be prudent to reexamine procedures and to consider how these can be enhanced to ensure compliance when GDPR comes into effect in May 2018.
VoIP vs SIP: Which one is winning the telecoms war?
Back in 2008 the death knell of the PBX was being forecast -- albeit mainly by VoIP suppliers. Whilst sales have dropped and there was some amalgamation of suppliers there is still a strong market. The number of PBX extensions still outnumbers VoIP by around seven or eight to one.
So, to misquote Mark Twain -- reports of the PBX’s death have been grossly exaggerated. It is the rise of a parallel technology SIP that has blunted many of the arguments put forward by VoIP suppliers suggesting we should throw away that box on the wall.
The three secrets to successfully monetizing IoT data
The global business landscape is being transformed by the Internet of Things. Soon, every business will be an IoT business simply because those that don’t adapt, innovate, and transform their models will risk falling behind in the Connected Economy. But even as business leaders scramble headlong to get in on the IoT gold rush, many are faced with the same harsh realization: that actually monetizing IoT data is difficult.
I’ve written about the challenges of IoT monetization before, and I agree with Gartner’s assessment that 80 percent of IoT implementations will squander their transformational opportunities. This statistic isn’t due to a lack of opportunity, as I believe that for any company that has customers, suppliers, employees or assets, IoT monetization can be transformational. Here are my top three strategies for ensuring that your IoT initiative is part of the 20 percent that actually succeed.
The pros and cons of VoWiFi
There’s no doubt that Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi) has captured a lot of attention lately. Indeed, AT&T has announced that it is handling four million VoWiFi calls per day and T-Mobile boasts some 22 million calls per day using the technology.
Today, many enterprises and mobile operators consider VoWiFi an easy and cost-effective way to provide indoor mobile coverage in buildings that block macro mobile signals. However, VoWiFi isn’t suitable for every application and neither do mobile operators want it to be.
Ways technology is continuing to transform the retail industry
From smartphones to the cloud and automation, technology is dramatically changing nearly everything about how we live and work. Technology’s impact can be felt in every industry, but it is especially strong in retail. It used to be that you had to have massive resources and connections to operate in the retail space. These days, thanks to more accessible technology, anyone with an idea and a product can sell via it the Internet and social media. Traditional retail business plans have been thrown by the wayside to make way for the disruptive new ideas of rapid transformation and increased competition, and it’s all thanks to new technology.
The latest technology is rapidly transforming the retail landscape -- here are a few examples:
HP unveils security solutions for business laptops
HP has just announced a new security solution, called the Sure Start Gen3, and a new laptop series, the EliteBook 800 G4 series. These new notebooks will be shipped with the security solution, which is why HP is calling them the "world's most secure and manageable PC".
The solution handles the computer's BIOS, and makes sure no tampering can occur on that microlevel, whatsoever. "HP Sure Start Gen3 will help prevent such attacks by automatically detecting tampering attempts with the BIOS (both in pre-boot and run-time), notifying the user of a problem and restoring the BIOS to its original pristine condition from a copy stored on a dedicated computer chip. In that sense, it’s self-healing", Hp promises. HP also says this solution works great with Windows 10, as it also protects the data governing BIOS configuration and policy.
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