Google: Three in four Brits have a smartphone
A Google report, five years in the making and with information from 625,000 people, shows just how much the Internet and smartphones changed our lives in half a decade.
According to the report, five years ago, one in three consumers in 40 markets had access to a smartphone. Fast forward to 2016, the number has gone up to a "staggering" 70 percent.
Cyber attacks cost the UK economy £1.9 billion
Eighteen percent of UK businesses have been the target of a cyber-attack in the last 12 months, according to a new report by Altodigital. These attacks cost the economy £1.9 billion.
Back in 2013 33 percent of companies were hacked, so Altodigital sees the current figure of 18 percent as a "welcome improvement." Each individual attack cost more than £2,000 last year.
UK tackles attacks with new National Cyber Security Center
The UK is getting a national center to combat cyber attacks, and it's the Queen who gets to open it. The National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) will reportedly be opened in central London by the Queen, accompanied by The Duke of Edinburgh and Chancellor Philip Hammond.
The NCSC is part of intelligence agency GCHQ and has already tackled 188 attacks in the last three months. It will look for holes in sites belonging to the public sector, will tackle spoof emails and pull phishing sites down.
Brits will spend €27bn on mobile devices in 2017
This year, the UK will spend more than £27 billion on mobile devices, new figures from VoucherCodes.co.uk and the Center for Retail Research show. This means there will be a 26 percent jump compared to last year.
Consequently, online retail sales will also grow, by 11.5 percent compared to 2016. British shoppers are expected to be quite the spenders this year, spending a total of £1.428.39 per head online. That’s a third higher than the EU average of £1,003.54.
8 out of 10 Brits feel misled by advertised broadband speeds
The way broadband speeds in the UK are advertised is misleading according to 80 percent of respondents to a new survey.
Broadband comparison site Cable.co.uk interviewed 2,000 consumers with 58 percent finding advertised speeds "very misleading" and 22 percent saying they are "somewhat misleading".
Demand for security pros in UK rises by 46 percent
To say that IT security professionals in the UK are in demand would be a severe understatement. A new report by Experis says there has been an increase of 46 percent in the demand for both permanent and contract IT security professionals.
The report, entitled Tech Cities Job Watch, says companies are putting more emphasis on long-term investments.
Most UK businesses still unaware of GDPR
Despite the fact that the media has dulled its teeth and worn out its keyboards, talking and reporting about the General Data Protection regulation (GDPR), less than half (47 percent) of businesses in the UK are aware of it. What’s more, just four in ten (40 percent) are fully aware of the NIS Directive.
Both documents will be coming into effect in 2018, and will significantly change how we do business online.
Almost half of UK CEOs not assessing AI's impact
UK CEOs aren’t giving artificial intelligence (AI) and automation the right attention, and that’s putting the entire country’s economy at risk.
This is according to a new report by PwC, which was published at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It says that almost half (47 percent) of UK’s CEOs are not addressing the impact AI and automation can have on their organisation.
UK will face a shortage of three million highly skilled workers
By 2022, the UK could be missing approximately three million highly skilled workers, according to a new annual CEO survey by PwC. The report says that, by that time, there will be 15 million high-skill jobs in the country. This state will actually come as a result of automating low-skill, routine tasks, which will place more emphasis on higher-skill, agile roles.
Another interesting conclusion is that more than nine million people could be chasing four million jobs. This is according to the government’s State of the Nation report.
UK health trusts hit by ransomware attacks
The UK's National Health Service is being targeted by ransomware according to a new study which shows that 30 percent of NHS Trusts have suffered an attack, potentially placing patient data and lives at risk.
The findings come from a Freedom of Information Act study conducted by endpoint security company SentinelOne. It submitted FOI requests to 129 NHS Trusts, of which 94 responded.
Few UK retailers confident about their customer experience
Retailers are seriously lacking confidence when it comes to delivering a seamless, connected experience across channels. This is according to a new report by SAP and PwC. The report, based on a poll of 300 retailers and more than 2,000 consumers, says less than a fifth (17 percent) of retailers are confident in their capabilities.
More than six in ten agree siloed business units are hurting their efforts, and a third say they are having trouble implementing the "single view of the customer". Just eight percent have successfully done this, the report claims.
Amazon introduces new job training program in UK
Amazon has steadily been expanding the scope of its cloud storage business AWS beyond hosting websites and apps for businesses and today the company announced its latest venture aimed at increasing IT skills training in the UK.
During an event in London, the company announced its new training and job placement program, re:Start. Amazon's new service, that was built in partnership with the UK's Ministry of Defense, the Prince's Trust and QA consulting, is geared toward educating young adults and military veterans and their wives.
UK companies take too long to react to Internet disruptions
Internet disruptions, in their biggest part, are taking place outside a company’s network, a new report by Dyn claims. The report also says having poor visibility beyond "company walls" makes it harder for those companies to react on time.
More than half (57 percent) of all Internet disruptions UK companies faced in the last year happened outside company networks. These companies need double the time to react compared to companies in the US.
iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus are the best-selling smartphones in US (again)
Apple traditionally enjoys very strong iPhone sales after it launches new smartphones. And this is certainly true of the three months ending November 2016, when the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus topped the sales charts in US and helped iOS close in on Android in Great Britain.
In US, it is actually an all-iPhone podium, with the iPhone 6s joining the newer models in the top three, according to a new Kantar Worldpanel ComTech report. Apple saw its share rise to 43.5 percent, while Google's Android dropped to 55.3 percent of the market.
Cyberattacks against IoT devices tripled in 2016
It only takes one successful cyber-attack to seriously hurt a company, so it’s shocking to see that UK businesses suffered, on average, almost 230,000 cyber-attacks in 2016.
This is according to Beaming. The ISP says a third of attacks was targeting company databases, but two thirds were, in fact, attacking connected devices, such as security cameras or building control systems. Such devices can be controlled remotely, through the internet.
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