News

The number of data breaches caused by ransomware rose to 33 in the first half of 2020 from 13 in the previous six-month period, according to the latest report from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner

iPhone SE and iPhone 11 sales contribute to record June quarter as Apple defies expectations in first true half of the year

Lords Select Committee finds the design of the Universal Credit system is ‘failing millions of people’, including a ‘significant minority’ who struggle with the digital service

Small Business Support Scheme will help country’s 5.8 million small businesses boost connectivity, cashflow and confidence following coronavirus pandemic

Datacentre consultants are concerned that electricity grids will be unable to cope with future power demand and that free air cooling is unlikely to be effective if the planet warms up

As business gets close to the edge, analyst predicts a ‘supercharged’ edge server market over the next five years driven by an associated boom in cloud services

Microsoft offers to buy TikTok from its Chinese parent to ease security fears in the US

Police and Border Guard Board of Estonia needs to improve its IT systems to stop criminals from becoming e-residents, says report

Qumulo grabs $125 million in funding as the file storage world shifts to the cloud; CEO Bill Richter says unstructured data growth presents an opportunity that could lead to IPO.

Silicon Roundabout mainstay TechHub has been forced into administration after Covid-19 pandemic undermines ability to generate revenue

AWS established Glacier as a cloud alternative to on-premises tape storage. Now Fujifilm positions its Object Archive to tape as an on-premises alternative to Glacier.

Increased focus on digital presence during lockdown likely to have prompted companies to invest more in ensuring and measuring application uptime and enhancing customer experience

Deloitte has partnered with no-code development platform provider Unqork to help enterprise customers that are undergoing digital transformations and app modernizations.

Adobe adds Predictive Audiences to Marketo Engage. The personalization tool is geared for users who manage marketing messaging to live and online event attendees.

New cloud migration tools and services from Google and Microsoft seek to meet customer demand for easier, faster deployments amid rising favor for multi-cloud deployments.

Microsoft says cloud-based Universal Print simplifies printer management by replacing on-premises infrastructure. The service is available through 365 on Windows 10 devices.

The Open Source Security Foundation will bring together key open source security initiatives across the industry to improve and support the security of open source software

Quality of Mersey is not strained in mobile health communications solutions, with a further £4.3m for 5G-based health and social care innovation to provide safe, free and accessible connectivity to services including health, social care and education

MSP moves to ensure it can help customers whenever they choose to reach out to the channel player for help

Channel player lifts the lid on highlights from its most recently completed fiscal year with the business continuing to build on previous years of growth

The hack of a former cabinet minister’s emails casts doubt over the effectiveness of safeguards and security training processes at the highest levels of the British government

Businesses in the Nordics are using SAP Cloud Platform to address Covid-19 challenges and are also seeking price reductions

A series of Sophos reports on the ransomware threat landscape shows how security professionals can sniff out a potential ransomware attack before it happens

Global digital ecosystem enabler Tata aims to allow businesses to adapt to the realities of enterprise transformation, workforce mobility and consumer experience in the new digital-first environment

Tech giant works with banks to layer digital services on top of secure and regulated banking infrastructures

The alleged mastermind behind the Twitter breach has been arrested, and the method of social engineering attack has also been revealed: phone phishing, or vishing.

Research finds that since lockdown, regional network availability and performance has differed between ISP and cloud networks, with cloud provider networks showing greater resilience

Early findings from a major review of policing reveal forces are struggling to keep pace with the changing nature of crime

Startup launches with the general availability of a converged platform that offers the promise of integrating multiple data management and analysis steps into a single offering.

The COVID-19 economy can harm partners, but also nudge them toward greater creativity. Speakers at CompTIA's channel event cited emerging tech and business consulting openings.

Western Australia’s aged care provider Juniper embarked on an aggressive strategy to completely transform its IT operations in just two years

The Nokia Centre of Excellence for Networked Robotics will explore the use of drones, advanced communications and artificial intelligence in agriculture and industrial automation, among other applications

MicroScope is holding a virtual event to discuss the changes that Covid-19 has sparked across the channel, what comes next and how to be more effective at digital marketing

$225 million returned to US mobile device consumers in Q2 2020, down by 50% compared with the same quarter last year, however US consumers see 9% increase in the value of their older devices

People are using apps to help them manage their money amid fears of a second coronavirus lockdown in the UK

More cyber attacks exploiting the pandemic seem likely, says Interpol

The Home Secretary has pledged to stop using an algorithmic decision-making system to assess visa applications after migrant welfare and technology justice groups challenged the tool for helping to create a hostile environment for migrants

Government lays the foundations for a datacentre industry with its new data protection law

University-led push to accelerate the pace of machine learning and artificial intelligence research in UK enters new phase with the deployment of a second supercomputer

Madrid Digital Telehealth Network expands access to essential health services to 1.5 million citizens, ensuring the safety of patients and staff

Dutch research organisation is looking into areas where self-sovereign identity technology could be used in society and business

Cable provider extends gigabit broadband footprint to more than 12 million homes with coverage in Scotland’s largest urban conurbation and West Yorkshire twin cities

Gas supplier aims to address 1970s problems at Easington storage terminal with 21st century private 5G mobile network solution

Microsoft plans to add SIP phone support to Teams next year. The move will significantly increase the phone options for enterprises using the cloud-based collaboration service.

Microsoft pledged to donate its service mesh to the CNCF in a stab at Istio, setting the stage for potential vendor collaboration around multi-cloud interoperability standards.

In his Black Hat USA 2020 keynote, security researcher Matt Blaze discussed the challenges facing U.S. elections this year and what must be done to solve them.

Bespoke DevOps pipelines are becoming a thing of the past as specialist vendors such as Harness and Drone.io merge to compete with large platform vendors.

Google Cloud, in partnership with the Harvard Global Health Institute, released public models that can predict new COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalizations 14 days out.

Channel partners seeking to drive innovation should become learning organizations that encourage risk-taking and creative thinking, according to speakers at CompTIA's ChannelCon.

Find out what you need to ask to make an informed decision on cyber security insurance with new help from the UK’s NCSC

The Singapore Tourism Board has developed a digital pass and an analytics service, among other initiatives, to digitalise the city-state’s embattled tourism industry

GDP and IT spending are down, but business leaders see technology as the way to go when it comes to coping with the global pandemic

New national data guardian will take over the post from Fiona Caldicott, working to build trust in data use across health and social care

Planned lawsuit will argue that the use of players’ statistics by third-party companies is incompatible with footballers’ data rights

UK-based energy market challenger Octopus Energy has named Amazon Web Services as its preferred cloud provider, as it gears up for further global expansion

A GCHQ research fellowship based at its Manchester office will explore various national security priorities such as deep fakes, fake news and the impact of AI

ContractorCalculator research highlights the mental health toll the pandemic is taking on IT contractors

Government proposal on reform of the planning system sets out plans for modernising the planning process though use of data, interactive online systems and collaboration with the property technology sector

Samsung fleshes out OneDrive, Outlook and OneNote integration. Microsoft offers Link to Windows, to extend phones to Windows 10 PCs

Six months after Google's acquisition of Looker finally closed, the two unveiled their first collaboration during Google Cloud's virtual user conference.

Session border controller software edition deployed on AWS to enable enterprise communications company’s customers to improve home working with no disruptions to network performance

Canon may have had up to 10TB of its data exfiltrated by the Maze ransomware gang

Qualcomm has patched multiple vulnerabilities in its chip hardware that left hundreds of millions of smartphones open to compromise by malicious actors

With democratization of graph databases in mind, TigerGraph recently added support for Microsoft Azure and took steps to help standardize graph query language.

New tool aims to enable users to plan routes and comply with social distancing measures while using public transport

Integrated Media Technologies, an MSP targeting media and entertainment, expanded into software development with SoDA, an unstructured data management tool.

The CISO of TikTok has confirmed the social video company's plans to open its first European datacentre in early 2022, as its data security processes come under increased scrutiny from the US government

Donald Trump has fired a pre-election warning to government organisations that give IT jobs to workers from overseas

Months after Ripple20 vulnerabilities were reported, things haven't gotten much better, say experts at Black Hat USA 2020. In fact, the world may never be fully rid of the flaws.

During a Black Hat USA 2020 session, CISA Chief Christopher Krebs said ransomware attacks on city, state and local governments are a major concern for election security.

Panasas storage software focuses on novel method to boost capacity and efficiency. Dynamic Data Acceleration in PanFS shuttles data to disk or flash based on file size.

Hampered by siloed data and a data warehouse constructed 25 years ago, Maine's state government used tools from Oracle to break down data barriers and improve BI capabilities.

Election Systems & Software, the biggest vendor of U.S. voting equipment, will allow the security researcher community to test its elections equipment for vulnerabilities.

Representatives from vendor leaders Rubrik, Cohesity, Veeam and Commvault give their impressions of Gartner's 2020 Magic Quadrant for backup and recovery products.

Oracle has developed cloud apps to help healthcare professionals keep track of COVID-19 data including results from clinical trials and lists of volunteers for vaccine trials.

The nation’s latest cyber security strategy includes centralised management of networks and a voluntary code of practice for deploying internet-connected devices, among other areas

Software industry lobby group iSpirt has called on the Indian government to ease the administrative burden of complying with rules related to taxes and trade

Trump says his Executive Orders against Chinese mobile apps are in the interests of dealing with a national emergency

Research reveals as many as 85% of small businesses in UK capital do not know how fast their broadband speed needs to be for their business to thrive, and only two-fifths were able to transition to a fully online business model after Covid-19 hit

Funding for the Northern Ireland border includes £200m for a Trader Support Service and £155m to develop technology to support traders during post-Brexit transition period

UK Tech Cluster Group report calls on government to prioritise startups, provide test beds for digital innovation and establish programmes to enable tech careers for people who have lost their jobs due to Covid-19

Starling Bank has seen a big increase in its business amid the Covid-19 slowdown

US regulator imposes fine over data breach that affected 106 million Capital One customers in the US and Canada

Leading software and chip companies embark on a pre-integrated software platform for virtualised RAN designed to reduce development cycles for communications service providers

The Data Standards Authority (DSA) wants government departments to use new open data standards when sharing data, with the aim of improving public services

Customers seeking help from the ISP are being targeted by a scam Twitter account

Rare piece of good news for long-awaited but much-criticised mobile app as technical conference highlights the positive outcomes for first large public test of coronavirus contact-tracing service

Foreign exchange firm Travelex has cut UK staff by 1,300 and physical outlets will remain closed

The pandemic has catapulted channel partners and their customers into a new mindset about digital transformation and how technology is adopted and used; other news from the week.

In her Black Hat USA 2020 keynote, Renée DiResta of the Stanford Internet Observatory explains how nation-state hackers have launched 'reputational attacks' against enterprises.

In its ongoing mission to keep mainframes relevant, IBM rolled out a raft of hardware and software offerings that move it closer to the heart of IT shops' hybrid cloud strategies.

In this Q&A, former Intermountain Healthcare CIO Marc Probst talks about how the pandemic has affected the healthcare CIO's agenda. Hint: It's all about efficiency.

The pharma firm straightened out disorganized DevOps processes, which now include data management for COVID-19 clinical trials, with a Plutora value stream management tool.

This week's 5G news includes T-Mobile 5G taking a significant step forward, Samsung releasing tablets and Intel and VMware joining forces on network infrastructure.

A decade after Stuxnet, SafeBreach Labs researchers discovered new zero-day vulnerabilities connected to the threat, which they unveiled at Black Hat USA 2020.