Technology expert Evan Schuman takes an authoritative look at the faults and foibles of enterprise IT.
Ever since its layoffs last summer and a plunge in quality, Rackspace lets customers in — but won’t let them out. A cautionary tale of a business that had to fight like heck to escape.
Much of mobile security advice these days is for users to be careful, not click on suspicious links nor open suspicious emails or attachments. But the growing popularity of no-click attacks sidesteps these defenses — and Google has drilled into....
Apple has a complicated relationship with privacy. It loves to tout its efforts, especially as a differentiator with Google. But actually delivering privacy? That’s a different story.
It’s a sad fact of mobile authentication: the industry tends to initially support the least effective and secure options. Take the recent case of the sleeping woman in China, for instance.
The mobile app security headaches continue. This time it's spyware found by mobile security firm Zimperium that not only steals data, but can silently control mic and camera — and secretly delete security apps. Fun times.
Apple, Google, and especially Visa this month have given us yet another example of how security and convenience are at odds in the mobile world. Convenience seems to have won out.
Another day, another revelation that mobile vendors might not always have users’ needs in mind, but they sure are helpful to cyberthieves.
A security researcher found that an open area for typing in a phone number has unintentionally turned AirTags into God’s gift to malware criminals.
I’ve always been impressed by how clever Apple can get when trying to protect its repair revenue. A new report from MacRumors doesn’t disappoint.
While Google has announced plans to reset permissions for older, rarely used Android apps, Apple’s app-tracking-transparency efforts in iOS have fallen short of the company’s grand vision.
Apple has unveiled plans to use its extensive powers to fight child pornography. Even though it has good intentions, the company's actual plan has given people dozens of reasons to oppose the move.
As if IT needs more reminders that apps in app stores may not be secure, a Netherlands security firm has found a new Android dropper app dubbed Vultur. It offers, and delivers, legitimate functionality, then shifts into malicious mode when it detects....
When it comes to keeping everyone in the company on the same page, IT could be doing more. That's especially true when making sure mobile devices are secured.
When spyware from an Israeli firm was discovered on a number of iPhones used by journalists, critics hit Apple over security and privacy concerns. But in this case, it doesn't look like the company did anything wrong.
It's deeply unsurprising that newly-released information from the Attorney General's office for Arizona — released when a judge agreed to unseal some of the data — shows Google trying to hide privacy settings and tracking users ....
In cybersecurity, one of the challenging issues is figuring out when a security hole is a big deal or is trivial. Apple now has a hole that pushes the definition.
Google is moving — slowly — to make multi-factor authentication default, pushing FIDO-compliant software embedded within the phone, and even has an iOS version. Nice touch.
A university study found that a frequently-heralded smartphone claim by both companies is non-existent. This raises a serious question: Don’t they have to prove something works before shouting it from the highest virtual rooftop? Doesn’t ....
Remember all of the security corner-cutting forced on us in March 2020 as companies scrambled to deal with the pandemic? It's time now to go back and fix things.
Given that law enforcement can leverage a hole in Mozilla open-source code that Apple used to permit accessories to be plugged into an iPhone’s lightning port, IT and enterprise security pros need to view mobile device security differently.
One of the best tech support programs in the industry has been Dell's ProSupport program, which routinely answers within 10 seconds and offers excellent techs who truly try to help. It also offers a next-day onsite repair program that's imp....
For years, security experts have been sounding the alarm about texting numbers for authentication. Now, due to some excellent work from Vice, it's clear the text situation is far worse than we thought.
WhatsApp does not treat all interaction data the same. For now, user-to-user/customer-to-customer/consumer-to-consumer messaging is encrypted and considered private. But when a user communicates with a business, Facebook can do anything it wants. Use....
Apple's upcoming iOS 14.5 and WatchOS 7.4 OSes will allow masked enterprise employees to access their iPhone if they happen to be wearing an Apple Watch that is unlocked. If companies don't stop workers from using this convenience, it will ....
Apple itself has issued a warning that its newest iPhone could attack your heart — literally.
In recent years, the feds have stopped asking for a workaround to get past Apple security. Why? It turns out that iOS, along with Android, is simply not as secure as those companies suggested.
Multi-Factor Authentication has become so common a security tool that many users assume it must work well to protect data and communications. What it really does is provide false comfort.
Now that Apple has agreed to pay $113 million to settle with iPhone users whose smartphone clockspeed was artificially slowed to boost hardware sales, it's worth examining why the move was so colossally stupid.
When it comes to whether enterprise IT should seriously consider this purchase — for those operations where BYOD hasn't yet alleviated the need to buy phones ever again — it doesn't make sense for most.
Max Krohn, Zoom's head of security engineering, detailed what users need to give up to get the better encryption protection that's coming.
Mobile apps galore have used crowdsourcing techniques this year to fight COVID-19. Now, a new app wants to build on those efforts by identifying communities (often down to the Zip Code) that are being aggressive or lenient in mask-wearing.
Two European banks are looking to boost security by layering a pair of biometric authentication methods – facial recognition and palm recognition – atop one another. That could mean more security, or more headaches for users.
When Apple rolled out its planned changes for iOS 14 and its companion WatchOS 7, it included a variety of interesting tweaks. Two stood out as especially interesting: a COVID-friendly Watch handwashing app and an enterprise-IT-friendly facial recogn....
Efforts by people to avoid getting COVID-19 are already affecting mobile payments, particularly contactless NFC payments. Since shoppers now want to avoid going inside stores, even briefly, app payments that happen far away from a POS system are pick....
As governments consider COVID-19 contact tracing and its privacy implications, it's not a bad idea for companies to take the opportunity to look more closely at their mobile agreements with employees.
One of the most frequently asked questions these days is "When will things get back to normal?" And the fair and valid answers are generally "They won't. Good-bye handshakes" and "In stages, ending when a vaccine is appr....
IT execs need to start talking with other C-levels now and figure out what they want their post-COVID company to look like.
The pandemic means there is no time for security niceties, such as properly processing RFPs for apps that were thoroughly vetted. That brings us to MFA and why it has to be radically re-envisioned.
Autonomous and semiautonomous vehicles are making serious progress, but they are going to run head on into a massive obstacle: human trust.
Amazon is experimenting with a way to allow shoppers to use a palm-print biometric to authenticate payments and to do so in physical stores far beyond Amazon-owned brick-and-mortars. Amazon is reportedly looking at QSRs (quick-service restaurants), e....
Purdue University has an interesting mobile concept, a means to free up lots of space that is now housing apps and app data. Why not, the university asks, stream the apps themselves from the cloud?
The latest Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report eloquently argues that aside from wireless, the form factor of mobile in and of itself poses security risks.
Employees and consumers are being more careful about sharing information that goes beyond strict need-to-know. We ran into one company that seems to not get that.
A massive number of text messages were stored in plaintext, with no security at all.
And a very different bug, planted by cyberthieves, presents even more frightening camera-spying issues with Android.
The best security approaches — such as continuous authentication — are invisible to the user and therefore frictionless. That's good in practice, but it can be bad in terms of customer perception. If they don't see it, they assu....
Sometimes, a mobile glitch is indicative of a much more pervasive issue. Our columnist's recent iPhone 11 iTunes headache perfectly illustrates how Apple's heralded focus on customer experience falls apart when doing upgrades.
Although this decision should end the debate and make it clear to companies that sites must be coded to be fully compatible—and, no, throwing in a toolbar option doesn't do it—it's astounding that companies ever resisted it.
The internet of things brings with it a wide range of IT security headaches, along with compliance nightmares — and turf wars.
A new study questions the efficacy of car accident-avoidance systems, but it's possible that a simple smartwatch might be part of the solution.
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