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Victory for DCA Trust: Judge Moot ZACR from .Africa case, Outs its Reconsideration

June 23, 2016June 24, 2016 Editor

Africa applied for 17 new gTLDs, among these, .Africa which as remained in the news due to a precedent setting court case in California may be available after the jury determines the case in February 28, 2017. ICANN recently terminated 9 out of the 17 African new Top-level Domain (TLD) as a result of missing their deadlines. Last week on June 20, 2016, the U.S. District Court determining the DCA Trust vs ICANN case for .Africa denied ICANN’s motion for reconsideration [PDF] on the Order enjoining ICANN from delegating new…

Banking Cyber-attacks could bring world economy to a halt

June 23, 2016June 23, 2016 Editor

Recent attacks give a glimpse of the sort of cyber-assault that could bring the world economy to a halt. Better defences are needed THIS May Anonymous, a network of activists, briefly hacked into Greece’s central bank and warned in a YouTube message that: “Olympus will fall…This marks the start of a 30-day campaign against central-bank sites across the world.” The warning struck a raw nerve. The financial system is little more than a set of promises between people and institutions. If these are no longer believed the whole house of…

Q&A: DCA Trust Founder on Status of .Africa & Why Other African gTLDs failed to Go Live!

May 12, 2016August 17, 2016 Staff Writer

ITBusiness: We spoke with the Pioneer of the .Africa gTLD and Yes2dotAfrica Campaign Sophia Bekele, also named African Trailblazer – Made in Africa – by the “Collector’s Edition” of UK’s Premium “NewAfrican Magazine” & one of top ICT Women in Africa by Bloomberg TV, on the status of the most controversial domain .Africa. ITB Q1: What is the Status of .Africa battle S. Bekele: The status of .Africa is now at the US Court, mainly because of ICANN did not manage to oversee a proper evaluation process and generally mishandling…

Vodacom Will Discontinue M-Pesa South Africa From 30th June

May 10, 2016May 10, 2016

Earlier in the year, Vodacom said that it was reviewing M-Pesa South Africa. The service that was launched in 2010 and re-launched four years later, was expected to have millions of users but it only garnered 76,000 active users. Shameel Joosub, CEO, said in a statement that the decision was based on the fact that the business sustainability of M-Pesa is predicted on achieving a critical mass of users. Their revised projections and the high level of financial inclusion in South Africa meant that there was little prospects of…

#ELLE101: #WomenInBusiness Twitter Chat with Sophia Bekele

May 6, 2016May 13, 2016

On 6th May 2016, Elle Afrique a blogzine for the #PowerfulAfricanGoddess, hosted an incisive Twitter Chat with Sophia Bekele, Business Executive and Philanthropist. The #WomenInBusiness chat proved to be very enlightening for Women. As a seasoned entrepreneur Miss Bekele had a few nuggets of wisdom to share on women in business and what some of her experiences have been thus far. She touched on the importance of networking in business. “Networking is the subtle building of human capital through connections. Traditionally Business has been built and expanded via networks, tech has…

Cyber Crime Predicted To Reach $2 Trillion By 2019

April 22, 2016

During the last ten years, our lives have changed. The increased usage of the Internet made blurred some lines between the virtual and the real world making some processes faster. Ordinary people are enjoying this change, as life is becoming much easier for them. Large companies and enterprises experience some negative sides of such changes, though. They are preparing for a huge increase in cyber crime. General Crime Numbers Ginni Rometty, the Chairman of IBM Corp, mentioned in his recent interview that cyber crime wave, as they named it couple…

Yahoo-backed E-commerce search startup Twiggle gets $12.5M Series A Funding led by Naspers

April 8, 2016

E-commerce operator Naspers led a $12.5 million investment that Twiggle will use to expand globally. (Bloomberg)—A Yahoo Japan-backed Israeli startup, Twiggle, has lined up a funding round led by Naspers Ltd., the Cape Town, South Africa-based group known for its early investment in Chinese e-commerce site Tencent Holdings Ltd. Twiggle, a web- and mobile-based service focused on search, aims to license its software to leading online retailing companies around the world and will use the $12.5 million in funding to expand globally. Using machine learning, artificial intelligence and natural language…

WhatsApp launches end-to-end encryption on messages for all its users

April 6, 2016

Instant messaging service WhatsApp in seeking to reassure its users about their privacy will be encrypting all messages sent via its app. WhatsApp’s announcement comes in the heels of one of the most high-profile clashes in the debate over encryption and data privacy between the government and a technology company. In February, the FBI asked Apple to unlock one of the San Bernardino shooters’ iPhones so authorities could access his data. Apple refused, stating a breach of privacy; the FBI took Apple to court but was eventually able to unlock…

Netflix caught secretly throttling traffic on AT&T and Verizon for the past 5 years

March 29, 2016March 29, 2016 Staff Writer

A message Netflix gave Verizon home Internet customers during a money dispute in 2014.

The Wall Street Journal last week confirmed a researcher’s findings that the video giant had been secretly throttling traffic reducing the default bitrate to 600kbps in order to help users stay under their data caps on Verizon and AT&T’s mobile networks, and has been doing so for the last five years. The practice does not extend to Sprint or T-Mobile , who Netflix feels are more “consumer friendly.” Netflix’s admission comes only a week after T-Mobile USA CEO John Legere said that AT&T and Verizon deliver Netflix video at a resolution of…

Big data security required as 80% of devices ‘at risk’

March 24, 2016 Staff Writer

Research by Irish company AdaptiveMobile found 80% of devices are at risk. This shows the need for ‘big security’ to be introduced to accommodate the huge projected growth in the internet-of-things, it says. Current security solutions won’t be strong enough to facilitate such an explosion in the number of devices, according to AdaptiveMobile’s chief technology officer Ciaran Bradley. “The concerning thing is when we look at the internet-of-things we’re talking about billions of sensors so if we were to take the current lax approach to security and transfer that across…