A growing cybersecurity skills crisis is forcing 64 percent of the organizations across Europe the Middle East and Africa to take risky shortcuts and temporary fixes to meet security demands.

Research from Insight Enterprises shows only 24 percent of IT decision-makers across EMEA say they have sufficient in-house cyber skills to keep pace with evolving threats. These shortages are delaying key initiatives (57 percent) and leaving more than half (57 percent) struggling to meet compliance requirements.

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This will all be over soon, we promise you. But for a little while longer you are going to continue hearing about Windows 10. It is something that has been talked about for so long that it would be easy to start to feel numb to any more mentions of the operating system, but the end of support for Windows 10 has reached an important milestone.

Over the weekend, we hit the point of there being only 30 days left. Never one to miss an opportunity to remind users of Windows 10 about the end of support – or, indeed, to suggest upgrading to Windows 11 – Microsoft issued a reminder about the upcoming end of servicing.

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Microsoft is by no means a stranger to nagging its customers in one way or another – usually with the intention of parting people from their money. In a somewhat unusual move, the company has used the latest preview builds of Windows 11 to introduce a way to pester Microsoft 365 (or “Office” to most of us) subscribers.

A full screen “reminder” – or nag screen – has been added in the Dev and Beta builds of Windows 11 released to Windows Insiders. Microsoft, of course, is talking about it in rather different terms.

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PasswordManager.com has released a new survey looking at how business leaders view Gen Z employees (those born around the mid-to-late 1990s through the early 2010s), especially when it comes to the handling of sensitive company information.

The results reveal that many bosses are worried about the younger generation, with nearly half of respondents believing they could leak secrets for social media attention.

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HitPaw has rolled out major updates to FotorPea and VikPea. The updated photo editing tool, FotorPea 5.0.0, introduces a new feature called AI Replace, which lets users modify images with plain text instructions. This can be used to switch backgrounds, adjust hairstyles or clothing, make corrections directly within selected areas, and so on.

The face restoration system has been tweaked in this new release, with the CodeFormer model producing details closer to natural facial features.

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Every web browser has a browsing mode designed to be more private; in Chrome, it is Incognito Mode. But while switching to this mode can help with improving privacy at a local level, it is not flawless when it comes to blocking external privacy invasions.

Tackling the problem of websites using invisible images to track visitors who have cookies disabled, Google is currently testing a new method of making Incognito Mode more secure and private.

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Mastodon is to roll out the ability to quote other people’s posts in your own posts on the decentralized social platform. This is something that has been a very long time coming, with Mastodon having talked about it for months.

The reason it has taken so long for post quoting to become a reality is because of the protections that have been built-in. Specifically, users have controls over who is able to quote their posts in order to avoid “dunking” – the phenomenon that sees mass quoting used for negative purposes.

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Microsoft has managed to avoid a hefty fine or other sanctions after the European Commission accepted the company’s proposal for unbundling Teams from Office 365 and Microsoft 365.

 A complaint from Slack a few years ago started the European legal wheels turning as Microsoft was accused of anti-competitive behavior once again. The European Commission agreed that the company had “granti[ed] Teams an undue competitive advantage in terms of distribution”, but now accepts Microsoft’s unbundling proposal.

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Microsoft has announced that it is going to allow app developers to publish to the Microsoft Store without having to pay.

The company says that by removing a friction point of requiring a credit card, it is “creating a more inclusive and accessible platform”. More than just taking away registration fees, Microsoft is also offering free hosting, free signing and automatic updates for MSIX packages.

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Artificial intelligence is finding its way into more and more areas of our lives. But while there are concerns around the use of the technology itself, there are much greater ones over how we secure it.

We spoke to Anand Kashyap, CEO and founder of Fortanix, to discuss confidential computing, a technology backed by Microsoft, Intel, Arm, AMD and Nvidia, which encrypts data while it's being processed, even by AI systems.

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Fans of debloating Windows now have another tool to experiment with. NTDEV, the developer behind the well known Tiny11 project, has created Nano11 Builder, a PowerShell script that hacks Microsoft’s operating system down even further.

While Tiny11 already produced a lighter and more flexible alternative to the full-fat Windows 11 install, Nano11 takes things to the extreme by automating the creation of an installer image that is a fraction of the original size.

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Apple’s newly announced, soon to launch, AirPods Pro 3 have been greeted enthusiastically by a crowd prone to enthusiastically greeting Apple products. Even before they are available to buy, praise has been heaped upon the latest incarnation of the iPhone maker’s wireless earbuds – but it is not all good news.

While the proclaimed audio quality is laudable, while the new features sound impressive, there are definitely issues with the AirPods Pro 3. And, no, we’re not talking about the price.

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Workers are increasingly using shadow AI to draft emails, analyze data, or summarize meetings, but are pretending they haven’t.

New data from marketing agency OutreachX finds 52 percent of US workers are worried about how AI will be used in their workplace in the future and that 48 percent of desk workers say they would be uncomfortable telling a manager they used AI for common tasks.

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A new study from Liquid Web shows IT professionals spend an average of 77 minutes per day checking dashboards, which equals about 468 hours per year or nearly 20 full workdays.

This is leading to stress and a risk of burnout as one in three say they can’t relax unless they check their server dashboard at least once an hour. 51 percent say they check dashboards during the night, at weekends, or on vacations, blurring the line between work and personal time.

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Global influencer marketing spend is forecast to reach $32.5 billion in 2025, with much of the new growth coming from AI influencers, according to a new case study by UNmiss.

From polished AI Instagram avatars to TikTok personalities who never sleep, brands are increasingly testing whether audiences care if creators are real or virtual.

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