Menlo Security has recently published a new report that will probably dismay you if you're a business owner. Microsoft Office has been named as the attack vector of choice for hackers around the world. The most common form of the attack is a malicious Word document or other office document attached to an innocent looking email. There are, of course, plenty of other ways to take advantage of various security weaknesses in MS Office and Office 365. These include the use of remotely hosted … Read more
New SSD Drive Can Hold 8TB of Storage
Good news for the business world in general, and the owners of data centers, in particular. Mass storage is about to get vastly more efficient thanks to Samsung's recently launched solid state drive, which manages to pack an impressive 8TB of storage into a delightfully small footprint, measuring just 11cm x 3.05cm. Not only do the new drives deliver twice the storage capacity of the SSDs used in high-end servers and slim line laptops, but it also has an impressive read speed of 3100 MB/s, … Read more
Some Private Posts On Facebook May Have Been Exposed
Facebook is in hot water again. Recently, the company admitted that while testing a new feature on the site, they inadvertently made public the posts of more than fourteen million users. The incident occurred between May 18th and May 22nd and occurred when Facebook was testing a new "Featured Posts" enhancement. The goal was that users could selectively make posts visible to everyone. Unfortunately, the error created a situation where any posts users in the test group made were … Read more
Microsoft Ending Forum Support For Older Operating Systems
Big changes are coming from Microsoft starting in July (exact date unknown), and it has potentially dire implications if you're using some of the company's older technology. Microsoft announced that in July, they'll no longer provide forum-based support for a wide range of products and software, including: Microsoft Band Zune Surface Pro Surface Pro 2 Surface RT Surface 2 Microsoft Security Essentials Internet Explorer 10 Office 2010 Office 2013 Windows … Read more
Microsoft Surpasses Google In Latest Valuation
Microsoft's stock price is surging, putting the company's total valuation at $753 billion. This makes it the third most valuable company on the planet, behind Amazon (782 billion), Apple ($923 billion) and leaving Google in fourth place, valued at $739 billion. Google first overtook Microsoft in 2012, and since that time, the two companies have traded places repeatedly. So Microsoft's current 3rd place position is expected to be relatively short-lived. It's worth noting, however, that … Read more
Passwords May Be Dead Soon If Microsoft Gets Its Way
Karanbir Singh (a program manager at Microsoft) is on a mission: Kill the password. As he said in a recent blog post: "Nobody likes passwords. They are inconvenient, insecure, and expensive. In fact, we dislike them so much that we've been busy at work trying to create a world without them--a world without passwords." The company's stated goal is to make it possible that an end user will never have to bother with passwords on a day to day basis and would instead provide credentials … Read more
SSD Drive Makers Adding Features To Reduce Duplicate Data
Big changes are in the works in the SSD-based storage ecosystem. It includes three different vendors all making similar announcements regarding designs to help companies that rely on SSD-based storage systems to reduce duplication and control data creep. It's not hard to see why they're scrambling. Although the price of SSD-based storage systems are coming down, it's a slow process. Currently, a gigabyte's worth of SSD storage costs about forty cents, versus about five cents per gigabyte of … Read more
Are Lasers The Answer To Completely Wireless Computing And Charging?
Researchers at the University of Washington just might change the face of computers and computing forever. It may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but based on their research, the day may soon be coming when computing devices are completely un-tethered, requiring no wires for either power or recharging. The team was able to successfully charge a smartphone from across a room using nothing more than lasers. Right now, their approach has an effective range of about forty feet. Devices … Read more
Bank Employee Steals Info On Over A Million Customers
Atlanta-based SunTrust Bank is the 12th largest bank in the US. They have a major problem, and so do roughly a million and a half of its customers. According to CEO William Rogers, an unidentified employee of the firm printed a vast amount of private customer information, including their names, addresses, phone numbers and account balance information. Rogers stressed that social security numbers, account numbers, driver's license numbers, user IDs, and passwords were not exposed. In a … Read more
Microsoft Helping With Ransomware In Office 365
Microsoft recently made small but significant changes to its Office 365 subscription service and to OneDrive, which are often used in tandem. The goal is to make it easier for users whose files have been encrypted by ransomware (or otherwise corrupted) to recover them. The most significant of the changes is a new button that Office 365 users will see a new "File Restore" function in both applications. If you've saved your Office 365 files to OneDrive, you'll be able to restore files in a … Read more
