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Acer Swift 7 Is One of the Thinnest, Lightest Business Laptops
Acer unveiled the latest version of its Swift 7 laptop, which they claim is the world's thinnest laptop. It features the latest 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8500Y processor and 10 hours of battery life. Running Windows 10, the revamped Swift 7 includes up to 512GB of fast PCIe SSD storage, and up to 16GB of LPDDR3 RAM. The new Swift 7 starts at $1,699 for a system that includes Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. Versions with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD are also available.
HPE Predicts Storage-Class Memory Will Replace NAND Flash
Storage-class memory (SCM), RAM that has the ability to retain its contents like NAND flash memory but the speed of DRAM, will eventually supplant flash as the high-speed storage medium of choice, according to HPE. In addition to replacing NAND flash, HPE believes the NVMe protocol used by SCM will replace the SCSI/SAS interface currently used in storage arrays.
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Microsoft and Google Announce Collaboration Tool Changes
Microsoft is rebranding its Skype Room Systems to Microsoft Teams Rooms, however Microsoft Teams Rooms still works with Skype for Business calls and meetings. Meanwhile Google is shutting down Google Hangouts, but adding the following capabilities to Google Chat as a way of easing the transition from Hangouts to Chat: Integration with Gmail, chatting with external users, "an improved" video calling experience, and the ability to make calls with Google Voice.
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GivePay, Genmega Partner to Introduce 'Gifted ATMs'
GivePay Commerce has partnered with retail ATM maker Genmega to introduce the GivePay Gift Card marketplace at Genmega ATMS nationwide. The software update introduces hundreds of digital gift cards and prepaid wireless products that can be purchased through the ATM and delivered instantly by text. Digital gift cards are sent to the recipient's smartphone and most cards can be stored in Apple Wallet or Google Pay for easy redemption.
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Instore Mobile Contactless Services Used by Only 14% of Online US Consumers
The window of opportunity in the US for mobile payment providers like Apple Pay and Google Pay is closing fast. Despite high levels of support from retailers, only 14% of US respondents currently use OEM-Pay (payment services provided by smartphone vendors) for instore purchases, according to a new survey from Juniper Research. The research firm thinks that future growth is likely to be threatened by increasing deployments of contactless cards in the US.
Apple Pay Transaction Volumes Are up 100% Year-on-Year
More than 1.8bn Apple Pay transactions were conducted last quarter, CEO Tim Cook has revealed during the company’s Q1 2019 earnings call. That number is “well over twice the volume of the year-ago quarter,” he revealed.
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Social Engineering, Credential Compromise Jumped in 2018
According to ProofPoint's fifth annual State of the Phish Report, more organizations were affected by all types of social engineering attacks (phishing, spear phishing, sms phishing, voice phishing, and USB drops) year over year. For the first time, compromised accounts bypassed malware infections as the most commonly identified impact of successful phishing attacks.
Cohesity Delivers Backup Solution That Helps Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Ransomware Attacks
Cohesity announced the Cohesity Anti-Ransomware Solution, a series of new capabilities available for the latest version of Cohesity DataPlatform that directly combats ransomware attacks. The company states that legacy backup solutions are ineffective against today’s ransomware attacks, so in response they developed a three layer solution that helps organisations prevent, detect, and respond to ransomware.
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Accenture Blends AI, Data and Human Input into Its SynOps Platform
Accenture has launched a new business platform that blends data, AI and digital technologies to help organizations improve their efficiencies. SynOps enables the collection, monitoring, storage, analysis and reporting of structured and unstructured data from various sources and creates the environment for advanced data exploration and AI model development to help with real-time decision-making.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
5 Reasons Why Payments and ID Need to Merge
By merging payments and ID in a comprehensive way, the author contends that we can solve a number of key issues that are holding the industry back, as well as opening up the doors to a major new wave of innovation. One of the biggest reasons for merging payments and ID though would not be to solve existing issues. It would be to speed up a new wave of technology-enabled innovation that would be possible as a result of the secure and efficient ecosystem it provides.
The Fed Should Develop Its Own Real-Time Payments, Say 3 Former Fed Payment Experts
Some former Fed payments experts believe ubiquitous access to faster payments and its benefits cannot be achieved with reasonable effectiveness, scope and equity without the Federal Reserve Banks offering these services to FIs. They favor the Fed providing a competitive real-time network to regulation of a single real-time payments provider like The Clearing House.
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How SD-WAN Can Improve Your Security Strategy
Deploying SD-WAN helps eliminate VPN concerns, while reducing the amount of traffic that needs to go through security parameters because all site-to-site traffic is encrypted. This makes security a bit easier to manage. Plus, for sites that simply need very basic security, SD-WAN has some inherent security capabilities. It can do things such as allow and deny certain sites and limit traffic that goes to certain sites. Finally, SD-WAN providers are making progress in partnering with both cloud security providers and cloud service providers. By making traffic encrypted and secure via SD-WAN, security platforms will only have to deal with public Internet traffic.
Why You Need to Use DMARC and SPF on Mail Servers to Prevent Phishing and Fraud
The risks of not securing email servers is growing - an FBI study indicated that "fake emails were a key driver in the 60 percent jump in business email compromise (BEC) losses in 2018." Many security experts state that open, industry-standard mail security specifications like DMARC and SPF can minimize these risks.
Cisco Serves up Flexible Data-Center Options
Cisco is significantly spreading its data-center technology to help customers grow and control hybrid, multicloud or hyperconverged edge environments. The company is expanding its data center-influence by extending its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) to the cloud, extending its hyperconverged HyperFlex offering to the edge and bolstering the management capabilities of its CloudCenter offering.
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Listening and Learning: What's in a Resolution?
This article looks at how one organization measured thier performance from a First Contact Resolution (FCR) perspective. They focused on 4 items: 1. Coaches would closely listen to a call; 2. Coaches would review the file and all of the information that the representative would have had the opportunity to review; 3. Coaches would assess the overall success of the call based on behavioral criteria that they determined were essential to a resolution; and 4. The call was then scored as resolved “Yes” or “No”.
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