Tech and Hosting News Round-Up

November 26, 2020 / Technology News

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Welcome to our latest round-up of news from the technology and hosting world. Here’s what we’ve discovered this week.

China already testing 6G

While the rest of the world is still rolling out 5G, China is already developing 6G technology and, in a world-first, has just launched 13 6G satellites into space as part of a new testing programme. The satellites will undertake communications experiments using high-frequency terahertz waves that could, potentially, enable 6G to far exceed the data transmission speeds achieved by the latest 5G networks.   

At present 6G still seems a long way off. International agreements on its formal specifications aren’t due until 2028 and the first deployments are not expected before 2030. However, some countries are already making plans. In South Korea, Samsung will begin working on 6G next year, while in the US, operators including Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile US have created the Next G Alliance to accelerate the development of 6G in America.

Growth in cloud account hacks

Cybersecurity company, McAfee, reported almost 7.5 million external attacks against cloud accounts during Q2 of 2020. With more than 200,000 of these attacks against businesses in the UK, it makes Britain the seventh most affected country. The top spot went to Thailand which experienced 625,000 attacks.

The security firm says that the attacks clearly indicate how cybercriminals have been changing their attack methods to take advantage of the pandemic. As companies have quickly shifted to the cloud in order to offer remote working and maintain collaboration, communication and productivity, there has been a 605% rise in pandemic related attacks.

McAfee did state that the cloud is still the securest place to do business and offers greater potential for business growth, innovation and resiliency. However, businesses do need to make their systems secure, introduce strong data governance and keep staff trained over security.

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Report calls for SMB digital adoption fund

The UK’s Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec) has called for the government to set up a digital transformation fund to help SMBs adopt new technologies. Coadec wants several incentives put in place for small and medium-sized businesses, these include a tax relief or tax credit fund to help reduce the financial burden of adopting new technologies and the creation of a tech matrix that will give sector-based recommendations of approved tech products and services.

Additionally, the coalition is asking that the country’s tech startups work in collaboration with SMBs to offer support on what tech they need to use and how best to use it, as well as wanting the government to develop a post-pandemic tech adoption strategy that enables companies to face future challenges with greater agility.

10M hotel reservation details exposed online

A Spanish company that provides a hotel reservation platform has left the data of 10 million bookings, going back seven years, unprotected online. Prestige Software’s Cloud Hospitality platform enables hotels to take bookings and sync room availability across numerous online booking sites, including Expedia, Hotels.com and Booking.com. However, a misconfiguration on its cloud network left the data publicly exposed.

The unprotected data contained personal and highly-sensitive information from over ten million bookings dating back to 2013. This included names, email addresses, national ID numbers, phone numbers, reservation information and payment card details, including CVV security codes and card expiration dates. There are concerns that the data could be used for credit card fraud, identity theft and phishing scams.

With the company being based in the EU, it is likely to be investigated for non-compliance with GDPR and could face substantial fines. A similar data breach by Marriot Hotels in the UK led to a fine of £18 million in the UK this year.  

Three moves to the cloud

One of the UK’s leading mobile operators, Three, has made a major move to the cloud. The move is part of a heavy investment in digital transformation aimed at improving both operational support, including for its 5G network, and business support.

The operator has deployed solutions that will manage telephone numbers, SIMs and linked resources via a unified data repository in order to provide increased reliability and efficiency, while enabling it to better manage communication identifiers, such as email addresses, URLs and IPs.

Additionally, by running its systems in the cloud, the company will no longer need to deploy and manage the platform on-site and can streamline its operations. Moreover, the cloud enables it to predict costs, ensure number availability and better maintain data regulation compliance.

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Author

  • Arjun Shinde

    I'm an experienced digital marketer with expertise in planning, SEO, SEM, and social media. I'm good at creating engaging content and optimising campaigns for a strong online presence.

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