If you're one of the relatively few people who use Google+ in something other than an Enterprise setting, be advised that the clock is ticking. Google has just announced that they're sunsetting the service. It will be going offline for consumers at some point over the next ten months. The reasons for their decision are complex. In part, it stems from the fact that the company readily acknowledges that it has "low usage and engagement," which is underscored by the fact that 90 percent of … Read more
Archives for October 2018
Payment Pages Are Being Compromised To Steal Data
Symantec's most recent statistics have revealed a disturbing trend. Malware designed to compromise checkout pages is seeing a big spike in use, with the company reporting a staggering 248,000 attempts since August 13th of this year, with more than a third of them (36 percent) between September 13th through September 20th. As disturbing as those numbers are, that's just the tip of the iceberg. As Symantec notes on their website: "If we compare the week of September 13 to 20 to the same … Read more
How Long Before You Experience A Cyber Attack?
According to this year's Traveler's Risk Index, published by The Traveler's Indemnity Company, a majority of business owners have a somewhat fatalistic view of hacking and data breaches. The index includes 52 percent of survey respondents indicating that they believe a cyber-attack is inevitable. The other statistics in the report paint a grim picture. Here's a quick overview: 55 percent of business owners say that they have not completed a cyber risk assessment 63 percent say that … Read more
Windows 10 Adoption Continues To Grow
Windows 10 is far and away the fastest growing version of the OS in the company's history. It recently hit an installation base of a staggering 700 million devices after about three years on the market. Note that these installation figures include installs not just on PCs, but also on Surface Hubs, Xbox, HoloLenses and smartphones. Unfortunately, as impressive as that number is, it falls well short of Microsoft's original estimate of a billion installs in three years. The smaller than … Read more
Google’s Emergency Location Service Improves 911 Response
Google is making a small but pivotal change as it relates to calls placed to 911 operators. Having recently finalized a complex partnership with RapidSOS and West (two emergency technology companies) and T-Mobile, Google will now send location data from its "Emergency Location Service" when an Android user places a 911 call. If the caller is a T-Mobile customer, the information will be passed along via the carrier. Where 911 call centers use RapidSOS, Google will send the location data via … Read more
G-Suite Users Can View Employee Productivity With Work Insights
Google has recently made some changes and improvements to its G-Suite. It introduces new tools designed to allow managers and admins greater visibility into how the people in their organizations use the G-Suite. Currently, the "Work Insight" tool is available in beta and displays information on how G-Suite is deployed at the team level. While this will be a boon to all organizations, it will be especially valuable for organizations moving from legacy tools to the G-Suite. It will also … Read more
Android May Be Coming To More New Cars Soon
Google scored a major coup in the auto industry. They just inked a deal that will put the Android OS in every car made by the global auto alliance Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi. It sold a staggering 10.6 million vehicles around the world last year. The tech giant has struggled to get its foot in the door, primarily because auto makers have been hesitating on handing over the keys to their Infotainment and other computerized systems, in fear of being shut out of the data collected by those … Read more
Data Breach Notifications May Get Standardized
A new piece of legislation is making its way through the halls of Congress that could standardize and streamline the data security and breach notification process for financial institutions. This is something that most people in the industry tout as an improvement over the current situation. The Consumer Information Notification Requirement Act (H. R. 6743) legislation was approved by committee not long after Congress received a letter cosigned by members from the American Bankers … Read more
