tech news
Pablo Escobar’s Brother Suing Apple for $2.6 Billion Over Life-Threatening iPhone Hack
We all know major corporations like Apple are notorious for failing to deliver on their technological promises, even hoodwinking users into spending more money on upgrades. A long-fought legal case finally brought some redress to iPhone users who had their devices intentionally slowed, but some still aren’t happy with the company’s misleading practices. Namely, Roberto Escobar, brother of infamous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, who is suing Apple for $2.6 billion (that’s with a B) for an alleged hack of his iPhone X. According to TMZ, the lawsuit claims Escobar purchased an iPhone X in 2018. Escobar, also known as El Osito, was concerned for his safety after reportedly being the target of numerous assassination attempts, and was looking to protect himself from hackers. After being told by an ...
Cashless and Contactless Payments Beyond COVID-19
The emergence of COVID-19 has made the need for digitising payments more critical than ever before and for this to be a success, electronic payments need to offer similar benefits to those afforded by cash. Globally, economies are in various stages of development having either started developing, replaced or are busy replacing daily batch payment systems with real-time systems that execute payments in seconds with the flexibility to meet the needs of the future digital economy. The drive towards digital payments and lowering the reliance on cash is not new to South Africa’s payments market. There are several mechanisms already in place to enable this and banks, card companies, fintechs and retailers are all involved in rolling out digital, non-touch payment mechanisms. Contactless cards us...
Use of Cloud Collaboration Tools Surge Across the World and So Do Attacks
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed companies to adapt to new government-mandated restrictions on workforce movement around the world. The immediate response has been a rapid adoption and integration of cloud services, particularly cloud-based tools such as Microsoft Office 365, Slack and other video conferencing platforms like Zoom. A new report by security firm McAfee shows that hackers are responding to this mass migration to these platforms with an increased focus on abusing cloud account credentials. After analyzing cloud usage data that was collected between January and April, from over 30-million enterprise users of its MVISION cloud security monitoring platform, the company estimates a 50% growth in adoption of cloud services across all industries. Some industries, however, saw a much...
Entersekt Integrates Digital Banking Software with Huawei Mobile Services
Sourced from Getty Images. Mobile fintech solutions company, Entersekt announced that it has successfully integrated with Huawei Mobile Services (HMS). HMS is Huawei’s alternative to Google Mobile Services, a collection of applications and application programming interfaces that are typically pre-installed on Android phones and tablets. Entersekt fast-tracked work on its mobile software development kit (SDK) to facilitate push messaging and ensure that consumers could continue to bank and transact securely after upgrading to newly manufactured Huawei mobile devices. The fintech provider holds an 80 per cent share of the South African digital banking authentication market and counts major overseas banks as customers too. The updated SDK is now ready for release to app developers across the ...
Twitter Labels President Trump’s “Potentially Misleading” Tweets
Image sourced from Al Jazeera Twitter said Tuesday that it added a label to the United States (US) President Donald Trump’s tweets for containing “potentially misleading information about voting processes,” a rare move that shows the social media company is taking a tougher stance against misinformation. Twitter reserves these labels for tweets that contain information flagged by the website as false. It’s the first time that Twitter has displayed such a label on one of Trump’s tweets. That same Tuesday, Trump tweeted “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-in-Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent,” a claim that has been debunked by fact-checkers and news organizations. He continues his remarks in another tweet, stating that it will be a “rigged election.” Mail-in-Ballots ...
7 Techniques Cybercriminals Could Use to Steal Your Private Data
Cyber threats do not rest and they continue to evolve as bad actors develop new attack techniques. Good cybersecurity hygiene requires more than a strong password to avoid compromise. The most important thing is to know how exactly cybercriminals may attempt to gain access to your data. Here are seven techniques they might try: Password Spraying: A form of brute force attack that targets multiple accounts in which adversaries try multiple guesses of the password on a single account that often leads to account lockout. With password spraying, the adversary only tries a few of the most common passwords against multiple user accounts, trying to identify that one person who is using a default or easy-to-guess password and thus avoiding the account lockout scenario. Key logging attack: By insta...
Enterprise Data Storage ‘business as usual’ with Tintri and Networks Unlimited
As the world grapples with a totally different business dynamic in the wake of the global lockdowns currently in place, the enterprise storage industry must continue showcasing the continuous innovation that enables compelling solutions for its clients. This, however, is not so easy for all players in the current economic downturn. This is according to a recent blog entry by Tintri, which provides AI-enabled intelligent infrastructure, and partners in South Africa with value-added distributor Networks Unlimited Africa. According to the blog, “Innovation and continuous investment therein are key drivers that enable compelling solutions to reach customers’ data centres. But in these extraordinary times business cannot operate as usual, and some vendors are finding their ability to maintain c...
Cybersecurity Reimagined for the CIO
Sourced from International IDEA Despite the technological innovation taking place, companies would do well to remain focused on ensuring their IT fundamentals are in place before rushing to capitalise on the latest trends. And nowhere is this more critical than when it comes to cybersecurity. Expectations are that the impact of global cybercrime will cost businesses more than $6 trillion by the end of next year, up from $3 trillion in 2015. It, therefore, remains one of the most significant challenges as digital transformation continues to grow in momentum, and the cloud has become part of standard business operations. Fortunately, companies are taking the protection of their data and networks seriously. Worldwide spending on information security solutions is anticipated to grow at a five-...
Check Point Software Partners Strathmore University to Promote Digital Skills in Kenya
Sourced from Business News Daily Cybersecurity solutions company, Check Point Software has announced that its education initiative has partnered with Strathmore University in Kenya to provide a comprehensive cybersecurity curriculum to students, bridging the digital skills gap and also creating a safer local cyber landscape. According to research, the number of unfilled cybersecurity roles now stands at 4.07 million professionals globally. What causes alarm for those within the security market across Africa is that the ICT courses across a range of disciplines are still underdeveloped, as well as the skills required to operate, support and understand the complexities of next-generation technologies and threats. Introducing the Check Point SecureAcademy To keep up with the current thr...
Spotify Removes its 10,000-Song Library Limit
Sourced from Forbes. Spotify has finally removed its 10,000-song cap on library sizes, now allowing users to add as much music as they’d like to their personal libraries. Fixing an issue that has irritated music-lovers on the service for years. With more than 50-million songs available to customers to stream at any time, until today, there was a hard limit of 10,000 songs that users could save to their own “Your Music” collections on Spotify for easy access. This is no more. After today, you can add as many songs as you like to your Liked Songs on @Spotify I’ve been working with a small team on the refactoring necessary to pull this off for a while now. Very happy to see this finally out. https://t.co/1nSExF5o3V — Felipe O. Carvalho (@_Felipe) May 26, 2020 Users have been requesting ...
Why South African Enterprises Will Benefit The Most from 5G Technology
Over the past forty years, the mobile industry has introduced a new generation of technology every decade. The enhanced capabilities introduced by 5G technology are valuable for business because of the potential to directly impact on core operations, unlocking much-needed efficiencies, and enhancing productivity, to an extent that we have not seen before. Key capabilities offer big benefits to business Prior to 5G, mobile technologies were primarily focussed on the individual consumer. The benefits to business have been indirect, particularly across Africa, where the coverage of fixed-line infrastructure could not provide the mass connectivity needed to impact on core operations. 5G was designed with the needs of the enterprise in mind, and its key capabilities — Enhanced Mobile Broadband ...
New IoT System Could Detect Future Virus Outbreaks
Sourced from Getty Images. IoT sensors that monitor body temperature in real-time and are implemented at a large scale could provide geolocation data that would allow potential quarantine areas to be rapidly identified. Through this, the idea is to shut down emerging viruses before a pandemic could take hold. IoT security firm WISeKey says it is working on such a solution. “Using the network of billions of interconnected smart IoT sensors, we can detect the spread of viruses by combining the anonymized digital identity with the behaviour of a person,” the firm says in a press release. Importantly, the company claims its solution can be fully secured and trusted. A question of privacy /* custom css */ .tdi_3_c05.td-a-rec-img{ text-align: left; }.tdi_3_c05.td-a-rec-img img{ margin: 0 a...
