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It’s the third week of the month — the week we find out whether Microsoft acknowledges any side effects it’s investigating as part of the monthly patch-release process.
First, a bit of background. Microsoft has released patches for years. But they haven’t always been released on a schedule. In the early days, Microsoft would release updates any day of the week. Then in October 2003, Microsoft formalized the release of normal security updates on the second Tuesday of the month. Thus was born Patch Tuesday. (Note: depending on where you are in the world, Patch Tuesday may be a Patch Wednesday.) The following day, or in some cases, over the next week, users and admins report issues with updates — and Microsoft finally acknowledges that, yes, there are issues.
This past week's Patch Tuesday started with 73 updates, but ended up (so far) with three revisions and a late addition (CVE-2022-30138) for a total of 77 vulnerabilities addressed this month. Compared with the broad set of updates released in April, we see a greater urgency in patching Windows — especially wiith three zero-days and several very serious flaws in key server and authentication areas. Exchange will require attention, too, due to new server update technology.
Apple may have put some of its plans to scan devices for CSAM material on hold, but the European Commission has put them right back in the spotlight with a move to force messaging services to begin monitoring for such material.
CSAM is emerging as a privacy testIn terms of child protection, it’s a good thing. Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) is a far bigger problem than many people realize; victims of this appalling trade end up with shattered lives.
The other day, my Dad — my bellwether for technology — mentioned in passing that he’d read online that Windows 11 shouldn’t be used and that the operating system wasn’t being adopted.
Dad had a point. He’s more of an Apple user now — I have him on my phone plan to support his tech needs, he uses an iPhone and has an iPad. As his needs have changed, his reliance on Windows devices has decreased. In fact, his current Windows needs involve applications not on the Apple platform. (And because he’s a standalone user, not a domain user, many of the advances in Windows 11 having to do with authentication won’t be available to him.)
Google Cloud has announced a new set of Sovereign Controls for users of its Workspace productivity software, aimed at allowing organizations in both the public and private sector to better control, limit, and monitor data transfers to and from the European Union.
The changes look to have come in response to a range of recent European Union efforts to better protect the personal data of members when using cloud services, following the collapse of Privacy Shield.
Unified endpoint management (UEM) is a strategic IT approach that consolidates how enterprises secure and manage an array of deployed devices including phones, tablets, PCs, and even IoT devices.
(Insider Story)
The past two years have seen mobility management take on a greater importance than ever in the enterprise. As remote and hybrid work models take hold at many organizations, “mobility management” has expanded its meaning from management of mobile devices to management of all devices used by mobile employees, wherever they happen to be working from.
Unified endpoint management (UEM) has become a strategic technology at the center of companies’ efforts to control this increasingly complex environment. Essentially combining enterprise mobility management (EMM) tools with PC management tools, UEM platforms help companies manage and protect a range of devices including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers across multiple operating systems — all from a unified interface.
When Russia launched its all-out attack against Ukraine in February, the world expected the invaders to roll over the country quickly. That didn’t happen, and Ukraine today, though still under assault, has so far thwarted Russia’s ambitions to conquer it.
Russia has also been fighting a quieter war against Ukraine, a cyberwar, deploying what had been considered the most feared state-sponsored hackers in the world. And in the same way that Ukraine has fended off Russia’s military might, it’s been winning the cyberwar as well.
[ Ukrainian IT industry says it’s still open for business ]In that cyberwar, as always, the terrain is primarily Windows, because it represents the largest and most vulnerable attack surface in the world. The facts about what exactly is going on have been shadowy. But there’s plenty of evidence that Ukraine may keep the upper hand.
Have you recently been on a video confefence call, hit the "mute" button and then offered up some nasty comments about a client or a colleague — or even the boss?
Or maybe while in a conference room with colleagues — muted — and pointed out that some proposed action would violate the terms of a secret acquisition in its final stages?
If you were comfortable that the mute button was actively protecting your secret, you shouldn't have been.
Thanks to some impressive experimentation and research from a group of academics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Loyola University Chicago, utterances made while the app is in mute are still captured and saved into RAM.
Jamf has announced a series of significant updates to Jamf Protect, introducing a unique set of technologies designed to make enterprise devices more secure while also identifying and responding to incoming endpoint threats. The company also introduced, Jamf Trust, which aims to make this kind of security simple to use. (The latter is also available for Android and Windows.)
What’s new in Jamf Protect?The big news for Mac security, Jamf Protect, now offers a comprehensive endpoint and network security solution, supplementing its existing protections with new tools for:
Human beings are natural pack rats, as evidenced by the 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space that's in use in the U.S. Fear of getting rid of stuff even has a name: disposophobia.
Keeping every pair of shoes your kids have ever worn isn't a problem for anyone except those with whom you share living space.
But the same rules don't apply to data.
All industries have records retention guidelines spelled out in compliance rules. They are usually strictly enforced for regulated companies, and firms that run afoul of them can be punished.
Last summer, law enforcement officials contacted both Apple and Meta, demanding customer data in “emergency data requests.” The companies complied. Unfortunately, the “officials” turned out to be hackers affiliated with a cyber-gang called “Recursion Team.”
Roughly three years ago, the CEO of a UK-based energy company got a call from the CEO of the company’s German parent company instructing him to wire a quarter of a million dollars to a Hungarian “supplier.” He complied. Sadly, the German “CEO” was in fact a cybercriminal using deepfake audio technology to spoof the other man’s voice.
You might not know it from all the panic-inducing headlines out there, but Android is actually packed with practical and powerful security options. Some are activated by default and protecting you whether you realize it or not, while others are more out of the way but equally deserving of your attention.
So stop wasting your time worrying about the Android malware monster du jour and which security company is using it to scare you into an unnecessary subscription, and take a moment instead to look through these far more impactful Android settings — ranging from core system-level elements to some more advanced and easily overlooked options.
The California State Assembly is considering new rules that would offer workers greater protection from the use of digital monitoring tools by employers.
The “Workplace Technology Accountability Act” (AB 1651), introduced by Assemblymember Ash Kalra, would create a way to protect workers against the use of technologies that can negatively affect privacy and wellbeing.
The bill would “establish much needed, yet reasonable, limitations on how employers use data-driven technology at work,” Kalra told the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee on Wednesday. “The time is now to address the increasing use of unregulated data-driven technologies in the workplace and give workers — and the state — the necessary tools to mitigate any insidious impacts caused by them.”
The COVID-19 pandemic did not just disrupt physical meetings and physical office spaces; workflows that relied on in-person interaction, such as signing documents and contracts, were also highly impacted. Electronic signature (e-signature) software has surged in popularity over the past two years as enterprises looked to modify their signature workflows to support a remote workforce, said Holly Muscolino, group vice president for content strategies and future of work at IDC.
With many companies returning to an in-person office environment or adopting a hybrid workforce approach, where employees work some days in the office and some at home, e-signature vendors are working to convince businesses that they are still relevant. Although the market has slowed down, Muscolino said, “it’s still showing healthy growth, because there are still companies who have not adopted this technology. There is still significant room for adoption.”
We often think vendors are perfect. They have backups. They have redundancy. They have experts who know exactly how to deploy solutions without fail. And then we see they aren’t any better than we are.
Let’s look at a few recent examples.
In the small to mid-sized business (SMB) space, StorageCraft has long been a trusted backup software vendor. One of the first to make image backups easy to do, it was used and recommended by many managed service providers. After StorageCraft was acquired by Arcserve in March 2021, there were no immediate major changes in how the company ran.
This week's Patch Tuesday release was huge, diverse, risky, and urgent, with late update arrivals for Microsoft browsers (CVE-2022-1364) and two zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Windows (CVE-2022-26809 and CVE-2022-24500). Fortunately, Microsoft has not released any patches for Microsoft Exchange, but this month we do have to deal with more Adobe (PDF) printing related vulnerabilities and associated testing efforts. We have added the Windows and Adobe updates to our "Patch Now" schedule, and will be watching closely to see what happens with any further Microsoft Office updates.
Apple CEO Tim Cook this week warned that regulators are on the edge of making poor decisions that will impact our future during a passionate speech in defense of personal privacy and his company’s business models at the Global Privacy Summit in Washington DC.
Neither good nor evilThe thrust of Cook’s argument is that privacy and security are essential building blocks of trust for a technologically advanced society. But that huge potential is being constrained by surveillance and insecurity.
Privacy-centered search engine DuckDuckGo today launched the beta of its desktop browser for macOS.
The browser is designed from the ground up to maintain privacy, the company said, meaning it will not collect information about users and will not install cookies or tracking codes on devices. DuckDuckGo also said it can block “hidden trackers” before they load.
Duckduckgo first announced plans for a macOS desktop browser in December 2021. (The browser is already available as a download for mobile devices). In 2019, DuckDuckGo added Apple Maps support and has since made other improvements to how it works on Apple devices.
Disclosure: Microsoft is a client of the author.
Microsoft this week had an analyst event about Windows 11 and a variety of productivity, management, and security features the company has planned. Over the last couple of years, Microsoft has aggressively improved both Windows and Office 365, but the big change ahead is the potential blend of Windows with Windows 365. We’ll see that start by the end of the year. The end game should be what appears to be a Windows desktop that integrates so well with the cloud that it can, when necessary, seamlessly switch between instances to comply with company policy, assure security, and provide recourse on automatic demand from Azure Cloud.
More than a decade ago, Marc Andreessen wrote a prescient article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Why Software Is Eating The World,” which noted all the industries that were being disrupted by software. It set the stage for the megatrend of cloud computing. But his motto could also apply to data. If anything, the […]
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At BlackBerry’s analyst summit this week, a great deal of time was spent on the company’s secure QNX operating system, its IVY platform for software management on cars, and other tools and utilities designed for the next generation of personal transportation. This conversation can’t happen soon enough. A growing concern of mine is that automobile […]
The post BlackBerry, Tesla and Autonomous Car Safety appeared first on IT Business Edge.
Artificial intelligence can automate the identification and remediation of threats in the cloud. Learn how to leverage it now.
The post Leveraging AI to Secure CloudOps as Threat Surfaces Grow appeared first on IT Business Edge.
Choosing the right data cataloging tools can help make your job easier, your company’s data collection more consistent, and most importantly, allow you to make better informed decisions with less hassle. But with many different options on the market, it can be hard to know where to start. Therefore, when implementing data cataloging practices, it’s […]
The post Top Data Catalog Tools & Software appeared first on IT Business Edge.
These days, skilled software developers are expected to design, create, install, test, and maintain software applications. Combining these demands with the pressures of an always-evolving technology toolkit and looming deadlines often leads to high turnover and burnout rates among software development team members. Therefore, stakeholders need to learn how to motivate their development teams to […]
The post Motivating and Retaining Your Development Team appeared first on IT Business Edge.
In 2016, dbt Labs got its start as an analytics consulting company, helping startups implement the modern data stack. But over time, it would add a hosted service to make it easier for deployment. Then there was the release of an integrated development environment (IDE), which was focused on the enterprise. dbt Labs’s evolving strategy […]
The post Data Startups: Why the Eye-Popping Funding Rounds? appeared first on IT Business Edge.
Enterprises worldwide are deeply engaged in their digital transformation journey, as they digitize and automate antiquated processes. To get there, they are increasingly investing in data analytics and business intelligence tools to analyze extensive datasets and make the right business decisions. Consequently, the data analytics market is surging, and now tops $200 billion in annual […]
The post Top 7 Data Management Trends to Watch in 2022 appeared first on IT Business Edge.
With the volume of new data now measured in the hundreds of exabytes each day and Web 3.0 becoming a thing, businesses are in need of advanced analytics and big data tools that can turn that data into real-time insights and personalized services for their customers. And for that data to be effectively used for […]
The post Best Data Profiling Tools 2022 appeared first on IT Business Edge.
Data collection software helps companies collect data through their website and surveys. Compare top products now.
The post Best Data Collection Tools and Software in 2022 appeared first on IT Business Edge.
DataOps is a software framework that empowers IT and data scientists to collaborate on data efficiently. Explore DataOps tools now.
The post Top DataOps Tools 2022 appeared first on IT Business Edge.
Microsoft Math Solver is an online tool that helps you find a solution to a math problem. The program can solve linear, quadratic, and systems of equations by graphing, matrix operations, recurrence relations, and optimization problems. If you have a deadline to meet or are just poor in Maths, this online tool is all you […]
The post What is Microsoft Math Solver and How to Use It appeared first on Windows Report - Error-free Tech Life.
System Idle Process helps to increase the efficiency and responsiveness of your computer by freeing up resources that are used by other programs and processes. However, you may have noticed that sometimes, your computer’s CPU usage for the System Idle Process is high. System Idle Process High CPU may consume a lot of system resources […]
The post 3 Ways to Fix System Idle Process High CPU in Windows 11 appeared first on Windows Report - Error-free Tech Life.
Steam is an online gaming, social networking, and DRM platform, and it is the largest digital game distributor in the world. It has more than 100 million active users, and more than 20 million people use it every day. That’s a lot of people! According to statistics, an average gamer owns about 20 games, but there […]
The post Gaming Stats: 5 Players That Own the Most Games on Steam appeared first on Windows Report - Error-free Tech Life.
Opera GX is a browser with a built-in VPN and adblocker specifically built for gamers. The first of its kind, it boasts some features like resource control tailored to gaming requirements. However, it is not just a browser fixated on gaming. It thrives in other aspects that make a modern browser. One area where it […]
The post Opera GX: How Good is the Integrated Adblocker? appeared first on Windows Report - Error-free Tech Life.
Binance is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of the daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. It offers you a versatile way to invest and trade cryptocurrencies online. Binance offers a price alert feature that helps you stay in touch with the market by notifying you when a specified buy or sell price is reached. […]
The post 6 Easy Ways to fix Binance Alerts not Working appeared first on Windows Report - Error-free Tech Life.
Are you in search of information on how to enable scan to a computer in Windows 11? Well, the OS is enabled to scan an image, document, and any other compatible files to your computer. They can then be saved anywhere you prefer and probably uploaded to the cloud, hence, accessible from anywhere you want. […]
The post 7 Ways to Enable Scan to Computer in Windows 11 appeared first on Windows Report - Error-free Tech Life.
There are different tricks to speed up indexing in Outlook on Windows 11. Generally, indexing is an integral feature of Windows as it allows you to easily locate any file of your choice. Logically, it may be correct to say this is why Microsoft included it in its email service, Outlook, but then, other email […]
The post 5 Ways to Easily Speed Up Indexing in Outlook on Windows 11 appeared first on Windows Report - Error-free Tech Life.
Discord is a popular gaming chat app that allows users to connect with each other. Once you download Discord, you get access to a ton of features, including the ability to send messages to people on your server as well as video calls with other members. It is not uncommon for Discord to have issues […]
The post 7 Best Ways to Recover Your Discord Account if It Gets Disabled appeared first on Windows Report - Error-free Tech Life.
When playing a game, comparing scores and chatting about the gameplay makes it more interesting. You can even learn a few tips from more experienced gamers from Xbox Social. The number of followers on Xbox is a measure of how popular you are. It’s also a way for you to compare yourself against other players. […]
The post Who Has the Most Followers on Xbox in 2022? appeared first on Windows Report - Error-free Tech Life.
Opera and Chrome are two of the most-used browsers in the world. Amidst their endearing features is the ease of use and speed. Also, they boast lots of integrations and extensions that extend their functionality. With Opera being one of the best browsers with a built-in VPN that does not slow down your internet, and […]
The post 3 Best Tips on How to Install & Use Chrome Extensions on Opera appeared first on Windows Report - Error-free Tech Life.
