For a limited time, if you're an Amazon Prime Member (or have a free trial -- get one here) you'll see the price drop an extra 20% on Halo Wars 2 Ultimate Edition for Xbox One. Price drop activates when you add it to your cart, and sinks the price from $79.88 to $63.99. Combining tactical combat with card-based strategy, your deck is your army in all new Blitz mode as you build collections of powerful Halo vehicles and troops and command those units in fast-action matches. See the discounted Halo Wars 2 Ultimate Edition on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Everyone knows corporate data breaches can be expensive, but does anyone really know exactly how expensive? Recent estimates for the average cost have landed all over the map, ranging from $4 million to $7 million. But when it comes to the top end of the scale, those appraisals turn out to be laughably small.+ Also on Network World: Everything you know about cyberwar is wrong +
The massive Yahoo data breaches of 2013 and 2014 now have a real cost attached to them, and it’s a couple orders of magnitude larger than those piddly estimates. Simply put, the breaches forced Yahoo to renegotiate its sale to Verizon, cutting the price by $250 million to $350 million. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
To misquote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the Apple Genius Bar, but that's just peanuts to space.And out there, in the vast reaches of the cosmos, continuously streaming towards Earth are what are called cosmic rays which are protons and atomic nuclei theorized to come from both supernovae explosions and probably the centers of galaxies. The earth is continuously bombarded by these alien particles which, in turn, collide with the atmosphere and generate a whole range of secondary particles including neutrons, muons, pions and alpha particles. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
European Union privacy watchdogs are still not happy with Windows 10's gathering of data about its users, over a year after they first wrote to Microsoft to complain.While the company has developed ways to give users more control over what data is collected, their consent to its collection cannot be valid without further explanation, according to the Article 29 Working Party, an umbrella body for the EU's national privacy regulators.The working party welcomed Microsoft's introduction of five new options in Windows 10 to limit or switch off certain kinds of data processing, but said they provided insufficient information about their operation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
European Union privacy watchdogs are still not happy with Windows 10's gathering of data about its users, over a year after they first wrote to Microsoft to complain.
While the company has developed ways to give users more control over what data is collected, their consent to its collection cannot be valid without further explanation, according to the Article 29 Working Party, an umbrella body for the EU's national privacy regulators.
The working party welcomed Microsoft's introduction of five new options in Windows 10 to limit or switch off certain kinds of data processing, but said they provided insufficient information about their operation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of Raspberry Pi's weaknesses is a lack of wireless technologies, which limits its communications capabilities with other devices. One new chipset from Qualcomm could help fill that gap.The QCA4020 chipset packs in Bluetooth Low Energy 5, ZigBee 3.0, WiFi 802.11n, and OpenThread wireless communications protocols.The chipset is like a mini-developer board -- an integrated chipset with an ARM-based CPU. It can be used to create smart home or industrial devices.It can also serve as a wireless access point for Raspberry Pi and other developer boards used to make smart gadgets, drones, robots, and industrial devices. It has a number of connector protocols and can work with Arduino boards.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The hackers behind a sophisticated attack campaign that has recently targeted financial organizations around the world have intentionally inserted Russian words and commands into their malware in an attempt to throw investigators off.Researchers from cybersecurity firm BAE Systems have recently obtained and analyzed additional malware samples related to an attack campaign that has targeted 104 organizations -- most of them banks -- from 31 different countries.They found multiple commands and strings in the malware that appear to have been translated into Russian using online tools, the results making little sense to a native Russian speaker.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The combination of heated competition and high customer expectations is feeding the demand for greater operational agility in every organization. Employees must have the ability to transform massive amounts of data into actionable insight while delivering the superior service customers demand. That calls for a more responsive, reliable IT infrastructure—but organizations also need to minimize delays, costs, and downtime while they make that infrastructure more agile.Although IT teams are under pressure to respond promptly and cost-effectively to changes in both the market and the IT environment, it's impossible to predict new demands from the lines of business, new competitive threats, or how much bandwidth to allocate for applications that don't yet exist. All you really know is that you must prepare your infrastructure for any possibility.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ever since smart thermostat maker Nest burst onto the scene with its unique combination of beautiful design and A.I.-powered automation, there has been increasing attention about how A.I. can be applied to the so-called smart home. The fact that Google acquired Nest and then, by all accounts, proceeded to screw up the opportunity that Nest created, doesn't in any way lessen the importance and opportunity that smart homes creates.
So it was interesting to hear of another play, this time a combined software and hardware one.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Swimming upstream?Image by ThinkstockIf you’re a small to midsized business and you wing it when it comes to network management and security then it’s not a question of if you will have a disaster, it’s merely a question of when. Why? Because malware, accidents and disasters are all waiting in the wings to pop out and make your life hell and cost you lots of money. Now I won’t lie to you, getting insulated from the bad stuff isn’t cheap, but if you think security and reliability is expensive, try fixing a disaster. Here are 12 steps that will, in the long run, make your business safer. Think you’ve got this covered? How many have you got in place?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When you get involved in the actual wiring of networks, one of the things you find yourself checking over and over is whether Ethernet ports are actually live along with do they connect to DHCP, is the Internet visible, and so on. Typically you’ll grab your laptop, plug it in and run a few tests but while this works, you might describe it as “sub-optimal” because how often have you tried to do exactly this in a ceiling void? In a cramped comms cupboard? Somewhere in the bowels of a rack? In every one of those situations it’s just time consuming and annoying to have to fiddle around and juggle with your laptop. The Netool network port analyzer aims to be a better tool for doing exactly this.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cheese Movers International’s restructuring resulted in some employees being unhappy with either their new role or the new management. And unhappy employees, especially those who know the system well and have access, can become major problems for companies.Verizon’s RISK Team was called in because the multinational company had heard rumblings among the disgruntled employees and found some negative comments online. While there was no evidence of a data breach, Cheese Movers' upper management was concerned something was coming.This is just one case found in Verizon’s recently released annual breach report, which examines some of the cases where the RISK Team was called in to hunt down culprits. The “ride–along edition” of Verizon’s report provides a first-person perspective of the company that calls in the heavy hitters to find out why the network has slowed, who defaced a website or where a leak is coming from. With all the accounts, the names of the companies have been changed to protect the brand from public ridicule.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Publicly traded companies are required by law to disclose only their global headcount, and that's all the information many of them provide. That keeps certain information a secret. These companies may be shrinking their U.S. headcount as they grow their overseas workforces. Six U.S. senators want to change that.These senators -- all Democrats -- are co-sponsoring legislation, introduced Thursday, that would require publicly traded companies to disclose their numbers of employees by location, by state, and by country."It's hard to hold companies accountable for gaming the system and shipping jobs overseas when it's not even known where their employees are located," said Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), in a statement. One of the key reasons this bill, called the Outsourcing Accountability Act, was introduced is because it is difficult to find information about the number of jobs that are moved offshore.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The G502 features the most advanced optical sensor for maximum tracking accuracy. Customize RGB lighting or sync it with other Logitech G products, set up custom profiles for your games, adjust sensitivity from 200 up to 12,000 DPI and position five 3.6g weights for just the right balance and feel. The G502 averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 1,000 people on Amazon, where its typical list price of $80 has been reduced to $58. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The G502 features the most advanced optical sensor for maximum tracking accuracy. Customize RGB lighting or sync it with other Logitech G products, set up custom profiles for your games, adjust sensitivity from 200 up to 12,000 DPI and position five 3.6g weights for just the right balance and feel. The G502 averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 1,000 people on Amazon, where its typical list price of $80 has been reduced to $56. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Almost 20 years ago, Chris Wysopal was among a group of hackers who testified before U.S. Congress, warning it about the dangers of the internet.Unfortunately, the U.S. government is still struggling to act, he said. "You’re just going to keep ending up with the status quo," he said, pointing to the U.S. government's failure to regulate the tech industry or incentivize any change.It’s a feeling that was shared by the experts who attended this week’s RSA cybersecurity show. Clearly, the U.S. government needs to do more on cybersecurity, but what? Public and Private sector
Perhaps, the need for U.S. action hasn't been more urgent. In last year's election, Russia was accused of hacking U.S. political groups and figures in an effort to influence the outcome.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In addition to using GPS to calculate distance and pace, the 225 has a built-in accelerometer. This allows it to capture distance and pace data when you’re running on an indoor track or treadmill, with no need for a separate foot pod accessory. Forerunner 225 is the first Garmin GPS running watch with wrist-based heart rate. Now you have the option to run without a heart rate strap. The 225 tracks distance, pace and heart rate, and featured activity tracking to count steps and calories all day. The full features Forerunner 225 averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 400 people on Amazon (read reviews), where its typical list price of $220 is currently reduced to the very low price of $139, one of its lowest prices to date. See the deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Internal Revenue Service rounded up some of the usual suspects in its annual look at the Dirty Dozen scams you need to watch out for this year.
It should come as no surprise that the IRS saw a big spike in phishing and malware incidents during the 2016 tax season because the agency has been very public about its battle with this scourge.
Just this month the IRS issued another warning about what it called a dangerous, evolving W-2 scams that are targeting corporations, school districts and other public and private concerns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With so many rumors surrounding the iPhone 8, it's been easy to lose sight of the fact that we're just a few short months away from seeing the next-generation version of iOS, the mobile OS that powers Apple's iconic smartphones.Earlier today, Apple announced that WWDC 2017 will be held from June 5-9 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. The annual developer's conference is where Apple will take the wraps off of iOS 11 while also showing us what the future of macOS, tvOS and watchOS will look like."Each year during WWDC," Apple's press release reads, "millions of talented developers around the world learn about Apple's breakthrough platform technologies ranging from programming languages like Swift to breakthrough developer APIs like SiriKit, HomeKit, HealthKit and CarPlay. These Apple technologies inspire developers to continue creating incredible experiences for every aspect of customers’ lives and improve the way they manage their smart homes, cars, health and more for over one billion active Apple devices."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here