The Salesforce cloud-based CRM platform is adding a low code, blockchain-powered service that will allow users to share data with third parties in a secure, transparent, and auditable way. Blockchain Blockchain, the technology that was famously behind the bitcoin cryptocurrency, has been described by its Co-Founder Nic Carey as being like “a big spreadsheet in the cloud that anyone can use, but no one can erase or modify”.  Blockchain is an open-source, free technology that acts as an incorruptible peer-to-peer network / a kind of ledger that allows multiple parties to transfer value in a secure and transparent way. Salesforce Blockchain Platform Salesforce [...]

New rules from the US State Department will mean that US visa applicants will have to submit social media names and five years' worth of email addresses and phone numbers. Extended To All Under the new rules, first proposed by the Trump administration back in February 2017, whereas previously the only visa applicants who had needed such vetting were those from parts of the world known to be controlled by terrorist groups, all applicants travelling to the US to work or to study will now be required to give those details to the immigration authorities. The only exemptions will be [...]

A group of 47 technology companies, rights groups and security policy experts have released an open letter stating their objections to the idea of eavesdropping on encrypted messages on behalf of GCHQ. “Ghost” User The objections are being made to the (as yet) hypothetical idea floated by the UK National Cyber Security Centre's technical director Ian Levy and GCHQ's chief codebreaker Crispin Robinson for allowing a “ghost” user / third party i.e. a person at GCHQ, to see the text of an encrypted conversation (call, chat, or group chat) without notifying the participants. According to Levy and Robinson, they would [...]

Amazon is launching a pilot scheme which will enable 100 small online businesses to get the opportunity to sell their goods in 10 Amazon pop-up stores in UK high streets. Clicks And Mortar The pop-up stores will be branded as ‘Clicks and Mortar’ and will enable small online businesses selling homeware, health and beauty, food and drink and electronics to get their first taste of selling from a physical store in a UK high street. The stores may also offer customers the chance to discover new brands on their local high streets. Amazon had already tested the pop-up store idea [...]

We spend one-third of our lives asleep, and it has been estimated that around £30bn and 200,000 working days are lost in the UK each year through a lack of good sleep (gov.uk).  The Rise app shows you how to get better sleep, and keeps a record of your sleeping progress, thereby helping you to feel better and be more productive at work. Rise offers 4 techniques to help users with sleep, provided by experts, 120 sleep relaxing guides, and sleep tracking tools to enable you to understand how your sleep is affected by the techniques. The app learns your [...]

California-based online survey software company SurveyMonkey has opened a datacentre in Dublin with a view to attracting enterprise customers in the EMEA region. SurveyMonkey SurveyMonkey, which was established in Portland by Ryan and Chris Finley, has more than 750 employees globally and is estimated to have more than 600,000 paying users across more than 300,000 organisational domains.  190 countries and territories use the SurveyMonkey platform which is a cloud-based, online survey tool that is offered for free, or SaaS. The company now has offices in San Mateo, Portland, Seattle, Dublin, Ottawa, and Sydney.  The Irish office was opened in 2014 [...]

The fact that big tech companies are willing to pay big bucks in ‘bug bounties’ is one of the main reasons why becoming an ethical hacker / ethical security tester is increasingly attractive to many people with a variety of technical skills. What Is An Ethical Hacker? An ethical hacker / white hat hacker/ ethical security tester is someone who is employed by an organisation and given permission by that organisation to penetrate their computer system, network or computing resource in order to find (and fix) security vulnerabilities before real hackers have the opportunity use those vulnerabilities as a way [...]

A survey commissioned by email security firm Mimecast and conducted by Vanson Bourne has revealed that even after GDPR’s introduction, more than half of UK firms have no Cyber Resilience Plan. What Is A Cyber Resilience Plan? An organisation’s cyber resilience is its ability to prepare for, respond to and recover from cyber-attacks, and a Cyber Resilience Plan details how an organisation intends to do this.  Most organisations now accept that the evolving nature of cyber-crime means that it’s no longer a case of ‘if’ but ‘when’ they will suffer a cyber-attack.  It is with this perspective in mind that a strategy [...]

Six years on from the launch of the first Google glasses, Google has announced the introduction of Google Glass 2 Enterprise Edition, glasses incorporating a wraparound camera and AR and designed to help workers by providing instant hands-free access to key information. Improved Following on from the original introduction of Google’s ‘Glass’, followed by the last Enterprise Edition back in 2017 which suffered from poor take-up due to an apparent lack of applications, Glass 2 Enterprise Edition is an upgraded version with a clearer target market, and a marketplace more educated to its benefits. Who? Google’s shorthand definition of its [...]

Finnish design house Aivan has shown how its ‘Korvaa’ headphones can be made from natural, microbe-grown, biodegradable materials, thereby offering hope in reducing the amount of plastic waste that goes to landfill or litters the natural world. Natural Prototype Although the headphones don’t actually work, the concept that has been created shows how a mixture of fungus, bioplastics, and other natural materials could provide an eco-friendly and equally as functional replacement for the kinds of non-biodegradable toxic plastics and materials that in a throwaway society would end up polluting the environment long into the future. Design house Avia worked with [...]