BetaNews Staff

The three AI technologies powering checkout-free retail

Checkout-free shopping is revolutionizing the retail space, cutting down on time wasted in line and improving customer experience while shopping. Though the idea of checkout-free technology powering your shopping trips may seem like a far-off technology, it actually utilizes three established technological components that work together to provide a smooth and frictionless shopping experience.

Each of these technologies, deep learning, sensor fusion, and computer vision, work synergistically to make futuristic-seeming technology part of our everyday lives. 

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RPA is not a silver bullet: Why no-code holds the key to digital transformation success

Digital transformation

If the UK’s businesses didn’t need to modernize before the pandemic, they certainly do now. The existential crisis many were plunged into over the past two years has reinforced the resolve of boardrooms everywhere that digital transformation is the future. When deployed effectively, it helps to deliver the agility that every business craves, whilst driving the operational efficiencies and productivity gains essential to survival in a period of high inflation and rising costs.

In this context, robotic process automation (RPA) can be a useful tool. But when deployed the wrong way, or in isolation, it may actually end up worsening legacy dependencies rather than alleviating them. Instead, organizations need to think about the bigger picture -- by bringing together apps, automation and extensible integration in a single no-code platform. That’s the best way to achieve modernization at a pace that fits the business.

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The evolution of identity-based fraud: Why ATO attacks are at the top of the list

fake identities

Digital identity is the new currency, and adversaries are chasing wealth. Research shows that 61 percent of data breaches are the result of compromised credentials. This is a common fraudster tactic, whereby using legitimate credentials allows them to avoid detection as they gather intelligence and stolen data that will allow them to undertake further fraudulent transactions.

Fundamental to the defense of systems is access control, but it has its limits. Attackers are continuously trying to circumnavigate these systems to access accounts, with login and payment flows frequently targeted. This is why many organizations have invested in anti-fraud technologies to detect and mitigate against such attacks.

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Why do we continue to rely on the 'weakest link' to protect our organizations' email?

phishing hook

Email security continues to be a top concern of organizations, with 94 percent of all cyber attacks being delivered through email. As the most frequently used communication channel across all industries -- no wonder threat actors love exploiting it!

The conventional approach to email security is failing. Our latest research found that an average of 75 malicious messages per 100 mailboxes slip past traditional email security filters every month. Consequently, organizations put employees through countless hours of security training with hopes they spot and report these threats to security operations centers. The so-called Human Firewall.

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Drawing clearer insights from the cloud

Many companies are finding an outsized return on their technology investment in a familiar place: their data. That's because the increasing sophistication of cloud analytics is helping more companies unlock value from their information. It’s a trend that’s pushing revenue in the big data and business analytics sector to nearly $275 billion in 2022, according to Statista

While that number is impressive, the return on investment to organizations that leverage cloud analytics correctly is incalculably greater. Properly specified and executed, cloud analytics platforms can gather, process and analyze enormous quantities of data with ever-increasing speed and efficiency, helping organizations gather in-depth insights on every aspect of their operations.

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Automation in cybersecurity: Overcoming barriers

"Automation" has become a buzzword in cybersecurity circles. That is not surprising in an environment where security specialists are in short supply and under intense pressure to defend the business against a huge variety of threats from innumerable different sources. Using technology to do at least some of the work seems like a no-brainer. Nevertheless, it seems that organizations are finding it hard to get the right approach to cybersecurity automation.

Threat Quotient conducted research last year that found resources, time and a lack of trust in outcomes are preventing companies from realizing the benefits of automation. In a recent webinar, myself, Nabil Adouani, CEO of Strange Bee and co-founder of The Hive Project, and our Global VP of Threat Intelligence Engineering Chris Jacobs discussed the current state of automation, the expectations around what automation can actually achieve, and what this means for implementation in the real world.

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Biggest issue for manufacturers: Matching the selling approach to customer demands

Sales graph

Through every industrial revolution, from 18th-century coal and steam to today’s 21st-century digital cloud, manufacturers have adapted their operations to the modern technological standard. Today, with e-commerce rapidly transforming how consumers shop, manufacturers face an urgent need to shift their traditional sales strategy and services to meet rising expectations for a seamless buying experience -- especially for complex enterprise products.

Sales teams have addressed this pressure for the past decade with popular configure price quote (CPQ) platforms. However, the more options and buying channels customers seek and companies' products fulfill, the more burdens CPQ software faces in connecting these complex buying cycles. To improve time to market, sell solutions more effectively and gain competitive advantages through customized selling experiences, a significant upgrade in CPQ technology is needed to mesh businesses' and customers’ multiple needs.

Standards change

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Tor Browser 11.5 is here with HTTPS-Only Mode by default and Automatic censorship circumvention

For anyone concerned about privacy and security online, Tor Browser is an extremely important alternative to mainstream browsers. Designed to help keep users anonymous and to bypass restrictions put in place by governments, version 11.5 has landed complete with even more powerful options.

Over the years, it has become easier and easier to use Tor Browser, with complex configuration options being made available to the average user without the need for special knowledge. With the release of version 11.5 of the software, things have been made even easier thanks to the introduction of automatic censorship detection and circumvention with the new Connection Assist feature.

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Why is the public sector a prime target for cybercriminals?

Cybercrime cash

According to a report by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, almost half of all recorded UK cyber incidents between September 2020 and August 2021 targeted the public sector. Public sector cybersecurity is being put to the test and it’s imperative that public sector organizations properly protect the sensitive data that is in their possession.

Back in October 2020, Hackney Borough Council in London suffered a serious ransomware attack which took many of its services and IT systems offline. The attack cost the council millions of pounds and today, more than 18 months later, data is still missing across many services. In February 2022, the Information Commissioner’s Office ordered Hackney Borough Council to disclose information regarding what cybersecurity training its staff had received prior to the attack, when they were required to work from home due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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SQL Server: Recovering operations after a disaster

disaster plan

Datacenters disappear. Not often, but it happens. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 swallowed whole datacenters in Lower Manhattan. Hurricanes Irma and Maria wiped out virtually all the datacenters in Puerto Rico in 2017. Cloud datacenters are not immune, either. The Azure Central Region outage of 2018 occurred after a lightning strike queued up a sequence of automated responses that failed in a spectacularly Rube Goldberg-like manner and proceeded to take multiple Azure availability zones offline for the better part of a day.

Sometimes it’s possible to anticipate the arrival of a disaster; other times, the disaster arrives without warning. Either way, the production infrastructure your organization depends on is going to be offline for some time. That does not, however, mean that your operations must go offline. It means that you need to have a disaster recovery (DR) plan in place that can provide an alternative means of keeping your operations running when your primary infrastructure is out of commission.

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Top tips for investors looking to navigate the current crypto winter

Cryptocurrency

The crypto market has experienced a lot of turbulence in 2022 -- and we’re barely over the halfway mark. From Luna’s extraordinary fall from grace to Bitcoin dipping below the $20,000 mark for the first time since late 2020 -- investors have been riding a financial rollercoaster in the past few months.

Despite the doom and gloom outlook of many, confidence remains amongst investors as we head into a 'crypto winter'. Latest research from Bank of America, which included findings from 160 of its clients -- indicates that blockchain technology and the digital asset ecosystem are here to stay, and investors aren’t deterred by the state of the market. Unsurprisingly, as a result, the bank’s leadership remains optimistic for mainstream digital asset adoption in the future.

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Disaster Recovery Planning: A successful framework for strategy and execution

The rise in cyber incidents is set to continue on its meteoric trajectory over the next decade. Ransomware attacks on a business, consumer, or a device are anticipated to take place every two seconds by 2031 -- a worrying escalation from every 11 seconds in 2021. And by 2025, damages are projected to reach a staggering $15 trillion annually, up from $3 trillion in 2015, according to Cybersecurity Ventures.

At the same time, users demand better performance and user experience year-after-year, and the subsequently increased threat landscape poses real challenges in connectivity and data security. 'Insider threat' also poses a considerable risk, with 80 percent of breaches involving privileged credentials misuse or abuse and malicious insider activity from recent employees.

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In machines we trust? The critical role of digital identity management

The introduction of the cloud has brought a lot of change to the world. A big one for enterprises is that it’s no longer a necessity to guard data on-premises. Most organizations today rely on a hybrid approach to hosting their applications, with an average of three or more different clouds driving various applications in their infrastructures.

While the cloud has delivered plenty of benefits to these businesses and transformed the way they think about data and security, they’re not all properly managing and securing applications across the enterprise.

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Transform the upstream oil and gas industry with the power of advanced technology

The digital capabilities of organizations have evolved at a rapid rate over the last fifteen years. Businesses must keep up with popular trends and technology to remain competitive. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation and technology in general, altering the landscapes across nearly all organizations. Industries like healthcare and hospitality were changed completely and will be forever. That said, other industries that were indirectly impacted by the pandemic were also pushed over the tipping point and sent into technological evolution.

One industry where digital strategies have lagged is upstream oil and gas. Many companies have been hesitant to implement the latest wave of digital transformation and have fallen behind in comparison to other industries. Decision-makers now face a digital deluge as solutions and platforms continuously flood into the landscape. Just a few of the technologies include:

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Why robust API security is crucial in eCommerce

eCommerce

In today’s modern eCommerce world, consumers have more digital-first and convenient ways of shopping than ever before. Among the critical technologies that have made this possible are Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) which give retailers the ability to transform their systems and processes in quick and efficient ways. Retailers need to reach as many users as possible and to facilitate this they need a well-constructed interface between the eCommerce site and the consumer.  

Amazon arguably kicked off the API explosion with Jeff Bezos’ instructions in 2002: "All teams should expose their data and functionality through service interfaces and communicate with each other through these interfaces which should be designed from the ground up to be externalisable."

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