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By Paul Tien, Contributor, Network World | Mar 27, 2018 9:00 AM PT

We’ve entered a new era of cyber threats. It’s like no other that’s gone before, in that CISOs must battle not only the huge volume of “old threats” out there but also a growing array of stealthier new attacks designed to circumvent traditional tools. These could include certain types of targeted attacks, ransomware, zero-day threats, and even business process compromise. And they have to deal with a much larger attack surface created by cloud, mobility, and riskier user behavior. We’ve entered a new era of cyber threats. It’s like no other that’s gone before, in that CISOs must battle not only the huge volume of “old threats” out there but also a growing array of stealthier new attacks designed to circumvent traditional tools. These could include certain types of targeted attacks, ransomware, zero-day threats, and even business process compromise. And they have to deal with a much larger attack surface created by cloud, mobility, and riskier user behavior.

Two years after its launch, the service had attracted around 30 active customers.

By Peter Sayer

IDG News Service - Paris bureau chief, IDG News Service | MARCH 28, 2018

SAP has decided to “sunset” a front-office service with which it hoped to crack the small business market.

Launched in May 2016, SAP Anywhere was supposed to help small companies build online stores, create marketing campaigns, manage inventory and analyze business performance. To achieve this it offered integrations with web services from Google, PayPal and United Parcel Service.

Perhaps more surprising than SAP’s retreat from the small-business market is how little ground it won there.

Despite a worldwide footprint, with launches in the U.S.,

It could include a new Surface Book, a Surface Pro LTE and more.

John Fingas, @jonfingas

Microsoft might not be done introducing new Surface hardware this year just because the Surface Laptop and Surface Pro are on store shelves. The company has confirmed that devices executive Panos Panay will be presenting at the company's two-day Future Decoded event (starting October 31st -- yes, Halloween), hinting that he'll introduce new hardware. A source speaking to The Verge supports this with word that there will be "at least one" new piece of hardware at the event, so it seems like Microsoft's habit of introducing new Surface machines in October will remain intact. As it stands, there are a few systems that could stand to get upgrades.

By Mustaali Marvi

Cybercriminals are always on the hunt for targets to exploit and make an easy buck from them – and small businesses are not immune to this. Here are five types of cybersecurity breaches you need to try to prevent as well as prepare for.

Since cybercrime damages are expected to grow beyond $6 trillion per year by 2021, it is high time for small and midsize businesses to identify the cybersecurity concerns that are a threat to their existence and take the appropriate measures.

Cortana will read your emails aloud during car journeys

By Tom Warren     @tomwarren      Mar 5, 2018, 10:19am EST

                        Cortana in Outlook for iOS Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Microsoft has been slowly adding more email intelligence to its Cortana digital assistant, but it has resisted integrating it directly into Outlook mobile. That’s about to change, soon. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s Outlook plans tell The Verge that the company is currently testing Cortana within Outlook on iOS and Android.

When Netscape released the source code for its Netscape Communicator web browser 20 years ago, a discussion was sparked in the developer community. A new term was being sought that could appropriately explain this stuff. A related term, “free software,” existed but its seeming focus on price confused the newcomers.
For the first time, on February 3rd, 1998 in Palo Alto, the term Open Source was coined by Christine Peterson, who was executive director at Foresight Institute.

Google introduced their home-baked machine learning chips at last year’s I/O. Known as Tenor Processing Units, TPUs for short, these chips were later known to be around 15 to 30 times faster than traditional CPUs and GPUs.

TPUs are designed to accelerate machine learning processing on Google Cloud Platform and reduce the time required to train and run TensorFlow-based AI models. Google is already using TPUs in their data centers.

By Paul Simons

Spamming, hacking and the breach of cyber security are an unfortunate reality of the digital world. According to some reports, almost one in three internet users in the United States are a victim of cyber crimes in one way or another. The cyber security attackers are launching more and more harmful malware every day and are evolving their techniques to strike more devices than ever before.

The situation is even more alarming for small businesses and ecommerce stores. Some statistics indicate that almost 64% of online companies have experienced web-based attacks and millions of customers have been affected. This means that online retailers must take necessary safety measures to secure their websites and ensure that customer’s sensitive information is duly protected.

There are a lot of great things to say about the faster release cycles we see with software these days. Bugs are fixed and features become available to us sooner, security issues are resolved quicker too. In a lot of cases, our operating systems and software packages are smart enough to check themselves and let us know updates are available or automatically install themselves.

Wise minds are always innovating. That’s exactly what’s occurred with long-time SMB Nation member Grace Schroeder (remember the Idea2 CRM?) with her new company Slingr. 

Schroder and team have launched a supporting actor application in a category I just made up called SMB channel partner ecosystem extenders. Essentially Slingr found a gap that needed to be filled. In particular this blog concerns Slingr’s integration of Slack to the Autotask professional services automation (PSA) solution.