Why quantum computing threatens security as we know it [Q&A]

Much of our current IT infrastructure relies on DNS to safely route traffic. Securing that infrastructure is in turn heavily reliant on cryptography, but there's a threat looming on the horizon.

Quantum computing will offer a level of processing power that could render current cryptographic techniques obsolete, and that's a problem for the entire internet and networking world. We spoke to Peter Lowe, principal security researcher at DNSFilter, to discuss the possible impact of quantum computing on security and what can be done to address the threat.

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Microsoft is working on a major Edge update known as Phoenix -- and you can try one of the best features right now!

Split tabs in Microsoft Edge Phoenix

Since consigning Internet Explorer to the trash can and adopting the Chromium engine, Microsoft has developed Edge quite rapidly and it has evolved into a browser that does a lot to make up for its predecessor.

And Microsoft is showing no signs of slowing down. The company is currently working away on a revamped version of Edge, code-named Phoenix. In addition to a more Windows 11-like look, there are some new features on the horizon, including the ability to split an Edge window into two tabs -- and you can even try this out in the preview builds of Edge right now to get a taste of what the future holds.

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Battle tested: Continuous testing helps chatbots thrive

If you’ve been interacting with your favorite brands lately, you’ve likely noticed that chatbots seem to be everywhere. We are a society obsessed with instant gratification. We want answers immediately and often that means rolling the dice on using a chatbot to see how close they can get to what we are looking for. As the use of chatbots expands, so can the number of chatbot failures each day. At the same time, customers’ expectations of what a 'good' chatbot experience is has never been higher. And not meeting these stringent expectations means disappointing the customer, which can also result in loss of business, or worse, damage to your brand.

No matter what industry a chatbot operates in, connecting and communicating with people is its primary function. The formula for success for chatbots is the same as it is for traditional customer service channels: quick and effective service. Even though conversational AI has made great technological strides, the user experience is still lacking, especially when it comes to handling natural language processing (NLP), latency, data security, and other issues.

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Debugging the monolith: How to change the thinking of an entire tech company

Board meeting

In recent history the tech industry has been impervious to market forces that have crippled adjacent sectors, predominantly because of the public’s insatiable demand for digitization.

However, over the course of the past year vulnerabilities have begun to emerge, with the economic climate growing so harsh that even the mightiest tech giants have faltered. Tech industry investment was down 40 percent in Q3 2022 compared to the same quarter in 2022, while market leaders such as Meta, Amazon and Twitter have all cut jobs to manage costs.

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Redefining the 'metaverse' -- how to determine real utility in the Web3 world

It’s time to redefine what has come to be known as the metaverse -- a reimagined internet, integrating both established and new technologies (think mixed reality) -- to Web3. Though possibilities appear to be plentiful, the 'digital reality' perception of the metaverse is too far off in the horizon and not currently widely relevant.

Rather than focusing on the metaverse, then, businesses need to consider the real-life use-cases for Web3 -- including decentralization, blockchain, and token-based economics -- including crypto and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), to gauge their true value, sustainability, and future. Web3 has given us an incredible tool -- the ability to create a 'digital value economy', whereby something can have value in and of itself online, without a trusted intermediary.

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Data Privacy Day: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

Privacy Day is of extra importance this year because of a dramatic increase in attacks designed to get around measures that make account log-ins more secure, and therefore protect our privacy.

For example, in mid-September, Uber reported a network breach that led to shutting down some of its internal communications and locking its codebase to prevent any new code changes. The attacker reportedly targeted a contractor by repeatedly sending multi-factor authentication login messages until the contractor accepted and gave the attacker access, according to Uber. Several days later, video game maker Rockstar Games announced it also had suffered a network intrusion from an unauthorised third party. The company says the attacker was able to gain confidential information, including early development footage for its upcoming and much anticipated game, Grand Theft Auto VI.

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Ransomware affects every aspect of your organization -- here's how to keep your business-critical applications safe

Cybersecurity continues to be an increasingly complex landscape for businesses to navigate as cybercriminals become more sophisticated and the frequency of attempted attacks grows at a rapid pace. One of the biggest cybersecurity challenges that businesses have to contend with today is ransomware, which has become the biggest global cyber threat as attacks strike fast and can do massive damage.

We particularly saw the rapid rise of the ransomware threat during the period of the Covid-19 pandemic, a time when most organizations and industries were increasingly adopting new technologies to help adapt to a new, remote environment characterized by digital transformation. According to the latest ransomware statistics, more than a third of organizations across the globe suffered an attempted ransomware attack in 2021, an increase of 105 percent -- to 623.3 million ransomware attacks -- compared to 2020. And, while the volume of ransomware attacks fell by 23 percent in 2022, as organizations began to more aggressively respond to cyber threats, attack methods are continuously evolving at the same time that average ransomware demands are dramatically increasing.

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Windows' Linux-style package manager WinGet now supports zip files

WinGet 1.4

Fans of the Windows Package Manager app -- also known as WinGet -- have been treated to a new version of the tool this week. In WinGet 1.4 there is quite a lot that's new, but the headline addition is support for .zip-based packages.

Other important changes in this release include new command aliases, new installation options, and numerous improvements and new functions.

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Do you trust Microsoft enough to use Windows 11's new 'Fix problems using Windows Update' feature?

Laptop running Windows 11

Updates for Windows 11 have proved to be astonishingly problematic over the last year and a half. Just about every patch and update that has been released has ended up causing new issues that have had to be addressed with yet another update.

Considering the problems caused by Windows Update, it is interesting to see a new option Microsoft is working on at the moment. Hidden in the latest Insider builds of Windows 11 is a new addition to the Recovery tools in the System section of the Settings app: Fix problems using Windows Update.

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Happy Data Privacy/Data Protection day

data privacy

These days no important topic is worthy of the name if it doesn't have a day devoted to it. Today (January 28) it's the turn of data privacy -- or data protection depending on who you talk to -- to take its turn in the spotlight.

As organizations gather ever more data, concerns around how it is stored and used have grown which has led to legislators taking an interest too.

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Insider threats: The cyber risks lurking in the dark

Insider threat

More and more IT professionals are dealing with a growing issue that is lurking within their own organizations. With recent high-profile data breach stories hitting the headlines, the risk posed by insider threats has become a matter of utmost concern for IT teams, with such incidents rising 44 percent over the past two years according to the 2022 Ponemon Cost of Insider Threats Global Report.

While insider threats are perceived by the general public as disgruntled employees actively sabotaging systems or stealing data to sell to competitors, the problem is much more complex than that. Due to the rising cost of living world-wide, more employees will become susceptible to the requests of malicious actors looking for potential accomplices for deploying ransomware. In addition, misusing insider access is not only limited to unleashing ransomware, as users may feel incentivized to also sell their credentials in a bid to make easy money. These risks raise huge concerns for any organization, as user privileges can be easily taken advantage of and escalated to take over critical IT resources. In fact, our own Quest security assessments found out that a significant portion of user accounts -- an impressive 70–100 percent -- have access rights that can be easily escalated by hackers to gain access to Tier Zero assets, including the Active Directory domain.

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Satechi launches Pro Hub Slim for M2 Apple MacBook laptops

On January 17, Apple unveiled new MacBook Pro laptops with M2 Pro and M2 Max processors. Fans of macOS around the world were very excited for these powerful new notebooks.

If you end up buying an M2 MacBook, and you want to add a bit of functionality, Satechi has a new product called "Pro Hub Slim" that you need to check out. This mini-dock converts two of the Thunderbolt ports into several different useful ports. While it is technically designed for the M2 MacBook Air, it will actually work with any MacBook from 2017 or later.

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Improving the hybrid meeting experience

Whether you are in the office full-time, part-time or completely remote, hybrid meetings have become a convenient and necessary way for employees who split their time between different locations to remain productive. The ability to work from home has become the ability to work from anywhere. Meetings and activities are moving to collaboration platforms as hybrid working has become the standard. Regardless of how many people are in the room or joining remotely, it’s important that everyone has a good experience. Flexible working will soon be the default for millions of workers, under new UK government plans that will allow people to request it from day one of their employment.  

As hybrid work evolves, video meetings and content sharing will continue to be an essential point of contact between colleagues, partners, and clients. To deliver effective and collaborative communications, organizations will need to ensure that they have a strong foundation in place and adopt the necessary technologies to support their employees and this way of working. Here we’ll cover the tools and technologies that users will need to interact with on a daily basis and the key IT infrastructure considerations for organizations.  

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Trustwave updates its threat hunting to find unknown dangers

Threat

Threat hunting takes a proactive approach to identifying the security issues an organization might face. But since it tends to be based on intelligence about current threats it can overlook new ones.

Now though Trustwave has enhanced its Advanced Continual Threat Hunting platform, offering resulting in a three times increase in behavior-based threat findings that would have gone undetected by current Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools.

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Hardware dependence -- what it is and why it's a problem [Q&A]

We're currently in the middle of a global chip shortage, while at the same time major hardware companies like Intel, NVIDIA and Arm are looking to dominate the hardware market for AI and ML applications.

This creates something of an issue where models have to be tuned and optimized according to specific hardware specifications and software frameworks, sacrificing the portability that the industry has come to take for granted..

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