Amazon Fresh has arrived in the UK and starting this week the online retailer delivers groceries in London.

This is the first time that the service will be available outside of the US and initially it will offer over 130,000 grocery items to consumers living in north and east London. A host of new items including thousands of fresh produce, dairy and bakery items will be available through the online delivery service.

Continue reading →

Can hackers get into the driver’s seat in autonomous vehicles? The short answer here is a resounding "Yes!" Just last year, researchers/hackers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek exploited a security issue with the mobile Wi-Fi system available in some Fiat-Chrysler products: They demonstrated they could use a laptop to take control of key vehicle systems in a Jeep Cherokee. Not only were they able to change the audio volume, adjust the air conditioning, and turn on the windshield wipers, they gained control over the transmission -- bringing the vehicle to a stop on the highway.

Luckily, it was all part of a pre-planned demonstration with a writer for Wired magazine, who was driving the car. The hacking part, however, was entirely real. The automaker had to recall 1.4 million vehicles as a result. It also was a wake-up call for both the auto industry and the government, which have teamed up with technology companies to start taking automotive cybersecurity more seriously going forward. They'll have to, too, to be ready for the predicted shift to self-driving vehicles.

Continue reading →

Wait until you hear what employees in Europe are using cloud services for. Oh, boy.

Blue Coat Systems has polled more than 3,000 workers in France, Germany and the UK, asking them about their cloud usage habits, and, as it turns out, some employees use such services (Dropbox, Box, Office 365, Slack, LinkedIn, Facebook, Gmail, etc.) to store data before starting a new job, for corporate espionage, whistle-blowing and even "personal protection".

Continue reading →

The number, and the frequency of DDoS attacks (distributed denial of service) continues to grow, a new report by content delivery network (CDN) services provider Akamai Technologies says.

The company said its DDoS mitigation platform, the Akamai Intelligent Platform, mitigated 4,500 DDoS attacks during the first quarter of 2016, representing a 125 percent jump, compared to the same period last year.

Continue reading →

The stereotype of older people having trouble using new technology is nothing more than that -- a stereotype. At least, according to a new report by Dropbox and Ipsos Mori. The two companies surveyed more than 4,000 workers aged 55 and more about their use of technology in the workplace.

The results will most definitely be surprising to some.

Continue reading →

Almost a fifth (19 percent) of companies in the UK wouldn’t notify their customers in case of a data breach, a new report highlights.

As the EU GDPR draws closer, Trend Micro investigated if companies have formal processes in place to notify data protection authorities (within 72 hours), and the public, in case of a data breach, as will be enforced by the Regulation.

Continue reading →

More than 60 percent of web services, or mobile app APIs have at least one high-risk vulnerability, which can potentially lead to a compromised database. Those are the results of a new and comprehensive report by High-Tech Bridge, summing up the trends in web security for the past six months.

The report also says that in case a website is vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS), it is also vulnerable to other critical flaws, in at least 35 percent of cases. Other vulnerabilities include SQL injection, XXE or improper access control.

Continue reading →

The amount of time people spent in apps of social media networks in the first three months of 2016, in nine major countries in the world, has dropped "dramatically", a new report by digital market intelligence company SimilarWeb says.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat have all seen significant drops in the amount of time people in the US, UK, Germany, Spain, Australia, India, South Africa, Brazil and Spain have spent in Q1 2016, compared to the same period a year before.

Continue reading →

Modern-day computers began trickling into the auto industry with cars like the 1971 Chrysler Imperial, which was one of the first to offer anti-lock brakes controlled by an electronic sensor system. Some 45 years later, the growth in computer-based car technology shows no signs of stopping. A number of Chevy vehicles, for instance, will provide you with a standard mobile Wi-Fi hotspot and 4G LTE connectivity for less than $20,000. And for folks who can afford a Tesla, that brand's "Autopilot" nearly lives up to its name. But as we've seen in other fields, as the potential benefits of connectivity increase, so does the potential for cybercrime.

Consider something as basic as mobile Wi-Fi. While Chevy is the only mainstream brand to supply that technology with 4G connectivity right now, a growing number of premium brands offer it, and a growing number of customers want it. Yet while mobile Wi-Fi gives you the same kind of online access as you'd get at your home or office, it also opens you up to all the same security issues you face there, from worries about passwords and personal data being captured, to concerns over the automakers' own security protocols.

Continue reading →

Microsoft is preparing to increase its commitment to the open-source Apache Spark big-data processing engine this week at the Spark Summit in San Francisco.

At the summit, officials from Microsoft will be offering further insight into its support for Spark with the company’s HDInsight, Cortana Intelligence Suite, Power BI and Microsoft R Server.

Continue reading →

To help its users stay on task and manage their assignments more easily, Microsoft has just launched a new project management tool for teams using Office 365 called Planner.

The company initially released a preview of its new tool in December 2015 and now it will begin rolling it out worldwide to all Office 365 users including those using Office 365 Enterprise E1-E5, Business Essentials, Premium and even its Education subscription plan.

Continue reading →

People like paying with plastic and those businesses that don’t enable easy card payment methods risk destroying themselves, a new survey suggests.

According to a report by Worldpay, 60,000 of small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) in the UK are "making life difficult" for those that dislike carrying cash around and they’re risking ruining their own businesses because of it.

Continue reading →

GovInsider recently did an interview with Ben Terrett, the former head of design at the UK Government Digital Service (GDS), about the GDS’s success in the digital realm. The two discussed mobile apps, why websites are better, and what needed to be done in order to have a successful digital project.

Terrett said the problem with mobile apps is that they are a huge undertaking -- not only is it expensive to make an app (or multiple apps, or an app ecosystem) but also to support it and update it following various software changes.

Continue reading →

Microsoft has changed the way it displays malware warnings in its search engine Bing to help users distinguish between the various forms of attacks that can appear in its searches.

The company has decided to replace its generic warning for websites that could be potentially dangerous for users, and instead offer separate warnings for sites that are known to contain malware and phishing sites.

Continue reading →

Security researchers at Pen Test Partners have discovered a vulnerability in Mitsubishi’s plug-in hybrid electric Outlander that could allow potential car thieves to disable the car’s anti-theft alarms.

The security researchers investigate potential vulnerabilities in connected devices through the use of penetration testing and found that the Outlander’s Wi-Fi module can be accessed by anyone within range of the vehicle by connecting to it with their smartphone.

Continue reading →