Salesforce.com has agreed to buy user data management platform Krux Digital, potentially allowing businesses to process even more data in their CRM systems.Krux describes its business as "capturing, unifying, and activating data signatures across every device and every channel, in real time."Essentially, it performs the tracking underlying behavioral advertising, handling 200 billion "data collection events" on three billion browsers and devices (desktop, mobile, tablet and set-top) each month.With that staggering volume of data, "Krux will extend the Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s audience segmentation and targeting capabilities to power consumer marketing with even more precision, at scale," Krux CEO and co-founder Tom Chavez wrote on the company blog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft is adding to its European cloud infrastructure, with plans to open new data centers in France next year, CEO Satya Nadella said Monday.The company has already spent US$3 billion growing its European cloud capabilities. These include data centers in the U.K. hosting Azure and Office 365 services, and in Germany hosting Azure.The French data centers will host Dynamics 365, Microsoft's new ERP and CRM offering, in addition to Azure and Office 365.The company has already won over the the U.K.'s Ministry of Defence and German auto parts manufacturer ZF to its cloud services. Ireland's Health Service Executive and the Franco-Japanese car-making partnership Renault-Nissan Alliance are also customers, it said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The European Commission is preparing to fine Google for paying smartphone makers to exclusively use its search engine on their mobile devices, according to Reuters.The European Union's antitrust authority filed a so-called statement of objections against Google in April, accusing it of forcing smartphone makers to exclusively use its search engine if they want access to the Play Store, through which phone users can download and purchase other apps.Now the Commission has sent a redacted copy of that statement of objections to complainants, Reuters reported after seeing the document.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SAP has bought IoT software developer Plat.One, marking the start of a plan to invest US$2 billion in the internet of things over the next five years.Some of those billions will be spent on the creation of IoT development labs around the world, SAP said Wednesday. It already has plans for such labs in Berlin, Johannesburg, Munich, Palo Alto, Shanghai and São Leopoldo in Brazil. The company is also rolling out a series of "jump-start" and "accelerator" IoT software packages for particular industries, to help them monitor and control equipment.Another compoent of SAP's IoT plan is to acquire new businesses, the latest of which is Plat.One. This company makes a platform that helps smart devices talk to one another and with a central database, translating between the different protocols they use to communicate. Plat.One says it manages 200,000 devices for 25 enterprise customers, including three telecommunications companies: BT, T-Systems and Telecom Italia.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Banks stopped three new attempts to abuse the Swift financial transfer network this summer, its CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt said Monday, as he announced Swift's plan to impose tighter security controls on its customers.Swift provides the network that banks use to exchange funds internationally, and hit the headlines in February when attackers almost got away with a billion-dollar heist at Bangladesh Bank. In the end, they only succeeded in stealing US$81 million after hacking bank systems connected to the Swift network.That prompted Swift to ratchet up security around its systems, which weren't themselves breached, updating the software it provides banks and adding new audit and verification tools.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Banks stopped three new attempts to abuse the Swift financial transfer network this summer, its CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt said Monday, as he announced Swift's plan to impose tighter security controls on its customers.Swift provides the network that banks use to exchange funds internationally, and hit the headlines in February when attackers almost got away with a billion-dollar heist at Bangladesh Bank. In the end, they only succeeded in stealing US$81 million after hacking bank systems connected to the Swift network.That prompted Swift to ratchet up security around its systems, which weren't themselves breached, updating the software it provides banks and adding new audit and verification tools.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Today's savvy bank robbers don't break into vaults looking for gold or diamonds: They're more likely to be hacking networks looking for access to the Swift payment system. Illusive Networks wants to catch them in the act.In February, hackers exploited Bangladesh Bank's access to the Swift fund transfer network to steal US$81 million -- and almost got away with $951 million.They had infiltrated the bank's network, installing malware on the Swift Alliance Access server that exchanged messages with the gateway to Swift's secure fund transfer system. They used the bank's Swift credentials to order payments, while their malware interfered with the printing of confirmation messages, delaying the bank's discovery of the electronic heist.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Today's savvy bank robbers don't break into vaults looking for gold or diamonds: They're more likely to be hacking networks looking for access to the Swift payment system. Illusive Networks wants to catch them in the act.In February, hackers exploited Bangladesh Bank's access to the Swift fund transfer network to steal US$81 million -- and almost got away with $951 million.They had infiltrated the bank's network, installing malware on the Swift Alliance Access server that exchanged messages with the gateway to Swift's secure fund transfer system. They used the bank's Swift credentials to order payments, while their malware interfered with the printing of confirmation messages, delaying the bank's discovery of the electronic heist.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The cost of complying with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation might seem like something best deferred until it enters force in 2018 -- but working on compliance just might boost profit, not reduce it.The GDPR, the EU's latest rewrite of its data privacy laws, doesn't enter effect until May 25, 2018, but already IT companies are talking up their software and services for complying with the new rules.It's not just an issue for EU enterprises: Any company processing the personal information of EU citizens is affected.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Swift is introducing a new reporting system to help banks identify fraudulent payments made over its financial transfer network -- but the reports will arrive up to a day too late to stop them.Over the last year, cybercriminals have hacked systems at a number of banks, using their credentials to issue fraudulent payment instructions over the Swift network. Swift's network wasn't comprimised, but because genuine credentials were used on authorized bank terminals, no alarms were raised until some time after the transfers were made, leaving victims struggling to recover their funds from the destination accounts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Swift is introducing a new reporting system to help banks identify fraudulent payments made over its financial transfer network -- but the reports will arrive up to a day too late to stop them.Over the last year, cybercriminals have hacked systems at a number of banks, using their credentials to issue fraudulent payment instructions over the Swift network. Swift's network wasn't comprimised, but because genuine credentials were used on authorized bank terminals, no alarms were raised until some time after the transfers were made, leaving victims struggling to recover their funds from the destination accounts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Safer passengers and healthier drivers might be among the outcomes of a new trial by a German software company and a Japanese telecommunications operator.NTT, the Japanese co-inventor of a sensing fabric used in health-monitoring clothing, is pairing up with business software developer SAP to collect and process real-time data on drivers' heart rate and alertness.SAP already sells a real-time analytics tool, Vehicle Insights, for processing data from connected vehicles.In the trial with NTT it will add information from NTT's IoT analytics platform to the database, allowing the analytics system to look for -- and perhaps act on -- links between drivers' state of health and other vehicle telemetry.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Free Wi-Fi for all: That was one of the proposals to come out of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's annual State of the European Union address on Wednesday.The project, WIFI4EU (Wi-Fi for you), aims to put free Wi-Fi hotspots open to all EU citizens in parks, squares, libraries and other public buildings.The Commission will provide €120 million (US$135 million) through 2019 to subsidize the purchase and installation of Wi-Fi hotspots in 6,000 or more locations, but the provision of bandwidth and ongoing maintenance will be left to the local community.The hotspots will be open to all EU citizens -- although given the budget, it's unlikely many of them will be able to get a signal without a long walk.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
HP has a plan to offset its declining printer revenue: Buy the printing business of Samsung Electronics.It hopes the deal, valued at US$1.05 billion, will help it enlarge its position in the market for photocopiers, which it values at $55 billion annually.The key to this, HP says, is Samsung's portfolio of multi-function laser printers, capable of handling A3 paper.Along with the printers, HP will also acquire a portfolio of 6,500 printing patents and a staff of 6,000, including 1,300 researchers and engineers.In buying Samsung's laser printing expertise, HP could be seeking to reduce its reliance on Canon, which today supplies all HP's laser printer mechanisms and cartridges. Canon and HP said their existing partnership will continue, however.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.K. government has published a report on the staggering scale of surveillance in the country last year.The report, compiled by the Interception of Communications Commissioner's Office (IOCCO), covers the surveillance activities of the U.K.'s three main intelligence agencies (MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service, and GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters), the tax authority, and a number of police forces.It shows that warrants for the interception of communications rose 9 percent and that authorities continue to collect communications metadata -- information about who called or connected to whom, when, how often -- with abandon. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.K. government has published a report on the staggering scale of surveillance in the country last year.The report, compiled by the Interception of Communications Commissioner's Office (IOCCO), covers the surveillance activities of the U.K.'s three main intelligence agencies (MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service, and GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters), the tax authority, and a number of police forces.It shows that warrants for the interception of communications rose 9 percent and that authorities continue to collect communications metadata -- information about who called or connected to whom, when, how often -- with abandon. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Bernard Barbier, a former head of the French signals intelligence service, shared a few stories with students of CentraleSupélec, the elite engineering school from which he graduated in 1976, at a symposium this summer.There was that time he caught the U.S. National Security Agency delving into computers at the Elysée Palace, residence of the French president, for example. And flew to Washington to tell them they'd been found out. Or when the Canadians said they -- and the Iranians, the Spaniards, the Algerians and a few others -- had all been hacked by a Frenchman, and they were totally right, although the French government denied it.These little confessions to the members of a student association at his old school, though, have reached a somewhat larger audience than he may have planned on.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Bernard Barbier, a former head of the French signals intelligence service, shared a few stories with students of CentraleSupélec, the elite engineering school from which he graduated in 1976, at a symposium this summer.There was that time he caught the U.S. National Security Agency delving into computers at the Elysée Palace, residence of the French president, for example. And flew to Washington to tell them they'd been found out. Or when the Canadians said they -- and the Iranians, the Spaniards, the Algerians and a few others -- had all been hacked by a Frenchman, and they were totally right, although the French government denied it.These little confessions to the members of a student association at his old school, though, have reached a somewhat larger audience than he may have planned on.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An agreement to send Canadian authorities passenger name record (PNR) data for flights from the European Union cannot be entered into in its current form, a top European Union judge has said.That's because parts of the draft agreement are incompatible with EU citizens' fundamental privacy rights, according to Paolo Mengozzi, Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the EU, in a legal opinion issued Thursday.His opinion, on a case brought by the European Parliament, is only advisory, and it still remains for the CJEU to make a final ruling on the matter.But if the court follows his advice, it could disrupt the European Commission's plans for a new directive on the sharing of PNR data among EU member states and with other countries. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An agreement to send Canadian authorities passenger name record (PNR) data for flights from the European Union cannot be entered into in its current form, a top European Union judge has said.That's because parts of the draft agreement are incompatible with EU citizens' fundamental privacy rights, according to Paolo Mengozzi, Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the EU, in a legal opinion issued Thursday.His opinion, on a case brought by the European Parliament, is only advisory, and it still remains for the CJEU to make a final ruling on the matter.But if the court follows his advice, it could disrupt the European Commission's plans for a new directive on the sharing of PNR data among EU member states and with other countries. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Peter Sayer