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With Salesforce purchasing Slack for $27.7 billion and Microsoft Teams reporting over 115 million daily users, the market for collaboration tools is proving that they are here to stay. With the ubiquity of remote work, companies are reliant on sharing data outside of the traditional, on-premises network to reach employees in their homes. Accordingly, for organizations to optimize their communication platforms’ utility, data policies should allow remote access to files. Consequently, lots of organizations have been forced into accelerating their cloud adoption to meet the needs of their remote workforce, leaving the question: what is to become of legacy systems?

While there is a lot of thought being given to new cloud initiatives, this narrow focus can sometimes let legacy data and systems fall by the wayside. Data regulations do not only pertain to the storage of new information, but they also mandate the proper storage of data from recent years past. Consequently, while it is critical during cloud transition to consider how to defensibly govern data remotely, consideration must also be given to how to scrub, remove, change, delete, and recall data in legacy systems as well. If you cannot access user records, personal data, corporate regulatory data, and legal requirements, then simply storing it is pointless as it fails to meet the demands of regulators. As we have recently seen from the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act, any customer may request that an organization produce their stored personal data, and not meeting these requests can cost millions.

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Over the course of 2020, the way we shop has changed forever. Although many new shopping trends are a direct result of COVID-19 and brands adapting to life in lockdown, countless changes in the fashion industry were already underway. An overwhelming switch to e-commerce, for example, has only been accelerated by the pandemic. Today, over 25 percent of the world's population shops online. The numbers of consumers flocking to landing pages is only set to increase.

With this dynamic shift to online shopping and exciting technological innovations becoming available to brands all the time, the world of fashion and e-commerce is evolving and adapting at an impressive rate. Gone are the days of mass shopping in the traditional way. Instead, brands are utilizing tech to create personal, immersive, and remote shopping experiences. 80 percent of online consumers stating that new tech is improving their shopping experience. So, it appears that the fashion world is certainly heading in the right direction.

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There’s no doubt that 2020 has been a testing year for everyone. According to data from PwC, 53 percent of CFOs expect a decrease in revenue and/or profits of up to 25 percent as a direct result of COVID-19. For many tech startups, that’s the difference between staying alive and closing for good.

With such uncertainty in the air, leadership teams have had to act fast and rethink their entire strategy.

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Cybersecurity company Sophos is announcing four new open artificial intelligence developments with the aim of improving defenses and making the use of AI in cybersecurity more transparent.

Although in other industries it's become common to share AI methodologies and findings, cybersecurity has lagged which doesn't help understanding of how AI can protect against cyberthreats.

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Google users around the world struggled to connect to many of the company's services as a huge outage struck the search giant.

Problems started in the early hours of the morning in the US, and around lunchtime in Europe, with thousands of users experiencing error messages when attempting to use the likes of Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive and Google Maps.  The company issued a series of statements saying it was aware of problems "affecting a majority of users".

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Linus Torvalds has officially announced the availability of version 5.10 of the Linux kernel. This release is significant not only because of the number of new features and fixes it includes, but also because it is a Long-Term Support (LTS) release that will enjoy five years of maintenance.

In his release notes for Linux 5.10, Torvalds also calls upon developers working on version 5.11 to submit changes in plenty of time for Christmas.

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Development of Mageia 8 seems to be moving along nicely, which is great news for users of that Linux-based operating system. Back in August, we shared that the first Beta of the distribution was available for testing, and now today, the second Beta arrives. As with the first Beta, the second is available with your choice of three desktop environments --  KDE Plasma, GNOME, and Xfce.

"We are happy to announce the release of Mageia 8 Beta 2. After a long time since the beta 1, we look forward to hearing your feedback and thoughts so that we can continue to get Mageia 8 ready for release. As we said in a previous post, a lot of work had to be done for the base system upgrade, java, kernel, and the graphical stack. These upgrades are now in a state that allows for the Beta 2 ISOs to be built and tested," explains The Mageia Development Team.

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MSI is a company popular for many of its products, but it is probably best known for its excellent motherboards. Many PC builders choose that company's boards when building a new gaming computer. Of course, MSI makes other great products, such as desktops, laptops, and more.

Today, MSI launches its latest monitor, and gamers should take notice. Called "MAG274QRF-QD," this 27-inch display (2560 x 1440 resolution) features Quantum Dot technology and NVIDIA G-Sync. Not to mention, it looks absolutely gorgeous -- it would look wonderful next to a gaming PC.

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It's a sad fact of life that the lightning-fast computer you bought recently will slow down. But the fact that things are feeling more sluggish than they used to does not mean that you need to rush out and buy a new computer, or even upgrade your hardware -- a little software-driven optimization may be all you need.

With the newly launched BoostSpeed 12 and Defrag 10, you have everything you need to give your computer the injection of speed it needs. Both have a great range of new features and options that will prove tempting to existing users and new ones alike.

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There's a battle playing out in the enterprise open source arena right now, but it's one you probably haven't heard about.

It's a clash between pure open source and commercialized open source (or 'open core') versions. While this may be below the radar for anyone not directly involved it has important long-term implications for the industry.

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From now, Windows 10 Insiders on the Dev Channel currently have the choice of installing preview builds from the FE_RELEASE or RS_PRERELEASE branches. By default, Insiders will get flights like new Build 20277 from the FE_RELEASE branch, but you can switch to RS_PRERELEASE if you’re feeling more adventurous.

To get the alternative download, Build 21277, you will have to actively choose to download it via Windows Update. Be warned though, once you’ve switched to RS_PRERELEASE you won’t be able to download FE_RELEASE builds any more.

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We're used to Microsoft rolling out a new Windows 10 Dev Channel build on a weekly basis, but this time around it has something different for us -- two Dev Channel builds, from different branches. It’s like a choose your own adventure.

The first of the new flights, Build 20277, comes from the usual FE_RELEASE branch and sports a handful of fixes and known issues.

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The consumer Internet of Things (IoT) has exploded into the connected world, making domestic life richer, easier and more entertaining. Consumer IoT comprises a set of connected devices that have a discrete function, enabled or supplemented by a data-gathering capability through on-board sensors. In any home or office environment an individual may come into contact with 'smart' appliances or devices such as coffee machines, cameras, heating systems, locks, lights, health trackers, refrigerators and TV’s, to name a few.

Criticism of IoT security, or lack-thereof, has highlighted serious deficiencies in both design and implementation of IoT devices. Unfortunately, consumers are critically dependent on device manufacturers for the security of their devices. With a rushed and greater rate of adoption, a number of risks have been introduced, attracting close attention from threat actors aiming to steal valuable information and disrupt services. However, all hope is not lost -- at a consumer level, there are still a few basic techniques that can be used to protect IoT devices from attacks.

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As the number of people working remotely increases, organizations are relying more heavily on IT to manage day-to-day activities. This new demand placed on IT infrastructure, especially cloud technologies, brings with it a change. Instead of building a budget in the background, IT professionals need to evaluate how information is going to be consumed by the organization going forward.

In light of the current climate, business priorities are changing. To build a budget that’s agile and can react to changes in service consumption, it’s up to IT professionals to work with the wider organization to really understand what’s important going forward. Many organizations are starting to look to cloud-based technologies as a way to mobilize their workforce in the long term. This means as users continue to work remotely, they will consume more bandwidth and data at an increasingly exponential rate. This increase in consumption has a direct impact on the IT department and subsequently the budget.  

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In response to the economic impact of COVID-19 companies are turning to their investments in AI to deliver both short-term cost-cutting and long-term technology innovation to drive revenue and efficiency.

A report from ML operations and management software specialist Algorithmia finds that 83 percent of organizations have increased their budgets for AI/ML and that the average number of data scientists employed has increased 76 percent year-on-year.

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