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The Best Enterprise Level Firewalls: Rating 10 Top Products
This 37-page downloadable report features reviews from hundreds of network security pros who have actually used the products in real-world situations. The article looks at the Top 10 Firewalls identified by IT Central Station.
Amazon Opens up Alexa for Business to Third-Party Devices
Alexa can now be integrated into office equipment such as audio calling headsets and video conferencing systems. Amazon has created an Alexa for Business integration for third-party device makers, allowing its the popular voice assistant to be embedded into a wider variety of office equipment.
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Microsoft's Office 2019 Price Hike: Will It Push You to Office 365?
Office 2019 Home & Business costs $249.99, up 9 percent from the $229 Microsoft asked for Office 2016 Home and Business. Office 2019 Professional now costs $439.99, up 10 percent from the $399 that Office 2016 Professional costed. The steady and gradual price rises, combined with more feature updates for Office 365, should have the effect of making an Office 365 subscription more attractive, especially to Microsoft's business customers.
Microsoft Provides a New Way for Business Users to Test Windows 10 Enterprise Features
Last September, Microsoft introduced a "Windows Insider Lab for Enterprise" to encourage Windows 10 Insider for Business testers to test-drive some of its coming business-oriented features. Microsoft recently announced the refresh of that lab, known as "Olympia Corp.," which officials are hoping will get even more business testers into the program. They now allow users to set up their own test organizations to test their pre-release Windows 10 Enterprise features, such as Windows Information Protection, Windows Defender Application Guard, Advanced Threat Protection and more, from both an administrator and client perspective.
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SMS Phishing + Cardless ATM = Profit
Scammers are combining SMS-based phishing attacks with new “cardless” ATMs to rapidly convert phished account credentials into cash. Krebs goes into the details of exactly how the scheme played out at one FI.
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FIs Struggle with Mobile Web Experience and Design
This article contends that the sales and marketing functions being built for mobile sites often don’t hit the mark because they don’t approach the process in a way that matches the way that consumers buy financial services. They recommend that before you turn your digital staff loose to redesign your mobile site to produce more and better sales, you ought to have them serve a short apprenticeship in a branch to learn how consumers make their financial services buying decisions.
In-Vehicle Commerce Opportunities Drive Total Connected Cars to Exceed 775 Million by 2023
A new report from Juniper Research has revealed that 775 million consumer vehicles will be connected via telematics or by in-vehicle apps by 2023, rising from 330 million vehicles in 2018. However, these in-vehicle commerce transactions will represent less than 1% of mobile and online transactions globally.
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Windows Defender Becomes First Antivirus to Run Inside a Sandbox
Microsoft announced that Windows Defender is the first antivirus to gain the ability to run inside a sandbox environment. In software design, a "sandbox" is a security mechanism that works by separating a process inside a tightly controlled area of the operating system that gives that process access to limited disk and memory resources. The idea is to prevent bugs and exploit code from spreading from one process to another, or to the underlying OS.
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5 Reasons Why Your Organization Doesn't Take Analytics Seriously, and 5 Ways to Change That
An MIT Sloan Management Review found that 67% of companies that were aggressively using analytics achieved competitive advantage in their markets. This article looks at what is slowing down meaningful big data and analytics adoption, and what CIOs and CDOs can do about it.
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Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
Gartner Predicts Most FIs Will Be Made Irrelevant by 2030
Within 12 years time, 80% of financial firms will either go out of business or be rendered irrelevant by new competition, changing consumer behavior and advancements in technology, according to forecasts by Gartner. The research firm predicts that global digital platforms, fintech companies and other nontraditional players will gain greater market share, using technology to change the economics and business models of the industry.
NACHA Reports Strong ACH Volume Growth of Nearly 7 Percent in Q3 2018
The number of ACH payments totaled more than 5.6 billion in the third quarter of 2018, a 6.7 percent increase over Q3 2017, according to NACHA. The ACH Network’s strong performance is driven in large part by online and business-to-business (B2B) payments. More than 3.3 billion ACH debit and nearly 2.3 billion ACH credit payments were made in the third quarter of 2018. During this same period, B2B payments increased nearly 10 percent with over 896 million payments completed.
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Rackspace Launches Disaster Recovery as a Service Program
Rackspace is broadening its existing disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) program for on-premises, colocation, and multi-cloud environments. Rackspace DRaaS for Zerto is a fully-managed disaster recovery solution, so customers can move away from managing disaster recovery themselves.
Virtual Application Delivery Controller: Where It Fits into the Software-Defined Data-Center Network
The author contends that SDN and virtualization are driving a shift from hardware-based application delivery controllers (ADC) toward a microservices model that enables more flexible application delivery controller licensing options. He states that over time, migration to a software-defined data-center network will require the disaggregation of ADC features, increasing use of microservices-based ADC features, and more flexible licensing options.
SD-WAN: The Inside Scoop from Real-World Deployments
This article looks at some software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) case studies. One example: for one company the move to broadband and wireless backup increased bandwidth because all three connections could be used interchangeably by SD-WAN. It also decreased monthly connectivity expenses by about 40%.
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5 Steps for Responding to an Angry Caller
The author suggests a 5 step approach for dealing with angry callers. He dubs it the HEART approach: Hear - Empathize - Apologize - Resolve - Thanks.
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