Category: TECH

Understanding the Impact of Internet of Things

Staff Writer
Liquid Telecom

While Apple and Samsung have had the benefit of being the large, dominant players in the mobile smart phone space, there are likely to be many successful entrepreneurial companies with many different Internet of Things products that help drive the next wave of innovation. It’s amazing when you stop and think about it. Your mobile phone has instant access to the sum total of human knowledge … and yet something important is missing: Contextual Awareness. Through sensors both stationary and wearable, the Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to change…

Share this
Read More

Cybercriminals Are Misappropriating Businesses’ Web Addresses

Staff Writer

As a Result, Customers Can’t Find the Real Companies on the Web Cybercriminals targeting businesses are stealing more than customer passwords and credit-card numbers these days. Some are misappropriating the very Web addresses—or domain names—of the businesses themselves. When Pablo Palatnik of Miami glanced at a Google analytics report showing Web traffic on his office TV monitor one day last month, he was alarmed to discover that traffic to his business website, Shadesdaddy.com, had plunged 80% from its usual level of as many as 10,000 visitors a day. At first,…

Share this
Read More

US Internet Regulatory Authority (USIRA) Proposed, “No Legal Basis for IANA Transition”

I believe that such proven methods from contemporary US Public Policy experience must be applied in administrating any Internet Governance structure that would result from the IANA Transition proposals. This further underscores the need for Congress to establish a US Internet Regulatory Authority (USIRA) which I had called for in my December 2014 article (See Congress will Oversight ICANN – CircleID). Written by Sophia Bekele on CircleID “No Legal Basis for IANA Transition”: A Post-Mortem Analysis of Senate Committee Hearing Only proper regulation by an independent agency with full Congressional…

Share this
Read More

Google’s Domain Name Land Grab: Consumer Convenience Or Coercive Control Point?

Privacy

Internet naming decisions are the sort of Internet plumbing inside baseball that only interests policy wonks and marketing mavens. That is until an 800 pound gorilla like Google GOOGL +0.54% decides to pay $25 million for a single generic top-level domain name (gTLD). Buying “.app” for almost four-times the previous record for a gTLD not only raised eyebrows, but questions about the strategy behind Google’s expansive and expensive domain name land grab. Although the most costly, .app is merely one of over 100 gTLDs, Google had already spent nearly $20…

Share this
Read More

CIO: The Cybercrime Economy Personified

Staff Writer

While the Center for Strategic & International Studies and McAfee estimated the annual cost to the global economy from cybercrime at $375 billion conservatively and $575 billion maximally as of June 2014, at least one expert stands by cost figures that are many times those numbers. “U.S. companies and the U.S. economy lose approximately $500 billion each year to theft of trade secrets and innovation. This includes all forms of economic espionage where cybercrime plays a major factor. When you factor the 10-year life of the investment in innovation, the…

Share this
Read More

Business spotlight on cybercrime

Staff Writer

In the wake of the Sony email hacking case, business expert Rachel Bridge looks at cybercrime and how you can protect your business. Online cybercrime is not just the stuff of sci-fi movies and urban myth. It is very real and it can pose a huge threat to your business. What’s more, contrary to what many people think, cybercrime is just as likely to affect small firms as large ones. Indeed, a survey by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) found that over a 12-month period, 41 per cent of…

Share this
Read More

Kim Kiyosaki: The Business Case for More Women Entrepreneurs

Staff Writer

Why the world is better served when women start more businesses Given the fact that women make up 85% of all consumer purchases, it’s interesting to think that, according to the latest census data from 2007, women own only 28.7% of businesses. This statistic has some interesting implications when you consider the following facts I found over at she-economy: 59% of women feel misunderstood by food marketers 66% feel misunderstood by health care marketers 74% feel misunderstood by automotive marketers 84% feel misunderstood by investment marketers 91% of women in…

Share this
Read More

Banks in Russia, Japan, the US, and Europe have fallen victim to a massive, sophisticated malware hack

Staff Writer

Hackers rob US and global banks of millions in one of the largest heists ever writes Kwame Opam on the Verge Banks in Russia, Japan, the US, and Europe have fallen victim to a massive, sophisticated malware hack, allowing the perpetrators to steal hundreds of millions of dollars since 2013. According to a Kaspersky Labs report provided to the New York Times, more than 100 banks in 30 nations have been affected by the breach, with upwards of $300 million stolen in the process. One of the largest bank heists ever…

Share this
Read More

Xiaomi: China’s big Apple rival isn’t worth getting excited about (yet)

Staff Writer

Xiaomi, the third-largest smartphone maker in the world, is coming stateside, but not in the way pundits expected. The company announced at a conference Thursday that its e-commerce website, Mi.com, could start selling products to U.S. customers in five months. Surprisingly, smartphones will not be among them — at least, at first. Instead, Hugo Barra, Xiaomi’s Global VP, suggested the company might start with items such as a recently-launched pair of headphones and its popular external battery pack, the latter of which sold 15 million units in 2014. The company has…

Share this
Read More

EU Parliament blocks Microsoft’s new Outlook apps over privacy concerns

Staff Writer

Access to Microsoft’s new Outlook apps has been blocked for members of the European Parliament because of “serious security issues.” Microsoft launched new Outlook apps for iOS and Android just over a week ago. The new apps are basically a rebranded version of a mail app made by Acompli, a company Microsoft bought in December for a reported US$200 million. Access to the apps though was blocked on Friday by the Parliament’s IT department, DG ITEC, in order to protect the confidentiality and privacy of its users, according to an…

Share this
Read More