UK office workers waste 1.8 billion hours a year because of poor technology

frustrated

Office workers across the UK are wasting 14 days per person each year -- or 1.8 billion hours a year in total -- because the technology they’re given isn't good enough.

A new study of 2,000 office workers from technology solutions company Insight shows 80 percent at some point have felt they don't have the technology they need to do their jobs properly. While 34 percent also say not being equipped with the right technology makes remote and flexible working difficult and stressful.

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Migrating infrastructure to the cloud -- what the board needs to know

Board meeting

If you serve on the board of a UK organization, it’s likely that digital transformation is high on your agenda as you look strategically at futureproofing your business. A key part of that is ensuring that the IT infrastructure supporting your company is functioning robustly as a platform on which to build competitiveness, rather than a legacy anchor holding back innovation and growth. Moving to an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS) set-up is increasingly the way that companies aim to unlock potential and enable more dynamic, flexible business processes.

The benefits of IAAS are clear: It’s flexible and can easily scale as your business grows. It removes the burden of maintaining legacy systems and allows the easy deployment of new technology and, ideally, you only pay for what you use on a predictable opex basis; you won’t be paying to maintain capacity that is rarely needed. It also allows you to add on services such as analytics and disaster recovery-as-a-service and it’s the perfect environment for the big data projects requiring large workloads and integration with business intelligence tools.

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Enterprises struggle to support edge workloads

Edge computing

The use of edge computing is driving a need for more local computing power, but a new study reveals that enterprises are facing problems when it comes to supporting edge workloads.

The survey of more than 300 storage professionals from computational storage specialist NGD systems finds that while enterprises are rapidly deploying technologies for real-time analytics, machine learning and IoT, they are still using legacy storage solutions that are not designed for such data-intensive workloads.

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Symantec launches new zero trust cloud access security technology

Secure cloud

Increasing volumes of business network traffic are now directed at the cloud and companies need a cost effective way to secure them.

Symantec is announcing updates and innovations across its portfolio of products, giving enterprises the ability to enforce zero trust security policies across SaaS applications, corporate applications hosted in the cloud, email and the internet.

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Businesses gain better control of cloud and mobile devices

Cloud

Enterprises around the world are gaining control of previously unmonitored and unsupported cloud applications and mobile devices in their IT environments according to a new report.

The 2019 Trusted Access report from Duo Security looks at more than a million corporate applications and resources that Duo protects. Among the findings are that cloud and mobile use has resulted in 45 percent of requests to access protected apps now coming from outside business walls.

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New platform streamlines cloud storage support and recovery

cloud button

As businesses move more of their workloads to the cloud they depend on data and applications always being available and secure. But this can conflict with the need for regulatory compliance and effective backup regimes.

Quest Software is launching a new version of its QoreStor product that helps businesses to easily move, recover and store data from on premise and cloud locations.

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Planning a cloud migration? Get your identity privileges in check first

girl in cloud

Cloud infrastructure is the foundation of most enterprises and any crack can cause significant damage. A great example of this is the 2017 AWS S3 outage, which was caused by an unauthorized administrator typing an incorrect command when trying to fix a billing system slowdown. The fact that the admin had access to a larger subsystem is what led to the problem that ultimately cost customers an estimated $150 million.

Unfortunately, the probability of identities intentionally or accidentally misusing privileges -- and a corresponding impact on business -- is going to increase greatly for enterprises embracing cloud. In May 2019, for example, a faulty database script deployed by Salesforce inadvertently gave all users full access to sensitive company and customer data, forcing the company to shut down its Marketing Cloud services for 15+ hours.

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New platform simplifies handling multi-cloud environments

cloud link

The rise of cloud adoption has led many businesses to adopt an environment where computing requirements are decoupled from storage and scale independently. But this leads to problems with accessibility and data management.

A new platform launched today by Alluxio provides improved orchestration for data engineers managing and deploying analytical and AI workloads in the cloud, particularly for hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

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Summer heightens cyber security risks

Beach sunset

You might think that cyber attacks are a constant year round activity, or perhaps that they are focused on peak shopping periods like Christmas. But a new study from threat protection specialist Lastline reveals many security professionals believe their organizations are more at risk in summer.

In a survey of 1,000 security professionals more than half believe cyber attacks are seasonal and 58 percent of those (30.5 percent overall) say that they see more attacks during the summer months.

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IBM officially acquires Red Hat for $34 billion -- Linux distros are unaffected

Red Hat and IBM

IBM has closed its acquisition of Red Hat following the statement of intent back in October. Following the $34 billion deal, Red Hat will operate as a distinct unit within IBM -- and will be reported as part of IBM's Cloud and Cognitive Software segment.

For IBM, the deal means fully embracing open source as it looks to accelerate its business model within the enterprise. For Red Hat, it means expanding its client base and working with a big player in the enterprise cloud business.

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Financial services businesses at high risk of mobile attacks

Mobile cash

Financial services are at greater risk of phishing and man-in-the-middle attacks on mobile devices than businesses in other industries according to a new report.

The study from mobile security specialist Wandera analyzed mobile device data from 225 financial services customers and reveals financial services organizations are experiencing a higher volume of phishing attacks than their peers in other sectors (57 percent compared to 42 percent cross-industry).

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Companies turn to instant messaging in response to rising email threats

Email fraud

In a new study of IT decision makers by Barracuda Network, 94 percent of participants admit that email is still the most vulnerable part of their organization's cyber security.

The survey of 280 decision makers focused on the email threat landscape and email security practises. It discovered that 75 percent have been hit with brand impersonation emails, the largest threat as identified in the survey with ransomware coming in second on 47 percent.

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Poor management of data harms businesses' ability to gain value from it

data magnifier

Less than 40 percent of companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are confident they can manage, secure and gain insight from data, and use it responsibly according to new research from Oracle.

The study finds that on average 42 percent of respondents do not have a data management strategy in place. Only 35 percent are highly confident they can manage data to generate meaningful insights, and key departments are still not accepting both accountability and responsibility for data management. In addition data security protocols are often not understood, or followed.

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Second screens could be dragging down corporate networks

Dual monitors

Having a second monitor is a great way of improving your productivity, but new research from network solutions company Gigamon suggests this could also be driving higher bandwidth consumption.

Of the 200+ IT professionals surveyed, 59 percent believe that second screens are, or could be, being used for non-work-related activity, like streaming music or watching videos.

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Microsoft launches Threat and Vulnerability Management for enterprises

Microsoft building logo

Scheduled vulnerability scanning can leave blind spots between scans leaving organizations vulnerable.

In response to this problem, Microsoft has partnered with a number of enterprise customers to create a new Threat and Vulnerability Management solution as a built-in feature of Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection.

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