How the tech industry can tackle the e-waste crisis head on
The success of the technology industry has been built on its constant innovation, always seeking out and creating products that are 'quicker' or 'more powerful' or 'sleeker'. However, as a consequence, there has been an elephant in the room growing for some time -- one that is yet to be tackled and taken seriously. That elephant is the mountain of electronic waste (e-waste) that continues to pile high every year.
With our tech consumption now comprising of everything from smartphones to tablets, from laptops to smartwatches, we as an industry bear a responsibility to manage the eventual waste these products create. Currently the amount of e-waste we generate rises by 347 million metric tonnes each year, and only 17.4 percent of it is known to be collected and properly recycled. To reverse the considerable environmental damage created by the IT industry, we need to change how we procure IT.
CISOs in smaller businesses suffer stress that puts the company at risk
A new study from extended detection and response platform Cynet finds 94 percent of CISOs in small to mid-sized companies report being stressed at work.
What's more 65 percent admit work-related stress issues are compromising their ability to protect their organization. Among the CISOs surveyed, 100 percent say they need additional resources to adequately cope with current IT security challenges.
Ransomware detection improves but attacks persist
Defenders have become more successful at detecting and preventing ransomware, but even so its share of incidents declined only four percentage points from 2021 to 2022.
The latest X-Force Threat Intelligence Index from IBM Security also finds that attackers continue to innovate, with the average time to complete a ransomware attack dropping from two months down to less than four days.
Twitter could be about to open source its algorithm
There is a great deal to be said in favor of making software, apps and code available on an open source basis. And this is particularly true of the algorithms that influence so many aspects of life, and control what is seen online.
Now Elon Musk has suggested that Twitter's own algorithm could be made open source -- perhaps as soon as next week.
Protecting the software supply chain [Q&A]
As developers come under increasing pressure to deliver projects quickly, there's a rising level of conflict between development and security teams. And attackers are taking advantage of this conflict in order to target software supply chains.
So, what kind of threats do enterprises face and what can they do to protect themselves? We spoke to Pete Morgan, co-founder and CSO of supply chain security company Phylum to find out.
Microsoft releases KB5022905 update preview to fix numerous Windows 11 problems
Ahead of next month's official release -- and after having launched it for users of the Release Preview build of Windows 11 -- Microsoft has made available a preview of the KB5022905 update for Windows 11.
This is a non-security update, but it fixes a number of issues including difficulties properly deleting user profiles, a Z-order problem with maximized windows and more. It also adds a new advanced auto-learning feature for facial recognition.
Microsoft plans to let you choose the tone of AI chats in Bing and Edge
Two weeks ago, Microsoft announced that it was introducing an enhanced version of ChatGPT into its Bing search engine and Edge browser and opened it up for testing.
Things didn’t go quite as smoothly however, and in testing it was found that the AI could go off the rails during long and intricate chats. As a result, Microsoft introduced some limits -- restricting users to five chat turns per session and a total of 50 per day. However, that limitation is set to soon be raised, and that’s not the only change that’s coming.
Collaboration tools still top the app download charts
Video conferencing and collaboration tools like Zoom catapulted to popularity during the pandemic as organizations made the shift to remote working.
But data published today by Finbold shows that even as we return to more normal working patterns Zoom remains the most downloaded business app in the US, with Teams in second place.
Enterprises plan to spend more on identity verification
A new report shows that 91 percent of organizations in the financial services, technology, telecoms, and aviation sectors worldwide intend to increase their spending on identity verification solutions in the next one to three years.
The report from Regula says 17 percent of businesses intend is to dedicate 11-20 percent of their IT budget annually to IDV solutions, with 15 percent of businesses opting for 21-30 percent.
Google is rolling out Memory Saver and Energy Saver features to Chrome users
Chrome may be one of the most widely used web browsers in the world, but along the way it has managed to earn itself a reputation for being something of a bloated resource hog. Now, weeks after initially announcing them, Google is rolling out a pair of new features to help address the problem.
Energy Saver and Memory Saver do very much what their names suggest, helping to reducing battery consumption and memory usage with a range of techniques. Available in Chrome 110, both features can be customized to your liking.
Leaked: How to install Android 13 in the stable version of Windows 11
It’s official: Android 13 has now been introduced to the Windows Subsystem for Android on Windows 11. The thing is, it’s only available to Windows Insider Program members (who also got special access to Microsoft’s Windows 10 22H2 preview build last summer). The Android update for WSA is available and accessible for users running Version 22.11.40000.11.0 and can be updated from the Microsoft Store app.
The update includes performance and reliability improvements such as boot speed, clipboard stability, mouse click input, app resizing, jump list entries, and media files. But you don’t need a Windows 11 Dev Channel or Beta build installed on your computer to upgrade the Windows Subsystem to Android 13 to try these features.
Microsoft to release Windows 11 Moment 3 to beta testers soon
Windows 11 Moment 3 is rumored to hit general availability towards the end of the first half of this year -- possibly in May. But before this next significant update to Windows 11 is released to the general public, it will first need to undergo beta testing -- and this could be happening very soon indeed.
Although Microsoft is yet to say anything about the release date for Moment 3, reliable leaker PhantomOfEarth has not only revealed that the beta is due for release soon, but also shared details of what it is likely to include.
Microsoft says it has resolved Outlook email filter outage that resulted in a deluge of spam
Users of Microsoft's Outlook.com have been flooded with spam and phishing emails over a period of 12 hours. It seems that the message filters for the email service suffered an outage, resulting inboxes being overwhelmed with junk mail.
While Microsoft says that the issue has now been addressed, the company has provided very little in the way of explanation for what happened.
Sabrent DS-UFNC USB Type-C Flat Docking Station is a drive enclosure and cloner
Sabrent has a new product called "USB Type-C Flat Docking Station," and while it does, in fact, use USB-C for connectivity, it is not a docking station. The company calls it "flat" because it lays flat -- it isn't actually flat, obviously. While the name is a massive misnomer, it is still rather cool.
Carrying the model ID of DS-UFNC, this "docking station" is actually a dual-drive enclosure and cloner. You see, it can simultaneously interface with both an M.2 NVMe SSD and SATA drive (2.5 or 3.5-inch) and act as either an external storage device or a standalone bi-directional disk cloner. Best of all, it utilizes a toolless design, so you can physically add and remove drives without the need of tools.
Over 98 percent of organizations have misconfigured clouds
According to a new report, 98.6 percent of organizations have concerning misconfigurations in their cloud environments that can cause critical risks to their data and infrastructure.
The research from Zscaler finds cloud misconfiguration errors related to public access to storage buckets, account permissions, password storage and management, and more, have led to the exposure of billions of records.
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