Businesses around the world don’t really enjoy updating their software, security researchers from Duo Security have found, exposing themselves, and their organization to risks of cyber-attacks, phishing, scams and malware.

Researchers looked at a sample of two million Windows devices used by businesses around the world and found that almost a quarter, and that’s 500,000 devices, are using an outdated and unsupported version of Internet Explorer.

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According to research released by Computing, only eight percent of IT decision makers believe that the Internet of Things (IoT) will be of no consequence to their organizations.

However over half (54 percent) of the respondents believe that IoT is ready to make its mainstream debut, despite their own organizations currently not having plans to adopt the technology. This corresponds with the 23 percent of IT decision makers who believe that the implementation of IoT is currently happening or will happen in the near future, although only 15 percent of them are actively involved with it at present.

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Switching to a cloud-based solution, either public, private or hybrid, can result in reduced cost, better data security and improve the overall bottom line, but only if it comes with a solid strategy, VMTurbo says.

The application performance control platform company says businesses will fail to realize the benefits of a cloud-based approach to business without a proper strategy. It has come to that conclusion following a poll of 1,368 organizations, where 57 percent said they had no multi-cloud strategy, 35 percent no private cloud strategy, and 28 percent no public cloud strategy.

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Chinese tech maker Lenovo has announced that it will start building enterprise hardware for its EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) customers in Europe.

That way, customers can expect lower prices (sort of) and faster delivery times.

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A security vulnerability on Google’s Android OS has exposed users’ text messages, call histories and other sensitive data for the past five years.

The security firm FireEye has released a blog post detailing how it affects smartphones running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean as well as earlier versions of the OS. The bug, which has been indexed as CVE-2016-2060, allows apps to access sensitive user data by taking advantage of Android’s permission system.

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Security is still the main reason IT professionals are up at night, new reports from BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT say.

BCS has asked 444 IT experts about their thoughts and fears revolving their company in 2016. The results, released in the 2016 Digital Leaders survey, show a mix of "predictable" and "thoughtful" ideas, as the BCS puts it.

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It was reported on Friday morning that Microsoft has invested in Pivotal, a San Francisco-based cloud-computing company. Besides Microsoft, Ford was also announced as a major investor.

The media reported that Pivotal’s Series C funding round hit $253 million, with Ford contributing with $182.2 million. It is not known exactly how much money Microsoft poured into the company. We do know, however, that the company’s value now sits at $2.8 billion.

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The fast-changing IT environment of today is forcing companies to reconsider their approach to IT, as they believe that can help them stand out in the crowd of their competitors.

However, the process is quite challenging. Those are the general conclusions of a new research released by managed services provider Claranet.

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Open source talent is in high demand when it comes to recruiting new technology experts, and this trend is only going to grow, new reports say.

According to the latest 2016 Open Source Jobs Report, 59 percent of hiring managers will increase the number of open source talent in their organization within the next six months.

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Soon enough, you can expect Google’s AI to start sending you love letters. And judging by the information you are just about to read, those might be some of the best love letters ever written, in the history of robotkind. Or humankind. Or both, I guess.

Here’s what’s going on. Google says its AI engine’s answers to human questions are too factual. Imagine the answers as being purely robotic. Subject, predicate, adverbial clause. Google, on the other hand, wants those answers to be more human -- it wants the robot to be able to answer the same question in different words, to change the tone and personality from time to time.

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Over the past two years, the Internet has seen some of the biggest, most devastating data breaches in history. With each attack, millions of personal identifiable information records are stolen, leading to the possibility of identity theft, banking fraud, and in some of the most notable cases, that's right -- divorce.

From an internet security standpoint, what’s most interesting about these data breaches isn’t the various celebrities naive enough to sign up for Ashley Madison with their real names but rather that these breaches often come from some of the most common methods hackers have for accessing data. Shouldn’t these common methods be the most widely protected against? That’s what a large portion of the internet security community believes, and that’s where the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) comes in. OWASP is an open-source security community that publishes the most common attacks to help developers keep their software from being the source of a critical (and possibly humiliating) breach. Keep reading to find out what OWASP’s Top 10 Project is as well as what those Top 10 actually are.

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The good news -- you’ve found a software development team that you’re comfortable with and work well alongside. They fit so well into your company’s culture, you even begin to view them as you would any internal employee. While this is all well and good, it’s not to say that you won’t run into challenges along the way -- from day-to-day communication gaps to even uncertainties in tracking of overall progress. Certainly no relationship is perfect, but it falls within your job description as the project manager or product owner to ensure outsourced projects stay on track and more importantly -- within budget.

The following list of management tips and tricks of the trade should be put in place to help keep risks down to a minimum and your outsourced relationships performing at their best.

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Unlike spam or phishing emails, which involve a broad and varied range of targets, spear phishing is a highly-targeted email attack against a specific group, organization, or even person.

The main aim of a spear phishing attack is either to obtain unauthorized access to sensitive data, whether this is intellectual property, financial data, trade or military intelligence, or to get the recipient of the email to act on a command, whether this is to transfer money or share confidential data.

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Ransomware is something like the digital version of Kanye West -- everyone hates it, but its popularity just keeps on growing. And it takes your money for things you really don’t want to buy.

The news about the rising popularity of ransomware was confirmed by security firm Kaspersky Lab, which released its quarterly report into the state of malware.

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You have started down the road to DevOps. You have re-structured your teams and you are experimenting with DevOps tools and processes. You now understand that DevOps is a continuum that starts with planning and development and ends with deployment into operations. So where do you start your DevOps initiative?

DevOps projects tend to start in only one part of the continuum. Often, DevOps teams start with application build automation (development) or they start with automating the deployment of apps into operations. When the driver for DevOps is in the test organization, it is called Continuous Integration. However, it is also important to work to continuously expand automation across the continuum because for DevOps to pay off, there needs to be continuous automation from development all the way through to operations.

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