Articles about Coronavirus

We see the European market today as the hottest area of the global cloud in a pivotal moment. While US cloud giants battle for world domination, China is building its "Great Cloud," Russia is testing its sovereign internet, and Europe is busy creating its own digital sovereignty.

The EU recently declared a massive digital transformation for its economy in the next decade where cloud and AI technologies will play an essential role. So what exactly can we expect from the European cloud industry in the short term?

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With stay at home orders and the sudden need to securely share sensitive documents from employee’s homes, there has been a significant demand for a surprising technology: the digital fax. Despite industry-wide efforts to digitally transform, the physical fax is still a very common and necessary piece of technology for many organizations.

In fact, 89 percent of small to medium-sized businesses still use faxes in one form or the other, and faxing still dominates communication in several fields. For example, faxing accounts for 79 percent of all communication in the medical industry. These same organizations have been scrambling to support the abrupt shift to remote work and have had numerous roadblocks in the process.

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Three months ago, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdown, the Internet Archive created a National Emergency Library with over 1.4 million books that you could borrow immediately.

By suspending waitlists for books in its lending library, the Internet Archive hoped to best serve the nation’s displaced learners. The plan at the time was to offer this Emergency Library "through June 30, 2020, or the end of the US national emergency, whichever is later".

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The recent reminder of the importance of basic hygiene has been glaring not only within the physical world, but also the cybersecurity one. Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) understand this more than most, given the sudden surge in remote work and additional threats this has brought to their organizations. Because so many people have started working from home, corporate perimeters have expanded in a way that many security professionals were not prepared to manage but must now understand in order to effectively safeguard their organizations.

With pundits anticipating a lasting impact on the way we work brought on by the pandemic, CISOs must consider all of the necessary steps to manage cyber risk in what could be the "new normal." And, like nearly anyone following social distancing guidelines right now, a good CISO understands that good security is built on a foundation of good, basic hygiene.

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With millions working from home for the first time thanks to coronavirus, many businesses have had to act quickly in order to facilitate remote communication which may never have been an option before the virus struck. Though these businesses may have already made the switch to internet-hosted calls and communications at work, providing access to all employees from home will not have been common. One of the most common concerns of using internet communication software is its security capacity, so how secure is it? And how can business leaders ensure the highest levels of safety for a remote workforce?

From news stories of vulnerable video conferencing software to threats from less secure home networks, navigating the security issues of a remote workforce may be a trial by fire for businesses attempting to maintain levels of normality during this time. Therefore, it will be important to understand both the benefits and drawbacks of internet communications to know what to look out for and how to inform staff of the best practice.

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As a result of the coronavirus pandemic most companies have shifted to having employees working at home. For some that is ideal, for others the lack of human contact can be depressing. It’s a double-edged sword in many ways -- you want people around but enjoy being home.

There is some good news for employers though -- new research released by Hibob finds that people working from home are just as productive as they were in the office.

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New research from DNS intelligence specialist Farsight Security, focusing on over 300 leading websites, finds that between March and April there has been an increase in DDoS events involving popular brand names.

It also reveals that DNS cache misses (which occur when the data fetched is not present in the cache) showed an increase of between four and seven times.

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Recent market data from Synergy Research Group via CRN suggests 2019 was a milestone for IT and that for the first time ever, enterprises are spending more money annually on cloud infrastructure services than on data center hardware and software. For example, total spend on cloud infrastructure services reached $97 billion, up 38 percent year over year, whereas total spend on data center hardware and software hit $93 billion in 2019, an increase of only 1 percent compared to 2018.

This means that many companies that have historically owned, maintained, and managed their own IT operations in their own data center are now evolving how they support their business operations by transforming their IT to cloud.

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The Cloud is a $200 billion business that analyst firm IDC expects to nearly double in valuation by 2022. It enables collaborative productivity apps, on-demand entertainment, and promises much needed advances in telemedicine. But all this potential will come crashing to a halt unless we take seriously the corresponding rise of cloud-based cybersecurity threats. The increase we have seen in cyber-attacks seeking cloud-based data is worrisome and the potential for crippling the healthcare industry is high especially given the current global climate and their dependency on cloud-based services.

Recent warnings and actual attacks are a prominent example of the active and persistent threats to our global healthcare networks, economy, and connected infrastructure. Organizations involved in national and international COVID-19 responses are being actively targeted by hacking teams and threat groups. This is according to a recent alert from DHS ‘s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) Europe’s largest hospital.  In addition, the Czech Republic warned of expected cyberattacks targeting healthcare systems designed to damage or destroy computers in critical healthcare infrastructure.  And last month, Interpol announced that its Cybercrime Threat Response team had detected a significant increase in ransomware extortion schemes against healthcare organizations and infrastructures.  The list goes on…

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Most of us have adapted quickly -- perhaps seamlessly -- to increased reliance on digital devices for the day-to-day processes of life and business. For many people with disabilities however, it’s a very different picture.

Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, so for a few minutes let’s put ourselves in the place of a person with a visual, hearing, motor or cognitive disability. With many physical places of business now closed, essential activities like banking, shopping and working must be solely conducted online or at great personal peril.

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New research from DevOps automation specialist Sonatype has discovered that software development activity in the UK decreased by 28 percent since February.

However, the UK position contrasts with some other countries where development activity has continued to grow in the midst of the pandemic. Notably, this includes the United States with a six percent increase and Germany with a 12 percent increase since January 2020.

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With the current pandemic continuing to grow in some areas, and unemployment rising even faster than food prices, we need problem solvers. Help at this time comes mostly from doctors and scientists, but can also come from other surprising areas.

If you've recently taken an AncestryDNA test, Ancestry.com is inviting you to supply some information that could assist in the fight against COVID-19.

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Three-hundred-and-eighty-four in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 on the Microsoft Store in the past seven days.

Microsoft continues to work on the company's Your Phone application. The latest version, released this week to Insider systems, adds support for controlling music on Android devices from within Windows 10.

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The technology industry has always moved quickly, but COVID-19 is putting companies’ flexibility and adaptability to the test. Although employees are increasingly working remotely, few organizations were prepared to go 100 percent virtual within the matter of a week or two while attempting to understand what life in a pandemic looks like.

As the shock and awe of self-isolating practices and quarantines wears off, there are some things enterprises need to consider in order to not just remain in business but ultimately emerge "healthy."

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It's only a matter of weeks since Apple revealed the 2020 iPhone SE, but many people are holding out for this year's flagship from the company -- the iPhone 12 range, some of which will be 5G devices.

But it seems like anyone waiting to get their hands on the handset will have to wait a little longer. The chaos caused by the spread of COVID-19 around the world is said to have forced Apple to delay the launch of the phone by a month.

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