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The modern workforce is more distributed and dependent on devices than ever before. In this hybrid work environment, digital employee experiences are siloed. IT teams are on the hook to ensure end-user productivity despite strained financial resources and the IT talent war.

Despite their technical expertise, IT service teams are limited in their ability to be in multiple locations at once. Distributed workforces further cause significant blind spots and open up businesses to vulnerabilities hiding in the dark estate. That’s where hidden issues live, yet IT teams can’t see them. The potential for unknown risks is nothing new in IT. So why should businesses care about the dark estate, especially now when IT departments are already burdened by lengthy lists of service requests, putting out fires, and keeping up with security challenges?

A new report from business software company Sage shows that 48 percent of SMBs have experienced a cyber security incident in the past year.

In addition the study of over 2,000 SMB decision makers around the world finds 51 percent say keeping on top of new threats is their biggest challenge and 44 percent say economic uncertainty and the cost of living has reduced cybersecurity budgets.

In the ever-evolving realm of the cloud, dwell times are now measured in moments, not days. Whereas Mandiant’s 2023 M-Trends report highlighted a global median dwell time of 16 days for on-premises environments, the Sysdig Threat Research Team (TRT) recently reported in their 2023 Global Cloud Threat Report that cloud dwell time is five minutes.

To better understand the stark difference between defenders' abilities to find attackers in the cloud and on-premises, I sat down with the Sysdig TRT to discuss their findings. They circled around four distinct, but closely related reasons.

Employees are embracing generative AI and its capabilities, with 86 percent of respondents to a new survey saying they want to use GenAI at work, and 52 percent seeing GenAI as a great tool to find more relevant information.

The study, of over 2,000 US adults conducted by Arlington Research for Coveo, finds 56 percent of respondents believe GenAI tools would save them at least an hour a day at work. However, more than 50 percent of respondents' companies don't have a GenAI policy in place to enable their employees to leverage these capabilities safely and privately.

Microservices architecture allows developers to build and maintain applications with ease, and enterprises are rapidly adopting it to build software using Spring Boot as their default framework.

With Hands-On Microservices with Spring Boot and Spring Cloud, you’ll learn how to efficiently build and deploy microservices using Spring Boot. This microservices book will take you through tried and tested approaches to building distributed systems and implementing microservices architecture in your organization.

According to a new survey of 302 security professionals, almost 80 percent say they have 'good' or 'excellent' career prospects, and more than 84 percent say the industry is 'growing' or 'booming'.

However, the report from The Chartered Institute of Information Security (CIISec) finds the industry is still plagued by issues including stress and overwork. 22 percent of respondents work more than the 48 hours per week mandated by the UK government, and eight percent work more than 55 hours which, according to the World Health Organization, marks the boundary between safe and unsafe working hours.

New research from Ivalua shows more than half (53 percent) of procurement and supplier management processes have yet to be digitized.

This is creating inefficiencies, with procurement teams estimating they are wasting 22 percent of their time each year dealing with paper-based or manual processes.

With the release of this month's security updates for Windows, Microsoft has brought to an end support for not only Windows Server 2012, but also Windows 11 21H2.

What this means for users of these versions of the operating system is that there will be no more updates of any sort made available -- and this means both security updates and non-security updates. For anyone who wants or needs to stick with Windows 2012, things could get expensive, but there are free upgrades available to those currently running Windows 11 21H2.

The Fedora Project and Slimbook have teamed up to introduce the Fedora Slimbook, a modern ultrabook that combines high-end technology with user-friendly features. Slimbook, known for its dedication to quality, innovation, and support for the Linux community, has partnered with the Fedora Project to offer users a unique computing experience.

The Fedora Slimbook showcases a stunning 16-inch 16:10 sRGB 99 percent screen, which brings a 3K display operating at a refresh rate of 90Hz to the table. This feature guarantees clear and vibrant visuals, making any graphical work or media consumption a delightful experience.

Today, Logitech brings something new to the table with its Wave Keys and Wave Keys for Business. These are wireless ergonomic keyboards designed to make working at a desk more comfortable and healthy. With more people of all ages spending a lot of time in front of computers, having a comfy keyboard is becoming very important.

Wave Keys comes with a special wave design in a compact size, making typing easy without having to learn anything new. It also has a soft place to rest your palms, which is great for support all day long. The wave design isn’t just for looks; it helps place your hands, wrists, and forearms in a natural position while typing. This can help reduce the usual strain from typing for a long time.

The latest biannual Cyber Threat Intelligence Report from Critical Start reveals the top 10 cyber threats, including a rise in phishing attacks using QR codes are on the rise with bad actors masquerading as Microsoft security notifications.

Since May this year a major campaign has seen emails with a QR code embedded inside a PNG image or a PDF attachment. This has been aimed across industries with the energy sector being hardest hit -- one US energy company received 29 percent of all emails in the campaign.

Despite considerable efforts by business leaders to protect their digital assets, in today’s cybersecurity landscape, a security breach is all but inevitable. According to reports, threat actors have already compromised hundreds of millions of records in 2023, and IBM says 83 percent of businesses had more than one breach in 2022. Companies must prepare themselves to respond and seamlessly recover post-attack in this climate and starting at the endpoint could help bolster their cyber resilience.

Endpoint management plays a pivotal role in supporting a robust cyber resilience strategy. By maintaining an up-to-date inventory of all devices connected to your network, endpoint management allows for the rapid identification and isolation of potentially compromised systems, preventing the spread of security incidents and minimizing their impact.

An endpoint management approach to cyber resilience is also supported by principles found in the MITRE Corporation’s Cyber Resiliency Engineering Framework (CREF) Navigator. Their cyber resilience framework focuses on sharing an understanding of what it takes to maintain and inform preparedness and is guided by four pillars. These include:

A new survey of 205 IT security decision makers highlights mounting concerns over the use of AI, and deepfakes in particular, as 68 percent of respondents express concerns about cybercriminals using deepfakes to target their organisations.

The study from Integrity360 finds 59 percent also agree that AI is increasing the number of cyber attacks, which aligns with the change in attacks that have been noticeable over the past year as 'offensive AI' is being used for tasks such as malware creation.

Microsoft has quietly announced plans to deprecate VBScript in "future releases of Windows". The company has not been more specific about the timeline than this, but there are some details about the deprecation process.

As part of a phased withdrawal, VBScript (Visual Basic Scripting Edition) was initially removed from Internet Explorer, and before being killed off in Windows completely, it will become an optional component. While a useful scripting language in its day, VBScript became something of an abused security nightmare, and has since been replaced by PowerShell.

While some might argue that generative AI is eliminating the need for certain jobs, it's also increasing the need for new roles and skills such as 'prompt engineering'.

With many people looking to upskill in this area to produce better results from AI tools like ChatGPT, and some companies creating new roles to stay ahead of AI's fast-paced developments, we spoke to Mike Loukides, vice president of content strategy for O'Reilly Media, to find out more about prompt engineering and why it’s important.