TechTarget News - Week of Aug 27, 2023

India gets ready for new data protection regime

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act will shape the way businesses collect, secure and use personal data as India looks to protect data privacy while driving innovation and economic growth

Google unveils generative AI integrations for data tools

Integrations between Duet AI and both Looker and BigQuery are among the features and integrations the tech giant is planning for its data and analytics tools.

Ukraine IT outsourcing dips, but startups bring new energy

Ukrainian IT services exports declined 9.3% in the first half of 2023 amid war and global economic slowdown. Resilient infrastructure and AI startups offer bright spots, however.

The compute problem AI startup Modular is targeting

The vendor is looking to enable developers be more efficient in their training and inferencing of machine learning models. It uses a programming language called Mojo.

More Aussie apartments to get high-speed fibre

NBN will enter into Area Switch Agreements with corporate bodies to deliver high-speed fibre to some 700,000 apartments across Australia

BT, Nokia team to boost 5G SA capabilities to meet future demand

Offering a boost in performance for its future 5G standalone network, leading UK telco teams with comms tech provider to demonstrate enhanced 5G SA uplink performance through aggregation of two spectrum carriers

5G Redcap, private networks gain momentum in IoT connectivity

Telenor IoT’s annual report into the state of the internet of things finds that poor technology choices can result in inferior performance, higher cost and a hindrance of long-term scalability and future readiness

Huawei, Ericsson ink long-term patent cross-licensing agreement

Rival tech firms and contributors of standard essential patents for mobile communication recognise value of each other’s intellectual property in agreement designed to create stronger patent environment

Bulk of IT spending going through the channel

The amount of money spent on technology might have been hit by macroeconomic conditions, but the majority of what is being transacted is going through partners

Zero-day that forced Barracuda users to bin kit was exploited by China

Mandiant has published details of how a Chinese threat actor targeted high-profile users of Barracuda Networks' Email Security Gateway appliances, including government agencies of interest to Beijing's intelligence goals

Premium shines as mid- to low-end smartphone market trends down in H1

Research group’s study of smartphone arena confirms general downward trend among major suppliers for the first half of 2023, with premium market holding up and slump in the mid- to low-end market expected to continue

Google releases Duet AI for Workspace; new Meet, Chat tools

The tech giant released its collaboration suite virtual assistant and unveiled new tools to help users summarize and translate meetings and enable teleprompts for presentations.

Cisco VPNs under attack via Akira, LockBit ransomware

Cisco and Rapid7 say ransomware actors LockBit and Akira have apparently been targeting Cisco VPNs not configured for multifactor authentication.

Microsoft Teams attack exposes collab platform security gaps

Criminal and state-sponsored hackers are ramping up cyberattacks on instant messaging platforms and other workplace collaboration tools. Meanwhile, enterprises' readiness lags.

Google updates Vertex AI with new models, expands reach

The cloud provider updates Vertex AI with models from Meta, a better PaLM 2 LLM, and adds features to its text-to-image product. It also expands an alliance with AI vendor Nvidia.

Google Cloud ups ante in generative AI

Google CEO Sundar Pichai kicked off Google Cloud Next 2023 by underscoring the company’s efforts to make generative AI tools more accessible to businesses and workers

Met police data platform deployed with data protection issues

Met Police deploys integrated record management system despite data protection ‘compliance issues' that would inhibit its ability to retrieve data, meet its statutory logging requirements, and respond to subject access requests

NCSC warns over possible AI prompt injection attacks

The UK’s NCSC says it sees alarming potential for so-called prompt injection attacks driven by the large language models that power AI chatbots

TD Synnex focused on taking market share

Distributor’s UK boss updates on progress made so far this year and the prospects for an improved 2024

Cyber world hails downfall of Qakbot trojan

A multinational law enforcement hacking operation disrupted the botnet infrastructure used to distribute the Qakbot trojan at the weekend, in a major setback for the cyber criminal underworld

5G network slicing value hits $19bn but growth stalls

Research finds that much anticipated and increasingly investigated aspect of next-gen mobiles has hit complexity headwinds, leading to slowdown in expansion market that is nearing $20bn in value

NetApp cloud storage evolving for stateful K8s, AI

Stateful Kubernetes storage, faster storage for AI data ingestion and more are all important features NetApp seeks to support for first-party cloud storage among the hyperscalers.

New set of Domo tools enables generative AI development

The analytics vendor's new artificial intelligence suite includes integrations with ChatGPT and other LLMs along with text-to-code translation that simplifies development.

UAW's push for 32-hour workweek might have roots in AI

The auto industry's shift to electric vehicles, automation and AI could redefine labor roles -- and it might be a driver behind the United Auto Workers' push for a 32-hour workweek.

Google AI plans could spur low-code/no-code faceoff with AWS

Google's generative AI products play catch-up with Copilot and others, but the upcoming addition of Duet AI to AppSheet might fill a market gap as AWS scraps Honeycode.

StorCentric winds down, Nexsan stands out

StorCentric's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing pushed the storage conglomerate and the companies it acquired into limbo. Now one of those companies might find new footing.

FBI, Justice Department dismantle Qakbot malware

The FBI operation, one of the largest U.S.-led botnet disruption efforts ever, included international partners such as France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Businesses should prepare for climate risk reporting

California lawmakers have proposed legislation requiring climate risk reporting from businesses as the U.S. SEC also works on a final climate risk disclosure rule.

MPs say UK at real risk of falling behind on AI regulation

MPs in charge of scrutinising the UK government’s proposals for regulating artificial intelligence have warned that time is running out for the introduction of new AI legislation before 2025

GenAI outranks cloud as business IT strategic priority

Enterprise Strategy Group research on the use cases for generative AI shows it as strategic for corporate IT, with impacts on customer experience, software development and IT Ops

Cisco expands customer experience services portfolio

Lifecycle services technology launched to give businesses ability to align priorities with clear and measurable outcomes to ensure their technology investments support their business, technology and operational goals

Post Office to provide in-person identity checks for One Login

Partnership between the Government Digital Service and the Post Office will see postmasters and staff provide face-to-face identity checks for those unable to use the One Login app or website

Teams unbundled in European economic community

Following the European Commission’s antitrust investigation, the tech giant will offer cheaper Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites without Teams

Home Office and MoD seeking new facial-recognition tech

The UK’s Defence and Security Accelerator is running a ‘market exploration’ exercise on behalf of the Home Office to identify new facial-recognition capabilities for security and policing bodies in the UK

8x8 releases conversational AI tools for the contact center

The cloud-based UC vendor releases voice technology to enable CX workers to connect self-service and agent-assisted workflows and receive conversation context from voicebots.

Embedded analytics a way for organizations to broaden BI use

By delivering data to workers within their workflows in an easily digestible form, inserting BI into other applications is one way organizations can broaden the use of analytics.

Sandworm attacks Ukraine with Infamous Chisel malware

The UK and its allies have attributed a novel malware campaign against Ukrainian state targets to the Russian intelligence-backed Sandworm APT

Schumer's AI policy objectives prioritize innovation

The SAFE Innovation Framework proposed by Sen. Chuck Schumer names explainability, accountability and innovation as some of the top policy objectives for AI in the U.S.

Microsoft 365 Backup sign of SaaS dependence, complexity

Microsoft 365 Backup marks a first for a major SaaS provider as the SaaS market continues to explode and the backup market rethinks how to design its offerings.

IFS snaps up industrial AI provider Falkonry

On the heels of buying Poka, IFS has acquired industrial AI software company Falkonry to help manufacturers detect and resolve anomalies in processes.

Hiring remains competitive, despite cooling labor market

The labor market is seeing fewer quit rates than during the COVID-19 pandemic peak. The Conference Board's survey reveals a decline in hiring expectations among CHROs.

Google Cloud Next enlists partner ecosystem for AI push

Google Cloud Next rallied consultancies, systems integrators and other service provider partners to help customers effectively deploy generative AI in the enterprise.

Google Cloud eyes bigger market share with AI

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian is confident the company’s generative AI capabilities will enable it to grow faster than the market and narrow the gap with rivals

Threat actors exploiting unpatched Juniper Networks devices

A series of vulnerabilities in Juniper Networks firewalls and switches appear to be being exploited in the wild to enable remote code execution, with thousands of devices thought to be exposed

Police Scotland five-year digital strategy approved

Police Scotland’s new strategy outlines how the force will approach and invest in its digital transformation over the next five years, but notes its ability to achieve its ambitions is subject to the availability of funding

Zoom takes Notes to collaboration suite

Collaboration and comms technology firm unveils workspace technology to offer clean user experience that allows users to create agendas and notes while staying in core conferencing platform

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