It’s been another bad week in security.
Not only do we learn that so-called “friendly” governments are quietly requesting surveillance data concerning push notifications, but Apple tells us more than 2.6 billion personal records have already been compromised by data breaches in the past two years.
Facebook parent company Meta is facing yet another legal challenge over user privacy, as a Spanish media company representing top media outlets in the country is suing the social media giant for $600 million for competitively unfair advertising practices based on noncompliance with the EU’s General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR).
The Information Media Association (La Asociación de Medios de Información, or AMI), has filed a €550 million ($600 million) lawsuit against Meta, claiming Meta’s ability to design personalized advertising on its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms based on its enormous user base represents an unfair competitive advantage in the advertising market in Europe, which includes media companies.
Microsoft plans to offer extended security updates to both business and individual Windows 10 users for the first time when the operating system reaches end-of-life in late 2025.
Microsoft encouraged Windows 10 customers to begin plans to migrate to the latest version of the operating system — Windows 11 — last April with the announcement that Windows 10 22H2 would be the final version.
Windows 10 is still the most widely used version of the OS, accounting for 64% of US desktop market share, according to StatCounter’s figures; that compared to 30% for Windows 11.
In yet another illustration of just how devious criminals have become in their attempts to undermine security, Jamf Threat Labs has identified a potential tampering technique that puts a device into Fake Lockdown Mode.
As most people know, Lockdown Mode is an extreme protection feature for iPhone designed to protect the kind of high-value targets some of the nastiestsurveillance and state-sponsored attackers aim for.
Generative artificial intelligence (genAI) is likely to play a critical role in addressing skills shortages in today’s marketplace, according to a new study by London-based Kaspersky Research. It showed that 40% of 2,000 C-level executives surveyed plan to use genAI tools such as ChatGPT to cover critical skills shortages through the automation of tasks.
The European-based study found genAI to be firmly on the business agenda, with 95% of respondents regularly discussing ways to maximize value from the technology at the most senior level, even as 91% admitted they don’t really know how it works.
If nothing else, Apple’s most recent emergency security update should be considered proof of an increasingly tense security environment.
Enterprises must understand that while Apple maintains a pretty solid ecosystem — certainly at present the most secure, even according to Cisco — that doesn’t mean it’s entirely safe, and every Apple customer needs to get wise to the growing proliferation of threats.
With more and more business users turning to the company’s solutions, it’s important to get ahead of the threat.
It’s the last call to keep any Gmail accounts you haven’t used recently.
Beginning December 1, Google will start deleting accounts that have been inactive for two years, including all associated photos, Drive documents, contacts, emails, and calendar entries. The tech giant first announced this change in their inactivity policy in May.
Google confirmed to Computerworld that it’s proceeding with the deletion plan. “We plan to roll this out slowly and in phases, not all at once,” spokesperson Christa Muldoon said. “We’ll be starting with accounts that were created and never used.”
Separate Gmail accounts held by the same user under different names are also subject to deletion, Muldoon said.
Large language models (LLMs), the algorithmic platforms on which generative AI (genAI) tools like ChatGPT are built, are highly inaccurate when connected to corporate databases and becoming less transparent, according to two studies.
One study by Stanford University showed that as LLMs continue to ingest massive amounts of information and grow in size, the genesis of the data they use is becoming harder to track down. That, in turn, makes it difficult for businesses to know whether they can safely build applications that use commercial genAI foundation models and for academics to rely on them for research.