IT Executive news

• Ready, set, overclock your budget Skylake CPU!

  16-12-2015 23:33
  
  Budget PC builders, here's your holiday bonus: Motherboard maker Asrock has just released its “Sky OC” BIOS for its Skylake motherboards, so even folks without pricier CPUs can overclock their chips.
  In a blog post on Wednesday, the company called the BIOS "an alternative for users to overclock any Intel Skylake i7/i5/i3 or even Pentium non-K CPUs on their Asrock Z170 motherboard.” It comes at a good time, because in addition to enabling these budget overclocks, Asro
  
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• Microsoft launches new OneDrive for Business sync client, developer kit

  16-12-2015 21:16
  
  OneDrive for Business entered the next stage of its evolution on Wednesday when Microsoft launched a series of updates that are aimed at improving its cloud storage and productivity service for businesses and other large organizations. First and most importantly, the company launched its next-generation OneDrive for Business sync client Wednesday, which should bring increased speed and reliability to the experience of using Microsoft's enterprise cloud storage on a computer. It's also compa
  
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• Over 650 terabytes of data up for grabs due to publicly exposed MongoDB databases

  16-12-2015 20:36
  There are at least 35,000 publicly accessible and insecure MongoDB databases on the Internet, and their number appears to be growing. Combined they expose 684.8 terabytes of data to potential theft.
  This is the result of a scan performed over the past few days by John Matherly, the creator of the Shodan search engine for Internet-connected devices.
  Matherly originally sounded the alarm about this issue back in July, when he found nearly 30,000 unauthenticated MongoDB instances. He decided to re
  
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• Google's top trending topics of 2015 include the hottest gadgets in tech

  16-12-2015 20:34
  
  If the eyes are the windows to the soul, the things we search Google for day in and day out might be the windows to our brains—or at least what most captured our minds, as a global society, during the past year.
  Google on Wednesday released its lists of the biggest trending topics of 2015, namely the ones that got the biggest spike this year versus 2014. The lists are presented interactively, letting you refine the search by country, drill down by topic, and even flash back to earlier yea
  
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• Microsoft reneges on unlimited cloud storage for some business users

  16-12-2015 20:23
  Microsoft reneged on its promise of unlimited OneDrive for Business storage for all organizations, announcing Wednesday that only premium Office 365 subscribers will get access to limitless cloud storage.While the company never officially said that every paying organization using OneDrive for Business would get unlimited storage, a blog post announcing unlimited storage for consumers said that it would be on the Office 365 roadmap. Removing that option for budget customers is a move that's sure
  
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• Microsoft reneges on unlimited cloud storage for all business users

  16-12-2015 20:23
  Microsoft reneged on its promise of unlimited OneDrive for Business storage for all organizations, announcing Wednesday that only premium Office 365 subscribers will get access to limitless cloud storage.While the company never officially said that every paying organization using OneDrive for Business would get unlimited storage, a blog post announcing unlimited storage for consumers said that it would be on the Office 365 roadmap. Removing that option for budget customers is a move that's sure
  
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• Now you can not only send emoji, you can sponsor them

  16-12-2015 20:21
  
  There are emoji everywhere these days -- but creating them doesn't come cheap, and now, says the Unicode Consortium, it's time to pay up.
  Of course, the consortium puts it a little more nicely than that: It's inviting people to sponsor a symbol for a year to help fund its work encoding languages that don't yet have digital representations.
  The Unicode developed and promoted by the consortium is composed of thousands of code points, each expressing a relation between a number and a symbol.
  Those
  
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• Acts of terrorism could push Congress toward encryption backdoors in 2016

  16-12-2015 19:35
  
  Despite the risks to online commerce, international high-tech sales, security of trade secrets and the fact that it won’t actually make encryption useless to criminals, decryption backdoors to let law enforcement access encrypted communications could become U.S. law in 2016 – and a nightmare to enterprises – especially if terrorists succeed in carrying out major acts of violence.
  So far the arguments against such a law have prevailed, but that could change if public opinion tu
  
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• IBM-Apple deal reaches key milestone with 100th enterprise app

  16-12-2015 19:26
  
  When IBM and Apple forged their partnership last year to bring new mobile apps to the corporate world, their promise of bringing 100 such apps to market by the end of 2015 was widely considered an ambitious goal. Sure enough, though, it now looks like they've hit their target right on schedule.IBM has delivered more than 100 IBM MobileFirst for iOS apps through the partnership, it announced Wednesday, each combining its big-data and analytics capabilities with Apple's user experience.To read thi
  
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• California opens road to public use of autonomous cars

  16-12-2015 19:06
  California has published the world's first regulations dealing with the routine use of autonomous cars on city streets -- a big step toward the day when computers, not humans, are in charge of cars.But the draft rules published on Wednesday don't go as far as some companies might have hoped. For now, they specifically exclude fully autonomous driverless cars that wouldn't even have a steering wheel.Currently, use of autonomous vehicles has been restricted to trained employees of companies l
  
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• Congress doubles H-1B fee to $4,000

  16-12-2015 18:36
  Congressional leaders early Wednesday morning released a $1.1 trillion spending bill that dramatically hikes the H-1B filing fee for IT services that rely heavily on visa workers.
  That new $4,000 fee is applied to firms of at least 50 employees and that have at least 50% of their employees on an H-1B or L-1 visa. It doubles a previous fee of $2,000, first set in 2010.
  The increased fee will be used to help create a biometric entry and exit tracking system, according to the legislation.
  The visa
  
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• Windows 10 cheat sheet

  16-12-2015 18:31
  
  Windows 10 is the best operating system that's come along from Microsoft in a long time. It's a shape-shifter that changes its interface depending upon whether you're using a traditional computer or a touch-based one. It undoes the damage wrought by Windows 8, including eliminating the awkward Charms bar and bringing back the long-mourned Start menu. A lot more has changed as well, with a new default browser called Edge, the integration of the Cortana digital assistant and plenty more.Using Win
  
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• Pebble Health does what the smartwatch’s third-party apps won’t

  16-12-2015 17:47
  Pebble is making it easier to keep track of fitness goals with an update to its latest smartwatches.
  With the new Pebble Health app, users can count their steps and get automatic sleep tracking on the Pebble Time, Pebble Time Steel, and Pebble Time Round. The app presents a running average of the user’s activity, along with weekly step and sleep graphs. Both measurements can feed into Apple’s HealthKit or Google Fit for viewing on a smartphone and correlating data with other fitness
  
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• 10 must-know job interview tips to help land a new gig

  16-12-2015 17:44
  
  Having spent much of my professional life listening to client feedback on the performance of executive candidates my team and I present, I am brimming with the good, the bad, and the outrageous when it comes to job interviews. So, I offer you these simple ideas. If you follow them all, you'll be more likely to enjoy a future of successful interviews.1) Don't swear
  Yes, you read that correctly. Don't swear. During one of my very first executive searches in 2005, my CEO client told me that on
  
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• Awkward Apple Watch band shows glimmer of a great idea

  16-12-2015 17:42
  
  One of the most significant differences between today's popular smartwatches and real watches is the need to charge the "smart" versions every 24 hours or so. You can wear a real watch for years without ever taking it off, but smartwatch users need to charge their watches every night, alongside their phones. Battery life is a major challenge for smartwatch makers. The more value a smartwatch offers, the more frequently people use it, and the quicker they drain the internal power supply. It'
  
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• Inside AT&T’s grand dynamic network plan

  16-12-2015 17:35
  
  AT&T is pouring billions into its network to make it more dynamic, which is resulting in new capabilities for enterprise customers. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently stopped by AT&T headquarters in Dallas to talk to Josh Goodell, VP of Network on Demand, about what the company is learning from early adopters of its Switched Ethernet on Demand service and what comes next. Among other things, Goodell explains how provisioning now takes days vs. weeks, service profiles can be
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Speed is the new IT currency

  16-12-2015 16:56
  
  In today’s competitive markets, businesses must be fast. Technology needs to deliver against user needs – and do so quickly. How about your organization? As CIO, how quickly can your IT team complete a new function implementation – the throughput improvement business users now demand? How quickly can your team change a function, demonstrating the agility business demands?That was a problem for one of America’s top 10 banks. As with any financial service organization, the
  
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• BrandPost: Five Strategies to Win at Enterprise Change

  16-12-2015 16:54
  
  Embracing innovative new technologies has the potential to fundamentally transform business. But at the same time CIOs are often challenged with introducing these new technologies into complex existing enterprise systems while avoiding business disruption, production outages, delays or rework. Failure to do so can result in high costs and project failures; success offers unparalleled opportunities for competitive advantage.
  That success is achieved through the use of proven strategies that can
  
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• Ford draws on Pivotal to reshape developer culture

  16-12-2015 16:46
  
  Ford Motor Company CIO and Vice President Marcy Klevorn is steering her department into the adoption of a new bimodal IT process, in which one team focuses on delivering services to the more risk averse core automobile manufacturing business, while another team is adopting more startup-like IT processes to support emerging opportunities by iterating quickly and taking more risks.[ Related: Why Ford's CIO is shifting gears to bimodal IT ]Ford CIO Marcy Klevorn.To read this article in full or to l
  
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• Vulnerability in popular bootloader puts locked-down Linux computers at risk

  16-12-2015 16:39
  Pressing the backspace key 28 times can bypass the Grub2 bootloader's password protection and allow a hacker to install malware on a locked-down Linux system.GRUB, which stands for the Grand Unified Bootloader, is used by most Linux distributions to initialize the operating system when the computer starts. It has a password feature that can restrict access to boot entries, for example on computers with multiple operating systems installed.This protection is particularly important within organiza
  
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• Apple's Topsy social search engine tweets out its own demise

  16-12-2015 16:24
  
  Fittingly enough, the Apple-owned Topsy data analytics business that boasted of indexing every Tweet back to 2006, announced its demise on Tuesday night via a Twitter post.Twitter
  Apple snapped up the would-be Google of Twitter search about two years ago for reportedly at least $200 million, and it's never been quite clear outside of Apple what the company did with its purchase. However, now that the Topsy webpage redirects you to an Apple Support page on using search on your iPhone, iPad or iP
  
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• Salesforce and Box join forces to put files where employees need them

  16-12-2015 16:11
  
  Box and Salesforce announced a new partnership Wednesday aimed at helping their joint customers get work done more efficiently by bringing documents from their cloud storage and content management solution into Salesforce.
  Using a new connector that will launch in February, users will be able to share Box files inside Salesforce, both from the service's web interface and mobile applications. For example, when commenting on a sales opportunity, users will be able to browse the files that ar
  
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• As pre-IE11 support ends, scrambling for workarounds

  16-12-2015 16:00
  
  Time flies. It seems like just yesterday we heard that Microsoft would stop supporting older versions of Internet Explorer. But it was over a year ago that it announced that support would end for all IE browser versions older than version 11. And the deadline is now upon us all: Jan. 16, 2016.
  The main impact of this to security professionals is that Microsoft will stop providing security updates and technical support for all earlier versions of IE. (Microsoft describes this policy on an FAQ pa
  
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• The 3 best activity trackers that cost less than $100

  16-12-2015 15:09
  
  A friend of mine uses the top button of his jeans as an activity tracker; when it starts to pinch, it's time for some exercise.
  I prefer a more high-tech approach, and I frequently test the latest and greatest fitness wearables. The following three options each cost $100 or less, and I recommend them all ... with a few caveats.Misfit Shine 2 is fashionable and functionalMisfit's recently released Shine 2 ($99.99) wearable is ideal for swimmers and others who want to rack up points each day
  
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• Almost three-quarters of enterprise app deployments are iOS, report finds

  16-12-2015 15:00
  
  About 73% of enterprise mobile app deployments run on iOS, while 26.5% are Android-based and just 0.3% are made for Windows, according to a report released today by mobile app management company Apperian.
  The firm’s analysis of its claimed 2 million mobile app installations around the world showed that North American companies favored iOS even more heavily, while Europe and Asia trended slightly more toward Android.
  ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Rumor: Apple Watch 2 and new iPhone 6c to be unvei
  
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• Women in tech: Why esports are a win for diversity

  16-12-2015 14:56
  
  More people are playing video games than all offline sports combined, and 188 million people currently watch professional competitive video gaming, or esports,. And according to Juniper Research projections, total esports viewing hours will reach 6.6 billion by 2018. The industry currently has a fan base that rivals many traditional sports leagues, and is on track to surpass $9 billion in revenue by 2017.Esports are facilitated by electronic systems and are moderated by both human and computer i
  
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• Lost devices account for bulk of healthcare security incidents

  16-12-2015 14:43
  
  Due to reporting guidelines, lost and stolen devices account for 45 percent of all breaches in Verizon's new health care data breach report, accounting for 45 percent of around 2,000 incidents with total losses of more than 392 million records.
  Miscellaneous errors, such as sending an email with data to the wrong address or forgetting to shred sensitive documents, accounted for another 20 percent, and privilege abuse -- where, say, a curious employee looks up the health data of a celebrity -- a
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Is FaceTime's dial tone annoying?

  16-12-2015 14:10
  FaceTime is an incredibly useful app in OS X and iOS. Many people use FaceTime video and audio calls to stay in touch with family and friends who live great distances from them. But as with anything, there's always room for improvement. And one thing about FaceTime that might need some improving is its dial tone.A redditor recently started a thread about FaceTime's dial tone, and expressed his dissatisfaction with how it sounds, and his fellow Apple redditors chimed in with their thoughts in res
  
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• 3 good reasons why iPad Pro won't replace your laptop

  16-12-2015 14:00
  
  Tablets and laptops have their own individual strengths and limitations, regardless of the manufacturers or underlying OS software. Apple's super-sized iPad falls somewhere in between a typical tablet and notebook, but its name suggests the new device, unlike previous iPads, is designed to get things done. However, while iPad Pro (prices start at $799) does many things better than a laptop, it simply doesn't match up in other areas.[Related Feature: Apple says the iPad Pro is built for business]
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 3 ways health IT can improve the doctor-patient relationship

  16-12-2015 13:39
  
  Three ways health IT can improve the doctor-patient relationshipYears ago—on the heels of the HITECH Act of 2009 – I told a physician friend that electronic health records (EHR) were coming and he’d better get ready.  They would be, I said, an irresistible force.  He pish-poshed me.  If EHRs were to happen, my friend said, he would be an immovable object.It hasn’t worked out that way, at least not for him. Not only did he fail to repel the forces of the EHR
  
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• Top 10 places to work

  16-12-2015 13:37
  
  10 best places to work according to GlassdoorImage by ThinkstockGlassdoor released its 2015 report of the best places to work, based off reviews and ratings submitted to the site. These top 10 companies have a few things in common when it comes to what makes employees happy. Some of the most common themes include a popular and well-liked CEO, competitive benefits, strong 401k programs, ample maternity and paternity leave, and even free snacks and lunches.Whether you're unhappy at your job or are
  
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• How to perform a clean install of Windows 10

  16-12-2015 13:37
  
  Every great operating system sputters, falters and fails at one time or another, and Windows 10 is no exception. Whether caused by a Windows Update snag or a good app installation gone bad, you'll probably need to take some substantial steps to fix the OS at some point.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Microsoft to send IE upgrade nag notices to Windows 7 PCs in January

  16-12-2015 13:22
  
  Microsoft will seed hundreds of millions of Windows 7 PCs next month with a nag notice reminding their owners that older editions of Internet Explorer (IE) are being dropped from the company's support list, a recently-published support document announced.
  The Redmond, Wash. firm is giving an early warning of the impending notices so that enterprises have time to tweak the Windows registry on affected PCs to disable the nags. By long practice, Microsoft FYIs its corporate customers at least 30 d
  
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• The year in fraud: 2015 in 13 numbers

  16-12-2015 13:16
  
  70,000,000
  An anonymous hacker has released records of 70 million phone calls by inmates in United States prisons and jails to the press – and it suggests that attorney-client privilege has been routinely violated on a huge scale. 50-75 percent
  Recent estimates of the percentage of merchants that lack the new EMV, or “chip and PIN” payment terminals ranged from 50 percent to as high as 75 percent. Card issuers doing better – that 70 percent will have issued EMV-enabl
  
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• The best Android phones, tablet, and smartwatch of 2015

  16-12-2015 13:00
  
  It’s been an extremely productive year for Android manufacturers, thus resulting in so many different devices to choose from. Picking out the right one for you from the long list of devices can be tough, but we’ve reviewed and tested each and every one of the major Android device releases this year in search of the best. Without further ado, here are our choices for the best Android smartphones, tablet, and smartwatch of the year.Best all-around smartphoneAbout halfway through the y
  
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• Security can't be left behind at a rapidly growing company

  16-12-2015 12:37
  
  Ginna Raahauge, senior vice president and CIO at Informatica, is focused on speed.
  She has to be. Her software development company is growing so fast that she doesn’t want anything – not even security – to slow down production on the technology initiatives that support corporate growth.
  But Raahauge has found the sweet spot to get the work done, without sacrificing strong security.
  “Rapid growth often means solutions or processes could be selected outside of a governed p
  
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• Encryption used by terrorists provides lively GOP debate fodder

  16-12-2015 12:32
  
  The ongoing political discourse over encrypted Internet communications used by potential terrorists sparked some major fireworks in last night's GOP presidential debate.
  Republican frontrunner Donald Trump was booed by some in the Las Vegas crowd when he called for "getting our smartest minds to infiltrate[ISIS's] Internet." In reaction to the boos, Trump told the crowd, "You're objecting to infiltrating their communications -- I don't get that."
  It wasn't only some in the crowd that objected t
  
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• Apple's 10 biggest wins, fails and WTF moments of 2015

  16-12-2015 12:30
  
  As Apple makes more and more money by selling more and more iPhones, it seems like the company barely has to try to remain at the top of the heap. And yet 2015 was one of Cupertino’s biggest years ever in terms of innovation, with product refreshes almost across the board (sorry, Mac Pro), a new device category (hey, Apple Watch), and a streaming service to rival Spotify.
  But the shiny patina of new devices didn’t distract anyone when Apple missed the mark this year, as it sometimes
  
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• Big data-analyse tegen financiële fraude

  16-12-2015 12:28
  Financiële instellingen smeden plannen om big data in te zetten voor fraudebestrijding. Bijna de helft van alle zakelijke en ICT-besluitvormers in de financiële sector is van plan om historische klantgegevens te gaan analyseren om patronen in fraude te ontdekken en daarop actie te ondernemen, of doet dit al.... lees meer
  
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• Data center tax break ignites political battle in Michigan

  16-12-2015 12:12
  
  The U.S. data center industry is now operating just like a sports franchise. When a local NFL football team wants a new stadium, it can threaten to move to a city promising a bigger and better stadium.
  Michigan now faces the data center version of this dilemma.
  The state's data center industry is growing at about 12% a year, thanks to a shift to cloud computing. Life has been good for commercial data center operators, and they haven't been pushing for tax breaks. But that changed once Nevada-ba
  
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• Trends are trending

  16-12-2015 12:00
  
  Having assessed the landscape in my role as a futurist, I have concluded that trends are trending.But not all trends are created equal. “This is a trend you should know about” is different from “Our competitor has stolen two key customers on the basis of its application of prescriptive analytics,” which in turn is different from “This trend requires action in the next two weeks.” In the second case, urgency has been added, and in the third, the urgency is butt
  
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• Top 15 security predictions for 2016

  16-12-2015 12:00
  
  In putting a security spin on the holiday song, “It’s the most predictive time of the year.”
  Not that those in the industry – even the best informed – have an infallible crystal ball. It’s that being effective in an ever-more-rapidly evolving threat environment means looking ahead. An accurate prediction can help an organization protect itself better. A wrong one can mean less ability to prevent or respond effectively to a breach that can damage reputation, t
  
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• Security predictions that could make or break your company

  16-12-2015 12:00
  
  Look deep into my crystal ballImage by ThinkstockNot that those in the industry – even the best informed – have an infallible crystal ball. But an accurate prediction of what is on the horizon next year can help an organization protect itself better. A wrong one can mean less ability to prevent or respond effectively to a breach that can damage reputation, the bottom line and more. So, here are some best guesses about 2016 from more than a dozen vendors and analysts.To read this arti
  
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• Review: Microsoft Azure reaches beyond Windows

  16-12-2015 12:00
  
  A long time ago in a century getting further and further away, Bill Gates compared MSN with the exploding World Wide Web, saw the future, and pivoted nicely to embrace the Internet. A few decades later, someone at Microsoft looked at the cloud and recognized that the old days of selling Windows Server OS licenses were fading. Today we have Microsoft Azure, Microsoft's pivot to cloud computing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• NL Healthcare kiest voor dienstverlening in de cloud

  16-12-2015 11:50
  Zorgconcern NL Healthcare heeft met zijn dochterondernemingen Orthopedium, Medinova, NedSpine, NL Healthcare Clinics en Mentaal Beter gekozen voor dienstverlening in de cloud van Lesscher IT. Lesscher IT gaat NL Healthcare helpen met diverse cloud-services. In totaal gaat het om meer dan 500 online werkplekken,... lees meer
  
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• EU privacy law to require opt-in and make data processors share in responsibility

  16-12-2015 11:50
  
  The shape of future European Union privacy legislation is becoming clearer, as lawmakers closed in on an agreement late Tuesday.Companies will have to obtain customers' consent before collecting and processing their personal data, and could be fined as much as 4 percent of annual revenue for breaches of the rules. That would put potential penalties for giants like Google and Facebook in the hundreds of millions or billions of euros, compared to the paltry fines of tens or hundreds of thousands o
  
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• Three men arrested in alleged wide-ranging spam operation

  16-12-2015 03:25
  
  Three men have been charged over a hacking scheme that allegedly collected tens of millions of personal records for use in spam campaigns.U.S. prosecutors say the trio broke into the networks of three companies and improperly accessed the network of a fourth one where one of the men was employed.Their primary goals revolved around obtaining email addresses for consumers in order to advertise insurance companies or online sites that sold narcotics without prescriptions, according to a news releas
  
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• Slack sets aside $80 million to help developers extend its platform

  16-12-2015 03:15
  
  If there's any company that's been virtually synonymous with growth over the past year or so, it's Slack, and now the team-software vendor is taking a big step to make sure that momentum continues.The company has established an $80 million fund to provide early-stage investments to companies building for the Slack platform, with a particular focus on apps that are designed to be “Slack-first” as well as enterprise tools that are making Slack integration a core part of their offering.
  
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• Google shows off new batch of designer watch faces to dress up Android Wear

  16-12-2015 02:19
  
  You can add a little more style to your Android Wear watch just in time for that big holiday office party.
  Google announced some new options from brands like Zoe Jordan, Mango, Nicole Miller, and other designers. The faces are available in the Play Store now if you want to try any of them out. They’re also headed to the Android Wear app on the iPhone within a few days.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Mozilla finally ships 64-bit Firefox for Windows

  16-12-2015 02:18
  
  Mozilla today shipped Firefox 43, the first edition that lets users download a production-grade 64-bit version for Windows.While Mozilla did not cite the 64-bit support with any fanfare, it was the biggest difference between Firefox 43 and its predecessors.A preview of the 64-bit Firefox for Windows was issued more than nine months ago, when Mozilla's usual schedule would have meant a May release.The biggest advantage of a 64-bit browser on a 64-bit operating system -- like Windows and Apple's O
  
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