Top Stories
Use of Cloud Collaboration Tools Surge Across the World and So Do Attacks
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed companies to adapt to new government-mandated restrictions on workforce movement around the world. The immediate response has been a rapid adoption and integration of cloud services, particularly cloud-based tools such as Microsoft Office 365, Slack and other video conferencing platforms like Zoom. A new report by security firm McAfee shows that hackers are responding to this mass migration to these platforms with an increased focus on abusing cloud account credentials. After analyzing cloud usage data that was collected between January and April, from over 30-million enterprise users of its MVISION cloud security monitoring platform, the company estimates a 50% growth in adoption of cloud services across all industries. Some industries, however, saw a much...
Entersekt Integrates Digital Banking Software with Huawei Mobile Services
Sourced from Getty Images. Mobile fintech solutions company, Entersekt announced that it has successfully integrated with Huawei Mobile Services (HMS). HMS is Huawei’s alternative to Google Mobile Services, a collection of applications and application programming interfaces that are typically pre-installed on Android phones and tablets. Entersekt fast-tracked work on its mobile software development kit (SDK) to facilitate push messaging and ensure that consumers could continue to bank and transact securely after upgrading to newly manufactured Huawei mobile devices. The fintech provider holds an 80 per cent share of the South African digital banking authentication market and counts major overseas banks as customers too. The updated SDK is now ready for release to app developers across the ...
Twitter Labels President Trump’s “Potentially Misleading” Tweets
Image sourced from Al Jazeera Twitter said Tuesday that it added a label to the United States (US) President Donald Trump’s tweets for containing “potentially misleading information about voting processes,” a rare move that shows the social media company is taking a tougher stance against misinformation. Twitter reserves these labels for tweets that contain information flagged by the website as false. It’s the first time that Twitter has displayed such a label on one of Trump’s tweets. That same Tuesday, Trump tweeted “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-in-Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent,” a claim that has been debunked by fact-checkers and news organizations. He continues his remarks in another tweet, stating that it will be a “rigged election.” Mail-in-Ballots ...
7 Techniques Cybercriminals Could Use to Steal Your Private Data
Cyber threats do not rest and they continue to evolve as bad actors develop new attack techniques. Good cybersecurity hygiene requires more than a strong password to avoid compromise. The most important thing is to know how exactly cybercriminals may attempt to gain access to your data. Here are seven techniques they might try: Password Spraying: A form of brute force attack that targets multiple accounts in which adversaries try multiple guesses of the password on a single account that often leads to account lockout. With password spraying, the adversary only tries a few of the most common passwords against multiple user accounts, trying to identify that one person who is using a default or easy-to-guess password and thus avoiding the account lockout scenario. Key logging attack: By insta...
Cybersecurity Reimagined for the CIO
Sourced from International IDEA Despite the technological innovation taking place, companies would do well to remain focused on ensuring their IT fundamentals are in place before rushing to capitalise on the latest trends. And nowhere is this more critical than when it comes to cybersecurity. Expectations are that the impact of global cybercrime will cost businesses more than $6 trillion by the end of next year, up from $3 trillion in 2015. It, therefore, remains one of the most significant challenges as digital transformation continues to grow in momentum, and the cloud has become part of standard business operations. Fortunately, companies are taking the protection of their data and networks seriously. Worldwide spending on information security solutions is anticipated to grow at a five-...
Spotify Removes its 10,000-Song Library Limit
Sourced from Forbes. Spotify has finally removed its 10,000-song cap on library sizes, now allowing users to add as much music as they’d like to their personal libraries. Fixing an issue that has irritated music-lovers on the service for years. With more than 50-million songs available to customers to stream at any time, until today, there was a hard limit of 10,000 songs that users could save to their own “Your Music” collections on Spotify for easy access. This is no more. After today, you can add as many songs as you like to your Liked Songs on @Spotify I’ve been working with a small team on the refactoring necessary to pull this off for a while now. Very happy to see this finally out. https://t.co/1nSExF5o3V — Felipe O. Carvalho (@_Felipe) May 26, 2020 Users have been requesting ...
Why South African Enterprises Will Benefit The Most from 5G Technology
Over the past forty years, the mobile industry has introduced a new generation of technology every decade. The enhanced capabilities introduced by 5G technology are valuable for business because of the potential to directly impact on core operations, unlocking much-needed efficiencies, and enhancing productivity, to an extent that we have not seen before. Key capabilities offer big benefits to business Prior to 5G, mobile technologies were primarily focussed on the individual consumer. The benefits to business have been indirect, particularly across Africa, where the coverage of fixed-line infrastructure could not provide the mass connectivity needed to impact on core operations. 5G was designed with the needs of the enterprise in mind, and its key capabilities — Enhanced Mobile Broadband ...
New IoT System Could Detect Future Virus Outbreaks
Sourced from Getty Images. IoT sensors that monitor body temperature in real-time and are implemented at a large scale could provide geolocation data that would allow potential quarantine areas to be rapidly identified. Through this, the idea is to shut down emerging viruses before a pandemic could take hold. IoT security firm WISeKey says it is working on such a solution. “Using the network of billions of interconnected smart IoT sensors, we can detect the spread of viruses by combining the anonymized digital identity with the behaviour of a person,” the firm says in a press release. Importantly, the company claims its solution can be fully secured and trusted. A question of privacy /* custom css */ .tdi_3_c05.td-a-rec-img{ text-align: left; }.tdi_3_c05.td-a-rec-img img{ margin: 0 a...
Hydroxychloroquine Trials for COVID-19 Suspended by WHO
Sourced from Getty Images. The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it is pausing clinical trials on the use of the controversial malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, to treat patients with COVID-19. This was one of four experimental treatments being investigated by the organization and has been under intense scrutiny for some time after it was championed by tech mogul Elon Musk and US President Donald Trump. “The executive group has implemented a temporary pause of the hydroxychloroquine arm within the Solidarity trial while the safety data is reviewed by the data safety monitoring board,” says Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, during a press briefing. This “Solidarity trial” is the WHO’s global investigation into experimental treatments for COVID-19 – including hyd...
Hackers Release New Jailbreak that Unlocks Every iPhone
Sourced from Macworld. A renowned iPhone hacking team has released a new ‘Jailbreak’ tool that unlocks every iPhone, even the most recent models running the latest iOS 13.5. For as long as Apple has kept up its walled garden approach to iPhones by only allowing apps and customization that it approves, hackers have tried to break free from what they call the “jail” – hence the term “Jailbreak.” This allows customising their phones as they see fit. Load whatever apps they want, even change things like issues with iPhone batteries. Hackers do this by finding a previously undisclosed vulnerability in iOS that break through some of the many restrictions that Apple puts in place to prevent access to the underlying software. Apple says it does this for security. But jailbreakers say breaking thro...
6 Tech Companies Make Remote Working a Permanent Option
The world has been changed by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Almost all points of what we used to know are in some ways now different. These changes will no doubt last as long as the pandemic, and many will last even longer. In the world of work, the transition from offices to home has been a worldwide reality. Now, six of the world’s largest tech companies have revealed that these advents of working-from-home may be a permanent fixture. At least for the foreseeable future. These tech companies include: Facebook Mark Zuckerberg says that as many as 50% of Facebook employees could be working remotely within the next five to 10 years. Facebook’s CEO pitched the idea as both of a matter of satisfying employee desires and also in an effort to establish a “more broad-based economic prosperit...
Why Getting Students Online Poses a Major Challenge
The COVID-19 lockdown has forced many schools, colleges and educational institutions to rapidly switch to online learning. Although there are many advanced online learning platforms available, the one critical factor that still remains is reliable connectivity to online learning platforms. The reality is that only a small percentage of homes in South Africa are covered by uncapped fibre connectivity. This is where mobile data connectivity is the only option. There has been ongoing lobbying of mobile networks led by various educational organisations such as the National Association of Social Change Entities in Education as well as the DG Murray Trust. The current reality, however, is that learning institutions are forced to provide data connectivity to learners. Last week, the U...
