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New research from security automation specialist Ivanti shows that ransomware groups are continuing to grow in sophistication, boldness, and volume, with numbers up across the board since the beginning of 2021.

The report, produced with Cyber Security Works and Cyware, reveals that the last quarter has seen a 4.5 percent increase in CVEs associated with ransomware.

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After a series of a preview builds and a recent release candidate, Microsoft's PowerShell 7.2 has now hit General Availability.

Based on the newly released .NET 6, this is a Long Term Support (LTS) version that will enjoy support from Microsoft for three years. In addition to bug fixes and performance improvements, PowerShell 7.2 boasts numerous new features including new APIs to use in scripts.

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For some people, Christmas is all about celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. For others, the holiday is more about Santa Claus, family, and exchanging gifts. Over on the Hallmark Channel, however, Christmas is largely about romance!

If you aren't familiar, Hallmark Channel is known for its cheesy, family-friendly, romantic Christmas movies. If you are a single man, you may not be familiar with this TV channel, but trust me fellow guys -- women love it. And now, just in time for the holidays, Hallmark Channel finally comes to YouTube TV.

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The idea of a 'common digital identity' (CDI), that would allow access to a range of services, offers huge benefits to financial institutions in delivering better, faster, and more reliable checks for consumers.

Consumers themselves, however, are less convinced. A survey conducted by RegTech Associates on behalf of PassFort finds only 17 percent of UK respondents say they are very much in favour of CDI.

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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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Cloud adoption is still rising across all industries but managing costs and regulatory requirements remain top concerns for organizations worldwide.

A new report from O'Reilly finds that 30 percent of all respondents in almost every industry cite managing cost as the most important initiative their company is undertaking related to public cloud adoption.

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We recently reported on a study showing that IT leaders are willing to pay more for systems and providers that have a commitment to sustainability. And with the COP26 climate conference in full swing there's increased focus on reducing our impact on the planet.

But how can enterprises properly vet their supply chain to ensure the businesses they’re dealing with are adhering to the appropriate standards? We spoke with Martin Thompson, founder of the ITAM Forum -- a body that promotes the IT asset management industry -- to find out.

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Unsurprisingly, vaccines have taken center stage this year as researchers continue to work to find immunizations for COVID-19.

Here are six of the critical technologies -- from 3D printing to telemedicine -- spurring progress on those and other vaccination development efforts.

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There is a lot to like -- love, even -- about Windows 11, but it is not to everyone's taste. Microsoft would have to pull off an incredible feat to produce an operating system that made everyone happy, and it is little surprise that Windows 11 falls short for many people.

Microsoft is, of course, eager for as many users as possible to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11. The company has not gone as far as forcing installations, but it is still offering upgrades that could be installed by another user of your computer. Don't want Windows 11? Here's how to block it.

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Users of Microsoft Office are in line for an interesting font-related upgrade that will make it easier to manage typefaces across multiple devices,

Microsoft is introducing an updated font picker in Word (and, presumably, other Office apps) and there are a number of improvements to look forward to. Key additions include the ability to sync fonts between devices and an easy means of seeing which fonts are used in a document.

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It is no secret that ransomware has been on the rise in the last 12 months. In fact, the UK has been ranked number 10 on the list of countries worst affected by ransomware in a new report commissioned by Google.

Just days after the publication of Google’s research findings, Lindy Cameron, who heads up UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), warned that ransomware now presents "the most immediate danger to the UK” and went on to note that despite the increasing volume of attacks many organizations have no incident response plans in place and rarely test their cyber defenses."

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It recently came to light that a series of problems with Windows 11 -- including apps such as Snipping Tool not working -- were caused by an expired certificate.

Having determined the cause of the issues, Microsoft released a fix; the bad news being that it was only made available to Windows Insiders. Now the patch has been given a wider release and can be downloaded by all Windows 11 users as an out-of-band update.

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While there are plenty of people who do not feel the need to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11, there is still a surprising number of people who decided to stick with even older versions.

There are, of course, many implicated associated with using Windows 7 or Windows 8, most of them security related. But there is also the matter of software support, and Microsoft is now trying to push hangers-on to upgrade to the latest version of its operating system by cutting Windows 7 and 8.x out of using OneDrive.

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I am not a big phone person. I don’t mean that I rarely use one, in fact, quite the opposite. It’s on me all the time and I continually check news, sports and messages, to name just a few. No, what I mean is that I don’t always have the latest model as some people seem to obsess about. I’ve always had Android phones, in fact, always the "official" model from Google, beginning back when it was still called the Nexus. 

I got the Pixel 1 XL, skipped the 2 because I saw no reason to spend the money, upgraded to the Pixel 3 XL, again elected to skip a generation when the 4 came out, expecting to break out the wallet for a 5 XL. Then Covid-19 made an appearance, keeping Google from releasing the XL version of the 5. Rather than break down, I held out for the larger model. 

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On almost an annual basis we see policy proposing the authorization of private-sector hack back, the latest of which has been legislation from two US senators. One of the main issues with policy proposals for hack back is that they rarely address how it would work in reality and how opportunities for abuse or unintended harm would be handled.

To address this, Senators Daines and Whitehouse have proposed that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) "conducts a study on the potential benefits and risks of amending section 1030 of title 18, United States Code (commonly known as the 'Computer Fraud and Abuse Act') to allow private entities to take proportional actions in response to an unlawful network breach, subject to oversight and regulation by a designated Federal agency."

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