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Cloud computing is no longer just a clever new toy in the world of IT infrastructure. Despite the nebulous name, it’s become a real and important part of our information architecture -- and tech professionals who ignore it or try to skim their way through risk falling behind rapidly. The new edition of Cloud Computing For Dummies gets you up to speed fast, clarifying your Cloud options, showing you where can save you time and money, giving you ways to frame your decisions, and helping you avoid weeks of research.

In a friendly, easy-to-follow style, Cloud Computing For Dummies, 2nd Edition demystifies the Cloud’s virtual landscape, breaking up a complex and multi-layered topic into simple explanations that will make the various benefits clear and ultimately guide you toward making the most appropriate choices for your organization. 

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When it comes to Windows, sometimes Microsoft overthinks and overdesigns things -- remember the Windows 8 nightmare? MS Paint is a wonderful tool that people have enjoyed for decades. Microsoft famously tried to replace it with Paint 3D, but no one wanted that as it was terrible. Look, people know what they like and Microsoft should respect that. Apps like Paint, Notepad, and the Snipping Tool are simple to use and work well.

Well, folks, it seems like Microsoft is finally starting to get it. After threatening to kill off the popular Snipping Tool, the company today announces that not only is the app alive and well, but it has a very bright future.

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This seems like a great time to ask this question, as it might not matter soon. With the direction things are heading, we may soon arrive at an intersection where the blurring of identity reality and identity fiction is so extreme that we’ll simply stop asking what is authentic personhood. 

Case in point, a story out of Paris in July outlines not a dystopian future, but a troubling present reality. The piece recounts the story of computer-generated YouTube storytime videos. The genre is pretty much what it sounds like:

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The manufacturing industry has become a major target for ransomware attacks. The reason is simple: if criminals can cripple the operational technology that controls the manufacturing plant, a company will rapidly come to its knees. With no product to sell, any company will fear for its existence -- and with that fear, the criminals believe any manufacturing company will be more likely to pay a sizable ransom to stay in business. Sophisticated cyber criminals understand this. They choose and research their targets and set their ransom to the maximum amount they believe the company can afford to pay.

For many years, the manufacturing industry didn’t worry about cyber threats. Its operational technology (OT) was air-gapped from outside interference, and was therefore safe from external compromise. This is no longer true. The advent of the fourth industrial revolution -- otherwise known as business digitisation -- has eroded that airgap. IT and OT are now totally interdependent. Bringing down a manufacturing company’s IT will almost certainly have a knock-on effect against its OT.

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Enterprises are overwhelmingly counting on data science as a key to their long-term success, but flawed investments in people, processes and tools are leading companies to fail in their best efforts to develop, deploy, monitor, and manage models.

New research from Domino Data Lab shows that while 71 percent of data executives say their company leadership expects revenue growth from their investment in data science, 48 percent say their company has not invested enough to meet those expectations.

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APIs make life easier for developers by allowing easy access to various program functions. However, this functionality also makes them an increasingly attractive target for attack.

Web application and API Protection platform ThreatX is launching new API catalog capabilities to provide enterprises with a clear view of their API's attack surface, as well as the operational health of any APIs in production.

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After a slump during the pandemic, vulnerability disclosures are once again showing growth according to the latest Vulnerability QuickView Report from Risk Based Security's VulnDB team.

The report shows 12,723 vulnerabilities disclosed during the first half of 2021 and the vulnerability disclosure landscape saw a growth of 2.8 percent compared to the same period in 2020.

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A new study from threat detection and response specialist Vectra AI finds that all respondents have experienced at least one security incident in their public cloud environment in the last 12 months.

The study of over 300 IT executives, with 70 percent coming from enterprises with more than 1,000 employees, shows a rapid expansion and reliance on AWS services while simultaneously pointing up security blind spots within many organizations.

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Over the last year there has been a significant move away from using cash. In the US alone ATM withdrawals are down 58 percent, 41 percent of consumers have switched from cash to online and phone payments, while 55 percent don't plan to switch back to using cash.

But while this is convenient for the consumer it opens up more opportunities for fraud and cybercrime. Financial risk management firm Feedzai is aiming to boost digital trust, by adding pre-transaction behavioral intelligence to prevent financial crime in real-time before it happens.

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Microsoft introduced its subscription-based Windows 365 last month, and earlier in the week announced general availability for the service that makes it possible to run full versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11 in the cloud.

If your business was planning on joining the Cloud PC revolution but hasn’t already done so, you might have a bit of a wait on your hands before you can take the service for a spin -- struggling to keep up with demand, Microsoft has paused its free trials.

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If it feels like a while since there was an update to PowerToys, that's because the last significant release was a little over a month ago. But now Microsoft has broken the dry spell by pushing out PowerToys v0.43.0.

Sadly, there are no new utilities to play with in this particular release, but it remains important. In terms of bug fixes, improvements and changes, this is one of the biggest updates to the suite of tools in quite some time. There is also the slightly controversial addition of telemetry to one of the utilties.

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The transition to PCIe Gen4 is in full effect, with more and more computers and motherboards having the new standard. Whether or not the user truly needs the benefits of PCIe 4.0 is debatable, but it is still cool regardless. After all, it is important to continually push boundaries.

One of the best aspects of PCIe 4.0 is faster solid state drives. For instance, today, Micron unveils the latest such SSD from Crucial. Called "P5 Plus," the PCIe Gen4 M.2 SSD is insanely fast. The drive features 6600MB/s read speed across all capacities. The 1TB and 2TB capacities offer 5000MB/s write speed, while the 500GB variant offers 3000MB/s.

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When Apple first unveiled its all-new iMac computers, owners of other M1 models, such as the Mac mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro were quite excited. Why? Because the iMac had the option of a Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. This was Apple's first-ever wireless keyboard with an integrated fingerprint reader, and the iPhone-maker promised it would sell the keyboard as a standalone product in the future for use with other M1 Mac computers (not Intel).

Many consumers, including yours truly, have been religiously checking Apple's website in hopes the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID would show up for sale, but day after day, we were left with nothing but disappointment. Apple got our hopes up and then left us hanging.

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A new study carried out by Opinium for certificate authority GlobalSign shows that managing digital certificates, especially expirations and renewals, continues to be a challenging process for businesses of all sizes.

The top challenges respondents typically encountered when keeping track of certificates include managing multiple types of certificates (45 percent) and managing large quantities of them (41 percent).

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A new survey from Egress of 500 IT leaders and 3,000 employees across the US and UK finds that 73 percent of organizations have suffered data breaches caused by phishing attacks in the last year.

In addition 53 percent of IT leaders report an increase in incidents caused by phishing since the widespread adoption of remote working. There are also concerns over future hybrid working, with 50 percent of IT leaders saying it will make it harder to prevent breaches caused by malicious email attacks.

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