The Essential 2018 Internet Trends Report

Legendary venture capitalist Mary Meeker  has just released the 2018 version of her famous Internet Trends report. It covers everything from mobile to commerce to the competition between tech giants. Check out the full report below, and we’ll add some highlights soon. Then come back for our slide-by-slide analysis of the 20 most important parts of the 294 page report.

TechCrunch.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

What was most surprising to you in her report?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

Amazon Web Services Reinvented the Internet into a Cash Cow

In the summer of 2003, there was an off-site meeting at Jeff Bezos’s house. We were doing this exercise, looking at what we thought our core competencies were as a company. We started off with fairly obvious things, like we were good at having a lot of selection in retail, and we were good at fulfilling that selection.

But when we looked into it more deeply, we realized that in building Amazon’s consumer business as fast as we had in the first eight years, we’d gotten really good at operating infrastructure services, things like computing and storage and database. And because our retail business was a very low-margin business…

NYmag.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

Will we all work for Amazon in the future?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

AWS new RoboMaker – you build intelligent robotics apps

Amazon Web Services is rolling out a new cloud service designed to help developers build, test and deploy intelligent robotics applications. The cloud juggernaut said the new AWS RoboMaker service works on top of the open-source robotics middleware Robot Operating System, and extends the framework with connectivity to AWS services for machine learning, monitoring, and analytics.

zdnet.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

What will Amazon not control, in the near future?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

Why AWS re:Invent is arguably more important than Amazon’s Black Friday

Yes, everyone shopped their wallets dry on Amazon during the big holiday sales push. But don’t forget that the AWS public cloud side of Amazon is likely to drive valuation and operating income going forward.

zdnet.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you using AWS, yet?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

Internet 100 times faster with ‘Twisted’ fibre optic?

A new development in fibre optics could make internet speeds up to 100 times faster – by detecting light that has been twisted into a spiral. … By twisting light into a spiral, engineers effectively create a third dimension for light to carry information: the level of orbital angular momentum, or spin. “It’s like DNA, if you look at the double helix spiral,” said Min Gu from RMIT University. “The more you can use angular momentum the more information you can carry.”

TheGuardian.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you using fiber connections in your office?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

Quantum computers will break the encryption that protects the internet

Encryption has plenty of uses. It defends state secrets, and the corporate sort. It protects financial flows and medical records. And it makes the $2trn e-commerce industry possible. Without it, credit-card details, bank transfers, emails and the like would zip around the internet unprotected, for anyone so minded to see or steal. Nobody, however, is certain that the foundation of all this is sound.

economist.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you concerned about your business privacy?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

Your computer could be quietly mining bitcoin — for someone else

Hackers are quietly hijacking personal computers, company servers, cable routers, mobile devices and other forms of computing power to stealthily mine cryptocurrencies — a problem that cybersecurity experts warn is growing rapidly.  The act, known as cryptojacking…

NBCnews.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Has your computer started to act strangely slow?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

How Amazon and Microsoft will battle Google over Android

Amazon and Microsoft are the two companies best suited to go face to face with Google in terms of app ecosystem and native application offerings for Android.  Four or five years ago, this would have been inconceivable. Neither company was in a position to provide compelling applications or store experiences that rivaled what Google had.  But that has changed.

ZDnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Do you use Android??Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

Open Source Intelligence Gathering: The Techniques

One constant throughout my career has been my fascination with what can be learned about an organization from basic public records. The aggregation of a multitude of small pieces of information can paint a picture that is sometimes startling in its completeness. Then some holes can be filled-in with small logical leaps and inferences.

specterops.io click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you gathering intel?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

A big tech company is working to free the internet from big tech companies

Components of the decentralized web may already be emerging, but they are not ready for prime time. Cloudflare, a company that makes its money by hosting the internet’s contents on far-flung servers and uses algorithms to deliver them to users as fast as possible, wants to help change that. The first step is what the company calls a “gateway,” to which anyone can connect a website and begin serving data stored in a peer-to-peer file-sharing network called the Interplanetary File System(IPFS).

technologyreview.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you looking for ways to succeed outside of the mega-platforms?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

Radical new plan to upend the World Wide Web by its inventor

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web … is working on a plan to radically alter how all of us live and work on the web.  “The intent is world domination” … “It’s a historical moment.” Ever since revelations emerged that Facebook had allowed people’s data to be misused by political operatives, Berners-Lee has felt an imperative to get this digital idyll into the real world. …

The difference here is that, on Solid, all the information is under his control. Every bit of data he creates or adds on Solid exists within a Solid pod–which is an acronym for personal online data store.

Fastcompany.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Would you like a decentralized internet, where you control your own data?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

Small business servers: Why and how you can say ‘no’ to the cloud

Even in this cloud-centric world, there remain good reasons to own and run a physical server out of your office (or even home). Which server? That depends entirely on what you’ll be using it for.

ZDnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you moving to an all cloud network?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

5G is almost here — here’s how everyone’s getting ready

5G is coming, and it’s going to have a massive impact on almost every facet of how we use technology, with faster speeds and lower latency theoretically opening up huge new frontiers in everything from smartphones to self-driving cars.  But the future of mobile networks isn’t here yet.

TheVerge.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you waiting for 5G?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

IN CYBERWAR, THERE ARE NO RULES

It won’t be cutting-edge cyberattacks that cause the much-feared cyber-Pearl Harbor in the United States or elsewhere. Instead, it will likely be mundane strikes against industrial control systems, transportation networks, and health care providers—because their infrastructure is out of date, poorly maintained, ill-understood, and often unpatchable. Worse will be the invisible manipulation of public opinion and election outcomes using digital tools such as targeted advertising and deep fakes—recordings and videos that can realistically be made via artificial intelligence to sound like any world leader.

ForeignPolicy.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

How secure is your business to cyber warfare?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

Everything in your home is about to get smart. Here’s what to watch out for.

Smart devices can improve daily life by being aware of what you’re doing, so they can predict what you want them to do. For example, smart lights can learn when it’s bedtime and use that information to only use low brightness after that if you wander to the bathroom.   That convenience comes at a price, however: IoT devices generally require an internet connection to function, and harvest your information in return for helping improve your day.

ThinkGrowth.org click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you using iot devices in your home?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

Using a truly private browser — Brave

One of the biggest leaks of privacy on your computer is your browser. Whether the leaks come from the website you browse to (tracking cookies, fingerprinting, etc), from the browser itself (diagnostic info, interest tracking, cloud-based history collection, etc), or from your ISP being able to observe everything you do.  Enter Brave, a browser specifically built from the ground up for privacy.

TheMedium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you concerned with your privacy?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

How Amazon Will Dominate the Supply Chain

It’s unclear what the future holds for traditional delivery companies. But judging by Amazon’s recent movements, there’s going to be a new delivery kid on the block. Today they’re delivering for themselves, tomorrow it’ll be for other companies. Before we know it, Amazon will be delivering everything for everyone.

TheMedium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

What impact will this have on your business?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

The next 50 years of cyber security

Observable gaps prevent our industry from operating in a rational, scientific and organized way. I think that the information security industry is currently stalling due to:

  1. A lack of classification methods around the root causes of breaches.
  2. A lack of transparency into the root causes of data breaches.
  3. A lack of probabilistic methods for those who practice cyber security.

Only a collective drive from this industry and its communities toward quantifiable methods and goals will allow us to build a future we’re proud of.

TheMedium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you concerned about the future of cyber security?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

The Pandora’s Box of the Digital Age

In the past year alone, a series of hacks and ransomware attacks by hostile governments and other malign actors have raised alarms about a major threat to global stability. Unfortunately, many governments are responding by developing still more cyber weapons, on the mistaken assumption that offense is the best defense.

Project-Syndicate.org click the link to read the rest of the story.

Should nation states focus on offensive strategies?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

Customer Experience Is The New Brand

Today, 89% of companies compete primarily on the basis of customer experience – up from just 36% in 2010. But while 80% of companies believe they deliver “super experiences,” only 8% of customers agree.

Forbes.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you trying new ways to communicate with your customers?
Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

Amazon and Walmart’s rivalry: how we’ll buy everything

For Walmart to compete going forward, Hetu says, it needs to invest in how it thinks people will want to shop in the future. “Walmart believes today is that in order to be relevant in the future, they have to get the technology — the relationship with the consumer through technology — into their physical environment,” he says.

TheVerge.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

How will this affect your business?
Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

 

Why Nation-State Hacking Should Matter To Everyone

Perhaps most critical, particularly for business networks who also support employee or consumer devices, is to ensure every device receives these necessary updates and patches. One vulnerable entry point can spell the downfall of an entire organization or a household of connected devices.

Forbes.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you considering purchasing one?
Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

Security Spending is Up – But on Old Technologies that Don’t Work

Most organizations are spending their increased dollars on the same type of solutions that they implemented in the past. But these legacy solutions are no longer effective at preventing modern breaches. Today’s attackers use new methods that old security systems don’t detect.

lastline.com learn more here

Are you certain your current security technologies deserve your trust?
Join the conversation on our Facebook Page! 

DeepLocker: will malware weaponize artificial intelligence?

Traditional cyber security solutions, such as bolt-on antivirus software, are no longer enough. Cyber attackers are exploiting every possible avenue to steal data, infiltrate networks, disrupt critical systems, rinse bank accounts, and hold businesses to ransom.

PCMag.com learn more here

Are you adding new layers of protection for your business?
Join the conversation on our Facebook Page! 

Google now has a Cybersecurity Company, Chronicle

Chronicle will initially offer two services: The VirusTotal anti-malware intelligence service, and a cybersecurity intelligence and analytics platform.

Inc.com click the link to read the rest of the story?

What do you think of Google’s entry into the world of Cyber Security offerings?
Join the conversation on our Facebook Page! 

Invisible threats to old-school endpoint protection software

Fileless security threats—also known as “non-malware” attacks—leverage RAM, the Windows system registry, and even PowerShell and the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) module to kick off multi step “attack chains.”

ChannelProNetwork.com click the link to read the rest of the story?

How are you dealing with file-less attacks?
Join the conversation on our Facebook Page! 

U.S. intel chief warns of devastating cyber threat to U.S.

The U.S. intelligence chief warned on Friday that the threat was growing for a devastating cyber assault on critical U.S. infrastructure, saying the “warning lights are blinking red again” nearly two decades after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Yahoo.com click the link to read the rest of the story?

Could your business survive such an attack?
Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!