Google is rolling out some important changes that will make it easier for people who use their services to control their data. They're starting with their most widely used service, which is search. In the weeks ahead, it will be easier than ever for users to delete their search history, on both PC and Android devices. The official company announcement reads, in part, as follows: "Today, we're making it easier for you to make decisions about your data directly within the Google products … Read more
Google Finally Cracking Down On Manufacturer Device Updates
Security in the Android ecosystem is awful. There's just no other word to describe it. In large part, the blame for that can be placed at the feet of Google. Although they have succeeded in creating a wildly successful platform, their management of OEM devices (in particular, security updates for them) have been virtually nonexistent. This has led to a situation where many device manufacturers don't bother to push critical updates at all. It costs money to do so, and until now, there … Read more
IBM Invests Billions To Purchase Popular Red Hat Linux
IBM has recently announced what is to be the largest open source acquisition in history. They're buying Red Hat for a staggering $34 billion dollars. This, as the saying goes, changes everything. IBM has lagged behind its competitors for years in the area of cloud computing. When the ink dries on this deal, they'll move from a virtual non-entity in the market to the world's #1 hybrid cloud provider. If you're a Red Hat supporter, don't worry that the company is going away. The company … Read more
Newest WiFi Version Will Be Called WiFi 6
Most people don't know what the latest version of WiFi is called. That's the fault of the Wi-Fi Alliance, the group that manages the implementation of WiFi. Since their earliest days, the group has insisted on a highly unconventional version numbering scheme. If you're curious, the current version is 802.11ac. The group's numbering system isn't very user friendly, which makes WiFi support fairly user un-friendly too. All that is changing, however. The next version of WiFi will simply be … 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
Hackers Make More Money Than Is Spent On Cybersecurity
Quick question - how much do the world's cyber criminals make every sixty seconds? If you guessed a quarter of a million dollars, you'd be wrong. If you doubled that value, you'd be wrong again. According to research conducted by RiskIQ, cybercriminals are raking in a cool million dollars per minute, compared with businesses spending $171,233 per minute on security measures. It's a lopsided battle, and businesses aren't winning. Some other interesting tidbits culled from the company's … Read more
High Frequency Audio Computer Monitors May Expose Screen Activity
It may sound like something straight out of a science fiction movie, but recently, researchers have made a disturbing discovery. Using nothing more than an off-the-shelf microphone, it's possible for an attacker to determine what content you're viewing on your computer monitor. The researchers tested a variety of LCD screens (with both LED and CCFL backlighting) and observed that the high-pitched noise made by the monitors changed as the content displayed on the screen changed. The … Read more
