Category: Analysis

Cybercriminals are still following the money and they care very little whether they get to it through a targeted attack on a business or a more widespread spam campaign, seeding financial malware wherever they find fertile soil. With all the media and security research attention in 2013 being focused on the targeted attack phenomenon and the growth in the numbers and type of organisations falling victim to these attacks, it can be thought that traditional end-user level attack campaigns are on the wane. This is wrong. 2013 saw the levels…

Read More

You can’t run a business without ERP. The term itself stands forEnterprise Resource Planning, but in essence ERP is about pulling together all the functions involved in a company into one computer or system. Everything from purchasing raw goods to shipping finished product, even HR and Accounts Payable needs to be accessible and useable in order to correctly handle the basic reason for a company’s existence: to get a product or service out to the paying customer. Whereas in earlier decades the processes involved in order fulfillment, purchasing, tracking, warehousing,…

Read More

Two thirds of Europeans believe cash is dirty – but struggle to break the bad habit with only one in five washing their hands after holding it  Waterloo, May 6, 2014 –  Research released today by MasterCard has shown that despite believing handling cash, bank notes or coins to be unhygienic and dirty, only one in five wash their hands after holding it. The European wide study of over 9,000 consumers from 12 countries highlighted how despite being ranked as more unhygienic than hand rails on public transport or communal food, such as nuts in…

Read More

In an information age, data becomes the new source of value. The information revolution isn’t just changing consumers’ preferences and behaviors. It’s also changing industries by enabling new information-driven solutions that match consumer needs better than traditional offerings do. In short, the old way is not working anymore because consumers expect more. This new reality is impacting all industries, but particularly financial services, which is not known for its revolutionary thinking. According to the Oliver Wyman report “A Money and Information Business: The State of the Financial Services Industry 2013,”…

Read More

Sure sign of system compromise No. 8: Your mouse moves between programs and makes correct selections If your mouse pointer moves itself while making selections that work, you’ve definitely been hacked. Mouse pointers often move randomly, usually due to hardware problems. But if the movements involve making the correct choices to run particular programs, malicious humans are somewhere involved. Not as common as some of the other attacks, many hackers will break into a computer, wait for it to be idle for a long time (like after midnight), then try…

Read More

Study reveals that devices would have a positive effect on staff and organisations. Wearable technology, such as smart watches and fitness monitors, could significantly increase the productivity of workers, according to a recently published study. Researchers from Goldsmiths, University of London, looked into how wearable devices affected employee wellbeing, productivity and job satisfaction over a one-month period. The results were published in the Human Cloud at Work (HCAW) report. It showed during that period employee productivity was boosted by 8.5 per cent, while job satisfaction improved by 3.5 per cent. Workers were given…

Read More

Serial: 4/6 – Sure sign of system compromise No. 6: Your online passwords suddenly change If one or more of your online passwords suddenly change, you’ve more than likely been hacked — or at least that online service has been hacked. In this particular scenario, usually what has happened is that the victim responded to an authentic-looking phish email that purportedly claimed to be from the service that ends up with the changed password. The bad guy collects the logon information, logs on, changes the password (and other information to…

Read More

Serial: 2/2 – What is net neutrality? Net neutrality is a principle which states that networks should not discriminate when it comes to the content that flows through their pipes — that they should not give certain kinds of content or certain providers preferential treatment in return for money. In other words, one bit should be treated like any other bit. As former Wired writer Ryan Singel put it in explanatory piece at Medium: “Net Neutrality is the simple concept that the company that provides you internet access on your phone and…

Read More

BYOD is happening, whether you like it or not. So how do you create a BYOD policy that works for your business? A Bring Your Own Device policy isn’t so much a choice these days as a necessity – for many companies it’s the only realistic response to the ongoing consumerisation of IT. Implementing one can make a company more flexible, and bring all kinds of benefits to an organisation. There’s the obvious reduction in hardware costs, but also the productivity gains you see when your employees use devices and…

Read More

Serial: 3/6 – Sure sign of system compromise No. 4: Frequent random popups This popular sign that you’ve been hacked is also one of the more annoying ones. When you’re getting random browser pop-ups from websites that don’t normally generate them, your system has been compromised. I’m constantly amazed about which websites, legitimate and otherwise, can bypass your browser’s anti-pop-up mechanisms. It’s like battling email spam, but worse. What to do: Not to sound like a broken record, but typically random pop-ups are generated by one of the three previous…

Read More