Microsoft has listened to corporate SaaS Windows 10 clients and slowed down the rate of patches and updates that it is sending out, thereby giving company admins more time to catch up. What’s The Problem? For many enterprise / corporate customers, two feature upgrades for Windows 10 a year is proving too much to keep up with, resulting in many admins now saying that they’ve barely got the time to deal with one upgrade before another one comes along, thereby leading to the temptation to skip every other update. Those tasked with managing the updates also say that the updates [...]

Microsoft has made the news again by appearing to flex its market muscle by testing pop-up warnings in Windows 10 that are triggered when users start to install rival Chrome or Firefox web browsers. What Happens? It’s been reported that when a user tries to install another, non-Microsoft browser on a computer running Windows 10, pop-up warnings are issued that remind the user that they already have Microsoft's Edge browser installed, and that Edge is a "faster, safer" browser for the Windows 10 operating system.. Just A Test Microsoft has been quick to point out that the pop-up warnings are [...]

Chrome 69, the latest version of the Google browser which is now 10 years old, has a number of value-adding new features, including the ability to automatically generate strong passwords. Improved Password Manager This latest version of Chrome has an improved password manager that is perhaps more fitting of the browser that is favoured by 60% of browser users, many of whom still rely upon using very weak passwords. For example, the most commonly used passwords in 2017 were reported to be 123456, password, 12345678 and qwerty. The updated password manger in Chrome 69 hopes to make serious inroads into [...]

Many of us have an old Android phone somewhere in the house, doing nothing. Rather than leaving it there to add no value to your life and work, you may find that it’s much easier than you think to resurrect it. Look Beyond The Launch Even though your phone may have been the greatest and the fastest when it was launched, the passage of time doesn’t necessarily mean that it has become obsolete. Performance issues can, of course, be exaggerated by age and resource limitations, but there are some steps you can take to clean-up your old android phone and [...]

If you’re using Windows 10 and you want to make sure you’re not exposed to the security risks posed by insecure wireless networks, there is a quick and easy way you can protect your Wi-Fi connectivity. Here’s how: Go to Settings. Go to Network & Internet > Wi-Fi Make sure that the 'Connect to suggested open hotspots' option is disabled, unless you connect through a virtual private network or VPN service.

Deep fakes are digitally manipulated videos that have been created using deep learning technology to make the subject of the video (often a famous person) say anything the video maker wants them to say, even incorporating the style and facial expressions of another person. Example An example here is a video that demonstrates the technique, and features a fake video of Barack Obama saying things that he would never normally (publicly) say. Example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmUC4m6w1wo Improving Fast The technique, which had its less than auspicious first uses in pornography, where porn actors were made to look and sound like famous [...]

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has found the UK government guilty of violating the right to privacy of citizens under the European convention because the safeguards within the government's system for bulk interception of communications were not strong enough to provide guarantees against abuse. The Case The case which led to the verdict, was brought against the UK government by 14 human rights groups, journalism organisations, and privacy organisations such as Amnesty International, Big Brother Watch and Liberty in the wake of the 2013 revelations by Edward Snowden, specifically that GCHQ was secretly intercepting communications traffic via [...]

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has reported taking 500+ calls per week reporting GDPR data breaches, but one-third of the calls appear to be based on myths and misunderstandings or over-reporting about GDPR matters. Update After Freedom of Information Request The update by the ICO about how things appear to be going just three months after the introduction of GDPR came shortly after a Freedom of Information (FOI) by law firm EMW yielded figures that showed that the number of complaints between 25th May and 3rd July 2018 rose to 6,281 versus 2,417 during the same period in 2017. Over-Reporting [...]

A bi-annual study by FireEye has found that less than a third of over half a billion emails analysed were considered clean enough not to be blocked from entering our inboxes. Phishing Problem Evident The study found that even though 9 out of 10 emails that are blocked by email security / anti-virus didn’t actually contain malware, 81% of the blocked emails were phishing attacks. This figure is double that of the previous 6 months. Webroot’s Quarterly Threat Trends Report data, for example, shows that 1.39 million new phishing sites are created each month, and that this figure was even [...]

A new kind of pilot secure email service called ‘AccountGuard’ has been launched by Microsoft, specifically for use by election candidates, and as one answer to the kind of interference that took place during the last US presidential election campaign. Ready For The Midterm Elections The new, free email service (which people must useOffice 365 to register for) is an off-shoot of Microsoft’s 'Defending Democracy' Program. This program was launched in April with the aim of protecting campaigns from hacking, through increased cyber resilience measures, enhanced account monitoring and incident response capabilities. The AccountGuard pilot has been launched in time [...]