Blair Hanley Frank
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Blair Hanley Frank
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Microsoft unveils Windows 10 feature to stymie advanced hack attacks
Microsoft wants to help protect companies from hack attacks, and it's introducing a new Windows 10 feature soon to improve the operating system's security capabilities.Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection is aimed at helping businesses deal with serious threats by using machine learning to protect Windows 10 devices. The feature builds a profile of how a computer behaves, and then alerts IT managers if it starts acting in a way that's indicative of a security breach. If the system detects an attack, it will provide administrators with recommended steps to remediate it.That's supposed to help IT managers sleep a bit better at night when facing threats powered by undisclosed "zero-day" vulnerabilities, along with social engineering attacks that take advantage of users making mistakes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Gmail for Work gets improved digital loss protection features
Google has expanded the digital loss protection features in Gmail for Work, to help ensure that employees don't share confidential information outside the company they work for. The service can now use optical character recognition on attachments, so administrators can ensure that employees aren't sharing mounds of confidential data in images (whether intentionally or not). That adds to existing features such as the ability to look inside common attachment types, including documents and spreadsheets. The OCR capabilities integrate with content detectors, so administrators can do things like prevent members of the accounting department from sending an email with a credit card number in it to someone outside the organization. It's a key feature for businesses worried about confidential information leaving the company, even if employees don't mean to do anything wrong.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Box makes it easier for businesses to control encryption of cloud data
Box has made it easier for its customers to control how stored data is encrypted with an update announced Thursday.The company announced a new service called Box KeySafe, which allows companies to control the keys used to encrypt data stored in Box. It comes in two flavors: a KeySafe with AWS Key Management Service that's designed to be easy for small companies to handle and not require a lot of time, and KeySafe with AWS CloudHSM, which uses hardware modules to manage keys via Amazon's product and is the latest revision of what was previously the Enterprise Key Management service.While that was useful for large enterprises like GE and McKinsey & Company that were willing to dedicate people to managing the security hardware, it left out smaller businesses that wanted control over their encryption keys, which is where the new product comes in. Box says the version of KeySafe that relies on Amazon's Key Management Service takes as little as 30 minutes to set up, and is simple to maintain.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Google continues enterprise push with Data Loss Prevention for Gmail
Google on Wednesday released a new tool for companies that want to make sure their sensitive information isn't shared via email.Gmail for Work now has Data Loss Prevention (DLP) capabilities, which allow administrators to set policies about what information users can send through Gmail. The goal is to protect confidential records and make sure users don't accidentally leak key data. For example, a policy could prohibit members of the accounting team from sending any emails with a spreadsheet attached. Policies could also be used to quarantine messages until an administrator can review them, or modify them to remind users not to share confidential information outside of the company. Google has tried to make crafting those policies easier with a library of predefined content detectors that help administrators build intelligent policies. For situations that aren't covered by the pre-built detectors, administrators can create their own. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Dell-EMC deal will ‘set back innovation,’ says Sun co-founder Vinod Khosla
While he thinks Dell buying EMC makes sense financially, Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla has little faith in the merged company's ability to innovate."EMC and Dell merging is a really good financial move for Michael, but it will set back innovation and distract from innovation," said Khosla, now a prominent venture capitalist, in an onstage interview at the Structure conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.MORE: Hottest Black Friday Windows dealsAsked about the future for old-line technology companies like Cisco, IBM and Dell, Khosla was pessimistic. In his view, only about half of those tech titans will stick around in the future. What's more, he said, innovation from those companies has been seriously lacking.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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The US government wants in on the public cloud, but needs more transparency
The U.S. federal government is trying to move more into the cloud, but service providers' lack of transparency is harming adoption, according to Arlette Hart, the FBI's chief information security officer. "There's a big piece of cloud that's the 'trust me' model of cloud computing," she said during an on-stage interview at the Structure conference in San Francisco Wednesday. That's a tough sell for organizations like the federal government that have to worry about protecting important data. While Hart said that the federal government wants to get at the "enormous value" in public cloud infrastructure, its interest in moving to public cloud infrastructure is also tied to a need for greater security. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft to acquire data protection firm Secure Islands
Microsoft announced Monday that it has made a deal to acquire Secure Islands, an Israeli company that focuses on protecting companies' data. Neither company disclosed the terms of the deal.The acquisition will help Microsoft level up its Azure Rights Management Service, which lets companies protect files individually and in bulk with tools that ensure they aren't opened or modified by people who are unauthorized to do so. Secure Islands's services include data classification technology that automatically detects the creation of new files from a variety of sources and then applies a protection policy to it. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft details takedown requests in expanded transparency report
In response to growing government demands for data, tech companies have been detailing those requests in transparency reports that elaborate on what gets done when government agencies come calling for users' data.Microsoft just released the latest incarnation of its data on Wednesday, including a new report on requests to get information taken down from the company's services. Those requests, unsurprisingly, are focused on Bing, since it's the Microsoft service most responsible for displaying data to the public. That said, takedown requests came for includes other services, too, such as MSN and OneDrive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Amazon makes it easier to lock down the cloud
If there's a common refrain in enterprise security these days, it's that nobody wants to become the next Sony, Experian, Scottrade, Target or Home Depot. Moving workloads to a public cloud service means that companies can leave some of the day-to-day work of securing their infrastructure to professionals who manage those services. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Amazon makes it easier to lock down the cloud
If there's a common refrain in enterprise security these days, it's that nobody wants to become the next Sony, Experian, Scottrade, Target or Home Depot. Moving workloads to a public cloud service means that companies can leave some of the day-to-day work of securing their infrastructure to professionals who manage those services. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Scottrade had no idea about data breach until the feds showed up
When an organization gets hacked, ideally they'll realize it promptly and warn their users right away. Take crowdfunding site Patreon, which was hacked on Monday and has already informed the world about the problem. Scottrade, an investment brokerage company, is different, and not in a good way.The company announced Friday that it suffered a security breach over a period of several months from late 2013 to early 2014, affecting approximately 4.6 million customers. But in a statement, Scottrade said it had no idea that the breach had occurred until law enforcement officials told them about it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft will release its hackathon help tool to the world
Microsoft is planning to bring its internal tool for running hackathons to the public next year, starting by allowing a few select colleges to test drive it at their own events. It's part of a plan by the company's Garage division to help other organizations get better at handling the administrative side of organizing marathon hack sessions like the three-day-long bonanza Microsoft held in July as part of its Oneweek employee team-building session. Known inside Microsoft as the "Hackathon interactive project site," it was built to help 13,000 employees and interns work on 1,700 projects during the Oneweek hackathon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft and VMware cozy up, forgoing past rivalry
Microsoft's new, more collaborative approach to the computing industry was on display at VMware's annual conference in San Francisco Tuesday, when executives from both companies shared the stage to talk about new device management features in Windows 10.As VMware Executive Vice President Sanjay Poonen explained, VMware and Microsoft, historically fierce rivals, have been working together more closely under the leadership of Satya Nadella. That work has now borne fruit in the form of Project A2, a new service that brings together VMware's AirWatch device management service and its App Volumes application delivery technology. Using Project A2, Windows 10 users can log in to their corporate account, get their device set up for use with a company's resources and then get all the applications they need provided straight from IT. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft may offer some Windows 10 patch notes to enterprises
IT administrators may get more information than originally planned about Windows 10 patches, as Microsoft ponders how much to tell business customers about modifications to the new OS."We've heard that feedback from enterprise customers so we're actively working on how we provide them with information about what's changing and what new capabilities and new value they're getting," Jim Alkove, a vice president in the Windows group, said during a press briefing. It's a change in tone for the company, which previously said that it wouldn't provide detailed information about most Windows 10 patches. That original plan was bad news for IT managers and users who want to know what an update does before they install it. This is more of an issue now that Microsoft is supposed to release more frequent updates over the lifetime of Windows 10, as part of its "Windows as a service" plans, than it did for previous editions of Windows.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft pushes emergency update for Internet Explorer vulnerability
Windows users are encouraged to update their computers as soon as possible, after Microsoft pushed out a patch for an issue in Internet Explorer that lets attackers remotely run malicious code with whatever privileges the current user has. The "Critical" vulnerability affects Internet Explorer versions 7 through 11 on Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and Vista. Windows Server 2008, 2012, 2012 R2 and the Windows Server Technical Preview are all effected, but Internet Explorer runs in a "Enhanced Security Configuration" that should mitigate the effects of this problem. The "out-of-band" patch was released outside Microsoft's typical Patch Tuesday release cycle and allows users and administrators to update their computers quickly. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Free Windows 10 upgrade will have ‘no financial impact’ on Microsoft
When Microsoft announced that it would be offering consumers a free upgrade to Windows 10, it got a lot of people talking. After all, the company charged $199 per license for consumers to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional just six years ago. So clearly, a free upgrade to a new OS would have to have a big impact on Microsoft’s business, right?Not so much, according to Katherine Egbert, a managing director and senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray. She said in an email that because most people get a new version of Windows when they buy a new computer, the decision to offer free upgrades will have “no financial impact” on Microsoft. The company will still make money from PC manufacturers who have to license Windows 10 for the new hardware that they sell.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft’s Surface Hub collaboration tool delayed until 2016
People who pre-ordered the Surface Hub from Microsoft were notified Wednesday that their mega-display and conference room collaboration tool won’t arrive until 2016, at least four months after Microsoft originally planned.Pre-orders for the Surface Hub, which is a massive touch-sensitive and camera-equipped display designed to help people work together in an office and across the Web, opened July 1. Following strong demand for the devices, Microsoft said two weeks later that it would be reworking its manufacturing processes to keep up with interest, and would have to delay the devices’ roll-out. Wednesday’s announcement means companies that planned to install the devices know when to expect their new hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Meet Sundar Pichai, Google’s new CEO
As part of a corporate reshuffle announced Monday, Sundar Pichai has been named the CEO of Google as it becomes a subsidiary of a new company called Alphabet. It’s yet another step up for the 43-year-old executive who has been on a meteoric rise through Google’s corporate structure. Last October, Pichai was named Google’s head of product, which put him in charge of the company’s key businesses like Android, search and Chrome, while then-CEO Larry Page stepped back from the day-to-day responsibility of managing those parts of the company. This corporate restructuring seems to be another move along that path, since Page will become CEO of Alphabet, which will directly control businesses like the Calico life extension and Google X research and development divisions that aren’t in line with Google’s core business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Opera Software considers sale after lowering financial expectations
Opera Software, the company behind the Web browser of the same name, may be seeking a buyer after the company announced lowered expectations for its quarterly and annual financial results.The Norwegian browser maker previously said that it expected revenue of $630 million - 650 million in 2015, but revised that figure Friday to between $600 million and $618 million. It also said that its quarterly revenue would be $146 million, which is at the very bottom of its guidance range for the quarter and $5 million below the expectations of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.Opera’s reduced expectations are a result of lower-than-anticipated returns from company’s mobile advertising business, specifically the non-Instant Play video advertising products from AdColony. While Opera is probably best known for its Web browser, the company actually makes most of its money from its advertising business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Microsoft will let shareholders nominate board members
Microsoft added a provision to its bylaws Friday that allowed shareholders with a significant stake in the company to directly nominate up to two candidates to its board of directors.With the change, Microsoft will allow consortiums of up to 20 shareholders, who have owned a combined 3 percent stake in Microsoft for the past three years, to put forward nominations for up to 2 candidates or 20 percent of the board, whichever is larger. Functionally, that means a very small number of people and institutional investors have the power to nominate board members through the process.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here