We are coming closer to the point where a cyber-attack will cost every large business more than $1 million. According to a new Kaspersky Lab report, a single cyber-security incident now costs a large business, on average, $861,000.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) pay ten times less, on average -- $86,500. The new report also stresses, once again, how costs go up the longer the threat remains unseen. For an SME, it will have to pay 44 percent more to recover from a week-old attack, compared to the one spotted on the first day. Among large companies, the percentage sits at 27.

Continue reading →

UK businesses’ number one technology priority is security, according to a new survey by EACS. The IT solutions and managed services provider polled CIOs, IT directors and IT managers, and released the results in a whitepaper entitled Business & Technology Priorities 2016 survey.

Among the top priorities for them are better efficiency, operating results, increased productivity and cutting costs. The study also found one interesting thing -- all IT decision makers agree that no company can be 100 percent safe. That is why disaster recovery is in second place on the list of tech priorities.

Continue reading →

Sunrise is dead, long live Sunrise! Once considered the best mobile calendar app to ever grace us with its presence, it got acquired by Microsoft and is now officially retired.

But Microsoft has taken its best features and reincarnated them into its Outlook app's calendar, and the general feeling is overall quite positive. The updated Outlook, which is available now, comes with a couple of changes. Interesting Calendars is one of the new features, which allows Outlook to connect with businesses, TV shows and similar.

Continue reading →

Microsoft has announced that it will be bringing Azure Service Fabric, which allows developers to run and manage microservices, to Linux.

Azure's CTO Mark Russinovich is very enthusiastic about microservices, which the company has been using internally for seven years. Russinovich believes that the vast majority of apps even including enterprise apps will soon be built using this technology.

Continue reading →

If your business hasn’t already faced a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, brace yourself: fake traffic is coming.

Your DevOps team and IT service desk need an action plan to handle these threats. This article will take you step-by-step through the process of identifying, stopping, and responding to DDoS attacks.

Continue reading →

A civil lawsuit filed in a Northern California federal court has accused Samsung and LG of having a clandestine agreement not to poach each other's employees in the US.

The suit was filed by a former LG sales manager who is accusing Samsung and LG of antitrust violations and believes the two South Korean companies have worked together to drive down employee wages. This case is reminiscent of the one which was filed against Apple, Google and other tech companies last year that resulted in a $415 million settlement.

Continue reading →

Dell EMC continues to offload unwanted divisions within the new company, and the latest victim is its Enterprise Content Division (ECD), including Documentum. They have been acquired by enterprise information management company Opentext.com, for $1.62 billion (£1.22bn).

The transaction is still subject to regulatory approvals, and is expected to close within 90 to 120 days. All software, associated services, and employees of ECD will be integrated into OpenText. OpenText hopes to "further strengthen its vertical offerings, customer base, managed services, and geographical coverage".

Continue reading →

IBM introduced a series of new servers dubbed "x86 killers". The devices, designed to give a significant boost to artificial intelligence, deep learning and advanced data analytics, were picked up by the Chinese telecommunications company Tencent, and IBM claims the results are basically out of this world.

"A large cluster of the new IBM OpenPOWER servers was able to run a data-intensive workload three times faster than its former x86-based infrastructure", IBM says in a press release. "While reducing the total number of servers used by two-thirds".

Continue reading →

HP is turning away from Salesforce and Oracle software to run its sales processes and now plans to use Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) software exclusively in its sales and support departments.

The two companies have entered into a six-year contract and plan to roll out Dynamics CRM to 6,500 of HP's sales staff and 20,000 of its support personnel. Though the dollar amount of this deal is still unknown, around 50 percent of the company's workforce will now use Microsoft's software and services to manage their relationships with customers.

Continue reading →

Canadian telecommunications company Blackberry announced new services for its Android Hub+ platform this week. Besides the Hub, Calendar and Password Keeper, which were available earlier, another six apps are now available for Android users, for both Marshmallow and Lollipop versions of the operating system.

These apps include Contacts, Tasks, Device Search, Notes, and Launcher, all part of Blackberry's productivity suite. They are available for a free 30-day period, after which they'll cost 99 cents per month. Hub, Calendar, Password Keeper, and Launcher will remain free, but with ads.

Continue reading →

As our world becomes more digital by the day, IT leaders are under ever-increasing pressure to perform in a measurable way. From the demands of cutting costs and modernizing workflows to bolstering security and optimizing cloud migration, their strategic and technical priorities extend into every aspect of the business. On a more comprehensive level, 70 percent of IT leaders regard digital transformation as a top priority within their organization. With so many initiatives demanding their attention, CIOs and IT managers must allocate their time and resources wisely.

Yet there are several challenges that can obstruct the path to modern IT success. In Gartner’s 2016 CIO Agenda Report, the technology research company asked 2,994 CIOs from 84 countries to identify their main barrier as an IT leader. Twenty-two percent of participants responded with skills and resources, while 15 percent pinpointed funding and budgets as their biggest obstacle. The fact of the matter is that IT departments don’t always have the funds and resources they need to truly drive digital transformation and stay on the cutting edge of technology. A company’s available budget reflects an abundance of tireless work and careful strategy, making the question of how to save and maximize hard-earned revenue one of the most pressing issues to affect enterprises across the globe.

Continue reading →

Microsoft keeps adding new features to its Office 365 suite, and now it has made easier for people outside a group to collaborate on files. A new feature, for Office 365 groups, allows people who aren't staff members, or members of a particular group, to join in and collaborate.

Group owners can now use the web version of Outlook to invite non-staff members in.

Continue reading →

After falling victim to a phishing scam in March, Seagate is now being sued by its own employees whose sensitive data was exposed in the leak.

The company's HR department was tricked into providing the operators of the phishing scheme with the personally identifiable information (PII) of 10,000 past and current employees and W-2 forms that include their Social Security numbers along with their wage, salary and tax information.

Continue reading →

They may seem like technology from the days of old, but make no mistake -- desktop printers still can hold an important place in British businesses today. Not only do they help create efficient and flexible printing management, but they also can help keep British office workers at their most productive, rendering them potentially one of the most important products for IT managers in 2016.

The value of desktop printers is often overlooked due to advancements of new printer technology services, including an array of enterprise-orientated features, however, the traditional role of the printer mustn’t be forgotten. Desktop printers intertwined within a multi-device print and document management strategy, whilst also combining bigger multi-function devices with smaller devices, should arguably become commonplace for all managers responsible for their company’s printing activities.

Continue reading →

ManageEngine recently announced the results of its global Active Directory and Windows Server Security -- Trends and Practices Survey for 2016, which found that 70 percent of IT administrators across the globe agree that their Windows environments are not immune to malicious attacks.

To delve a bit deeper, we spoke to Derek Melber, a technical evangelist for ManageEngine.

Continue reading →