In the digital marketplace, every business relies upon data backups. For small companies, this is especially important, as an IT problem can mean escalating downtime with financially catastrophic results. Newer businesses are especially vulnerable to infrastructure failures, with 80% of UK start-ups failing within the first year. What do you need to do to keep your company safe? Read on and see.
All companies benefit from teamwork, and when it comes to IT, this can be crucial. Today’s small businesses are more reliant than ever before on the digital marketplace, but hiring an in-house expert is a prohibitive expense for most organisations. As a result, many smaller companies find their IT riddled with insecurities and inefficiencies. Experts offer a range of support options. Here’s what to expect.
Small businesses need to take extra care to ensure their data is safe, secure, and accessible. One of the most successful strategies is using an IT support service that offers offsite server backup solutions. These come in all shapes and sizes, so it helps to know what’s available. Here’s the latest in digital safety.
Is IT support really worth it? It’s a question that lots of companies were asking themselves back in 2019 when the world was a much simpler place. Today, as businesses are recognising that digital capabilities are about so much more than just productivity and efficiency, IT support has become a lifeline. But what should you be looking for? Here’s our quick insider’s guide.
Facebook has begun notifying any of those users whose data is known to have been harvested and shared with data mining firm Cambridge Analytica.
On Your News Feed
If you are one of the 87 million people whose data has been shared, 1 million of whom are in the UK, when you log into your Facebook account, you will see a detailed message beginning with the words “We understand the importance of keeping your data safe.”
It is now understood that the data of 2.2 billion Facebook users was actually shared by Facebook, and all of these users will be receiving a message entitled “Protecting Your Information”. This message will include a link which will allow them to see what apps they use, and what information they have shared with those apps. Users will also be given the option to stop sharing information with the apps or to stop any access to third-party apps altogether.
The latest energy report from Apple has stated that the company has hit a new milestone in green energy usage by making all of its 43 data centre sites across the world operate using 100% renewable energy.
Not Quite What It Seems
Although the effort is admirable, the claim that has led Apple’s CEO Tim Cook to stress that the company is committed to leaving the world better than it found it, is not as transparent as it appears.
It is not possible for all the data centres to be connected to a completely renewable energy supply at the moment, so what Apple actually means is that the data centres can be 100% ‘renewables powered’, thanks to the clean energy that Apple buys and puts back into the power grid that can be offset against its global power consumption.
Dubai is once again in the news for being an adopter of new technologies after an announcement that it will be hosting a trial of digital vehicle number plates next month.
Smart Plates
The ‘smart plates’ will have digital screens, GPS and transmitters, and according to the head of the Vehicle Licensing Department at Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), the digital plates will make life easier for drivers.
The trial of the new plates is scheduled to start next month and end in November, and one of the key things that is being tested, as well as the Roads and Transport Authority’s (RTA) Tag2Connect (T2C) platform, is thought to be whether any issues / problems may be caused to the hardware and operation of the plates by Dubai’s desert climate.
A new report by security firm Positive Technologies shows that 1 in 10 employees would fall for a social engineering attack.
What Is A Social Engineering Attack?
Social engineering cyber-attacks rely upon the element of human error e.g. convincing / fooling a person into downloading malicious files, unwittingly corresponding with cyber-criminals, sharing contact information about employees and transferring money to hackers’ accounts, or clicking on phishing links.
Test
The results of the report are based on ‘penetration tests’ which involved sending 3,300 emails to employees containing links to websites, password entry forms and attachments. As the name suggests, a penetration test is an authorised simulated attack on a computer system, which is performed in order to evaluate the security of that system.
Reports that the state-run university-based ‘Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology’ (KAIST) has been working on military robot research with defence company Hanwa have resulted in threats of a boycott by more than 50 AI researchers from 30 countries.
Killer Robots?
Although the threat of the boycott of KAIST appears to have been effective in exposing and causing KAIST to agree to stop any work related to the development of lethal autonomous weapons (killer robots), the story has raised questions about ethical red-lines and the regulation of technology in this area.
KAIST opened its research centre for the convergence of national defence and artificial intelligence on 20 February, with the reported intention of providing a foundation for developing national defence technology. It has been reported that a now-deleted announcement about the work of the centre highlighted a focus on areas like AI-based command and decision systems, navigation algorithms, large-scale unmanned undersea vehicles, AI-based smart aircraft training systems, as well as smart object tracking and recognition technology.
If you’d like a handy way to search your photos and identify important buildings/landmarks, places, names, Wi-Fi passwords and other valuable contextual information depicted in them, Google Lens may be for you.
For example, take a photo of a router’s password sticker and you’ll automatically connect to that network, take a picture of an unknown plant and automatically identify it in Google search results, or take a photograph of foreign text for a translation.
This photo scanning smart camera feature for all Android and iOS users works through the official Google Photos app. Here’s how: