There are only two types of enterprises it seems. Enterprises who have paid cyber extortionists to recover data, and those that have not yet paid.The outlook is bad and getting worse
According to IBM Security’s report on Ransomware (pdf – sign in required):
“Almost one in two executives (46 percent) has some experience with ransomware attacks in the workplace, and 70 percent of that 46 percent have paid to get data back."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Privacy Shield, the new international framework allowing companies to transfer customer data between the EU and the U.S., is getting good reviews so far, but some companies aren't betting on it for the long term.Companies using Privacy Shield worry that it may face the same fate as long-used predecessor the Safe Harbor Framework, which was overturned by the European Court of Justice in October 2015 after revelations of mass surveillance by the U.S National Security Agency. Digital Rights Ireland and French civil liberties group La Quadrature du Net have also challenged Privacy Shield in court, saying the new framework doesn't adequately protect Europeans' privacy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Procrastination has once again turned into desperation. "Maybe I could whittle a pan flute from those broken chair legs in the basement", you're thinking. Snap out of it! Stay calm and remind yourself that with just a few minutes on Amazon right now you can still snag great gifts for anyone left on your list, and have them at your doorstep with plenty of time to gift wrap. Amazon's "last minute deals" page right here features great deals in almost any department, guaranteed by Amazon to arrive by Christmas. You need Amazon Prime to take advantage of free 2-day shipping, so if you don't have a membership, take a minute to sign up for a free 30 day trial and feel the weight lift from your shoulders. But do it soon -- once the 2-day window closes, things will get ugly. Breathe deeply and go get the job done: See Amazon's Last Minute Deals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
On Feb. 5, employees at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, started having network access problems that prevented electronic communications. Over the next few days, they learned that the hospital was the victim of a ransomware attack that encrypted files on multiple computers.After several days during which staff had to resort to pen and paper for some record keeping, the hospital decided to pay the $17,000 ransom -- the equivalent of 40 bitcoins that the attackers had requested. It was deemed to be the fastest way to restore the affected files and systems.This was to be the first in a string of ransomware attacks that affected multiple healthcare organizations in the U.S. over the following months, including the Chino Valley Medical Center, the Desert Valley Hospital and Methodist Hospital in Henderson, Kentucky.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft announced a series of partnerships with location-based services in the hopes of creating what it calls a "world graph," covering all kinds of locations and objects and how they work together. The first was a multi-year deal to use HERE mapping data across a number of its own services, such as Cortana and Bing Maps. Audi, BMW and Daimler purchased HERE from Nokia last year for €2.8 billion and use it in their GPS systems. Microsoft also announced a partnership with a number of mapping technology leaders, including HERE, TomTom and EsriI, to create what it describes as a "world graph" that details "a new data index of physical places, objects and devices and their interconnectivity." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last week’s tech news cycle was dominated by coverage of the high-profile meeting between the incoming Trump administration and a star-studded roster of tech leaders. Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Alphabet’s (Google)’s Larry Page, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Oracle’s Sasha Catz,, IBM’s Ginny Rommety and others were summoned to Trump Tower for a heavily hyped sitdown that provided some amazing optics. (Who can forget the meme of Bezos, Page, and Sandberg looking incredibly glum at the table?) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The internet of things (IoT) is all about connecting devices to the internet so that they can talk to each other and to us, to make life more convenient. That might mean turning on the lights when we get up, or allowing us to use our phones to see who’s at the front door, even when we're at the office. The potential applications are endless.
There are already more than 6 billion connected "things," and that's set to rise to more than 20 billion by 2020, according to Gartner.
But the enthusiasm for all things IoT has blinded us to the potential risks. Too many companies, keen to gain a foothold in the market, have rushed out products that lack basic security protocols. The risks here are enormous.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Privacy groups have complained to the Federal Trade Commission that Google is encroaching on user privacy through a policy change in June that allows it to combine personally-identifiable information with browsing data collected by its DoubleClick digital advertising service.The complaint by Consumer Watchdog and Privacy Rights Clearing House alleged that Google has created “super-profiles” as it can track user activity on Android mobile phones, with an 88 percent market share of smartphones worldwide, "and from any website that uses Google Analytics, hosts YouTube videos, or displays ads served by DoubleClick or AdSense."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Organizations are rapidly jumping on the digital transformation bandwagon. Those that don’t or delay too long will most likely suffer in the long run. The means to leverage technology and processes to transform the business and user experience are critical for the survival of organizations. In the last few years, we’ve seen several businesses cease or struggle to exist due to fierce competition, changing business model, user behavior and lack of digital transformation. The journey to digital transformation may not look exactly the same for each business, but the collaboration between Lines of Business (LoBs) and IT must be tighter than ever before. This is simply because LoBs needs to move at a much faster pace in delivering business value and outcomes, and IT plays a key role in enabling them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Unparalleled speed and strength. If that's what you're looking for in your next USB Lightning cable, then consider this one from Zeceen which is made with a sturdy Zinc alloy Connector and a high-strength yet fully flexible stainless steel jacket spring wire – a design that promises not to disintegrate even under extreme conditions like bad weather or rough handling. Zeceen also promises a 12-month satisfaction guarantee. Its typical list price of $19.99 on Amazon has been reduced 15% to $16.97 for this virtually unbreakable 3.3-foot cable. See it on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Use of cellphone spying technology has become widespread among U.S. law enforcement agencies and should be better regulated, according to a new congressional report.Not only is the FBI deploying the technology, commonly called "Stingray" after one product made by Harris Corp., but so are state and local police. And there are concerns that some law enforcement agencies have used Stingrays without securing search warrants, said the report from House Committee on Oversight and Reform, published on Monday.“Absent proper oversight and safeguards, the domestic use of (Stingrays) may well infringe upon the constitutional rights of citizens to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures,” it said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung has upgraded laptops in its Notebook 9 series with Intel's latest Kaby Lake chips, jumping ahead of rivals expected to announce new PCs at CES.The Notebook 9 laptops, which have 13.3- and 15-inch screens, are lightweight laptops with full HD displays. Samsung didn't share specifics of chips in the laptops, which will be unveiled by Intel at January's CES.Nonetheless, there are some things you can expect. The new laptops will be faster than older models and also have better graphics. PC makers are measuring a performance improvement of about 5 percent to 15 percent improvement in Kaby Lake performance compared to the predecessor Skylake. Integrated graphics will be able to handle video beyond 1080p resolution.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Interesting posts this week from a few Cisco executives taking a look forward into what should be a very interesting networking world in 2017.+More on Network World: 5 enterprise technologies that will shake things up in 2017+First up was Cisco’s Jeff Reed, Senior Vice President Enterprise Infrastructure and Solutions Group who had a blog on the top 10 list for future 2017 network trends. It reads as follow:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lynda.com, the online learning unit of LinkedIn, has reset passwords for some of its users after it discovered recently that an unauthorized external party had accessed a database containing user data.The passwords of close to 55,000 affected users were reset as a precautionary measure and they have been notified of the issue, LinkedIn said in a statement over the weekend.The professional network is also notifying about 9.5 million Lynda.com users who “had learner data, but no protected password information,” in the breached database. “We have no evidence that any of this data has been made publicly available and we have taken additional steps to secure Lynda.com accounts,” according to the statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Designed and Engineered by Cambridge SoundWorks to deliver richer fuller bass; the PLUS delivers surprising bass from such a small speaker, excellent bass performance across each type of music genre. The PLUS battery technology and power saving design allows this speaker to play up to 30 hours from a full charge with volume set up to 2/3 of maximum playing volume. IPX5 water resistance makes the unit splashproof, rainproof, dustproof, and sandproof. Check out the dramatically discounted OontZ Angle 3 PLUS from Cambridge Soundworks now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AeroGardens are the world’s leading indoor gardening systems. You can grow up to 6 plants in this garden and they’ll love the 20 watts of high performance, energy efficient LED lighting. The LED lights are tuned to the specific spectrum that allows plants to maximize photosynthesis, resulting in rapid, natural growth and abundant harvests. The LED lights concentrate daylight white LEDs for fast growth, blue LEDs for bigger yields, and red LEDs for more flowers and fruit. With ideal lighting and optimally balanced levels of water and nutrients, plants grow up to 5 times faster than when grown in soil. Its typical list price of $159.95 has been reduced 44% to $89.95. See it on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to punish Russia for hacking of Democratic groups and figures during the election season with actions that’ll occur in secret and others that’ll be made public.“Our goal continues to be to send a clear message to Russia or others not to do this to us because we can do stuff to you,” Obama said in a press conference.The President stopped short of explicitly blaming Russian president Vladimir Putin for directing the alleged hacks, but said that, “not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin.”Obama met Putin during a summit in China in September and told him to "cut it out" and or else "there would be some serious consequences if he didn't," he said. After that meeting, the hacking attempts stopped but Wikileaks had already been given copies of stolen documents.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Zinc, a messaging platform for businesses, announced Friday that it is launching a set of new features aimed at helping desk-less workers get the most out of enterprise instant messaging.
First off, the company is launching Broadcasts, a way for businesses to send employees rich notifications that block out all of the other messages and force users to close then before they can resume messaging. Administrators will be able to see which employees have seen and dismissed the notification.
In addition, the company rolled out support for Organizations, which let administrators subdivide all of the Zinc users in their company into a set of smaller groups.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As 2016 draws to a close, a new study suggests big data is growing in maturity and surging in the cloud.AtScale, which specializes in BI on Hadoop using OLAP-like cubes, recently conducted a survey of more than 2,550 big data professionals at 1,400 companies across 77 countries. The survey was conducted in conjunction with Cloudera, Hortonworks, MapR, Cognizant, Trifacta and Tableau.[ Analytics 50 winners for 2016 ]
AtScale's 2016 Big Data Maturity Survey found that nearly 70 percent of respondents have been using big data for more than a year (compared with 59 percent last year). Seventy-six percent of respondents are using Hadoop today, and 73 percent say they are now using Hadoop in production (compared with 65 percent last year). Additionally, 74 percent have more than 10 Hadoop nodes and 20 percent 20 percent have more than 100 nodes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
“Whoever makes two ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before, deserves better of mankind, and does more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together”.Steven Valenscin, the founder of Growers exemplifies this 400-year-old quote by Jonathan Swift.Steven grew up working on his family farm in Washington State. After serving in the US Navy, He started North Carolina’s first private soil testing laboratory and then combined his passion for soil fertility and farming to found Growers. Steven aims to simplify the complex world of agronomy into precise farm management decisions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here