5 GHz Wi-Fi is better, so why aren't we letting go of 2.4 GHz?

Public wi-fi

There is a bit of black magic -- or fuzziness -- to Wi-Fi technology. For example, few people know how fast their Wi-Fi connection is at any given moment. Wi-Fi operates at literally hundreds of different speeds (data rates), and these variations depend on dozens of factors. The speed can change with every single data packet that gets transmitted.

Over the last 19 years, Wi-Fi has made incredible strides to stabilize and perform at the high level we enjoy today. The variability of Wi-Fi, however, can still make things confusing.

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Businesses forget good security practices in DevOps environments

DevOps

Many organizations don’t enforce proper security measures in their DevOps environments, putting both the company and the product at risk. This is according to a new report by Venafi looking into security practices among DevOps adopters.

Using the same passwords for multiple machines or not even bothering to secure communications between machines are some of the most common issues, usually among organizations in the middle of adopting DevOps practices.

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Malware backdoors still the biggest threat to enterprises

Backdoor button

New data from cloud security specialist Netskope shows that companies are still struggling to prevent network breaches and protect themselves at all points of entry.

Backdoors made up the bulk of cloud malware detections, at 37.1 percent, down from 43.2 percent last quarter but still the biggest single threat.

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Enterprises want mobile apps that can improve productivity

mobile cloud enterprise

Most businesses have adopted some kind of mobile strategy and the focus now is on the positives that mobility programs can deliver.

New research for mobile application management provider Apperian finds that 43 percent of respondents listed improved productivity as their primary goal of enterprise mobile apps -- a 20 percent jump over 2016.

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ShadowPlex delivers cost-effective deception technology

Deception

Deception technology intended to catch out attackers by deploying decoys that mimic business systems is gaining in popularity. The market for deception is expected to exceed $2 billion by 2021.

Threat defense specialist Acalvio Technology is launching a new product called ShadowPlex which offers the scale and depth of a dynamic deception environment, and integrated intelligence built on a cloud-first infrastructure that makes it easy and cost-effective to deploy.

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Demand for IT contractors in UK is rising

it workers

Demand for IT contractors has strengthened over the past six months despite the uncertainty caused by the vote to leave the European Union. At first glance this seems counterintuitive.

Historically, contractors have been the first into and first out of a period of economic malaise or even just uncertainty. The fear was that the EU referendum result would send the jobs market into a tailspin, and that contractors would be first to feel the pain. They are, after all, a flexible resource and it is much more cost effective for organizations to divest themselves of contractors than employees. In the months leading up to the referendum last June, that is exactly what we saw. Demand for contractors weakened as organizations hesitated over their IT investments until some measure of clarity was achieved.

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What is dark data?

Warehouse huge room server

As a society, and as businesses, we used to have a good handle on our data. We knew what it was, where it was kept, and we used it in a very formal way, treating it as something very precious. You could argue that a lot of it was always "dark," as it was locked in files and accessed only by those with physical proximity as well as the permission to use it.

Within organizations, data processing used to rely on very structured, defined data sets, but the rise of social data, the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning and constantly connected devices has introduced a seemingly unlimited supply of unstructured data. It comes streaming in from multiple sources -- cloud data, device-driven data, social data, financial data, and everything in between...

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Enterprises replacing data centers with hybrid clouds

Data center

Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, summed up on the concept of cloud computing very succinctly. "All it is, is a computer attached to a network." Ellison and Oracle have gone on to embrace both open source and cloud technologies including OpenStack, but the basic premise that it starts with a physical server and a network still holds true.

The server industry is going through massive change, driven in the main part by advances in open source software, networking and automation. The days of monolithic on-site server rooms filled with rack-space, and blinking lights and buzzing air-con, are gone. However, the alluring simplicity of this concept is not quite how it works in the real world.

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Moving beyond the responsible, digital future

looking ahead

Few trends have received more hype and attention in the past couple of years, than this broad-based phenomenon termed as "digitalization." If one were to do a simple cause-and-effect analysis, then it would be easy to arrive at a definition which would attribute digitalization to digital technologies such as mobile, social, cloud and IoT. Further, advances from robotics to cognitive intelligence to augmented reality, have catapulted the idea of "digitalization" into businesses across industries.

In today’s world, if a business hasn’t digitally transformed it won’t be around for much longer. But a technology-centric definition would be a radical over-simplification of this "business model necessity." While digital transformation -- much like the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" -- might be technology led, the change itself is much deeper, and has the potential to disrupt entire societies. To succeed in an already present change, organizations must look beyond the current changes and towards the future at four key themes:

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Fujitsu announces six new enterprise devices

Fujitsu

Fujitsu has announced six new enterprise devices on six different product series, offering faster machines and more security. There's the new 10.1-inch Arrows Tab Q507/P-SP tablet, a new Notebook Lifebook, two ESPRIMO models, a 17.3-inch Celsius H970 mobile workstation, and the Futro MU937 mobile notebook device (which Fujitsu claims is the world's lightest).

What's particularly interesting about the Arrows device is that, for the first time, it comes with Fujitsu's Biometric Authentication Slide Passport functionality. This biometric authentication service allows users to log in using the palm of their hand.

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Almost half of UK business hit by cyber crime

UK cyber risk

UK-based businesses of all sizes are being urged to protect themselves against cyber crime after new government statistics showed nearly half of all UK businesses suffered a cyber breach or attack in the past year.

The Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2017 reveals nearly seven out of 10 large businesses identified a breach or attack, with the average cost to large businesses of all breaches over the period being £20,000 and in some cases reaching millions.

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Managing compliance in the hospitality industry [Q&A]

Credit card PCI DSS

Even for businesses in sectors like finance and healthcare where compliance and security is ingrained in the culture, protecting sensitive information is a major challenge.

For other sectors where it's incidental to the main business, compliance can be a major headache. With new payment card security requirements and other regulations like GDPR coming into force, businesses in sectors like hospitality need to up their game. We spoke to Geoff Milton, security strategist at data protection company ShieldQ to find out how the hospitality industry can overcome the headaches associated with compliance.

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New edge platform delivers faster digital experiences

LTE_ADVANCED_FAST

A great deal of today's data is generated by users at the edge of corporate networks. It therefore makes sense to process and serve this information closer to where it originates.

San Francisco-based Fastly is unveiling its new edge cloud platform, which allows popular businesses to deliver consistently secure, fast and personalized digital experiences as close to end users as possible.

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New tool offers flexible feature delivery for mobile developers

Mobile apps

Businesses are clamoring for up to date mobile apps, but in the past the approach has tended to be all or nothing, with no real way of testing new features on some users before rolling them out to everyone.

Mobile developer tool specialist Rollout.io is launching a new ROX by Rollout tool that gives mobile app developers the ability to selectively deliver new features to subsets of users and monitor the performance of those features, making intelligent, data-driven recommendations about further deployment.

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Businesses are unprepared for the Industrial IoT

Cooling towers

Many companies are unprepared for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), even though most executives at those companies realize that the future of their business could depend on it, according to a new study.

The research from the Business Performance Innovation Network finds that 52 percent of executives at large enterprises -- and 41 percent of executives at all companies -- expect the IIoT to have a significant or major impact on their industry within three years.

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