Qualcomm has agreed to pay US$19.5 million to settle a gender discrimination class action lawsuit that alleged that women at the company get lower pay and have lesser chances of promotion under its current programs.The settlement on behalf of a class of about 3,290 female employees was reached before suit was filed, but still requires the filing of a class complaint and a move for preliminary approval of the agreement from a judge in a federal court in California, according to Sanford Heisler, the legal firm representing the women.The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California alleges that in Qualcomm’s U.S. operations, women in science, technology, engineering, and math, known together as STEM, and related roles face discrimination in pay and promotions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Alan Masarek has been CEO of Vonage since November 2014. Since then, the company has undergone a transformation, building on its roots as a home phone replacement company to become a leading provider of cloud communications for business. Vonage jump-started its leadership position as a business communications provider through acquisitions and has been very active acquiring companies to complement the core consumer VoIP offering and early SMB offering the company had when Masarek assumed the role. Masarek’s vision is for Vonage to be the global leader in cloud communications by transforming the way people connect and businesses operate through integrated and contextual communications whenever and however people choose to communicate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A cyberespionage group known for targeting diplomatic and government institutions has branched out into many other industries, including aviation, broadcasting, and finance, researchers warn.Known as Patchwork, or Dropping Elephant, the group stands out not only through its use of simple scripts and ready-made attack tools, but also through its interest in Chinese foreign relations.The group's activities were documented earlier this month by researchers from Kaspersky Lab, who noted in their analysis that China's foreign relations efforts appear to represent the main interest of the attackers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A vulnerability across at least eight brands of wireless keyboards lets hackers read keystrokes from 250 feet away, according to wireless security vendor Bastille.The problem is that the keyboards transmit to their associated PCs without encryption, and it’s just a matter of reverse engineering the signals to figure out how to read what keys are being hit, say Bastille researchers. An attacker could inject keystrokes while the keyboard is idle and the machine is logged in, they say, using a dongle that can be fashioned for less than $100.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft is finally bringing one of the best features of its Outlook mobile app to the desktop. Users of Outlook on Mac and Windows will start seeing their inbox separated out into two tabs: Focused and Other.As the name implies, the Focused Inbox is supposed to hold all of a user's important emails, while Other contains everything else. Users can train the system by moving email to and from the Focused Inbox, and establishing rules about certain senders and subjects.When new messages come into the Other inbox, a banner will show up at the top of the list of focused messages letting users see how many new messages are in that section of their inbox, along with a select list of senders.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Verizon, which today announced its intention to purchase Yahoo for $4.8 billion, will be on the hook to Mozilla for over $1 billion through 2019.According to Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, Verizon may be liable for partial payments even if Mozilla cuts ties to Yahoo and seeks another search provider.Earlier this month, Recode and the New York Times claimed that the 2014 Yahoo-Mozilla contact gave Mozilla the right to switch to another search provider if Yahoo was sold.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Anniversary Update for Windows 10 is just around the corner and it’s packed with all kinds of new features. Microsoft is emphasizing the improved Windows Ink functionality, as well as beefed-up Cortana features. But what are Windows 10 users themselves most excited about?To find out, we scoured forums on the Internet, posted inquiries on social media, and even asked for feedback via email. So here, in no particular order, are the features that have Windows users most pumped. What you see below might surprise you, and it just goes to show that often it’s those nice little touches that improve a user’s experience that get the biggest reaction.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A year's worth of features within Windows 10Image by Mark HachmanSince Microsoft rolled out Windows 10 at the end of last July, the company has been busy adding features to the code. Cumulatively, these additions and tweaks have produced the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Making a planImage by PexelsDetails matter when developing an incident response (IR) plan. But, even the most successful IR plans can lack critical information, impeding how quickly normal business operations are restored.This quick guide from Cybereason takes a closer look at nine of the often forgotten, but important steps that you should incorporate into your IR plan.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
5 innovative ways to solve unimportant problemsImage by Envoy/Pacific ContentAll work and no play not only makes Jack a dull boy, it makes for a pretty disengaged workplace. In Silicon Valley, especially, the competition for talent is cutthroat, and offering fun and innovative projects is a great way to attract and retain elite talent.
Digital guest management and visitor sign-in solutions company Envoy's CEO Larry Gadea and his team wanted a way to publicly recognize the efforts of employees. Technology provided the answer: an automated 'sales gong' that would reverberate throughout the office whenever a new subscriber signs up. The solution's built using a Raspberry Pi connected to a series of relays, and the mechanism to ring the gong is written into the main codebase. Any time there's a new subscriber, the system springs into action and rings the gong.
The overall effect is more than just to recognize the efforts of salespeople, marketers and developers within the company, Gadea says. It's to remind Envoy's teams of the "bigger picture" and to build on the culture of innovation and teamwork at the company. "We wanted to remind everyone that all the hard work we're doing is making an Continue reading
Health care organizations were 114 times more likely to hit by ransomware infections than financial firms, and 21 times more likely than educational institutions, according to a new research report by Solutionary.The Omaha-based security firm detects millions of attacks a year, according to threat intelligence analyst Terrance DeJesus. But while health care accounts for just 7.4 percent of the company's client base, it saw 88 percent of all ransomware attacks during the first half of this year."These numbers do not count all of the email delivery or exploit kit activity that happens pre-infection and would be attempts to deliver ransomware," he said. "These are confirmed ransomware outbreaks on directly affected systems."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It is only a few short weeks since Twilio, the communications platform developer, had its stock market debut. It's also a safe bet that in these turbulent times for tech stocks, Twilio spent much time thinking about product and other announcements it could make post-listing to keep the markets positive about its performance.And so it is doing so today with a seemingly small, but actually pretty cool piece of news for the company. Twilio is rolling out Sync, a tool designed to help keep applications in sync across different devices and sessions. The idea being that developers can build experiences that are consistent across the different devices they wish to support. It also means they can add multi-user collaboration capabilities into their applications without having to think about the pesky details of state.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For months now, reports of Apple secretly developing an electric car have been making their way through the rumor mill. And in a move that perhaps signals that Apple's electric car plans are much more than a run-of-the-mill research project, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the company has brought in esteemed hardware executive Bob Mansfield to oversee the entire development process.A longtime Apple employee, Mansfield was highly regarded as both an engineer and executive who helped bring important Apple products and hardware innovations (such as the Retina Display on the iPhone 4) to market. But in recent years, Mansfield quietly stepped away from his day-to-day duties at Apple and instead enjoyed what can accurately be categorized as a pseudo-retirement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SentinelOne is offering a to pay customers $1,000 per endpoint for customers’ machines that get infected by ransomware if its products don’t either block or remediate the problem.The deal is for customers who use the company’s Endpoint Protection Platform in a mandatory configuration running on computers with fully patched operating systems and applications, and that have volume shadow copy service enabled, the Microsoft service that backs up files in use.Customers must also be quick to respond to alerts about infections by adding threats to a blacklist and to remediate and rollback within an hour.The $1,000 per machine offer only applies to payment of ransom, not for costs related to the disruptions ransomware causes. SentinelOne also won’t pay if the ransom doesn’t lead to successful recovery of the encrypted data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The FBI has launched an investigation into the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computers, even as more evidence surfaced of possible Russian involvement in the attack.The data breach was first disclosed last month, when hackers published confidential DNC files, including opposition research on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.Then on Friday, Wikileaks published over 19,000 emails that were stolen from the DNC, some of which now threaten to damage the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While there's a lot of talk about Windows 10's new features for consumers, the forthcoming Anniversary Update also adds a pair of advanced security capabilities aimed at helping IT managers better lock down the computers in their organization.Windows Information Protection aims to make it possible for organizations to compartmentalize business and personal data on the same device. It comes alongside the general release of Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, a system that uses machine learning and Microsoft's cloud to better protect businesses after their security has been breached.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Learn the ins and outs of Windows 10 with this Introduction to Windows 10 Bundle. For $19.99, you’ll get lifetime access to four e-Books and hundreds of video tutorials.If you have any questions on this popular operating system, you’re sure to find the answer here. Flip through the books to learn how to optimize the OS and preserve your privacy and security. The materials also detail how to make life easier on an everyday basis, with detailed explanations on how to integrate Microsoft Office 365, utilize your phone as a personal computer, and much more.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hyper-converged platforms have been red hot of late. Because of this, the number of solution providers has increased significantly. In addition to Simplivity and Nutanix, two of the best-known vendors today, Cisco, VCE, HP and others have recently jumped into the market.
Another solution provider that got its start in India and is on the verge of entering the U.S. market is 8kpc. I recently had the opportunity to interview the company’s president and CEO, Ram Appalaraju, who you may recognize from his stints with Cisco (where he was a vice president) and Enterasys (where he was a vice president and CMO) as well as his advisory work with the ONS. Below are details of the interview: To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Research firm IDC is out with its latest estimates on who the leaders of the cloud systems management market are and some familiar names top the list: VMware, IBM and Microsoft. IDC
IDC Worldwide Cloud systems management software market share
IDC defines cloud systems management as software tooling with the following functionality: Workload scheduling and automation; change, performance and event management; and troubleshooting. IDC expects that by the end of 2017 80% of enterprises will commit to using hybrid cloud computing that uses multiple public cloud providers along with private cloud or non-cloud resources, IDC’s report states.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Globally, 63 percent of companies involved in Internet of Things projects are “seeing significant returns on investment,” says Britain-based telco Vodafone.The supplier and network recently published its annual state-of-the-IoT industry report that it calls an IoT barometer. Vodafone interviewed 1,100 business executives around the world via Machina Research to try to gauge companies’ participation in IoT.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 12 most powerful Internet of Things companies
Budgets are increasing, the vendor says. Almost all companies (89 percent) say they are increasing IoT spend, with many (76 percent) believing the tech genre “will be critical to their success,” the report says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here