Articles about Software

Browse the internet and you’ll build up an offline database of all the sites you’ve visited, the type of products that interest you and your hobbies and interests. Ads targeting these interests will track you across various websites.

Most modern web browsers can block trackers and enable you to delve into your browsing history and quickly delete the information from your devices. But, has it really been deleted? Any computer expert would be able to retrieve some of this data if necessary.

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Finding and addressing vulnerabilities is a major headache for businesses, left unattended they can lead to cyberattacks and data breaches.

Data management company Cohesity is looking to make detection easier with a new application that uses backup data to assess the vulnerabilities, or risk posture, of an enterprise's IT environment.

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In the modern world it's vital for businesses to know what software they have, and where vulnerabilities lie. Flexera already assists IT and security teams to do this with its Software Vulnerability Manager, and it's now launching new modules to help address threats.

It's produced two new modules for SVM. The first of these is the Vendor Patch Module, which allows organizations to take advantage of insights and mitigate them more quickly, by using comprehensive patch coverage -- with more than 1,000 out-of-the-box patches. Additionally, the Vendor Patch Module delivers details to help companies more easily create over 1,000 additional patches.

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We see people purchase new security software and are often asked "how do I remove the old version?" which we find utterly perplexing.

To be clear, there’s really no such thing as a '2019' or '2020' of any security software as you always have the latest version as part of any paid subscription. You’re not using year-old outdated security to protect your devices. What a new release does is enable the company to make an announcement and, in turn, websites such as BetaNews to write about the new features. It’s really as simple as that.

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UK-based SiSoftware has released SiSoftware Sandra Lite 20/20 (2020), a major new release of its system information, diagnostics and benchmark tool for Windows PCs.

The 2020 version adds two new Neural Network benchmarks covering AI and machine learning, plus extends support to the latest CPU architectures, including AMD Ryzen 2 (3000 series) and Intel IceLake and CometLake.

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What do you perceive as the primary threat to your devices for the year ahead? Most people are now fairly self-aware to be wary of phishing attempts and illegitimate websites, while basic security software will prevent you from accidentally installing malicious software.

What you can’t do is stop your teens going online, short of throwing out their smartphone. If you can’t beat them, join them. But keep them secure whilst they access the internet.

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There’s a do you/don’t you approach to system maintenance software. Some users swear by the tools, running in the background keeping their system in-check. Others complain of system errors and unnecessary Registry cleansing which can do more harm than good.

The secret is, control. Switch off all automated processing and simply choose the tools you want to run manually. We’d advise against system-wide Registry cleansing for example. Let Windows do this for you. The other secret is to find a maintenance tool you can trust, from a recommended developer.

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FinePrint Software has released both pdfFactory 7.0 and FinePrint 10.0 for Windows PCs. pdfFactory 7.0 provides PDF creation tools, and offers a more fully featured Pro version with PDF-editing capabilities, while FinePrint is a universal print previewer designed to save users time, ink, paper and other resources.

The latest version of both tools focus on improving and future-proofing their user interfaces to work with high-definition monitors.

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When Microsoft announced that it was going to start charging its partners for software licenses that had previously been free, there was an understandable backlash.

Now the company has announced that it is putting these plans on hold, and free software licenses will still be available to Microsoft Partners. On the eve of its Inspire conference, Microsoft's Gavriella Schuster revealed that the decision to revoke internal use rights (IURs) has now been reversed.

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German software developer SoftMaker has unveiled SoftMaker FreeOffice 2018: Anniversary Update, extending major new features and compatibility improvements to its free office suite for Windows, Mac and Linux.

The update, officially dubbed Revision 966, comes with dozens of new features across the suite’s three main applications: TextMaker, PlanMaker and Presentations. It also updates its compatibility settings to work seamlessly with Microsoft Office 2019 documents.

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AOMEI has released AOMEI Backupper Standard 5.0, the first major update of its freeware Windows backup, imaging, sync and cloning tool since December 2016.

Version 5 unveils a long-overdue design refresh, attempting with some success to provide a flatter, more modern interface in keeping with Windows 10. There’s also the promise of faster file sync, but in the main the program’s functionality remains identical to earlier versions, providing file- and image-based backup, sync and cloning.

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The average UK enterprise has downloaded over 21,000 software components with a known vulnerability in the past year alone, according to new data from Sonatype the DevSecOps automation specialist.

Sonatype's fifth annual State of the Software Supply Chain Report has studied over 12,000 enterprise development companies globally and shows that of the average 248,000 open source components downloaded by British business in 2018, 8.8 percent have a known security flaw.

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CERN -- the European Organization for Nuclear Research best known for its particle smashing Large Hadron Collider -- has decided to eschew Microsoft in favor of open source software.

For many years, CERN benefited from hefty discounts on Microsoft products, but this is coming to an end. Rather than paying hugely increased licensing fees, the organization is instead implementing its own Microsoft Alternatives project, known as MAlt. CERN says it is "taking back control using open software".

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Version 3.0.7 of VLC has been released, and while it may seem like a minor x.x.x update, it includes more security fixes than any other previous release -- including two high security issues.

Jean-Baptiste Kemp, the president of VLC-maker VideoLAN, says the number of fixes included in this version is due to the EU-FOSSA bug bounty program, funded by the European Commission.

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Let's face it, most of us don’t lose data that often, but when you do, it takes time to scurry around and find a tool to attempt recovery. Time is important for finding deleted files. The more often your computer writes to the drive, the less likely you’ll be able to recover data.

Although it’s rare for a hard drive to fail or for an individual to 'accidentally' delete important data you need in the future, once it happens, you’ll want software to help you recover, swiftly.

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