Category: News

Government attacked over war on encryption

Posted on January 18, 2022 by - News

Open Rights Group and leading security and technology experts have accused Home Secretary Priti Patel of misleading the public with a “scaremongering” campaign against end-to-end encryption.

Patel’s TV, radio and newspaper advertising campaign, created by M&C Saatchi accuses social media companies that use encryption of “blindfolding” the government.

Jim Killock, Executive Director from Open Rights Group believes the scaremongering campaign by M&C Saatchi is being used to soften up public opinion prior to amendments to the Online Safety Bill that would allow the government to install backdoors into end to end encrypted messaging apps, and condemns the UK Home Office for exploiting emotive narratives to manipulate the public.

Capgemini makes quantum leap with Biggish Blue

Posted on January 18, 2022 by - News

Capgemini has signed a deal with Big Blue to set up a ‘IBM Quantum Hub’ with an in-house quantum technology team to develop quantum technologies.

The Quantum Lab (Q-Lab) will comprise quantum technology experts and facilities in the UK, Portugal and India.

It will coordinate research programs to develop business-driven client propositions for sectors most likely to benefit from quantum technologies in the medium future – life sciences, financial services, automotive and aerospace.

Paris surrenders at Sopra Steria

Posted on January 18, 2022 by - Moving People, News

French reseller Sopra Steria’s has appointed Cyril Malargé to succeed the departing Vincent Paris as CEO.

Paris said that after 30 years at the company he wished to be relieved of his CEO duties for personal and family reasons.

Malargé currently leads the group’s operations as a chief operating officer and will take its helm as CEO on 1 March.

Paris said: “I would like to thank Pierre Pasquier sincerely for the trust and the constructive and exacting support he has always given me. I am proud to have been able to contribute in my various functions to the development of Sopra Steria, to which I remain committed. “

There are sluggish moves to Windows 11

Posted on January 17, 2022 by - News

Software King of the World, Microsoft, must be disappointed with the latest figures which show very few people are moving to Windows 11.

According to a Lansweeper report based on an analysis of 10 million devices, just 0.52 percent of them were running the latest Windows 11 operating system.

The majority of devices checked (81 percent) run Windows 10, Lansweeper’s analysis found that 5.8 percent of machines are running the unsupported Windows 7 operating system.

Vole had a few difficulties with Windows 11 including not being able to get some of the later AMD chips to run and some older hardware not being up to the task. Other reviewers have reported a lack of a compelling reason to move to the new operating system which is rather too similar to the old one.

 

Most companies trust no one but don’t really know what to do about it

Posted on January 17, 2022 by - News

A survey has revealed that while most organisations have a vision of zero trust or are in the process of implementing zero-trust initiatives, more than half of the mob cannot translate this “vision” into the solutions they are implementing because they lack some basic core fundamentals of zero trust.

The FortiGuard Labs Threat Landscape Report “Global State of Zero Trust” said that there was an increase in the volume and sophistication of attacks targeting individuals, organisations, and increasingly critical infrastructure.

Organisations are looking for solutions to protect against these evolving threats and zero trust is top of mind, but for multiple reasons. Additionally, the shift to work-from-anywhere has put a spotlight on zero-trust network access (ZTNA) in particular, as organisations need to protect important assets from workers connecting from poorly protected home networks.

The report illustrates some confusion about what comprises a complete zero-trust strategy. Respondents indicated they understand zero trust (77 percent) and ZTNA (75 percent) concepts and over 80 percent reported already having a zero-trust or ZTNA strategy in place or development.

Customers fear security risks from robot chat

Posted on January 17, 2022 by - News

Cloudy PCI Pal has released a report which found 81 percent of UK businesses felt that increased use of technology to handle customer service enquiries, such as chatbots or self-service websites, was a security risk.

Consumer fears coincide with a move to replace contact centre professionals with automation. The report claims that it is not so much that consumers hate talking to robots and feel that any company using them is insulting them, but that they are worried about security.

About 21 percent of UK contact centre professionals believe that less staff will be employed due to greater use of automated solutions or chatbots.

Ingram Micro gets new CEO

Posted on January 14, 2022 by - Moving People, News

Ingram Micro has appointed Paul Bay is its new CEO, replacing Alain Monié who has become executive chairman.

Bay previously held the position of executive vice president and president of Global Technology Solutions at the distributor, as well as several other roles including president for the Americas and senior vice president of vendor management.

Ingram Micro is a remarkable organisation thanks to Alain and his leadership over the last decade”, Bay said.

TD Synnex releases first post-merger results

Posted on January 13, 2022 by - News

TD Synnex has published its first results since the $7.2 billion mergers between Synnex and Tech Data completed last September. Yes, M&A pays dividends!

The company posted figures which were “at or better than expectations”.

Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021 was $15.6 billion, an increase of 155.1 percent. This was directly due to the merger’s impact compared with Tech Data’s quarter at the same time the year before. Non-GAAP operating income came to $408 million compared to $221 million.

Arrow improves cloud management platform for channel

Posted on January 13, 2022 by - News

Arrow Electronics has improved ArrowSphere, Arrow’s award-winning, for its channel partners with the tools they need to streamline the transition to Microsoft’s new commerce experience, it said.

Microsoft will now move all seat-based cloud offerings to Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program in its updated move, including Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Windows 365.

The programme will roll out in January 2022, and it will be the only way to transact seat-based products in CSP for new end customers from March 2022 and existing end customers from July 2022.

Rackspace teams up with Digivante

Posted on January 13, 2022 by - News

Cloudy Rackspace is coupling with Digivante to provide its European customers with AI-based digital performance analysis and continuous website and application testing services.

Rackspace Technology customers across EMEA get Digivante’s expertise and technical capabilities, it’s said, mainly because many businesses rely heavily on digital reliability and app development.

Atos issues second profit warning

Posted on January 12, 2022 by - News

Atos has issued its second profit warning in seven months in its preliminary FY2021 financial figures.

The French services giant told investors the revised guidance communicated in July last year will not be met due to “several significant effects”.

Atos had already lowered its annual objectives following a slower-than-expected recovery in the year’s first half.

The company now expects a 2.4 percent drop in its 2021 full-year revenues, totalling €10.8 billion against the previous forecast for a “stable” performance.

NHS Digital lost 393 devices 

Posted on January 12, 2022 by - News

NHS Digital recorded 393 lost or stolen devices between September 2020 and September 2021, including 52 mobiles, 19 laptops and three tablets.

In addition, a further 319 laptops were recorded as lost due to having no record of their disposal.

The maker of 256-bit AES XTS hardware-encrypted USB drives, submitted Freedom of Information (FoI) requests submitted to 16 government departments into the security of devices held by public sector employees.

Midwich snaps up DVS

Posted on January 12, 2022 by - News

Midwich has acquired a majority stake in Cardiff-based distributor DVS due to its cunning plan to get into the CCTV and security market.

The HikVision and Toshiba distributor was founded in 2003 and is based in Cardiff. Operating through parent company Cooper Projects Limited, the firm offers CCTV and security solutions for trade customers in verticals including corporate, retail, and residential.

Canon forced to sell chip free printer cartridges

Posted on January 11, 2022 by - News

Canon is set to sell chip-free printer cartridges to help its customers continue using its products due to the global semiconductor shortage.

For those not in the know, chips have been placed in toner cartridges to communicate information, including toner level, and to confirm that the toner is a genuine Canon product.

However, faced with a choice with providing this information and customers not having toner at all,  Canon has produced chip-less toner cartridges to help its customers print as normal, although there will be some minor changes to the printing process. This will affect over 50 of its models in the imageRUNNER and imageRUNNER ADVANCE range.

Cloud giants should expect closer monitoring

Posted on January 11, 2022 by - News

Cloud giants AWS, Azure and Google Cloud should expect some closer monitoring from the Prudential Regulation Authority.

The Financial Times is reporting that the financial services regulator is looking for ways to access more data from Amazon, Google and Microsoft because of the impact that service outages and cyberattacks would have on British banks.

The watchdog wants more robust outages and disaster recovery tests given the increasing reliance UK banks have on a handful of cloud providers.

This could include the introduction of a “war game” which models AWS and Azure failing at the same time, executives said.