Month: June 2020

  • Nokia nets exclusive Taiwan Mobile 5G deal

    In a huge win for Nokia that will not only bring in around €400m over three years, but will also establish it as a leading player in a key region, Taiwan Mobile (TWM) has selected the Finnish telco as the sole supplier of its 5G network in a three-year framework contract.

    In the 5G era, TWM is repositioning itself as a next-generation technology company focusing on telecommunications, the internet, media and entertainment, and e-commerce, with an emphasis on sustainability. In Taiwan’s spectrum auction in January 2020, the operator claimed 60MHz in the 3.5GHz band and 200MHz in the 28GHz band.

    … Read More
    Read More

  • Phishing back in vogue as ransomware vector

    Cyber criminals appear to be returning to phishing as a means of spreading ransomware into target organisations, reversing a recent trend towards using malicious downloaders as a first-stage payload delivery mechanism. This heralds the possibility of a return to the large-scale ransomware attacks seen a couple of years ago.

    That is according to threat researchers at Proofpoint, who have seen an uptick in phishing-related ransomware lures targeting mainly France, Germany, Greece, Italy and the US, with daily volumes ranging from one to as many as 350,000 messages in each campaign, many exploiting the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.

    The uptick includes

    … Read More
    Read More

  • MPs urged to back Finance Bill amendments to loan charge policy

    MPs are being urged to support an amendment to the forthcoming Finance Bill that could potentially free thousands of people from being within the scope of the government’s controversial loan charge policy.

    The Finance Bill 2019-2021 has been working its way through the House of Commons since March 2020, and is due to enter the report stage ahead of its third reading on Wednesday 1 July.

    Ahead of that, a series of suggested amendments to the bill were published on 26 June, including one proposal to tighten up the government’s loan charge policy so that it applies only to individuals

    … Read More
    Read More

  • 95% of North American CIOs report remote work issues during lockdown

    With one or two exceptions, the general consensus has been that employees in the major economies forced to work from home since March due to Covid-19 have coped well, but research from Hitachi ID Systems and Pulse has found that CIOs have had to battle hard to maintain acceptable experiences for remote workers.

    Indeed, the survey in May 2020 of 100 North American C-suite executives at enterprise, mid-sized, and small companies looking at the biggest roadblocks IT teams have encountered while working from home found that as many as 95% of all CIO respondents reported that their IT organisations have

    … Read More
    Read More

  • UK needs an immigration and training rethink

    The CBI has warned that significant reskilling is required across the UK workforce in the wake of the coronavirus. In its Building a world-class innovation and digital economy report, the industry organisation said the country faces major talent gaps, which will affect business innovation.

    The report predicted that as the economy recovers from the pandemic, all employees will need essential digital skills to use recently adopted technologies at work and to innovate.

    According to the CBI, many businesses will also need some employees with advanced or specialist digital skills, such as software engineering or artificial intelligence skills, to develop new,

    … Read More
    Read More

  • Former Post Office CEO and Fujitsu play the blame game in Horizon IT scandal

    A former Post Office CEO has blamed supplier Fujitsu, which in turn blamed the Post Office, for many of the failures to stop IT errors that caused one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in history.

    Meanwhile, the government has reiterated that it has no intention to have a judge-led public inquiry into the scandal that saw innocent subpostmasters’ lives ruined after being wrongly blamed for branch account shortfalls.

    Earlier in June, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) select committee chair, Darren Jones MP, sent letters to executives past and present at the Post Office and its IT supplier

    … Read More
    Read More