slider - itbusinessdirect

Study: Canadian tech sector outperforms finance

August 5, 2016 Dianne Jacobs

The Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship (BII+E), a non-profit arm at Ryerson focused on innovation research, has released The State of Canada’s Tech Sector 2016, a report that breaks down the technology sector’s key characteristics and its contribution to the economy. The tech sector, which consists of 71,000 companies, employs around 5.6 per cent of all working Canadians (864,000 of them), and they tend to make more than workers in other sectors, said the report. The average tech employee earns $67,000 per year compared to a national average of…

iPhone Sales Slumping, Is This Why They Are So Expensive?

January 27, 2016February 11, 2016 Dianne Jacobs

The iPhone is arguably the most popular phone in the world. While it has yet to catch on famously in Kenya and Africa, in other areas of the world, it is ubiquitous and in vogue. One of the primary reasons why it is not the most popular phone in Kenya and Africa is the steep cost. While most smartphones range between 10,000 to 20,000Kshs, an iPhone may set you back 50,000Kshs and above. According to an article by CNN, iPhones are just as expensive in other parts of the world.…

Time Warner Cable loses 320,000 customer passwords via phishing attacks

January 7, 2016February 11, 2016 Staff Writer

If you’re a Time Warner Cable customer, now is a very good time to change your password. The company admitted late yesterday that it believes personal data belonging to as many as 320,000 customers may have been stolen. The news came to light after the FBI alerted Time Warner Cable to the fact that it believed that user data, including email addresses and passwords, “may have been compromised.” Reuters reports that it’s unclear how the data was collected, though “there were no indications that Time Warner Cable’s systems were breached.”…

Coca-Cola applies to trademark its hashtag slogans

January 8, 2015February 17, 2016

Drinks maker Coca-Cola has filed two trademark applications covering Twitter hashtags. Documents filed at the US Patent and Trademark Office in December show that the multinational company has applied to trademark ‘#cokecanpics’ and ‘#smilewithacoke’. It is not clear how the hashtags will be used across Coca-Cola’s various Twitter accounts, but the drinks brand has been known to encourage interaction with its more than two million followers. The company uses the #cokejourney slogan on Twitter to promote personal development among Coca-Cola fans. For William Hansen, partner at law firm Lathrop &…

The cyberattack on Sony Pictures made employees collateral damage

December 4, 2014February 17, 2016 Staff Writer

The wave of cyberattacks of large retailers, from Target to Home Depot, over the past year have made hacks feel like a fact of life for many consumers. But the alleged breach at Sony Pictures last week hints at a future where such attacks are more invasive than a stolen credit card: Documents allegedly leaked include Social Security numbers, salary information and even employee performance reviews. The leaked documents, first reported on by Kevin Roose at Fusion, have not yet been verified by Sony. But a memo sent to employees by Sony Pictures executives obtained by the…

There Is A ‘Very Surprising’ Connection Between Bitcoin’s Creator And The Alleged Founder Of The Silk Road

November 25, 2013 Staff Writer

The two most important moments in the history of Bitcoin are its creation, and the founding of illicit goods and services site Silk Road, which created the first ever market for the digital currency. Now, two Israeli mathematicians, Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir of the Weizzman Institute south of Tel Aviv, write in a new paper (first reported on by John Markoff at Bits) that they’ve found a “very surprising connection” between the individual or individuals behind the first and the individual allegedly behind the second. In October, the FBI arrested San…

DotConnectAfrica attends Transform Africa 2013, calls for the progress of its .africa commitments to be acknowledged

November 4, 2013June 20, 2014 Staff Writer

DCA was invited as a delegate to the international high-level conference that was held in Rwanda from October 28 to 31, 2013 Nov. 3, 2013 – The conference was attended by over 1,500 delegates and Seven African Heads of State including among others Presidents of Kenya, Uganda, Gabon, and Burkina Faso. Other delegates included Ministers and CEO’s of blue chip firms. The summit was Co-hosted by President Paul Kagame and Dr. Hamadoun Toure, the Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), with the aim of pooling together International participants…

Facebook & Google Move Up On Social Network Creep Index

October 31, 2013 Staff Writer

Google and Facebook gave the anti-social networking crowd new ammunition as they made moves that kicked them up a notch on the social media creep index. Let’s put it this way: If you were looking for an excuse to give up on these companies, these recent announcements certainly don’t give you good reasons to reconsider staying. As I define it, the creep index is like the Defcon Warning System of social media. Instead of defining how close we are to nuclear war, it measures just how intrusive and creepy our…

IT Security is critically underfinanced by business

September 30, 2013September 30, 2013 Staff Writer

53% of South African based IT decision makers feel that not enough time or money is available to develop IT security policies. As a result, barely half of the companies feel that they have highly-organised, systematic processes to deal with threats. These findings emerged from the recent Global Corporate IT Security Risks 2013 survey conducted by B2B International for Kaspersky Lab in 2013 among business representatives around the world. The situation is especially poor in the global educational industry, where only 28% of organisations are confident that they have sufficient investment in…