Ransomware is an increasing security concern for IT professionals
There are always plenty of security concerns causing furrowed brows
of IT professionals, but a survey shows that it is ransomware that is
causing the biggest headaches at the moment. A survey carried out by Spiceworks and published by Webroot
found that 88 per cent of professionals had concerns about ransomware,
while one third of those questioned had dealt with a ransomware attack
first hand. By far the most common strategy for dealing with a device
that has been maliciously encrypted is to simply wipe it.
Two-thirds expect the number of attacks to increase in the next year
which is particularly concerning when you consider that two thirds of IT
professionals know someone who has been affected by ransomware. Despite
the threat and attempts to thwart the flow of ransomware with
filtering, firewalls, and email scanning, just 44 per cent believe their
current security set up is "somewhat effective".
Faced with a device that is encrypted by malware and held to ransom, 9
per cent of those surveyed would attempt to crack the encryption
themselves, while 22 per cent would call in encryption experts. The
importance of backing up does not seem to have filtered through to the
hundreds of people questioned by Spiceworks; while 82 per cent of IT
professional affected by ransomware would wipe the device in question,
just 19 per cent would restore data from a backup.
It should come as no surprise that the internet is one of the most
common sources of this type of malware, but email and social networks
also feature high on the list. A worryingly small 31 per cent of IT
admins have a specific strategy in place for dealing with ransomware
attacks.
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With Facebook's rocketing popularity, the social network became a target for scammers and malware peddlers, and social engineering attacks have only increased massively since they first became a phenomenon.
So it's always handy to be aware of what current major scams are doing the rounds, so there's no danger of you being tempted into clicking and ending up with something nasty on your machine.
Security expert Bitdefender (the maker of the famous internet security suite which is generally ranked highly among testers, ourselves included) maintains a yearly list of the top ten scams, and this time around, the number one spot has stayed occupied by the same predictable piece of click-bait.
Yep, the top scam is "Total profile views/visitors (Check out now who viewed your profile)", with the lure of being promised a list of those who've been peeking at your profile representing 30 per cent of scams on Facebook.
Number two, but a long way behind on 7.4 per cent, is "Change your Facebook Color/Colour" (which offers to change the background colour of your profile). And at number three we have a bogus Rihanna sex tape, which represents 4.8 per cent of all Facebook scams. All the top three scams mainly target the UK, US and Australia.
Rihanna is the top lure in terms of celebs, taking over from Taylor Swift who was a popular scam last year, but has now fallen out of the top ten. Another major scam which slipped from the list was an alleged free trip to Disneyland.
As you can see, not only is the "see who viewed your profile" scam number one, but variants are also present at number eight and nine (and seven is pretty similar – seeing if folks have deleted you). Other Facebook theme/colour trickery is also repeated throughout the list.
People would do well to remember that you will never be able to see who has viewed your profile, and that Facebook blue is here to stay (and there will never be a "Dislike" button, while we're at it).
Catalin Cosoi, Chief Security Strategist at Bitdefender, commented: "Why do people still want to see who has been taking a peek at their profile, despite all security warnings? I think they believe these are legitimate apps. This is social engineering at its finest – a challenging mental game that pushes the right psychological buttons. The baits have changed over time, with stalkers, peekers, admirers, overly attached girlfriends and exes haunting you, but the reason this scam works is simple: human nature."
Bitdefender further noted that there has been an increase of viral video scams which perpetuate themselves via like-jacking (tricking somebody into liking a clip on Facebook when they didn't mean to).
For more on Facebook security, check out our tips on how to avoid your Facebook account being hacked.
People in the UK who persistently pirate music and movies will soon start getting emails warning them that their actions are illegal.
The warnings are part of a larger scheme that aims to educate people about copyright and legal ways to enjoy digital content.
Starting next year, up to four warnings annually will be sent to households suspected of copyright infringement.
But if people ignore the warnings, no further action will be taken.
The warning system is the result of four years' wrangling between internet service providers (ISPs) and industry bodies representing music and movie-makers.
The original enforcement regime was outlined in the Digital Economy Act 2010 and called for persistent pirates to have their net access cut off after a series of warnings.
'Difficult to protect'
In addition, rights holders wanted warning letters to mention the potential penalties people would face for copyright infringement and access to a database of known illegal file-sharers.
The years of talks brokered by the government have led to the creation of the Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme (Vcap) that uses warnings via email or post.
The UK's biggest ISPs - BT, TalkTalk, Virgin and Sky - have signed up to Vcap. Many smaller ISPs are expected to join later.
In addition, the UK government has pledged to contribute £3.5m to an education campaign that will promote legal ways to listen to music and watch movies.
Introducing the three-year educational scheme, Business Secretary Vince Cable said the initiative was all about supporting the UK's creative industries.
"It's a difficult industry to pin down and it's also difficult to protect," he said. "But unless you protect it then it's an industry that cannot function."
'Persuading the persuadable'
Government estimates suggest the UK's creative industries contribute £71bn to the UK economy and support about 1.68 million jobs.
Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI, said it had been a "long road" to produce the Vcap agreement. He said that though it lacked punitive action it could still help bring about change in people's habits.
"It's about persuading the persuadable, such as parents who do not know what is going on with their net connection," he said.
"Vcap is not about denying access to the internet. It's about changing attitudes and raising awareness so people can make the right choice," he said.
As well as taking part in Vcap, the BPI and other rights holders were working on other fronts to tackle persistent pirates, file-sharing sites and to suppress the economy that supported them, said Mr Taylor.
These initiatives included issuing notices to Google about links to pirated content, action in the courts to shut down websites that offer links to infringing content, and working with advertisers to limit the funds that flow to file-sharing sites.
Amazon has announced the launch of Zocalo, its enterprise storage and sharing service that looks set to take on the likes of Dropbox, Box and Google Drive.
Zocalo, which is named after the Spanish word for "plaza," will provide "strong administrative controls and feedback capabilities that improve user productivity," the company claimed.
Read more: Cloud technology given vote of no confidence by startups worldwide
The service will allow users to store, share and receive feedback on their files through a central hub.
In a statement, the firm stated that rival storage products had become "overly complex and expensive" for individual users and businesses.
The firm also stressed the security credentials of the new service, with all files encrypted in transit and at rest, and administrators able to specify how data is shared both internally and externally.
Amazon is initially offering 200GB of storage for $5 a month, but users will be able to trial the service for 30 days free of charge for up to 50 people. Those wishing for increased storage will have to pay a sliding price scale.
Amazon WorkSpaces customers will also receive Zocalo for free with 50GB of storage per user.
"With Amazon Zocalo there is no hardware to purchase and maintain and no software to deploy," the company confirmed. "Administrators simply enable the service for their organisation and invite users."
Noah Eisner, general manager of Zocalo at Amazon Web Services (AWS) said that there was a real need for the new platform.
"AWS was increasingly being asked to provide an enterprise storage and sharing tool that was easy to use, allowed users to quickly collaborate with others, and met the strict security needs of their organisations. That's what Amazon Zocalo was built to do."
Read more: Amazon purrs over cloud, agility and hefty money savings at AWS Summit
Amazon Zocalo is currently only available as a limited preview, but the service is due for release shortly with multi-platform support on Android and iOS devices, alongside the firm's own Fire range.
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4K is the hottest buzz word in the tech world right now, and it's rewriting the rulebook when it comes to image quality.
It affects not just the world of 4K TV and cinema, but also cameras and image capture, smartphones and tablets, computer monitors and PC games - practically anything that displays images or records video.
4K TV sets are now available from most of the major TV manufacturers, but they're merely the tip of a very cool technology iceberg.
So what, we hear you ask, is 4K really all about?
What is 4K?
What that means in terms of potential image clarity is more fine detail, greater texture and an almost photographic emulsion of smoothness.The headline fact is simple and dramatic: 4K Ultra HD TVs (also known as UHD TVs) deliver four times as much detail as 1080p Full HD, that's eight million pixels compared to two million pixels.
But this is just for starters. Prior to a roll-out of TV services, broadcasters are working out what else they can upgrade under the 4K banner. In the UK, a working group chaired by the BBC and BSkyB are mulling over every possible tweak, from higher frame rates to greater contrast and a wider colour spectrum.
Talk to the engineers steering this 4K broadcast bandwagon and they'll tell you everything spec-wise is up for grabs. If this indicates to you that the 4K standard is anything but set in stone, you'd be correct.
Ultra HD is going to be a work in progress for years to come, but that doesn't mean you should wait for the dust to settle before improving your image.
Difference between Ultra HD and 4K
Technically, "Ultra High Definition" is actually a derivation of the 4K digital cinema standard. However while your local multiplex shows images in native 4096 x 2160 4K resolution, the new Ultra HD consumer format has a slightly lower resolution of 3840 X 2160.
This is one reason why some brands prefer not to use the 4K label at all, sticking with Ultra HD or UHD instead. However, the numerical shorthand looks likely to stick. As a broad brush label it's so much snappier!
Why should I care about 4K Ultra HD?
Photographers who routinely view their work on an HD TV are seeing but a fraction of the detail inherent in their pictures when they view them at 2160p.There are many reasons why 4K should make you rethink your next TV purchase (actually, there are eleven and you can read about them here), not all of them immediately obvious.
A 4K display reveals so much more nuance and detail – the difference can be astonishing. While 3D has proved to be a faddish diversion, 4K comes without caveats. Its higher resolution images are simply better.
The higher pixel density of a 4K panel also enable you get much closer without the grid-like structure of the image itself becoming visible –this means you can comfortably watch a much larger screen from the same seating position as your current Full HD panel. Currently all available 4K Ultra HD TVs are in excess of 50-inches.
Projectors
While 4K UHD TVs are on the fast track, the same can't be said for video projectors. Only Sony offers 4K models, the high-end quasi pro VPL-VW1100ES and the home cinema friendly VPL-VW500ES.
Currently there's no consumer 4K solution for LCD, D-ILA or DLP projectors, although that's likely to change in 2015, when Texas Instruments is expected to begin shipping its first 4K DLP chipset for home hardware.
How expensive is an Ultra HD TV?
The first wave of 4K TVs were large, really large. Both Sony and LG launched with 84-inch panels, the KD-84X9005 and 84LM960V respectively.
Consequently, they were saddled with price tags in excess of £20,000/$30,000. Not to be outdone, Samsung weighed in with the 85-inch S9 at £35,000/$55,000, clearly aimed at footballers and oligarchs!
However, prices have fallen dramatically as screen sizes have shrunk and brands have predictably embarked on a tit for tat price war. You'll nopw find 4K TVs for less than $1000, though we'd encourage you to be careful when choosing one - a 4K resolution won't necessarily give you a better picture if the processing electronics behind the panel are bad.
Generally speaking, a market-leading 65-inch 4K TV like the Sony KD-65X9005B will set you back a little over $3,500/£3,000... and they're getting cheaper.
So how small will 4K Ultra HD screens get?
In the short term, screen sizes are likely to stabilise at 55-inches and upwards. That's because as the screen size shrinks the advantage of having such a pixel dense display starts to diminish. There's also an irrefutable relationship between screen resolution and viewing distances.
While seating will vary from home to home, generally speaking a large 4K TV will provide an upgrade for a smaller 1080p screen. However, the 4K resolution will ultimately be about more than just definition.
High frame rate UHD broadcasting could have an even greater impact than resolution when services begin – and the benefits of HFR are not restricted to larger screen sizes. When this second generation 4K UHD breaks cover, expect high-frame rate 4K TVs to drop further down the size scale.
How far should I sit from a 4K TV for the best picture?
4K Ultra HD is a much more intimate viewing experience than Full HD. In many respects, the best way to view 4K is analogous to the way we view films in a cinema. Old style cinemas were shoe-box shaped and most patrons sat typically 3-5 screen heights away, because that was the most comfortable viewing distance.
Contemporary cinemas are wider, and now the optimum viewing distance is 1.5 screen heights back. From this vantage point you can take in all the visual information that's available and comfortably fill your field of vision. Translated to the home, that makes the most comfortable distance to view a 65-inch 4K screen approx. 1.5m. Of course, in many homes that simply isn't practical. Consequently, a large 4K screen is probably best viewed at a distance of between 2-3m; time to rearrange your furniture?
What 4K content is available for me to watch?
As of April 2014, Netflix became the first big name to deliver 4K content to the home. When you open the Netflix app on a 4K TV, 4K content will stream automatically where it's available. From the start, that's just House of Cards Season 2, but don't worry - there's LOTS more 4K content ready to be piped into your home.
YouTube offers a nascent 4K channel, but you'll require a powerful PC with a 4K capable graphics card, of which there are few that make economic sense.
But the lack of native 4K isn't quite the big deal you might at first imagine. The truth is today's Ultra HD screens do such a remarkable job with 1080p content that you almost certainly won't feel shortchanged. Rather than just linearly scale, big brand sets utilize all manner of database interpolation to upscale images, and the results are spectacular.
To take advantage of this, Sony has released a selection of Mastered in 4K branded Blu-rays. These are in fact standard 1080p Blu-ray discs, albeit ones based on the best available transfers which take full advantage of available disc capacity. They have also been mastered with a wider colour range than standard Blu-ray platters.
A 2160p upgrade on the Blu-ray standard is inevitable, of course, which will allow for true Ultra High Definition movies to be sold on disc.
Sony meanwhile has rolled out a download service in the USA for owners of Sony 4K TVs – however there's no sign of that arriving in Europe just yet.
That said, native 4K broadcasting remains the ultimate goal. BSkyB is just one of many global service providers who have been successfully trialing acquisition and broadcast, as it mulls over the financial potential of a dedicated 4K sports and movie channel offering.
Before that can happen, transmission standards need to be agreed and chipsets made available for a new generation of Sky+ UHD boxes.
When it comes to 4K compression codecs, HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) is the most widely talked about, however there are other options. Both Sony and Netflix have partnered with Californian outfit Eye IO for their online 4K services.
How important is HDMI 2.0 to 4K Ultra HD?
HDMI 2.0 is the latest iteration of the HDMI specification. While the existing HDMI 1.4 standard can deliver 4K video, it's limited to 30 frames per second (or 30Hz). While this is fine for most movies, broadcasters are looking for higher frame rates for TV.
HDMI 2.0 increases bandwidth up to 18Gbps and supports 4K Ultra HD at 50/60 fps, with 12-bit 4:2:2 colour (you don't need any special cables for HDMI 2.0 interconnectivity, any current high-speed cable will work). However, only Panasonic currently offers an HDMI 2.0 compatible 4K TV, in the shape of the TX-L65WT600.
So where does that leave the remaining first generation 4K sets? Well both Philips and Samsung, whose 4K panels are coupled to separate connection boxes, say they'll simply introduce new tuners which owners can upgrade to.
Sony and others are looking to implement a firmware fix; by shedding colour sub pixels they reckon they'll be able to fit high frame-rate 4K down a HDMI 1.4 pipe, most likely with 8 bit 4:2:0 colour. How visible this kludge will be remains to be seen. For what it's worth, we've seen JVC's 4K e-Shift3 projectors running 4K at the same colour resolution, and they look spectacular so the omens are good.
Hang on, what about 8K?
If 4K offers four times the resolution of Full HD, then 8K will deliver 16 times the definition. 8K screens comprise a staggering 33 million pixels.
This is an order of magnitude beyond any display technology currently available, and only one broadcaster, Japanese state owned NHK, has publically said it intends to commercialise the technology.
Also known as Super Hi-Vision, a number of 8K trials have been conducted, including acquisition at the London 2012 Olympics. NHK has since pledged to shoot and transmit the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in the format.
Of course, bringing 8K to market is a formidable technical challenge. As with 4K, HEVC, is currently favoured as the best compression technology for the job.
However, because the benefits of 8K image definition only really become apparent on screens 84-inches and larger, the format is not seen as a commercially viable platform by most broadcasters and TV manufacturers. If you're waiting to jump from Full HD to 8K, you could be kicking your heels for quite some time.
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