BetaNews Staff

The internet remains a dangerous place to inhabit; if anything, the risks presented by viruses and other forms of malware are greater than ever. While Windows includes the Defender tool to help keep you safe, it does not offer complete protection, and this is where the newly updated IObit Malware Fighter 9.0 can help you out.

This latest version features full support for Windows 11 and an expanded protection database. IObit, however, points out that this is not just a case of "blindly increasing" the size of the database, but also optimizing it by tidying up invalid and out-of-date entries.

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Holiday season is upon us, and predictions are that online sales will hit an all-time high of $206.88 billion in the run up to Christmas. The growth in online demand has meant e-commerce operators, banks and logistics companies are increasingly reliant on cloud strategies and investments to rapidly scale, and remain resilient and secure. In retail, the cloud market is predicted to expand over 18 percent CAGR by 2025 driven by omnichannel experiences while the cloud supply chain management market is set to grow at a CAGR of 13.81 percent.

While retail is a cloud leader, other industries are following suit, and as such, we’re starting to see the trends influencing adoption. The recent 2021 Cloud Adoption Survey, explores the state of the cloud, microservices, distributed application development, and other critical infrastructure and operations technologies.

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As pressure grows on governments worldwide to take decisive legislative action to protect vital networks, data and infrastructure, there is a growing acceptance that despite its vital role, regulation alone cannot address the challenges posed by nation-state and criminal cyberattacks.

The pressure to act has been growing. Among the devastating attacks mounted on public sector IT infrastructure in countries around the world, the now infamous SolarWinds incident arguably did more than any other to push politicians into action. While both the US and UK governments blamed Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (the SVR) for the supply chain attack, the Russian government refuted the claims in an exchange of rhetoric reminiscent of the Cold War.

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Microsoft has released the latest feature update for Windows 10, the November 2021 Update. Also known as Windows 10 21H2, this update boosts security with the addition of support for the WPA3 H2E (Hash-to-Element) protocol and more.

As is often the case with feature updates like this, Microsoft is performing a staged rollout meaning that if you wait for it to be offered to you, you might be waiting quite a while. You can, however, opt to manually download and install the November 2021 Update so you have the latest version of Windows 10 installed as soon as possible. Read on to find out what's new and how you can skip the queue and upgrade immediately.

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Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the demand for employees to return to the workplace, the United States Department of Labor is acting on an executive order from the Biden administration which requires all companies with more than 100 employees to issue vaccination passports or agree to frequent COVID testing, as a part of their day-to-day business activities.

There is a workforce divide as to how vaccine mandates will be implemented across managers and employees. As it stands, and according to a recent study, only 30 percent of executives feel that their businesses should implement some level of vaccine mandate. This may be mainly down to anti-vaccination sentiment, which has caused issues throughout the economy and its workforce.

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Toronto developer AgileBits has unveiled 1Password 8 for Windows, a complete rewrite of the program code with the promise of a "modern, first-class experience that feels right at home on Windows 11".

The new build has been developed using the lightweight Rust programming language using the Electron cross-platform desktop framework to facilitate future development across multiple platforms.

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Back in 2019, I wrote an article about the talent shortfall in technology and cybersecurity. Unfortunately, since the pandemic and because of Brexit, that gap, particularly here in the UK, has only widened. As of 2021, the global talent shortage already amounts to40 million skilled workers worldwide. By 2030, the global talent shortage is predicted to reach 85.2 million workers.

This means that companies worldwide risk losing $8.4 trillion in revenue because of the lack of skilled talent. This gap is keenly felt in security and again there is currently a shortage of 350,000+ cybersecurity specialists in Europe alone.

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It’s almost impossible to escape the phrase "hybrid working" at present. The pandemic has brought about changes to the office environment and the way we work that few would have predicted a few years ago. In fact, remote and hybrid working models now look to be a permanent fixture, given the success that many businesses have seen in recent months.

Debate over the pros and cons of this change has dominated the media landscape, and there are undoubtedly challenges that come with this kind of transition. Offices that used to home hundreds of employees every day now lay either empty or with just a skeleton staff, creating a drain on resources and prompting plans to downsize office space.

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You may read the phrase "imposter syndrome" and be surprised that there’s a term for something you feel without realizing it’s a common thing. Have you ever felt like you’re not good enough for the career you have? Do you doubt yourself and feel like an imposter in the workplace? Do you have a nagging feeling that you’re winging it? You’re not alone.

A huge 77 percent of the UK experiences imposter syndrome.

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Across the board, from operations to finances to customer satisfaction, the wrong data -- old, incomplete, and inaccurate information -- sets business back. According to MIT, "The cost of bad data is an astonishing 15 percent to 25 percent of revenue for most companies."

The differences between these errant data are important. Also important is understanding that, strictly speaking, there is no "bad data." "Bad" makes data subject to the interpretation of a value judgment. A better, more descriptive term would be "technical debt." This is when engineers begin to indiscriminately start to modify code and introduce new features. Over time, features are layered one on top of another and, if unchecked, teams sacrifice long-term efficiency via a durable, hard-won solution for the sake of easier, short-term approaches that yield a quick solution. 

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In recent years, cloud computing has become ubiquitous. So much so, that individuals rarely notice that they are using it to store documents and data instantly, despite the increasing importance that these technologies have in the remote arena. As many organizations continue to see their workforce scattered across different cities and countries, there is a clear urgency to access data safely, and without needing to do so in a physical workplace.

Beyond pandemic-incentivized cloud usage, other businesses will be motivated by the ease and flexibility that these technologies allow -- indeed, many find the ability to scale their operations up or down a very attractive prospect indeed.

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Remote work isn't going anywhere. The number of major companies announcing plans to allow their employees to work from home into the future continues to grow every week as Covid-19 prolongs the time away from the office and remote employees realize an improved work/life balance.

A switch to permanent remote work will also mean changes to the technology we use to work. Existing solutions were utilized early in the pandemic when there weren’t any other options, but as the projected time at home continued to increase it was clear that purpose-built solutions were needed to make an entirely remote office function properly.

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In October, the internet was shaken by the Facebook outage that affected dozens of big-name companies, as well as millions of brands and businesses that advertise on Facebook’s platform. Because of something as simple as a misconfigured Domain Name System (DNS) record, every device with the Facebook app integration started DDoS-ing recursive DNS resolvers -- DDoS meaning "Distributed Denial of Service." This, in turn, caused overloading in countless cases across the board.

You might be thinking to yourself, "So, what? A few sites were offline for a couple of hours." But the outage brought to light other issues. Communications for the very Facebook employees that could fix this issue were crippled. Some of these hindrances went so far that people were unable to enter buildings because the physical badge system wasn't even online.

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Digital transformations have taken over corporate America. Over the last few years, businesses of all sizes have discovered much of their success now relies upon the ability to quickly interpret incredible amounts of data. While the business intelligence space grows exponentially, traditional BI tools still struggle to keep pace with the need for quick, decisive interpretation of this information surge.

Embedded analytics has inserted itself into this dilemma as the nimble, robust solution.

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We all know the importance of backing up our data, and by far the simplest way to ensure that everything is safeguarded is to create system images that back up everything at once. You could buy expensive software to do this, or you could use the newly updated Macrium Reflect 8 Free.

This powerful backup tool is free for home usage and can be used to create images of Windows systems -- even when they are running. The latest version of the free edition of this software includes a number of improvements and enhancements, starting off with the ability to create WinPE 11-base rescue media which uses the Windows 11 kernel.

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