UK bank Barclays has announced it will soon roll out its own contactless payment service for its Android-using customers in the country. All Barclays customers with an NFC-enabled Android smartphone will be able to pay for things the same way they pay with a contactless card.

For purchases of up to £30, all they need to do is tap their smartphone at the payment terminal, the same way they’d tap a contactless card. For purchases of up to £100, customers would need to tap in their PIN code.

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Initially a fairly rudimental way to shut websites down, DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks have evolved into a complex and potentially catastrophic technique for cybercriminals to compromise valuable data.

With one survey of IT managers finding that the average cost of a DDoS attack was $40,000, it is imperative that businesses operating online recognize this threat and do something about it, which should start with your choice of hosting provider. One option is to switch from a shared hosting solution to a dedicated server, where your website can enjoy complete control over access and security. However, hosting providers and ISPs have a crucial part to play too.

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Amazon has decided to follow in the footsteps of Google and other technology companies by open-sourcing its deep learning software.

The company has released its deep learning software DSSTNE (pronounced destiny) on GitHub under an open-source Apache license. Deep learning has gained a lot of traction in recent months and many tech companies are currently developing their own software to help teach computers.

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Endpoint detection and response company Tripwire and Dimensional Research conducted a research, and asked 763 IT professionals from various industries about their security practices, and if they felt confident they could detect an ongoing cyber-attack.

The two companies announced that the majority of IT experts felt overconfident in their abilities to detect an ongoing threat and remove an unauthorized device from their network.

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New research from Gartner suggests that the worldwide server virtualization market is very close to reaching its peak.

In 2016, the x86 server virtualization market is expected to reach $5.6 billion. This is an increase of 5.7 percent compared to 2015. However, this growth is not attributed to new software licenses which have declined for the first time in more than a decade. Instead this increased growth has been driven by maintenance revenue which is a clear indication of how the software market has begun to rapidly mature.

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The security firm Wandera SmartWire Labs has released a new report detailing how many popular business apps used by large enterprises leak data and present a multitude of security risks.

The company assessed the threats that exist on popular business apps and how they could be potentially damaging to large companies in Europe, the US and Asia. Wandera’s report was able to shed light on 10 apps, widely used by enterprise employees, that failed to employ secure data storage and protect information that could personally identify users.

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Publishers are set to lose $27 billion by 2020 thanks to ad blockers such as AdBlock Plus, a new report by Juniper Research says. Keeping in mind that the digital advertising spending worldwide sits at $197.48 billion (expected to grow to $252bn by 2018) according to Statista, that means ad blockers will account for almost 10 per cent of total digital advertising market.

Ouch.

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The average permanent salary of an IT professional in the UK has increased to a record high of around £40,000 per year, according to statistics from CV Screen.

The recruitment firm’s analysis shows that London earns the most in all of UK, with an average salary that is 14 percent above the national average. The rise in the national average salary, which marks as the highest average wage for the industry, represents a two percent increase over the last three years.

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Proof of concept (PoC) is a basic demonstration that showcases an idea in order to illustrate its scalability and profit potential. There is a misconception that if the design, idea or development needed for the final product will work, that is, then there is no need for a proof of concept. This is the first wrong assumption startup founders often make.

The next is not truly understanding what their PoC goes to prove, and how their proof of concept can be the gateway to their first round of funding.

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It’s become more common than not in recent years to experience a security breach -- whether it’s your company records or your personal social media accounts, data on the web today is not as safe as it once was.

Often, people think that because their personal information is protected with a strong password, it’s enough to ward off hackers and cybercriminals. This, however, couldn’t be further from the truth. Let’s learn why.

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Data archiving is a practical way to rein in rampant data growth. It is also an excellent option for the users to keep their primary storage "clean". Additionally, data archiving helps improve the overall performance and efficiency of the backup/recovery environments.  In the event of disaster or even just everyday tasks, the appropriate archiving mechanism will offer a quick and complete way to access one's data as effortlessly as possible.

Archiving is one of the most financially responsible approaches to take from the operations side of your IT house. Ultimately, by investing in a data archiving structure, costs are significantly reduced with respect to both storage and data protection.

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The Hollywood scenario where people hire ex criminals to do their bidding, as no one else seems to have the necessary skills, has been replicated in real life, according to a new report by cyber-security service provider SecureData.

SecureData says more than a third of businesses (34 percent) would have no problems hiring an ex hacker to compensate for the lack of in-house cyber-security skills. I just wonder how you classify someone as an "ex hacker".

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A new survey, from the real-time IT management company ManageEngine, has revealed that 70 percent of global IT administrators believe that their Windows environments are at risk of malicious attacks.

The survey, titled "Global Active Directory and Windows Server Security -- Trends and Practices Survey, 2016", gathered the opinions of over 325 IT administrators from organizations around the world.

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Anonymous has joined forces with GhostSquad to launch successful cyberattacks on eight international banks that were forced to shut down their websites.

The hacktivist collective alongside the hacker group GhostSquad have launched a new operation called Op Icarus which aims to punish corrupt banks and individuals in the financial sector.

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An Appian/YouGov survey analyzed 400 business executives, from companies with more than a billion dollars in revenue, about their digital business transformation plans, and the results are just in.

According to the survey, 14 percent have fully migrated to all intended areas. Another 48 percent managed to migrate partially, but not everything.

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