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Spring 2016 Issue 53 |
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GLOBAL: Breakthroughs
in Online Industry in 2015 from the Legal Perspective 2015 abounded in noteworthy judgments, which
shows that Success of the year From the perspective of the advertising industry, it is worth
mentioning the dispute between the publishers of the German daily newspapers
"Die Zelt" and "Handelsblatt", and Eyeo, producer of the
advertisement blocking Internet tool – AdBlock Plus, which was lost by the
former. The publishers filed a lawsuit against AdBlock Plus for illegal
activity that was detrimental to market competition and deprived them of
their profits from advertising. Another issue that was raised concerned the
fact that some companies pay the developers of AdBlock Plus for being placed
on the so-called "white list" of entities that are not blocked by the
program. The publishers lost the case in the court of Hamburg, as the bench
did not find any violations by the producer's ad blocking software. In the
light of the dispute’s loss and the need for conciliation, and with the lack
of a legal means to put an end to the activities of the software producer,
the recent activity of the Axel Springer Group is becoming more and more
important and can be considered a success. The Group closed access to all
content on the "Bild" newspaper website to all users of ad blocking
programs. It requires AdBlock to be turned off or a EUR 2.99/month
subscription fee to be covered. Its activity is lawful, and looking at recent
reports – effective. Perhaps;
therefore, it is one of the solutions that could be adopted by the
advertising industry? Failure of the year The so-called "Trilogue” negotiations on the wording of the
new regulation on data protection for European citizens were completed. While
the idea behind it is noble, the combined efforts of the online industry
failed to convince European legislators to take into account the demands of
the industry, such as a more precise definition of personal data or clear
regulations on profiling, with a new model of much more restrictive
sanctions. It can all be summed up by Townsend Feehan, CEO of IAB Europe: ”The data protection deal is a triumph of populist
rhetoric over common sense. Legal uncertainty and big fines are a toxic cocktail, and companies will have little
choice but to impose annoying requests for consent every time a user accesses
their website. Trend of the year Data combining – a new driving force that increases the
effectiveness of online campaigns. “First party data", i.e. the data of
the advertiser or the agency; "second party data", i.e. the data of
the advertisers' partners and lastly; "third party data", i.e. the
data of third parties such as publishers, monitoring traffic on their
websites. These three notions, in particular in relation to the growing
popularity of programmatic advertisements, are becoming commonly used. From
the legal perspective, it is worth mentioning that the growing use of
different data sources entails increased legal risks for the entire process.
This raises questions concerning the "ownership" of data, its safe
transfer, attempts to combine it (with the use of the popular "cookie
matching") and the consequences it has for the protection of personal
data, but also for the information obligations of publishers. Forecast for 2016 Privacy will likely be a returning subject and a headache for
the industry. The past year shows that, although the statutory law has not
kept pace with the development of business models, especially in the online
industry, the judicial authorities are striving to bridge this gap with
precedential judgments. Apart from the “ From
http://www.gemius.com/
Internet
Governance Outlook 2016: Cooperation & Confrontation In 2015 we saw many agreements on Internet Governance. 193
Governments agreed in the UN General Assembly on the WSIS 10+ Outcome
Document. They agreed to extend the mandate of the IGF for ten years. They
agreed to strengthen the multistakeholder approach. And they agreed to make
more efforts to bring the next billion users online until 2020. The UN Group
of Governmental Experts (GGE) agreed on a number of confidence building
measures to strengthen cybersecurity. Governments agreed that countries have
the same rights and duties under international law offline and online. The UN
Human Rights Council agreed to establish a new rapporteur on privacy in the
digital age. The Bad News The bad news is that the good news is only one side of the coin.
The majority of the agreements are nothing else than "agreements in
principle". With some exceptions they do not really solve problems. The
devil is in the detail. And the documents which enabled governments in 2015
to agree on language disguise a fundamental disagreement on substance. The
different political and economic interests of governments and corporations,
diverse cultural and social values, historical experiences of individual
countries and the controversial ideologies of political leaders did not disappear
in 2015. And they will not disappear in 2016. The risk is high, that the
Internet in 2016 will mirror the global political trends of growing
confrontation, radicalization and re-nationalization. The best we can hope
for in 2016 is that we can secure an environment which will allow the
Internet Governance ecosystem to continue to innovate, to grow, to evolve and
to keep extreme and polarizing positions under control. This would mean that
2016 could become a year with a mix of cooperation and confrontation. And
this would not be a bad thing. One of the key questions of the 2016 Internet Governance agenda
will be whether the Internet remains the open, free and unified network as we
know it since the invention of the TCP/IP protocol in 1975. There are growing
tendencies to split the Internet into smaller parts: into national Internet
segments or special Internet economic zones. National firewalls or wallet
gardens could lead to a fragmented Internet. 25 years ago the removal of
physical borders for the free flow of ideas and information did open the door
for an incredible wave of innovation, economic growth, job creation, social
activities and enhancement of individual rights and freedoms. Today, the
re-erection of frontiers in the borderless cyberspace implies the risk to
reverse such a development with could lead to unpredictable economic
downturns, new social unrest and irrational political reactions. This is a
complex issue. On the one hand it is a natural process that the ongoing
growth of complex systems reaches a moment, where sub-systems emerge on top
of the basic infrastructure and that such subs-systems develop their own
life. 25 years ago the Internet had less than 4 million users, now it has
more than 4 billion. In 1991 there were no search engines, no social
networks, no apps. Now search engines and social
networks have billions of users and we have thousands of new services and
applications. Such a complexification has consequences. Under certain circumstances fences around sub-systems can be justified
or are even needed to secure the functionality of specific services. There
can be good reasons for introducing checkpoints to get the dark side of the
Internet under control. On the other hand, the risk is high that a
re-bordered Internet will dwindle down innovation, reduce market
opportunities, block social interactions and introduce censorship and mass
surveillance. Governments and the whole Internet community has
to fight the evils of cyberspace: terrorists, criminals, hate preachers,
pedophiles. But it has to be done in a balanced way. One has to avoid that fundamental individual rights and freedoms are
undermined. And one has to avoid that economic opportunities for innovation
without permission and the low entry barriers for newcomers with creative
business models are not blocked. The medicine to fight the various Internet
diseases has to be administered in a way that it does not kill the patient.
And it has to be done in a cooperative way with the involvement of all
stakeholders. Spaces for Confrontation Let's have look into the 2015 Internet Governance agreements to
find out where we can expect more agreements or disagreements in 2016. There
will be three main battlefields in the Internet Governance Ecosystem:
Cybersecurity, Cybereconomy and Human Rights. And at the moment there are
more questions than answers. 1. Cybersecurity. Governments agreed in the GGE that states have the same rights
and duties under international law offline and online. But they could not
agree what does this mean for war and peace. In the offline world, a war is
defined by the UN. And it is the UN Security Council which has some
competences if international security it threatened. Chapter 7 of the UN
Charter gives states the right to self-defence in cases of an attack. Does
this apply for a cyberwar? There is no definition, what a cyberwar is. A war
in the offline world means death, damages and destruction. Neither the attack
against And what about espionage? 2. Cybereconomy: WSIS 10+ agreed that there is a need to bring the next billion
Internet users online. There is broad agreement that the development of a digital
economy is key for economic growth and job creation.
The Boston Consulting Group has found that countries with a developed
Internet economy have higher growth rates and less unemployment than
countries with an underdeveloped Internet economy. The last 15 years we saw
the emergence of the Silicon Valley giants in the There is a growing economic competition in the digital field.
Regional trade pacts as TTP and TTIP do not include so far a special chapter
on digital trade, but some paragraphs cover online protection of intellectual
property and personal data and also domain name dispute resolution in the
ccTLD space. Trade negotiations are rather different from Internet Governance
discussions. TTP and TTIP are secret negotiations by governments only.
Internet Governance issues are discussed in open and transparent spaces with
the participation of all stakeholders on equal footing. If the trade world
and the Internet world comes together, do we will
see the next "clash of cultures"? What will happen if the WTO
starts negotiations on a Digital Trade Pact behind closed doors and without
the involvement of non-governmental stakeholders? After the decisions by the
European Court of Justice on the 3. Human Rights Governments agreed in the WSIS 10+ Outcome Document that the
information society has to be based on human rights. They reaffirmed the UN
resolution 69/166 that "the same rights that people have offline must
also be protected online". Governments agreed to link the WSIS process
to the Millenium Development Goals (MDG). But if it comes to the right to
freedom of expression there is no agreement what "illegal content"
is. And what about the damage of individual privacy if governments introduce
mass surveillance to fight criminals and terrorists? There is a broad
agreement, that access to the Internet can be seen as a human right. But
there is just lip-service if it comes to put money on the table to finance
enhanced access. In 2015, more than 80 percent of the developed world was
online, but only 34 of the developing countries. Nearly four billion people
are still offline. In the WSIS 10+ Outcome Document 193 governments
recognized that bridging the digital divide "requires greater und
sustainable investment" (para. 40), that "private investment"
is "critical" (para. 43) and that there is a need "for an
ongoing evaluation of new innovative financing options" (para. 45). How
concrete is this? Doesn't it sound like "Waiting for Godeau"? Places for Cooperation In 2016 the two main Internet Governance conferences will take
place in 1. OECD & IGF The previous OECD Ministerial Conference on the Information
Economy (Seoul 2008) was a milestone in promoting the Multistakeholder Modell
within an intergovernmental organization. The OECD has now Advisory
Committees where the technical community, businesses and civil society are
self-organized and make recommendations to the governments of the OECD member
states. There is not always agreement as it was seen in the process to draft
OECD Principles for Internet Policy Making (2012). But the input from
non-governmental stakeholders has enriched the discussion. And one can expect
that the OECD is deepening such a multistakeholder approach with the
forthcoming There is an ongoing agreement that IGF should not become a
policy making body. But the free and frank exchange of ideas and information
among all stakeholders on equal footing within the IGF framework enables
decisions makers to qualify their policies. And it paves the way for the emergence
of innovative mechanisms as it was demonstrated in 2014 by the Net Mundial
Conference in 2. The United Nations A main place for Internet Governance discussion in 2016 will be
the UN Commission for Science and Technological Development (UNCSTD). The
role of the UNCSTD was strengthened by WSIS 10+. The UNCSTD has now to report
not only via the ECOSOC to the annual UN General Assembly, it has also a
mandate to cooperate with the High Level Political Forum of the 2030 Agenda
for Sustainable Development. And it got a mandate to reactivate the Working
Group on Enhanced Cooperation (WGEC) which has to produce a report for the
72. UN General Assembly in 2017. The 19th UNCSTD session is scheduled for May
In the 71st UN General Assembly, which starts in September 2016,
there are now three committees which will discuss Internet related issues.
The report of the GGE in 1st committee (security), the report of the UNCSTD
in the 2nd committee (economic and social development) and the report of the
Special Rapporteur on privacy in the digital age, Joseph Cannataci in the 3rd
committee (human rights). The first draft of Mr. Cannataci's report will be
presented to the spring meeting of the UN Human Rights Council which starts
end of February 3. One can also expect that the agendas of the big annual summit meetings
of world leaders will include issues like cybersecurity, digital trade and
human rights. The G 20 meeting will be hosted by 4. ICANN & IETF In the Internet Governance Microcosms, the management of
critical Internet resources, the completion of the IANA transition and the
further development of the new gTLD program will dominate the 2016 agenda.
During ICANNs 54th meeting in End of January 2016 the ICANN Board, after it has received the
full packages from the two groups, will send the proposal to the National
Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA) of the US Department
of Commerce. The A completion of the IANA transition would be also useful for
ICANN itself. There is an urgent need that ICANN — under its new CEO - is
concentrating its limited energies and capacities on its core business: the
management of names and numbers. The new gTLD program, introduced in 2012,
was a revolution for the Domain Name System (DNS). On the one hand the new
gTLD program is a big success. Nearly 1000 new gTLDs have been delegated in
the last two years. However, the new gTLD market is still in its infant stage
and less than 10 million registration in the new
gTLD space is below the high expectations. ICANN's new established
"Competition, Consumer Trust and Choice Review Team" (CCT-CRT) will
have a lot to do. A report is expected at the end of 2016. A lot to discuss
during the three ICANN meetings in 2016 (March in 5. Multistakeholder Platforms Next to the many intergovernmental and international units,
there are more and more multistakeholder platforms which contribute to global
Internet policy making. There are at least six platforms where we can expect
in 2016 innovative and creative input.
6. Other Mechanisms In the last years we did see also the growth of a large number
of projects and programs for Internet education, knowledge production,
research and documentation. One can only hope that this large body of
knowledge, which is now available and will grow in the coming years, will be
used by policy makers, business leaders, technical experts and civil society
activists to find a rational approach to the large number of controversial
issues which are waiting for a solution on the 2016 agenda for Internet
Governance. Among such programs are, inter alia
20 Years after the Declaration of Cyber-Independence Twenty years ago, on February 8 1996, John Peter Barlow
published his "Declaration of Cyber-Independence in Davos/Switzerland.
This was five years after the invention of the World Wide Web and in the
early days of the information society. Full of emotions the famous rock
singer and activist of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) declared:
"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and
steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future,
I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You
have no sovereignty where we gather. ... We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter
how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. Your
legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do
not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.
... We will create a new civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be
more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before." Today we know that John Peter Barlow was
partly right and partly wrong. He was right, that the Internet changes the
world. But he was wrong that the Internet creates a new world with a new
civilization. With all the new devices on our fingertips, we are still living
on our old planet. And when the UN recognized that "the same rights that
people have offline must also be protected online" one can add in 2016
that "the same problems that people have offline they have also
online". From
http://www.circleid.com/ Top Three Cyber Threats
for 2016 – and the Need for a More Skilled Cyber Workforce Someone will
click on a link in a highly targeted spear phishing campaign; an employee
will go rogue and release a password – the keys to the IP kingdom; and
Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) will mop up the rest. Then you need the
right staff skills to manage this. Global, independent, non-profit,
association, ISACA reveals this and more in its January 2016 Cybersecurity
Snapshot - a poll from its nearly 3000 members. The top three threats that global
IT and security professionals are most concerned about for their organization
this year are: 52% Social
engineering ( 40% Insider
threats ( 39% Advanced
persistent threats ( These items
outranked options frequently associated with cyberattacks, including malware
(Australian 32%), unpatched systems ( One major
concern was that the cybersecurity skills gap continues to pose a significant
obstacle to organizations seeking to expand their cyber workforce. 45% say
that they are hiring more cybersecurity professionals in 2016, yet 94% of
those hiring say it will be difficult to find skilled candidates. 60% say
identifying who has adequate skills and knowledge will also be difficult.
“The aggressive increase in cyberattacks worldwide is feeding a growing chasm
between demand and supply in the cybersecurity talent wars. It is also
shedding light on a critical problem in our industry: identifying job
candidates who are truly qualified to safeguard corporate assets in a
landscape that is highly complex and constantly evolving,” said Eddie
Schwartz, CISA, CISM, CISSP-ISSEP, PMP, international vice president of ISACA
and president and COO of WhiteOps. ISACA was the first to combine
skills-based vendor-neutral cybersecurity training with performance-based
exams and certifications to address the cyber talent shortage with the launch
the CSX Practitioner certification in August 2015. Another key
issue was about cybersecurity legislation and reporting of cyber-breaches. # 63% of
global IT professionals oppose giving governments
backdoor access to encrypted information systems. ( # 59% feel that privacy is being compromised in an effort to
implement stronger cybersecurity laws ( There is
marked scepticism about the likelihood of organizations sharing data breach
information voluntarily as called for by the recently passed U.S.
Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015. # 83% favour
regulation requiring companies to notify customers within 30 days of the
discovery of a data breach – up 10% from 2014 (Australia 90%) # 72% of US
respondents say they are in favour of the U.S. Cybersecurity Information
Sharing Act of 2015, which encourages cyber-threat information sharing
between the government and the private sector. Yet, only 46% believe their
own organization would do so voluntarily if it experiences a data breach. “The
Cybersecurity Snapshot shows that the professionals on the front lines of the
cyber-threat battle recognize the value of information-sharing among
consumers, businesses and government, but also know the challenges associated
with doing so,” said Christos Dimitriadis, Ph.D., CISA, CISM, CRISC,
international president of ISACA and group director of information security
at INTRALOT. Cybersecurity has become a high-stakes, boardroom-level issue
that can have crippling consequences for any C-suite executive who lacks
knowledge about the issues and risks. Strong public-private collaboration and
ongoing knowledge-sharing are needed to safeguard our organizations from
cybercriminals,” he added. From http://www.itwire.com
The top science and technology news of 2015 was announced in From http://www.news.cn/ From
http://www.koreaherald.com
The Viet Nam Information Technology Press Club announced the top
ten domestic information and communication technology (ICT) events of 2015. 1. Bkav Corporation launched its first made-in-Vietnam
smartphone, Bphone on May 26.A standard edition phone, with a storage
capacity of 16GB, is on sale at a price of VND9,990,000 (more than
US$450).The event attracted not only the interest of the domestic media but
also the international media for a long time. 2. The National Assembly passed the Law on Information Security
at its 10th session of the 13th tenure on November 19.The law consisted of
eight chapters and 54 clauses.The law regulates cyber information security,
rights and duties of agencies, organisations and individuals in ensuring
cyber information security, and technical standards on cyber information
security, in addition to business, human resource development and state
management on cyber information security.The law is considered an important
legal document in boosting cyber information security in the country. 3. The Viet Nam Post and Telecom Group (VNPT) completed its
restructuring by establishing three corporations.The three corporations are
VNPT-VinaPhone, VNPT-NET and VNPT-Media.The establishment of the corporations
helped VNPT's production and business activities form a value chain from
"content", "infrastructure" to "customers".With
this, VNPT completed Phase 2 of its restructuring plan and are moving to
Phase 3. 4. The government issued Resolution 5. The Viettel Telecommunications Group (Viettel) officially
inaugurated its 6. The government portal tried out a fan page on Facebook called
"Thong tin ChinhPhu" or "Government information" on
October 20.The page aimed to carry news about the government activities
faster and wider on the Internet.The government expected that through the fan
page, government information would reach people faster. 7. The National Numbering Plan took effect in March, including a
plan to change all 11-digit mobile phone numbers into 10-digit numbers and
change telephone area codes.The change of telephone area codes will be
carried out within two years. 8. 2015 is considered the year Vietnamese telecom providers
introduce over-the-top (OTT) services, worrying about the moving of users to
free apps like Zalo and Viber.VinaPhone launched its OTT app, called
VietTalk, in the beginning of the year. In April, Viettel introduced Mocha.On
August, MobiFone announced its pilot app, called
Halo. 9. The central city of 10. Google CEO SundarPichai visited Viet Nam on December 22.He
had a meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and talked with
Vietnamese tech start-ups, students and enterprises in Ha Noi.This was the
first time a high-level leader of Google visited Viet Nam.Earlier, in the
beginning of December, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, also attended a
seminar on social network, mobile phones, big data and cloud computing in HCM
City. From
http://vietnamnews.vn/ Online violence and abuse is a major barrier for women on the
internet. The legal framework to fight gendered abuse is based on morality,
not on women’s rights, and only ends up restricting women further. This talk
discusses some strategies that women use to make the internet their own and
to keep the internet an empowering public sphere. Instead of talking more
generally about abuse and violence against women on the internet, I want to
focus on a research study we did (the fieldwork was done late-2012/early-2013)which looked specifically at verbal online abuse against
women who are publicly vocal on the internet. The context was that at the
time trolling, as it is called, had become more visible. At the same time,
some of the provisions of the IT Act were becoming more and more contentious.
KapilSibal, who wasthe Minister for Communication and Information Technology,
said that one reason why Section We thought of doing a quantitative study butwe decided against
it precisely because there was so little information available.Not just in The abuse women get is by nowwell-known. It ranges from mildly
sexist remarks, swear words, to actual rape threats and death threats.The
abuse is quite consistent, sometimes over days. What actually elicits the
abuse?Particular topics are more likely to invite
anger. National politics definitely is a very sensitive issue. Narendra Modi
emerged as a very polarising figure. But interestingly, that did not only
affect women who spoke out against him but also women who spoke in favour of
him. So, in a way itworks both ways. Religion emerged as a very sensitive
issue as well. Feminism, feminist politics, and progressive views about
sexuality were very, very contentious. You didn’t need to have an opinion
about something specific to become the subject of abuse. A lot of the abuse
that happens is also plain old moral policing. For example, one of the women
in our study was a Muslim woman who wears a veil. And she had, at some point,
put a picture of herself on Twitter where she was wearing a veil but she was
also wearing a t-shirt and jeans. She was at some social get-together and it
was clear that this was a get-together. And she got massive right-wing
extremist Muslim reactions, mostly from men, very conservative, telling her
that this was no way for a Muslim woman to behave.And this would go on and
on.So it isn’t necessary that you talk about something particularly
sensitive. What was also interesting is that we had mommy bloggers who
spoke about their families and being a mother, but who also spoke about, say,
national politics. They got a lot of abuse from other women who questioned
the fact that they mixed these two topics.What were they trying to say about
motherhood?As if 'this' was somehow tainting motherhood!That was a big challenge
itself.But most of the abuse we could see was from men, or what seemed to be
men, vis-a-vis women. It terms of how the women talked about the abuse, there
are two things in particular I want to highlight. Women would say
consistently that the internet is like the street. When you go out on the
street you know there might be street sexual harassment and you are prepared;
in the same way when you go out onto the internet, you have to prepare. They
also spoke about how one doesn’t realise that in the beginning, and that the
first time something happens you are really shocked.Because earlier on many
of them felt they were in their living rooms speaking to people.It took a
little while for them to make the shift to the fact that this was not their
living room, they were actually ‘outside’. The second thing is linked to
this, and this toohas come out again and again: you do not speak to your family about
this. We found this even with media personalities who many of you see on TV
on a regular basis, women who had 300-400 followers on Twitter,
well-educated, professional, well-earning, upper-middle class women.I’m
thinking of a particular person in Mumbai: her husband was sitting on the
other side of the room (there was a partition in between), and every time she
talkedabout actual abuse she lowered her voice! She said: he’s already
complaining I spend too much time on Twitter. If he knows what happens there,
he’ll definitely say, why are you doing this? In the same way that families
say don’t hang around on the street, they say don’t hang around on the
internet. What also emerged very strongly is that no matter how varied the
abuse women get, the views that really still hit them the hardest are things
to do with body and sexuality. Not just your own sexuality but also the
sexuality of parents. There were several women who said that they could
handle anything but this. In one particular case, the guy started to
sexualise the woman’s father and talk about his sex life in very strong
terms. It started with a discussion about a book by Romila Thapar, and this
is what it became in some six tweets. And she
saidfor hours she could just feel the heat coming off her body because she
was so angry. So it’s very clear that the traditional issues that are the big
issues for women offline emerge even online. Finally, in terms of the
strategies they used, many are obvious. In the beginning you ignore; when
possible you block people or you report them. Several of the bloggers
actually mentioned that Wordpress is preferable over Blogger because
Wordpress allows you to see the IP address of the person who comments and so
you can actually block that IP address if you feel uncomfortable with
somebody. They also commented that if you use strategies like this they are
still very individualised. The person might not be
able to harass you or anyone, but as somebody said, the harasser is still out
on the street. It’s a very personalised strategy. Almost everybody we spoke to resorted to self-censorship. I
think there was only one exception who said that she didn’t. But everybody else started to curtail
their own words. But this blocking, ignoring, reporting,
they’re not very empowering strategies. There was a set of strategies that
was far more interesting. A lot of women said they were looking for
communities online to deal with harassment.And that when you have a community
there are much more creative ways (to cope with abuse). Let’s say, for
example, re-tweeting abuse, in the hope that it will land up on the page of
the abuser.There were several women who said that they did that because they
wanted men to respond to the abuser as well. Because men can sometimes use
language, theseare the words of women in the study, that ‘I would never be
comfortable doing’. So you have to give it back in a different way. Both the
facts that you can use a different language and that there is a bigger group
are really important. If you have that kind of support it also becomes easier
to use strategies like humour. I think some of the most empowering strategies
were actually about refusing the abuse. To make use of the fact that the
person is not standing next to you, and to take the sting out of it. One
woman commented that she feltpeople in And finally, there were some women who made very strong arguments
to actually talk back. Not just through humour but also through very harsh
words. One woman emphasised that on the internet there is one big difference
from the street and that is the fact that the guy is not standing next to
you. Physical differences do not matter in the same way, and he cannot get to
you as easily. And so her point was: you have the same weapons. He has a
keyboard and you have a keyboard, so why don’t you use it? She felt that this
is a mindgame and women are losing it before they start. She made a really
important point about how women must start responding differently to make
thepublic sphere of the internettheir own. I thought that argument was really
important. In terms of the legal framework, what emerged was thatfirst, women
don’t want to go to the police because it’s not ‘good’ to be seen doing so;
families often don’t encourage it, and the police doesn’t necessarily
understand. The first thing the police officer asked one woman was: Where is
your husband? As if she couldn’t come and file a complaint about harassment
on her own! Another problem with the legal framework is that many of the laws
that you can use to fight something like this are based on morality, on
obscenity, and ultimately these kinds of provisions restrict women. They
restrict the control you have over your own self-representation. If we want
to keep the internet alive as an empowering sphere, we need to fight this.
Basing provisions of free speech on morality and not on women’s rights,
people’s rights, is a real problem. This is the edited version of a talk on
gendered abuse on the internet delivered at a workshop on Gender, Sexuality
and the Internet at CCDS, Pune, on May 14, 2014. The workshop was conducted
in partnership with Point of View, Mumbai, and the EROTICS project. Anja
Kovacs directs the Internet Democracy Project, From
http://netpehchaan.in
The impact of
cyber security on Cyber
security will move into the boardroom (and everywhere else) “It’s been
moving up the corporate agenda for some time and in 2016, more than ever,
cyber security will be recognised as a boardroom issue,” Bartlett says. “In a
lot of ways, cyber security is like health and safety - it needs to form a
key component of the company’s risk management system, and Directors need to
undertake their due diligence, get proper advice and demonstrate that they
are taking action. “Shareholders will expect nothing less.” Attackers
will get more and more sophisticated “It’s easy
to get caught up in the cloak and dagger intrigue of cyber security as a vast
and intricate problem, but the reality is that attackers are developing
methods and tools faster than most organisations are evolving their
protection,” Bartlett adds. “That said, basic attacks like dropping a USB stick
with malicious code on it in the hope that an unsuspecting person will plug
it in, remain all too prevalent.” Many
organisations will fail to focus on the basics “The fact
that most attacks still come in via the most obvious security holes is
precisely because these gaps exist in the first place,” Skills will
remain in demand “Ethical
hackers, security executives and consultants are and will remain in short
supply,” Managed
Services will provide most of the answers “Many
organisations are realising that 24/7 coverage of the network environment is needed
to assure the security of operations - but that it can’t be delivered
internally,” People and
culture will remain the weakest link “Even the
most secure systems can be compromised with social engineering,” From http://www.computerworld.co.nz
Micro-segmentation defense, attacks by rogue intelligence
officers and quantum encryption investment are among many things to keep an
eye on in 2016. With attacks on organizations ranging from the 1. MORE SECURITY LEADERS WILL ADMIT THAT CURRENT SECURITY
TRAJECTORIES ARE FAILING, AND LOOK AT NEW STRATEGIES AND METHODS WITH MORE
REALISTIC ODDS OF SUCCESS. I’ve said it, RSA President Amit Yoran said it and more chief
information security officers (CISOs) will be saying it in 2016: The security
industry has failed. Since enterprises have transformed beyond four walls to
embrace mobile, cloud, the Internet of Things (IoT) and integrated supply
chains, they will begin to look for different ways to address security in
these new environments. As Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing
over and over again and expecting different results.” And more leading CISOs
in government and commercial enterprises will stop pretending that spending
more money on yesterday’s ineffective technology will, this year, yield
different results. 2. YEAR OF THE MICROS: IN 2016, MICRO-SEGMENTATION,
MICRO-VIRTUALIZATION, MICRO-PRIVILEGES WILL UNITE TO CHANGE THE GAME. Organizations often use IT segmentation to ensure that a
break-in to one segment of an enterprise won’t affect the security of the
other segments. It’s a strong premise, but its execution has failed over the
years. Early attempts like “air gaps,” which physically separated networks
into different buildings or rooms, proved wildly expensive. Firewalls and
virtual local area networks (VLANs) followed, but these are complex to manage
and have high error rates. In 2016, we'll see the adoption of new approaches
that work better in today’s evolved environments. Micro-segmentation is the
future. It allows enterprise managers to easily and quickly divide physical
networks into thousands of logical micro-networks without the historic
security management overhead. In 2016, enterprises will look to
micro-segmentation as a way to take back control of the enterprise network
without having to deal with firewall rules, outdated applications, remote
users, cloud-based services and third parties that all have become attack
vectors in today’s world. Companies up and down Highway Companies like Bromium are leading the way in
micro-virtualization. They’re taking the concept of “sandboxing” one step
beyond separating programs to launch virtual machines that surf the Web for
you with hardware isolating any incoming malware. The micro-privileges
concept says that every employee within an organization should have the least
amount of privilege required to do their jobs, particularly at the top. This
means that the higher you are in an organization, the less privilege you
would have, because the risk of attack is so high. All three “micros” will
become easy to deploy and operate in 2016, and will work together to start
changing the playing field advantage back to the good guys. 3. ROGUE INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS WILL BECOME A SIGNIFICANT THREAT
CATEGORY WHEN EMPLOYEES USE GOVERNMENT-OWNED SPY CAPABILITIES FOR THEIR OWN
PURPOSES. Many state-sponsored attacks attributed to governments worldwide
have actually been executed by government employees who were motivated by
their own ideological issues — and did not have government authorization. In
2016, rogue intelligence officers will emerge as a separate category that
business and government organizations will need to monitor and control in a
different way than they would a state-sponsored attack. 4. BOARDS WILL TAKE CHARGE OF SECURITY, WITH CLEAR PROACTIVE
DIRECTION. Security is no longer a technology issue,
it’s a business issue that requires prioritization from the top down. This is
why the security function will evolve and no longer report solely to the CIO.
In 2016, boards will start to care and take real action so that cybersecurity
expertise is a requirement across the C-suite. 5. XP EVERYWHERE WILL COME BACK TO BITE Support for Windows XP ended in early 2014, and security updates
to users around the world ceased. However, XP still supports a multitude of
critical systems – think ATMs, government networks, hospital devices, and
workstations for electric, gas and water utilities — making them vulnerable
to hackers. This makes a significant attack in 2016 as a direct result of “XP
everywhere" as not only possible, but probable. 6. CYBER MEETS KINETIC … AND THAT COULD BE FATAL. Until now, the worst thing that could happen to a machine under
cyberattack would be “the blue screen of death.” Now, however, attackers can
control the machines, which means they can crash
your car, stop your heart or blow up public infrastructure. When cyber starts
to meet kinetic, the issue escalates beyond data loss and reputation
management to physical destruction and even death. We could very well see the
real-world results of this in 2016 as digital and physical worlds collide and
are targeted by state-sponsored conflicts and stateless terrorists. 7. CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE COMES UNDER WIDER ATTACK. When critical infrastructures like financial systems and
utilities fail, we all suffer. Because it is owned by private companies,
protecting every aspect of 8. RANSOMWARE MOVES FROM HOME TO BUSINESS. You’ve heard of ransomware: a malware attack that blocks a
user’s access to digital property — essentially holding it hostage — until a
certain amount of money is paid through an online payment method like Bitcoin
to retrieve the lost data. It’s a common and successful scam targeted at
individuals who find it easier to pay up than get help. Next year, these
types of attacks will also be aimed at the enterprise. I predict that
companies will have data encrypted under ransomware to the tune of millions
of dollars. 9. EMERGING SECURITY TECHNOLOGY WILL DISRUPT MANY HISTORICALLY
DOMINANT BRANDS IN THE MARKET. The companies we know and love from the security history books
will be overtaken by emerging security brands that are doing things in a
different way. In the next 12 months, new players that think and act
differently — and enable the enterprise to do the same — will begin to take
market-share from vendors that continue to push yesterday’s technologies. 10. 2016 WILL BE A YEAR OF MASSIVE RAMP-UP IN THE ARMS RACE
AROUND QUANTUM ENCRYPTION. All security is currently based on encryption, i.e., the
inability of modern computers to calculate a very long key in a reasonable
amount of time. But with governments and Google hot on the quantum trail,
soon quantum computers will be able to break down encryption quickly, and
we’ll need a completely new security model. Enter quantum encryption, which
is designed to resist this enormous new computing power. In 2016, there will
be an increase in funding and R&D investment to develop quantum
encryption as a way to resist the quantum computers of the near future. From
http://www.govtech.com/
The number of Canadians who use a third-party touch-based
payment service to buy a product on service on their mobile device is
forecast to grow by 150 percent this year to reach over 1 million users,
according to consultancy Deloitte. “Last year mobile payments began to go mainstream,” said Duncan Stewart, director of TMT Research
at Deloitte in Deloitte also predicts that mobile will become the leading games
platform by software revenue in 2016, reaching 37 percent of total gaming
sales and surpassing both console and PC games. Deloitte also expects the niche product virtual reality (VR)
headsets to move from the lab to the store for consumer purchase in 2016 with
hardware and software sales totaling USD 1 billion globally and less than USD
30 million in Almost all of these From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
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EUROPE:
Council of The Council of Europe today called on European states to
safeguard the principle of network neutrality in the development of national
legal frameworks in order to ensure the protection of the right to freedom of
expression and to access to information, and the right to privacy. In a
Recommendation, the Committee of Ministers representing the 47 Council of
European member States, issued a set of network neutrality guidelines
pointing out that Internet traffic should be treated equally, without
discrimination, restriction or interference irrespective of the sender,
receiver, content, application, service or device. Whilst acknowledging that
Internet traffic management can sometimes pursue legitimate purposes, the
Committee of Ministers stresses that it can also result in blocking,
discrimination or prioritisation of specific types of content, applications
or services. The following are some of the main recommendations contained in
the guidelines: -Internet traffic management measures should only be admitted in
exceptional circumstances – to comply with an order from a court or a
regulatory authority; when needed to preserve network integrity and security;
or to prevent or address network congestion. These measures should be
non-discriminatory, transparent, maintained no longer than strictly
necessary, and subject to regular review by the authorities. Internet users
should be able to obtain information from Internet service providers (ISPs)
about Internet traffic management and Internet speed. -In their policy frameworks states should ensure the
accountability of ISPs for breaches of the principle of network neutrality.
For their part, ISPs should put in place complaint procedures to allow
Internet users to report alleged breaches. Users should have the possibility
of referring the matter directly to the authorities and be entitled to a
timely redress. -National authorities should monitor and issue public reports on
Internet traffic management practices. -ISPs should in no case discriminate against traffic from other
providers of content, applications or services which compete with their own
products. Preferential treatment of traffic based on agreements between ISPs
and providers of content, applications or services should only be allowed if
there are sufficient safeguards for users to access, use and impart
information. -Any traffic management practice that allows assessing the
content of communications is an interference with the right to privacy and it
should fully comply with article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights
and national legislation, and be reviewed by the authorities. From
http://www.i-policy.org/
The Dutch ministry of economic affairs has sent to parliament
its proposed amendment of the net neutrality legislation. The net neutrality
section of the Telecommunications Law will be dropped in favour of the
definition approved in the EU's Telecom Single Market legislation passed in
November. The new rules are expected to take effect 30 April 2016. The same
as the previous Dutch legislation, the EU law requires that all internet
traffic be handled equally by providers of internet access, without discrimination,
blocking or limitation. A small number of exceptions to this are allowed,
mainly in order to comply with enforcement of other laws. ISPs may employ
reasonable traffic management techniques in order to ensure smooth network
operations, but these techniques must be transparent and not be influenced by
commercial motives. In contrast to the Dutch legislation, the EU net
neutrality rules make an exception for 'specialised services' that may
require special network treatment. The Dutch government had lobbied against
this, calling it a weakening of the current legislation in place in the
country. From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
Dutch Govt
Wants to Expand Data Breach Obligations The Dutch government wants to implement an obligation to report
data breaches and cyber security. The bill sent to the lower house calls for
governments and companies in vital sectors to report incidents to the
National Cyber ?? From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
The Swedish government is considering overturning its long-held
opposition to internet filtering – so says one of the country's most
high-profile ISPs. According to Bahnhof and its CEO Jon Karlung, the ISP
received an email from an investigator who said he had been appointed by the
government to look into regulating the Swedish gambling market. The
investigation is looking into a new licensing system that would require any
gambling site to get a license from the government. Critically, however, in
order to make the system enforceable, gambling websites that did not have a
license to operate in The government... not so much Although Swedish law is quite firm on the issue of filtering and
blocking, the current government has repeatedly signaled that it has a
different philosophy. It has repeatedly fought in court – and lost – to have
the Longer game Give the Swedish government's repeated and determined efforts to
find a way around its current laws however, some suspect it is now trying to
find a different way to bring in laws that enable it to enforce internet
filtering – and has hit on the regulation of gambling websites as a possible
route to do that. Once such a law is on the books, it would be easier to
apply internet filtering to copyright infringement down the line. "We
will not take a position either for or against with regards to
gambling," said Bahnho CEO Karlung. "However, we want to strongly
warn of action to close parts of the internet that authorities deem
objectionable." From
http://www.theregister.co.uk/
Measuring
the Information Society Report 2015 ITU’s flagship annual Measuring the Information Society Report, released
on 30 November 2015, gives an overview of information society developments as
we reach the cusp between the end of the Millennium Development Goals and the
beginning of the Sustainable Development Goals. The From
http://www.itu.int/
There’s Now
an Official HTTP Status Code for Legal Takedowns: 451 HTTP status codes are a core part of helping
your browser understand what to do with a page. You’re probably
familiar with 404 — page not found — but there are a plethora of others, like
302, which help tell your browser a page has moved. The Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF) has finally created a standard for when a page has been
taken down due to legal reasons. The new status code, 451, indicates that a
host has received a legal demand to deny access to a resource. This status
code was added to help add “transparent operation” to the internet, and
responses using error 451 should also include a explanation in the body
including details of the legal demand, who made it and what legislation it
related to, for example: Unavailable For Legal Reasons This request may not be serviced in the of access to resources hosted on servers deemed to be operated by the People’s Front
of Judea. The response code is also intended to be used in cases where a
provider in the access chain is blocking access, such as an ISP or DNS
provider, to identify which entity blocked the page. IETF Chair Jari Arkko
said during the vote that he was in “FULL support of this specification” and
the ballot passed unanimously. Error 451 is approved for publication, but
needs work from the RFC Editor, but Mark Nottingham, IETF HTTP Working Group
Chair, said that “effectively, you can start using
it now.” From
http://thenextweb.com/
Rough
Consensus & Ambigious Compromise in Global Digital Politics The UN's ten-year review of World Summit on Information Society
(WSIS) concluded successfully with the adoption of the WSIS+10 Resolution on
16 December 2015. The review process was a 'diplomatic sprint': in just a few
months (effectively since September this year), negotiators managed to draft
a complex and diplomatically delicate text. Rough Consensus 'Development is increasingly digitally-based' is the first message
of WSIS+10. Almost half of the WSIS+10 Resolution covers
digital development. In addition, the Resolution has a strong link with the
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. As the ITU's matrix shows, all of
the 17 sustainable development goals rely on digital technologies in the
implementation process. 'Cyber(in)security
profoundly affects modern society' is the second message of WSIS+10. An
entire section of the Resolution, consisting of seven paragraphs, is devoted
to this topic, including an expression of concern regarding the use of the
Internet for terrorist purposes and cybercrime. 'Human rights offline apply
equally online' is the third message of WSIS+10. A section containing eight
paragraphs restates previous agreements that all human rights online are
universal, indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated. Ambiguous Compromise While WSIS+10 reached rough consensus on development, security,
and human rights issues, the topic of Internet governance - like ten years
ago at the WSIS Summit in Tunis - kept negotiators working until the early
morning hours. The main division between the inter-governmental and the
multi-stakeholder approaches to Internet governance remains alive. To address
this division, WSIS+10 reaffirmed three core elements of the ' Towards WSIS 2025 The main question remains: will the reinforced ' In the search for solutions to their digital problems, Internet
users and organisations increasingly refer to courts. This year, the Court of
Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled on Facebook and the Self-help through technical solutions is another trend. For
example, Internet companies and users increasingly rely on strong encryption.
This has led law-enforcement and security agencies to complain that strong
encryption limits their access to digital content relevant to criminal
investigations and anti-terrorist activities. The impact of encryption on
security has come into sharper focus after the recent terrorist attacks. All
in all, juridical, technical, and other means to address digital policy
issues will be used more and more often. Could these trends undermine WSIS
efforts to establish a collective set of principles for global digital
development? Are court rulings (mainly in WSIS successfully passed the test of the first ten years. There
are many reasons to believe that its success will continue. However, digital
policy needs to evolve to deal with 'known knowns' (for example, the Internet
governance framework), 'known unknowns' (dealing with big data and the
Internet of Things) and 'unknown unknowns' which will inevitably emerge.
Solutions that have worked well in the past will not necessarily be effective
in the fast changing context of the future. In the words of our WSIS+10 recipe: 'Keep stirring it carefully for the next ten
years, but make sure it does not overcook in the meantime.' From
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Breakthroughs
in Online Industry in 2015 from the Legal Perspective 2015 abounded in noteworthy judgments, which
shows that Success of the year From the perspective of the advertising industry, it is worth
mentioning the dispute between the publishers of the German daily newspapers
"Die Zelt" and "Handelsblatt", and Eyeo, producer of the
advertisement blocking Internet tool – AdBlock Plus, which was lost by the
former. The publishers filed a lawsuit against AdBlock Plus for illegal
activity that was detrimental to market competition and deprived them of
their profits from advertising. Another issue that was raised concerned the
fact that some companies pay the developers of AdBlock Plus for being placed
on the so-called "white list" of entities that are not blocked by
the program. The publishers lost the case in the court of Hamburg, as the
bench did not find any violations by the producer's ad blocking software. In
the light of the dispute’s loss and the need for conciliation, and with the
lack of a legal means to put an end to the activities of the software
producer, the recent activity of the Axel Springer Group is becoming more and
more important and can be considered a success. The Group closed access to all
content on the "Bild" newspaper website to all users of ad blocking
programs. It requires AdBlock to be turned off or a EUR 2.99/month
subscription fee to be covered. Its activity is lawful, and looking at recent
reports – effective. Perhaps;
therefore, it is one of the solutions that could be adopted by the
advertising industry? Failure of the year The so-called "Trilogue” negotiations on the wording of the
new regulation on data protection for European citizens were completed. While
the idea behind it is noble, the combined efforts of the online industry
failed to convince European legislators to take into account the demands of
the industry, such as a more precise definition of personal data or clear
regulations on profiling, with a new model of much more restrictive
sanctions. It can all be summed up by Townsend Feehan, CEO of IAB Europe: ”The data protection deal is a triumph of populist
rhetoric over common sense. Legal uncertainty and big fines are a toxic cocktail, and companies will have little
choice but to impose annoying requests for consent every time a user accesses
their website. Trend of the year Data combining – a new driving force that increases the
effectiveness of online campaigns. “First party data", i.e. the data of the
advertiser or the agency; "second party data", i.e. the data of the
advertisers' partners and lastly; "third party data", i.e. the data
of third parties such as publishers, monitoring traffic on their websites.
These three notions, in particular in relation to the growing popularity of
programmatic advertisements, are becoming commonly used. From the legal
perspective, it is worth mentioning that the growing use of different data
sources entails increased legal risks for the entire process. This raises questions
concerning the "ownership" of data, its safe transfer, attempts to
combine it (with the use of the popular "cookie matching") and the
consequences it has for the protection of personal data, but also for the
information obligations of publishers. Forecast for 2016 Privacy will likely be a returning subject and a headache for
the industry. The past year shows that, although the statutory law has not
kept pace with the development of business models, especially in the online
industry, the judicial authorities are striving to bridge this gap with
precedential judgments. Apart from the “ From
http://www.gemius.com/
Freedom of
Information Act Does Not Go Far Enough, Say Campaigners Campaigners have called for private contractors running public
services such as prisons and healthcare services to be subject to freedom of
information requests. The government’s review of the Freedom of Information
Act is considering whether there is a greater need to protect areas of
policymaking from FoI requests. However, the Campaign for Freedom of
Information says the act does not go far enough because private companies are
only required to provide information when it is explicitly written into their
contracts. The calls echo those from the Labour party’s deputy leader, Tom
Watson, who has set up an alternative review to look into ways the act can be
strengthened. The campaign lists examples where requests for information were
refused because it was held by private firms, including: the number of staff at HMP Birmingham and the number of attacks
at the prison, held only by G4S; the value of penalty fares issued on the London Overground and
Docklands Light Railway by private sector inspectors; the costs of bringing TV licensing prosecutions, which is held
by Capita and not known to the BBC; whistleblowing policies applying to
Virgin Care staff providing NHS services; and the numbers of parking tickets issued,
then cancelled on appeal, by Islington traffic wardens offered Campaign director Maurice Frankel said: “Information about
public services provided by contractors, whether commercial bodies or
charities, should be covered by FoI. The loophole in the act, which excludes
such information if the contract doesn’t refer to it, should be closed. The
public’s right to know should not be arbitrarily cut off because the staff who provide the service are paid by a contractor not
by the authority itself.” From
http://www.theguardian.com/
ITU Forum
Adopts ICT Strategies on Response to Disasters Over 500 participants from 70 countries attending ITU's 2nd Global
Forum on Emergency Telecommunications (GET2016) in Kuwait underscored the
importance of ICTs in disaster early warning and response through the launch
of two important new global initiatives, the ITU Network of Volunteers for
Emergency Telecommunications and the Global Emergency Fund for Rapid
Response. Held at From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
Focus
on Data NSW ICT Strategy Update The final update to the current " "The DAC's collection and analysis of data from a variety
of sources will facilitate the delivery of better services and build a much
improved evidence base to support policy development, informed by trusted
data," Dominello said. "The DAC will become custodian of any new
data products created through the aggregation of datasets where there is no
other natural custodian, reducing the burden on agencies to continually
extract and provide exports of the same data for different research
queries." "Working with the research, start-up and data science
communities, the DAC will bring a new focus and insight to existing policy
challenges, while opening up opportunities to consider new ways of designing
better customer services," states the NSW government's update to its ICT
strategy, Digital+ 2016. The ICT strategy update includes a roadmap for the DAC with a
goal of having the centre by Q2 2016 delivering projects aligned with
government priorities and by Q3 establishing a register of data assets and
information sharing agreements between NSW agencies. Other DAC priorities
outlined in the strategy update include leading the development of a
cross-jurisdictional approach to data sharing and analytics for consumer
protection and regulation, and national collaboration to build capability and
standard practices for data sharing and analytics across sectors and
jurisdictions. Elsewhere the ICT strategy update sets out a number of other
priorities to boost data asset sharing within government. Open data, open government The NSW government will update its open data policy and publish
a forward release schedule for datasets, the update states. The state
government in 2013 launched its open data policy, which outlined an 'open by
default' approach. The ICT strategy update says that by Q4 2018, reports
published by the NSW government will be made available in at least one
machine-readable format, and integration points between OpenGov NSW, Data NSW
and the Digital State Archive will have been developed. The strategy update includes
the launch by Q2 2016 of a 'NSW Customer Dashboard'. "The NSW Customer
Dashboard is a digital tool for NSW Government to measure and report
performance from a customer perspective on a whole of government basis,"
the document states. "The NSW Customer Dashboard will assist in
monitoring progress towards the NSW State Priorities, and promotes a culture
of accountability by providing a single snapshot of real time data across NSW
Government. From
http://www.computerworld.com.au/
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From http://www.news.cn/ Top Sci-tech
News of 2015 Unveiled in The top science and technology news of 2015 was announced in From http://www.news.cn/ Online
Platform Facilitates Legal Work A pioneering Internet platform that allows lawyers to file cases
and pay legal fees online has been embraced by From http://www.chinagate.cn/
How to overcome population decline and a super-aging society and
maintain the nation’s social and economic vitality is a momentous challenge
facing The total fertility rate — the average number of children born
to a woman over her lifetime — is currently 1.42. If young people were able
to marry and rear children as they wish, the birthrate would likely improve
to 1.8. Cited as factors preventing this are employment practices that make
it difficult to simultaneously work and rear children, a shortage of day care
centers, in addition to financial problems. To reinforce the economic
foundation for young generations, it is necessary to improve the conditions
of nonregular workers and provide assistance so they can be hired as regular
employees. Expansion of a system for the development of vocational
capabilities is also important. Financial help to households with three or
more children and expansion of the scholarship system, among other steps, are
necessary to lighten the financial burden of child rearing. Relevant policies
incorporated in the fiscal 2016 budget should be implemented steadily. Work
systems, including long hours of work, must be reexamined as a major premise
for a diverse range of human resources, including women, to be able to work
productively. It is impossible to expect the birthrate to increase unless
there is an environment for both men and women to be able to balance work and
family. Reducing to zero the number of people who will have to leave
jobs to care for relatives — the second on the list of priorities — is a
challenge that must be tackled urgently as the postwar baby boom generation
grows older. The number of people who quit jobs to care for others amounts to
100,000 annually, centering on those in their 40s to 50s. This illustrates
how inefficient the current system for nursing care services really is. More
than 500,000 people are on the waiting list for entry into special nursing
homes for the elderly. The government has put forth a policy of expanding
child and nursing care facilities to an even greater extent than in previous
plans. The challenge is how to secure personnel to engage in child and
nursing care services. Both sectors are beset with a serious shortage of
manpower, and a conspicuous number of operators are struggling to provide
services. The biggest factor is low wages. To significantly improve the
working conditions, the government must work out measures to secure financial
resources. Discussion should also be deepened with regard to reviewing the
tax and social security systems that impede women who wish to work, as
housewives dependent on their husbands are required to pay tax if their
annual income exceeds a threshold of either ¥1.03 million or ¥1.3 million,
depending on circumstances. Holding down the medical expenses that are sure
to rise in line with the aging population is the biggest point at issue in
sustaining the social security system. The functions of so-called family
doctors must be enhanced, while the number of patients seeking treatment for
minor complaints at large hospitals must be reduced. Health care services for the elderly must also be improved, such
as by extending support to help them leave the hospital at an early date and
providing home-based medical care. The number of beds designated for patients
in a critical condition, which increase expenses for seriously ill patients,
must also be reduced. More patients should have regular pharmacies, so waste
such as duplicated medication can be avoided and cheaper generic medicine can
be promoted. Treatment fees paid to medical institutions under the public
health insurance system should be modulated along with these courses of
action, when the fees are revised in April. In doing so, it is important to
make the restraint on medical costs compatible with an improvement in the
quality of health care services. Elderly people are also called on to bear
financial burdens commensurate with their financial strength. It is worth
considering the idea of raising the upper limit of financial burdens to be
borne by those aged 70 or older under the high-cost medical care benefit
system to the same levels as those for currently working people. There also
remain problems with the public pension system. It is essential to reinforce
the functions of the macroeconomic slide system under which pension benefits are
to be reduced in line with the declining number of births and the graying
population. As the implementation of the program under the present system is
restricted during a deflationary period, the reduction has been delayed. To maintain a balance between income and expenditures of the
program, the costs incurred by the delayed reduction will inevitably be
compensated by cutting back the pension benefits given to future generations.
This scenario will not win the understanding of young people. Irrespective of
economic circumstances, the slide system should be fully implemented.
Expansion of the number of people eligible to join the employees’ pension
plan should also be promoted. Currently many nonregular workers are excluded
from the plan. Such workers are highly likely to receive little or no
employees’ pension benefits in the future. As businesses tend to evade
assuming the burden of paying insurance premiums for their workers, the
number of nonregular workers is being pushed up. The reform plan compiled last
year by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry was insufficient, as it put
off solving these pending issues. We hope the related bill which is scheduled
to be submitted to the current Diet session will respond to these issues
properly. The government and ruling coalition parties, conscious of the House
of Councillors election slated for this summer, must not dodge painful
reforms. From
http://the-japan-news.com
The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning on Tuesday
convened a meeting of a consultative body to mull strategies regarding fifth
generation ( From
http://world.kbs.co.kr
Gov't to
Focus on Supporting New Technologies in 2016 From
http://www.koreaherald.com
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Even in retail, the government is keen to open up only the large
retail operations, especially outlets with land size above 2,000 sq metres. Foreign
ownership in retail, that operate in the below 2,000 square meters (sqm)
area, remain closed. The proposed rules will be included in the upcoming
foreign negative investment list (DNI), scheduled to be issued in March this
year. Tackling another sector requiring huge capital, Investment commitment in January Investment commitment in From
http://www.dealstreetasia.com/
The Indonesian government has finally completed the e-commerce roadmap
draft, which will form the basis for future guidelines regulating the sector.
The roadmap will cover critical aspects of the industry such as funding,
taxation, communication infrastructure, logistics, cyber security, consumer
protection and education. The e-commerce sector, which is currently highly
regulated in The funding issue of e-commerce will be covered under the
Negative Investment List (DNI), which is expected to be announced by the
government soon. “The main point
is the affirmative policy on SMEs (small and medium enterprises), whereby
foreign investors may invest in large e-commerce, while small e-commerce
players are closed for foreign investors,” said Rudiantara. Asked whether
foreign investors’ ownership in e-commerce will be capped, he said the issue
has been omitted from the e-commerce roadmap. The ownership issue will be
regulated in the DNI. Earlier, the National Investment Coordinating Board
(BKPM) said it was considering foreign holdings in domestic Marketplace to be
capped at a maximum of 67 per cent As for tax issue, the roadmap suggests
simple and smaller tax rate for e-commerce players. The tax system could be
different between small and large players. “The government is currently
considering to delay imposing tax on startups,” he
said. The Finance Ministry is currently drafting tax mechanism for e-commerce
companies and transactions. From
http://www.dealstreetasia.com/
A plan of 19 billion Singapore dollars (13.2 billion U.S.
dollars) aimed at supporting Singapore's research and development efforts
over the next five years was announced by the city state's Prime Minister Lee
HsienLoong on Friday.Lee also unveiled Research Innovation Enterprise 2020
Plan (RIE2020), the sixth roadmap for research and development, which he
thought is important for Singapore's future, and will contribute a lot to the
country's economy as well as creates many opportunities and jobs.The funding
represents an 18 percent increase from RIE2015's 16.1 billion Singapore
dollars (11.2 billion U.S. dollars) and has been the biggest budget up to
now, Channel NewsAsia reported.Lee also pointed out that the funding will
focus on four domains, namely, advanced manufacturing and engineering, health
and biomedical sciences, services and digital economy as well as urban
solutions and sustainability.According to the Straits Times, the funding
works out to be about 4 billion Singapore dollars (2.78 billion U.S. dollars)
annually when spread over 2016 to 2020. The health and biomedical sciences
sector gets the largest share, or 21 percent of the overall amount, followed
by advanced manufacturing and engineering with 17
percent.Except the four areas, the funding will also be used to
programs that cut across all sectors. These programs come up to 8 billion From http://news.xinhuanet.com/ Singapore Thursday unveiled concrete steps to have a fourth
mobile phone company, offering significant concessions to potential players
interested in launching telephony services, and taking on its incumbent
operators. So far, only two local firms – fibre broadband services provider
MyRepublic, and an arm of Consistel – have publicly expressed interest to bid
for permits to become the fourth operator in Interestingly, The 900 MHz is also considered more efficient because of the
propagation characteristics of these signals, especially for indoor coverage.
It is estimated that telcos that have this frequency require about 40% lesser
equipment and other related infrastructure, including cellular towers because
this band offers superior coverage. This cuts down the capex for the new
entrant. The IDA said the auction will be held in two stages, and the first
phase will be open only to new entrants bidding to become the fourth operator
in the city state. In the second stage, the airwaves auction will be open to
both existing players (M1, Singtel Mobile and StarHub Mobile), as well as the
new entrant who bagged frequencies in the earlier bidding process. The IDA
has also laid down rules of the new entrant, and said this company, would be
given a ‘reasonable period’ to build up its network, and added that the
fourth operator must achieve achieve nationwide outdoor service coverage by
October 2018. Prior to unveiling these guidelines, the IDA had held
consultations with all stakeholders between in April 2014 and July 2015. It also pointed that several industry players had supported the
allocation of more spectrum in view of the increasing consumer demand for
mobile data services and the Internet of Things (IoT). The IDA further added
that several potential new players had indicated strong interest to enter the
mobile market. “The entry of a new MNO will increase competition in the
mobile services market. It is
likely to bring about a wider variety of innovative services and more
competitive offerings to benefit consumers. A new MNO is expected to bring
about increased investments in the infocomm sector, leading to more advanced
technologies and improved service quality,” the IDA added, justifying its
move to allow another operator. Jacqueline Poh, Managing Director, IDA, said:
“The spectrum made available will allow all mobile operators to roll out or
enhance their high speed networks as early as 2017. Having more players in
the market will give consumers a greater choice in selecting an offering that
best suits their needs.” From
http://www.dealstreetasia.com/
THE INFORMATION and Communications Technology Ministry is ready
to roll out 24 projects next year under its “Digital Thailand” plan. The plan
follows the Cabinet's approval of the ministry's 24 projects worth Bt3.755
billion on Tuesday as part of its promotion of a "digital economy".
ICT Minister Uttama Sava-nayana said yesterday that the key projects included
the development of a so-called digital community network, which would see the
upgrade of 2,280 existing community ICT learning centres. In the initial
phase, 600 of the community centres will be upgraded. The project will cost
Bt700 million. Up to now, the learning centres have solely focused on
providing ICT knowledge to people, but the digital-community-network concept
will encourage community members to enter the e-commerce channel. The second
project is the launch of 10,000 new public Internet access spots nationwide,
at a cost of almost Bt900 million. Two other projects are the further
promotion of the use of digital technology by making small and medium-sized
enterprises much more well versed in doing
e-commerce, and the deployment of ICT to improve the public services offered
by state agencies, including the development of online internal communication
channels among all agencies. Another one will be the further development of
Phuket as a "smart city". According to the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), the value of e-commerce market
in From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
THE National Digital Economy Committee yesterday approved in
principle the digital-economy development plan sponsored by the Information
and Communications Technology Ministry. The ministry will hold meetings with
relevant parties to listen to their opinions on the plan and forward it for
Cabinet consideration next month. The National Legislative Assembly is also
expected to consider the Digital Economy Bill next month, according to ICT
Minister Uttama Savanayana. The 20-year digital-economy plan focuses on
building a nationwide advanced broadband network, promoting a
digital-technology-based economy and society, creating public e-services,
developing human resources competent in the digital economy and society, and
creating public confidence in the use of digital technology. The plan
features four phases: building digital infrastructure, entering the digital
economy and society, full digitisation of the country, and using digital
technology to drive From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
ICT Ministry
Considers a National Telecom Fund THE INFORMATION and Communications Technology Ministry will meet
with five private and state telecom operators to discuss the possibility of
setting up a national telecom infrastructure fund. The five operators are
TOT, CAT Telecom, Advanced Info Service, Total Access Communication, and True
Corp. The fund would be the vehicle to promote the rollout of telecom
networks nationwide with the aim of ensuring equal telecom-service
accessibility at affordable prices. "The fund, if successfully set up,
will help in stimulating economic growth and benefit the stock
exchange," said ICT Ministry Minister Uttama Savanayana. Foreign firms 'enthusiastic' "People will also be able to access low prices and quality
services, while telecom operators can jointly use basic telecom
infrastructure, telecom towers and base stations." He added that some
foreign companies were enthusiastic about joining the fund investment. An
asset that would be sold to the fund is the planned Bt15-billion broadband
Internet network to be rolled out by TOT and CAT that will cover 70,000
villages nationwide. Initially
the rollout will focus on 30,000 villages that are beyond the reach of
broadband Internet networks. The ministry will spend an additional Bt5
billion next year on creating international Internet
gateways. Uttama said the ICT
Ministry also planned to launch a free public Wi-Fi spot in all villages
nationwide. It is considering
asking for financial support from the National Broadcasting and
Telecommunications Commission's Broadcasting and Telecommunications Research
and Development Fund to finance the project. From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh this week asked the Finance
Ministry to complete a draft resolution on tax incentives for IT firms and collect
suggestions from relevant ministries and the Ministry of Justice for
submission to the Government this month.On November 24, 2015, the Ministry of
Finance submitted to the Prime Minister a number of measures and policies on
tax incentives to promote the application and development of IT in Viet
Nam.Ninh also asked the Finance Ministry to discuss with the National
Committee on Information Technology Application issues involving extending
tax payment schedules for IT firms.Regarding corporate income tax, IT service
and software would be subject to tax preferences. They would be able to enjoy
the preferential tax rate of 10 per cent for 15 years. In special cases,
companies that employed more than 1,000 workers, could enjoy the preferences
for no more than 30 years, and get four-year tax exemptions and 50 per cent
tax reduction for no more than nine years.On personal income tax (PIT), IT
workers can enjoy a 50 per cent tax reduction. Meanwhile, some kinds of allowances are not counted as taxable
income. The Viet Nam Tax Consultants Association (VTCA) has suggested the
special occupational allowance of 25 per cent for salary for IT workers.The
association estimates that the new policy on tax incentives would help make
up 25 per cent of GDP growth, attract talented employees and create more than
1 million jobs with high income in IT and other industries.The preferential
tax incentives for the IT sector were also discussed by the National
Committee on Information Technology Application at a meeting on September
2015 chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam.At the meeting, Deputy PM
Dam required the Ministry of Information and Communications to co-ordinate
with the Ministry of Finance to offer clear guidance on tax incentives in the
IT field.Policies must be built in view of encouraging and developing IT
enterprises, not simply satisfying users of services, said Dam. From
http://vietnamnews.vn/ Gov't Sets
2016 Economic Targets The government has recently adopted major measures to implement
the country's 2016 socio-economic development plan and state budget. The
Resolution No.1 issued recently by the government has laid down some key
objectives for this year, as follows; Gross domestic product (GDP) grows 6.7
per cent; export turnover increases by 10 per cent; import surplus ratio
against exports is under 5 per cent; consumer price index grows less than 5
per cent; total development investment is about 31 per cent of the GDP; the
percentage of multi-dimensional poor household rate reduces to between 1.3
per cent to 1.5 per cent and health insurance coverage nationwide is about 76
per cent. Maintaining macroeconomic stability while controlling inflation To ensure this objective is achievable, the government has asked
all government agencies, people's committees and organisations nationwide to
pull efforts to carry out their assigned tasks at a high level. The
government has asked the State Bank of Pro-active fiscal policy The government has asked the Ministry of Finance to co-ordinate
with ministries and central and local governments to develop a pro-active
national budget for 2016. The Resolution has also listed some key measures to
help achieve the national budget target. One of the measures is to strictly
implement the Tax Law and state budget collection missions. "In 2016, The Government Resolution lists three key areas for the national
economic restructuring, namely public investment; State economic
groups/corporations; State Commercial banks and credit organisations.
However, public investment is the core. The MPI will work closely with other
ministries and government agencies to monitor and supervise the use of
Official Development Aid (ODA), preferential loans from foreign donors, plus
the State development investment credits and others in all public investment
projects. Meanwhile, State investment credits are designated to invest only
in important and urgent projects having a big impact on the country's
socioeconomic development. The document also emphasises the need to mobilise
other capital resources in the construction of essential infrastructure
socio-economic projects by combining various methods like public-private
partnership, foreign direct investment, joint venture and others. Export promotion The Resolution calls on the Ministry of Industry and Trade
(MOIT) to work out policies to diversify import markets to avoid heavy
dependence on a certain market while taking measures to promote exports in a
sustainable manner. "The MOIT should adopt effective measures to
increase exports to potential markets, particularly commodities with high
value added and high export turnover," the Government Resolution says.
The document also lays emphasis on the effective use of trade protective
measures as regulated by the World Trade Organisation in restrictions on
imports and protecting domestic production. IT application The Ministry of Home Affairs and central and local government
agencies are asked to strictly implement the country's Master Programme on Public
Administrative Reform in the 2011-20 period and the Government's Plan on
Administrative Reform from 2016-2020. The Government's Resolution asks all
central and local government agencies and organisations to apply IT in their
public services, particularly the Government's Resolution Corruption prevention All ministries and central and local agencies have to strictly
implement rules and regulations on the prevention and combating of corrupt
activities, particularly the regulation that public officials have to make
reports on their income and assets. From
http://vietnamnews.vn
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Online violence and abuse is a major barrier for women on the
internet. The legal framework to fight gendered abuse is based on morality,
not on women’s rights, and only ends up restricting women further. This talk
discusses some strategies that women use to make the internet their own and
to keep the internet an empowering public sphere. Instead of talking more
generally about abuse and violence against women on the internet, I want to
focus on a research study we did (the fieldwork was done late-2012/early-2013)which looked specifically at verbal online abuse against
women who are publicly vocal on the internet. The context was that at the
time trolling, as it is called, had become more visible. At the same time,
some of the provisions of the IT Act were becoming more and more contentious.
KapilSibal, who wasthe Minister for Communication and Information Technology,
said that one reason why Section We thought of doing a quantitative study butwe decided against
it precisely because there was so little information available.Not just in The abuse women get is by nowwell-known. It ranges from mildly
sexist remarks, swear words, to actual rape threats and death threats.The
abuse is quite consistent, sometimes over days. What actually elicits the
abuse?Particular topics are more likely to invite
anger. National politics definitely is a very sensitive issue. Narendra Modi
emerged as a very polarising figure. But interestingly, that did not only
affect women who spoke out against him but also women who spoke in favour of
him. So, in a way itworks both ways. Religion emerged as a very sensitive
issue as well. Feminism, feminist politics, and progressive views about
sexuality were very, very contentious. You didn’t need to have an opinion
about something specific to become the subject of abuse. A lot of the abuse
that happens is also plain old moral policing. For example, one of the women
in our study was a Muslim woman who wears a veil. And she had, at some point,
put a picture of herself on Twitter where she was wearing a veil but she was
also wearing a t-shirt and jeans. She was at some social get-together and it
was clear that this was a get-together. And she got massive right-wing
extremist Muslim reactions, mostly from men, very conservative, telling her
that this was no way for a Muslim woman to behave.And this would go on and
on.So it isn’t necessary that you talk about something particularly
sensitive. What was also interesting is that we had mommy bloggers who
spoke about their families and being a mother, but who also spoke about, say,
national politics. They got a lot of abuse from other women who questioned
the fact that they mixed these two topics.What were they trying to say about
motherhood?As if 'this' was somehow tainting motherhood!That was a big
challenge itself.But most of the abuse we could see was from men, or what
seemed to be men, vis-a-vis women. It terms of how the women talked about the
abuse, there are two things in particular I want to highlight. Women would
say consistently that the internet is like the street. When you go out on the
street you know there might be street sexual harassment and you are prepared;
in the same way when you go out onto the internet, you have to prepare. They
also spoke about how one doesn’t realise that in the beginning, and that the
first time something happens you are really shocked.Because earlier on many
of them felt they were in their living rooms speaking to people.It took a
little while for them to make the shift to the fact that this was not their
living room, they were actually ‘outside’. The second thing is linked to
this, and this toohas come out again and again: you do not speak to your family about
this. We found this even with media personalities who many of you see on TV
on a regular basis, women who had 300-400 followers on Twitter,
well-educated, professional, well-earning, upper-middle class women.I’m
thinking of a particular person in Mumbai: her husband was sitting on the
other side of the room (there was a partition in between), and every time she
talkedabout actual abuse she lowered her voice! She said: he’s already
complaining I spend too much time on Twitter. If he knows what happens there,
he’ll definitely say, why are you doing this? In the same way that families
say don’t hang around on the street, they say don’t hang around on the
internet. What also emerged very strongly is that no matter how varied the
abuse women get, the views that really still hit them the hardest are things
to do with body and sexuality. Not just your own sexuality but also the
sexuality of parents. There were several women who said that they could
handle anything but this. In one particular case, the guy started to
sexualise the woman’s father and talk about his sex life in very strong
terms. It started with a discussion about a book by Romila Thapar, and this
is what it became in some six tweets. And she
saidfor hours she could just feel the heat coming off her body because she
was so angry. So it’s very clear that the traditional issues that are the big
issues for women offline emerge even online. Finally, in terms of the
strategies they used, many are obvious. In the beginning you ignore; when
possible you block people or you report them. Several of the bloggers
actually mentioned that Wordpress is preferable over Blogger because
Wordpress allows you to see the IP address of the person who comments and so
you can actually block that IP address if you feel uncomfortable with
somebody. They also commented that if you use strategies like this they are
still very individualised. The person might not be
able to harass you or anyone, but as somebody said, the harasser is still out
on the street. It’s a very personalised strategy. Almost everybody we spoke to resorted to self-censorship. I
think there was only one exception who said that she didn’t. But everybody else started to curtail
their own words. But this blocking, ignoring, reporting,
they’re not very empowering strategies. There was a set of strategies that
was far more interesting. A lot of women said they were looking for
communities online to deal with harassment.And that when you have a community
there are much more creative ways (to cope with abuse). Let’s say, for
example, re-tweeting abuse, in the hope that it will land up on the page of
the abuser.There were several women who said that they did that because they
wanted men to respond to the abuser as well. Because men can sometimes use
language, theseare the words of women in the study, that ‘I would never be
comfortable doing’. So you have to give it back in a different way. Both the
facts that you can use a different language and that there is a bigger group
are really important. If you have that kind of support it also becomes easier
to use strategies like humour. I think some of the most empowering strategies
were actually about refusing the abuse. To make use of the fact that the
person is not standing next to you, and to take the sting out of it. One
woman commented that she feltpeople in And finally, there were some women who made very strong
arguments to actually talk back. Not just through humour but also through
very harsh words. One woman emphasised that on the internet there is one big
difference from the street and that is the fact that the guy is not standing
next to you. Physical differences do not matter in the same way, and he
cannot get to you as easily. And so her point was: you have the same weapons.
He has a keyboard and you have a keyboard, so why don’t you use it? She felt
that this is a mindgame and women are losing it before they start. She made a
really important point about how women must start responding differently to
make thepublic sphere of the internettheir own. I thought that argument was
really important. In terms of the legal framework, what emerged was
thatfirst, women don’t want to go to the police because it’s not ‘good’ to be
seen doing so; families often don’t encourage it, and the police doesn’t
necessarily understand. The first thing the police officer asked one woman
was: Where is your husband? As if she couldn’t come and file a complaint
about harassment on her own! Another problem with the legal framework is that
many of the laws that you can use to fight something like this are based on
morality, on obscenity, and ultimately these kinds of provisions restrict
women. They restrict the control you have over your own self-representation.
If we want to keep the internet alive as an empowering sphere, we need to
fight this. Basing provisions of free speech on morality and not on women’s
rights, people’s rights, is a real problem. This is the edited version of a
talk on gendered abuse on the internet delivered at a workshop on Gender,
Sexuality and the Internet at CCDS, Pune, on May 14, 2014. The workshop was
conducted in partnership with Point of View, Mumbai, and the EROTICS project.
Anja Kovacs directs the Internet Democracy Project, From
http://netpehchaan.in
Fund Paucity Affects Karnataka’s Smart
City Plan The smart
city wave in From
http://smartcity.eletsonline.com
Karnataka Govt Plans Allocating Rs500cr
for Minister for Urban Development
for Karnataka Vinay Kumar Sorake has said that Mysuru city would be developed
under the smart city programme with State funds. For this, the State
Government is planning to allocate Rs. 500 crore in the coming financial
year. He also said, “The amount would be released in a phased manner for five
years and Mysuru would be developed comprehensively. “Mysuru city was not
included in the smart city programme of the Union Government for different
reasons, and since the Mysuru City Corporation did not get the requisite
marks, there was poor progress in implementation of the JNNURM scheme and
because of this Mysuru was not considered, Sorake said. The Minister
expressed his wish that From
http://smartcity.eletsonline.com
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The Communications and High Technologies Ministry will take all
necessary measures to prevent another mass Internet outage in the country, Acting
Communications and High-Tech Minister Iltimas Mammadov said. From http://www.azernews.az/ Single
Database on Azerbaijan’s Children to Be Created The State Committee on Family, Women and Children Affairs of the
From http://news.az/ The government of From http://en.trend.az/ President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov outlined main priorities
of social-economic development of He noted that Uzbekistan expects that GDP will grow by 7.8
percent in 2016, industrial production – 8.2 percent, agriculture output –
6.1 percent, retail trade turnover – 14 percent, services – 17.4 percent. It
is expected that inflation will be in the region of 5.5-6.5 percent. Real
income of population will grow by 9.5 percent and income of salaries,
pensions, stipends and allowances – by 15 percent. He said that measures should be
adopted to ensure launch of 164 large investment projects with total cost of
over $5 billion in 2016. He said
that it is necessary to complete construction of high speed railway to Bukhara,
two steam and gas turbines of 450 MW each at Talimarjan thermal power
station, a power unit of 150 MW at the Angren thermal power station, three
blocks of desulphurization with the capacity of 6 billion cubic meters of gas
at the Mubarek Gas Processing Plant, a new smelter capacity with the capacity
of 70,000 tons of copper at the Almalyk Mining and Metallurgy Combine, expand
the capacity of the cement plant in Jizzakh region up to 1 million tons of
Portland cement, development of production of new models of cars Aveo (T-250)
at GM Uzbekistan. It is planned to build 13,000 houses with total area of over 1.8
million square meters in rural area in 2016 with construction of Uzbek President said that social sphere and improving life
standards of population will be also priority direction for 2016. In his speech also, President said that
From http://en.trend.az/ |
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Big
Data Gets Its First Official Standard at the ITU The United
Nations' ITU agency has long worked to promote global cooperation in a
variety of technical areas, and on Friday it announced its
first-ever standard for big data. The new international standard details the
requirements, capabilities and uses of cloud-based big data, with an eye
toward ensuring that its benefits can be achieved on a global scale. It also
outlines how cloud computing systems can be leveraged to provide big-data
services. "This new ITU standard provides internationally agreed
fundamentals of cloud-based big data," said Chaesub Lee, director of the
International Telecommunication Union's Telecommunication Standardization
Bureau. "It will build cohesion in the terminology used to describe
cloud-based big data and offer a common basis for the development of big data
services and supporting technical standards." Outlined in the ITU's new
report are recommendations and requirements for data collection,
visualization, analysis and storage, among other areas, along with security
considerations. What isn't entirely clear, however, is whether the specifications
add substantially to what's already been established by vendors in the space. "We're
somewhat skeptical around the area of international standards in the data
space," said Alan Duncan, a research director with Gartner. "We have
not really seen any of them have a huge amount of traction." What often
happens is that before official standards even exist, market forces push
vendors to establish interoperability on their own, From http://www.computerworld.com.au
It may have
been easy for Congress on Friday to approve the Cybersecurity Information
Sharing Act (CISA), despite past controversy around it. This bill does not
hike federal spending or impose sweeping regulatory rules. Its main feature
is something many firms will be happy to get: liability protection if they
share information with the government about cyberthreats and attacks. CISA
was slipped into the keep-the-government running $1.1 trillion spending bill.
It was approved just before lawmakers took their holiday recess. The
cybersecurity provisions of the bill itself are expected to cost the
government about $20 million over a four-year period. The White House was
expected to sign the bill, and possibly upset a long list of tech firms,
including Apple, Google and Facebook, who are worried about private
information getting into government hands. Lawmakers are betting that the
measure will improve security, but the legislation's effectiveness will
ultimately be settled by the attackers who breach corporate systems. Alan Paller,
director of research at SANS institute, said the bill won't accomplish
"a thing" in terms of improving information security, or reducing
vulnerabilities. But Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner, said the bill will
matter. Because of legal issues, a malware attack discovered by one firm
wasn't necessarily shared, and this sharing of information is critical.
"Now you know exactly what the attack looks like" as result of
information sharing, said Litan. "The bad guys use the same attack in
multiple places." The government will be required to create a portal for
information sharing. It limits the government use of threat information to
cybersecurity purposes, which includes threats to minors and countering
cyber-related crimes. There have also been warnings by privacy advocates such
as the Electronic Frontier Foundation that the bill is a swamp of
"immunity clauses, vague definitions and aggressive spying powers"
that have turned it into a surveillance bill. Those comments came in an
earlier critique of the legislation. From http://www.computerworld.com.au
IA
Says Ready to Help Eliminate ‘Digital Divide’ Internet Patton said
Internet From http://www.itwire.com
ACMA Promises ‘Easier
Access to Spectrum’ for Internet of Things ACMA’s newly
proposed changes to regulatory arrangements will ensure operators of M “The
proposals are a part of our work in looking at From http://www.itwire.com Industry Still Not
Satisfied with Proposed Telco Security Legislation A coalition
of industry groups still wants the Federal Government to make further changes
to the proposed Telecommunications Sector Security Reform (TSSR) initiative
in the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill. On-going
concerns with the draft bill have been conveyed to the government by the
Communications Alliance in coalition with the Australian Industry Group (Ai
Group), Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) and the Australian
Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) in their submission released
today. Communications Alliance CEO John Stanton said today that while the coalition
welcomed the fact that the Government had responded to earlier industry
concerns with amendments to the proposed bill, industry maintained that
“further adjustment of the proposed reforms is needed to extend and maintain
the security framework for the telecommunications industry in an effective
and efficient manner”. "We
remain especially concerned with the potentially negative consequences of the
proposed reforms on businesses and innovation, particularly in the context of
the Internet of Things (IoT)." In November last year, the
Attorney-General George Brandis released a new draft of the legislation,
making a number of changes which he said addressed industry concerns,
including introduction of a higher test threshold before a direction to a
telco can be made by the government. The legislation – a draft of which was
first issued in June last year – requires telcos to inform the government
about network changes and procurement intentions. From http://www.itwire.com
Government Releases NBN
End-User Migration Policy The
progressive rollout of the NBN has seen a significant reduction in the
instances of premises which were previously unable to connect to the
broadband network, even though they had declared they were ready to be
connected. To ensure a working service is available at the premise, the
Federal Government has today released its Migration Assurance Policy (MAP) to
support the transitioning of existing broadband and phone services customers
by limiting the disruption during the switch-over to the fixed-line national
broadband network (nbn). In its policy released today, the government says
that one of the “Four Pillars that support successful migration” is
Serviceability – “ensuring a working service is available at the premise when
an order is placed”. The policy document notes a significant improvement in
connection performance now compared to previously. According to the policy
statement, at the time of the last election, around 30% of premises declared
ready to connect were not actually serviceable because the physical network
had not been connected at those premises. “This figure
is now less than 5% as nbn has implemented strict new processes to ensure
more end users are ready to connect when areas go live. The remaining
unserviceable premises are actively targeted by nbn for bespoke construction
solutions.” With the release today of MAP, the government notes that the nbn is replacing
Telstra’s fixed line network which is compulsorily switched off 18 months
after the nbn is activated in a rollout region. To date, the government says
that 154 regions around “A smooth
migration process will be essential in coming years as the nbn rollout
gathers momentum. nbn’s
three-year rollout plan will expand the network footprint to include more
than 9 million homes and businesses across Australia by the end of 2018,” the
policy notes. The new policy is the result of extensive collaboration between
the government, NBN Co Limited and Telstra, and has also been “informed by
feedback from stakeholder consultations, industry and public submissions on
the draft framework”. According to its statement accompanying today’s release
of the MAP policy, the government says it “resolves the Labor government’s
legacy of early rollout areas that were plagued by problems including network
shortfalls which caused extended waiting times for connections, ordering
system errors and inconsistent data which led to missed appointments and
occasional unexpected disconnections”. Other early migration problems which
the government says are being addressed include inappropriate equipment
placement, accuracy of information from installers, and general consumer
understanding about the nbn installation process. The
government notes that the MAP emphasises the importance of consistent and
accurate information and data sharing between parties to “make connecting to
the fibre nbn trouble-free” – and establishes four critical pillars which
underpin the successful switch-over from Telstra’s copper and HFC networks to
the NBN fixed line network. As well as Servicability, the government says the
other three pillars that support successful migration are: •
Availability – a suitable product range to meet consumer needs • End-user awareness
and management – the need for consistent and timely information and support
for households and businesses, and •
Installation and activation – the timely completion of orders for an nbn
service. The
Government says it “recognises the telecommunications industry’s hard work
and commends its commitment to improving the migration process,” and that the
policy and framework will be updated as needed over time, including
addressing any additional migration issues as they arise. From http://www.itwire.com
The
Government has refreshed its national Cyber Security Strategy, as it ramps up
investment across its Ultra-Fast Broadband and Rural Broadband Initiative
programmes. The refreshed strategy was launched by Communications Minister
Amy Adams with an Action Plan and a National Plan to Address Cybercrime. “The
Government is building infrastructure and investing $2 billion into our
Ultra-Fast Broadband and Rural Broadband Initiative programmes because we
want New Zealanders to engage in the digital economy,” “By
refreshing the action plan each year we will keep pace with any emerging
threats,” Adams says a
key action in the new strategy is the development of a national CERT to
reduce harm from cyber security incidents and improve As outlined
by # Cyber
resilience is about the on-going protection of # Cyber
capability involves building the skills of New Zealanders, businesses and
government agencies to protect themselves online, spearheaded by the Connect
Smart public-private partnership # Addressing
cybercrime will focus on building police capability to deal with cybercrime #
International cooperation will allow From http://www.computerworld.co.nz
Govt Unveils Cyber
Security Credentials Scheme for Kiwi SMEs “One of the
core actions of the new Cyber Security Strategy and Action Plan is to build
the capability of small businesses to improve their cyber security,” adds
Craig Goss, Small Business Minister. Small businesses make an important
contribution to “It will
enable small businesses to demonstrate to their customers and business
connections that they have put in place the basic cyber security practices,” From http://www.computerworld.co.nz
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The European Commission has begun to work on a five year e-government
action plan for the EU as part of its Digital Single Market strategy. Andrus
Ansip, EU vice president in charge of the Digital Single Market, has outlined
a set of principles which reflect several priorities of the Piloting the ‘once only’ principle for businesses across the EU. Accelerating member states’ transition to full e-procurement and
interoperable e-signatures. Reforming EU institutions’ digital set-ups and procedures. Supporting interoperability for public administrations. Making interconnections between business
registers a reality by 2017 and supporting access to digital services in
member states. In addition, the commission will look at specific areas such as
transport, health and the judiciary. Interoperability's importance Ansip emphasised the importance of compatibility between
national public services, describing the European Interoperability Framework as
a key building block, and emphasising the potential of the Interoperability
Solutions for European Public Administrations (ISA²) programme. ISA² will run
for five years beginning in January and provide �131 million to support the
development of interoperable digital solutions. Ansip also outlined three
principles to underline the work, while pointing to some of the barriers in
the way of adoption. He said that ‘digital by default’, which has been at the
centre of the Open by default Secondly, administrations should take up the open data agenda
and work more freely with other groups in a move towards ‘open by default’.
This would give individuals, businesses and the third sector the potential to
provide more services using the data. “If this is made accessible, made
available as open data – free for use and re-use – then the community,
individuals as well as companies, can benefit hugely,” Ansip said. “And the
public sector benefits in return. The more we share, the more we gain.”
Thirdly, there is a need for more compatibility between national public
services, what Ansip described as “cross-border by default” and which will
draw heavily on the European Interoperability Framework. The principles can
be seen as more specific than the priorities of the EU’s 2011-15 e-government
plan, which focused on empowering citizens and businesse, reinforcing
mobility in the single market, enabling efficiency and efficiency and
effectiveness, and creating the key enablers and preconditions. Ansip issued
a call for people to take part in the public consultation on the new plan,
which will run into 22 January, and concluded: “Digitising government is key to making it open, efficient and accountable at the
service of our communities.” From
http://www.ukauthority.com/
THE The The two main pillars for the roll out of Czech e-government were
a central service point - which would allow all government departments and
services to communicate with each other – and a more advanced central system
for communication between the emergency services. The target date for
completion of the central service point was originally set at 2010. By the
time the spending watchdog completed its reported in August this year, it was
still unfinished. And the same story held true for the new system for the
emergency services. Altogether, the watchdog checked on four specific
projects where spending totaled 700 million crowns. It found fault with 390
million of that spending. It also questioned why the ministry avoided holding
public tenders and instead arranged for in-house agreements to be signed with
suppliers for five contracts. Spokeswoman for the Ministry of Interior,
Martina Nemcová, said that the two central projects were finally completed
soon after the watchdog’s report was wrapped up. That means that the threat
of the European Commission clawing back some of the 85 percent funding that
underpinned them no longer applies. “Both projects, the central service point and the basic
operations centre for integrated emergency systems were completed by the
target date, that being November 30, 2015. That means that there is no threat
that funding from the integration budget of the European Union will be
withheld. There were delays to both projects and these were probably in part
caused by organizational and personnel changes at the Ministry of Interior in
the past. For example, the management of the project was changed seven times
in six years.” The spending watchdog also queried why the ministry gradually
handed over some of its communications workload to the Czech Post Office
pointing out that the promised large savings and efficiency from that step
were elusive with charges for services cut by just two percent in 2014. From
http://www.radio.cz/
Last week, the National Regulatory Control Board (Nationaler
Normenkontrollrat), an expert board advising the German government on
bureaucracy reduction, published a critical report on the topic of
e-government in From
http://www.lexology.com/
From
http://famagusta-gazette.com/
In terms of hardware, the main three verticals for investment
this year were clients (18%), network and communication equipment (13%) and
high-end servers (13%). Processors were the least invested area at 7%. For
software, spending was mainly focused on licences. British institutions spent
a whopping 32% of their budgets on this area. A further 21% was invested in
software vendor support costs and maintenance, while software as a service
(SaaS) spending reached 18%; platform as a service (PaaS) 17%; and the final
12% of their budget was spent on 'other' software solutions. Kable surveyed
135 British governmental institutions for the report, named ICT Customer
Insight. From
http://www.misco.co.uk/
“We need to harness our incredible technical prowess and look to
what new approaches and technological innovation can bring,” he said. “By
leading this ground-breaking international project we will be able to share
ideas with our European counterparts as we work to create a city that is fit
for the future and an even greater place to live, work and visit.” Various
other organisations will assist the From
http://www.v3.co.uk/
NORTH
AMERICA: Federal officials have been meticulously counting up the federal
information security workforce over the past two years in pursuit of a single
database of cybersecurity jobs in the federal government. The feds hope the
database will better quantify persistent shortages in tech talent -- and
eventually help fill them. But the effort might benefit from a check-in by
Congress. Lawmakers still lack good data on the federal government’s efforts
because the database has not been made public and the Office of Personnel
Management -- which is leading the cyber job census -- is not required to
report its progress to Congress. That’s according to a Jan. 8 Congressional
Research Service report posted online recently by the Federation of American
Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. The report stopped short of
issuing recommendations but said if Congress wanted to beef up oversight, it
could ask the Government Accountability Office to audit OPM’s cyber workforce
data and evaluate how effectively the database is being used to spot
shortages, plot future staffing needs and fill gaps. Cyber job functions are scattered across 100 different federal job
categories at last count. That’s often led to confusion and made
apples-to-apples comparisons hard to calculate. For example, in 2011, DOD
officials tallied up about 19,000 cybersecurity employees at the department
-- 69,000 fewer than the number identified by GAO that same year. In 2013,
OPM announced it would build a database of cybersecurity jobs by recoding
federal job descriptions to align with a framework developed by the National
Initiative for Cybersecurity Education. As of November, about 95 percent of
all federal positions had been re-coded using the new approach. But the
database, which ostensibly contains the makings of the first consistent
governmentwide count of the civilian cyber workforce -- has not yet been made
public. Efforts to tally up the information security experts in government
ratcheted up again after the OPM hack drew attention to the lack of qualified
information security personnel in government. As part of a long-term plan for shoring up cybersecurity
initiated by the White House, agencies faced an end-of-2015 deadline to
report the five most common cybersecurity skills gaps to the Office of
Management and Budget, which is planning to release the first-ever
governmentwide cybersecurity HR strategy in April. But again, that data does
not have to be submitted to Congress, the CRS report noted. “Congressional
knowledge of the progress of these evolving efforts, therefore, might be
limited or incomplete,” which may make it difficult for Congress to assess
the capabilities of the federal cybersecurity workforce, the CRS report
concluded. In addition, researchers said lawmakers have little visibility
into the use and effectiveness of pay and hiring flexibilities that have been
offered at some agencies -- the departments of Defense and Homeland Security,
for example -- to speed the hiring of cyber experts. Last March, for example, the Pentagon was granted the authority
to fast track the hiring of 3,000 infosec professionals to staff up U.S.
Cyber Command. And in November, DHS announced plans to hire up to 1,000 new
cyber experts under special hiring authorities. But agencies that use the
hiring shortcuts are not required to report to Congress on how they’re being
used or the total number of employees ultimately hired using them. In the absence
of good data, “Congress might find it difficult to ensure that these
flexibilities are being used to fill appropriate positions,” the report
stated. Alan Paller, the founder and director of research at the SANS
Institute, who has studied DHS’ cyber-expert shortage, has criticized the
agency in the past for “hijacking” the hiring authority to fill regular IT
roles. From
http://www.nextgov.com/
Why
Open Data Doesn't Mean Open Government Demand for open data in Jonathan Gray, director of policy and research at Open
Knowledge, says it is important to consider the distinctions between “open
data” and “open government”. He says opening up existing data sets is just
the first step and doesn’t automatically lead to a democratic government:
“Publishing open data is of course not sufficient for open governments or
open societies. It is just one ingredient in the mix, and no replacement for
other vital elements of democratic societies, like robust access to
information laws, whistleblower protections and rules to protect freedom of
expression, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly.” Gray adds that
it’s not just countries such as A number of groups have sprung up in When the ODI started working with the government of Carolan says that the biggest challenge when trying to get key
stakeholders onboard within the government is to help them understand the
benefits of open data. “This can often mean making a case about the economic
potential. It requires addressing people’s fears with clear messages about
what open data is, and what it is not. “Once you identify who is willing to
put their political capital behind an open data initiative, the next
challenge is to find the best ways to support them so they can bring about
these changes within the system. Open data is primarily a challenge of
culture change. Implementing the technology is much easier.” From
http://www.theguardian.com/
Internet
Governance: On the Next week, the UN General Assembly will agree a text that reviews
the outcomes of the 2003/2005 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
and, to the extent that agreement can be reached, also points forward to the
future. In the second in a series of posts on the WSIS+10 process edited by
LSE alumna Anri van der Spuy, David Souter, Visiting Senior Fellow at the
LSE, and Managing Director of ict Development Associates, asks whether the
agreement will address today’s and tomorrow’s challenges of Internet
governance, or merely those of yesterday? Defining Internet governance It was WSIS that first gave substantive geopolitical prominence
to the issue of Internet governance, afforded it a ‘working definition’, and
clarified dividing lines over national and international, and over
multilateral and multistakeholder, ‘roles and responsibilities’. The working
definition in WSIS’ Tunis Agenda refers to Internet governance as ‘the
development and application by governments, the private sector and civil
society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules,
decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use
of the Internet.’ This is the terrain across which advocates of different
concepts of Internet governance have contested for the past decade, where
they have contested during negotiations in the current General Assembly
process, and where they will continue to contest into the future. It includes
both ‘narrow’ Internet governance (IG) – concerning the technical evolution
of the Internet – and ‘broad’ IG – concerning its use, and thereby its
interface, with other aspects of economy, society and culture. What was, and is, at issue? International texts like those agreed at WSIS are geopolitical
compromises, studded with ambiguity where agreement can’t be reached. The
text elaborating the definition of Internet governance in the Tunis Agenda
was intensively negotiated in the Summit and an earlier Working Group, and
closely contested in three main areas – concerning the desirability or
otherwise of: a) internationalised control over critical Internet resources
(what might be called ‘the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers) question’); b) government oversight over the use of the Internet and
its impact on national societies; and c) the relationship between governments
and other stakeholders in the development of Internet governance (the
question of multistakeholderism). In each case, while governments were
divided, those in other stakeholder communities – the private sector, civil
society, the technical community – tended to favour non-governmental or
multistakeholder approaches. Out of these disagreements, governments
represented at WSIS agreed two mechanisms: the Internet Governance Forum
(IGF), a multistakeholder discussion space without decision-making powers;
and ‘enhanced cooperation’ – a term of deliberate and studied ambiguity – ‘to
enable governments, on an equal footing, to carry out their roles and
responsibilities, in international public policy issues pertaining to the
Internet, but not in the day-to-day technical and operational matters, that
do not impact on international public policy issues.’ There is little
agreement on the meaning of ‘enhanced cooperation’, let alone on whether it
has taken place. The direction of travel It is this framework that the present General Assembly process
is reviewing – and herein lies the problem. By their
nature, review processes look backwards; and looking backwards is no way to
set the agenda for the future in a fast-moving area like the Internet. As the
UN Commission on Science and Technology (CSTD) emphasised in its ten-year
review, Implementing WSIS Outcomes (for which I was lead consultant), both
the Internet and the Information Society are now very different in scope,
scale and significance from the time of WSIS. Changes in scope and scale are
fairly obvious. The number of people using the Internet today is around three
times that in 2005. The ways in which it is accessed have been transformed by
mobility and broadband. Many of
what are now core aspects of usage – including social media and cloud
computing – had barely begun when the Tunis Agenda was agreed. The
commercialisation of data and concentration of market power in Internet
corporations have altered relationships between users of the Internet,
infrastructure and service providers. Above all, the Internet has become
critically important to most aspects of economy, society and culture,
certainly in developed countries and increasingly so in developing countries. The implications of Internet development These changes have two implications for Internet governance. The
Internet is much more important than it was in 2005, but it is also very
different. Its growing pervasiveness and impact require adjustments in
thinking by both Internet professionals and governments. Internet
professionals need to re-evaluate core principles of the Internet’s first
flowering for today’s realities. Adaptiveness is as necessary for the
Internet’s governance mechanisms as it is for technical standards. Those
mechanisms which emerged when the Internet was technically unsophisticated,
non-commercial and only impacted on a few people in a small number of countries, are inherently unlikely to be as appropriate
for today’s mass-market commercial, global Internet. That is most obviously true
at the interface between the Internet and other public policy domains. It is
clear that the advent of the Internet has altered the parameters of
mainstream governance, between citizens, government and business, both
enabling and requiring changes in how governments do things. But this is not a one-way process. The
more important the Internet becomes to economy, society and culture, the more
its governance and norms must also conform to those of other policy domains.
This requires changes in how the Internet is managed. It is not just
governments that require this evolution in the relationships between
stakeholders, but also principles of good governance themselves. The rule of
law should rely on the consent of those governed, not on changing algorithms
and online business models. Internet governance needs to address the future, not the past The scope, scale and significance of the Internet will continue
to grow (indeed to accelerate) over the next decade as datafication and
commercialisation intensify, the Internet of Things becomes established,
algorithmic decision-making becomes more widespread, and today’s ‘unknown
unknowns’ become tomorrow’s innovations. Internet governance arrangements
that were thought appropriate for 2005, or 2015, are unlikely to be nearly so
appropriate in 2025. Internet governance debates should focus on what is
needed in the future more than what was needed in the past. The beginnings of
the necessary realignment are discernible. Some governments are now paying
substantive, rather than rhetorical, attention to the interface between
multilateral and multistakeholder approaches at international level. There is
more discussion of the impact of evolving Internet business models on issues
including privacy, taxation and economic regulation. Cybersecurity is an obvious area of importance at the interface
between the Internet and mainstream governance. Only the last of these,
however, is prominent in the current General Assembly negotiations, where its
inclusion has been resisted by some important stakeholders. The problem with
today’s debates on Internet governance, is that
they’re still yesterday’s debates. Arguments about ‘enhanced cooperation’ are
a cul-de-sac. It’s the changes taking place in the fast lane of the motorway
– the transition to cloud computing, the concentration of economic power
within the Internet, the step change in the Internet-user interface which the
Internet of Things is poised to bring – that will determine the future of the
Internet and its growing impact on our societies. It’s in that fast lane that
today’s debates about Internet governance need to be taking place. From
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/
The
Working Group on Internet Governance - 10th Anniversary Reflections 2015 marks the 10th anniversary of the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS). The UN General Assembly reviewed the progress
made over the past decade and negotiated a text that addresses a number of
global Internet governance issues. 2015 is also the 10th anniversary of a
multistakeholder experiment that helped bring the WSIS to a successful
conclusion: the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG). Convened in
2004, the WGIG assembled 40 representatives of governments and stakeholders
who engaged in months of intensive peer-level dialogue and collective
analysis. The WGIG process was an important turning point and catalyst in the
intergovernmental recognition of multistakeholder processes for Internet governance.
In June 2005, the WGIG released a widely noted report that advanced a “broad
definition” of Internet governance; holistically addressed a range of policy
issues; offered four competing models for the ”oversight” of critical
Internet resources; and proposed the establishment of the Internet Governance
Forum. The report significantly influenced the final agreement adopted by
WSIS. This book reflects on the WGIG’s procedural and substantive contributions
to the evolving global Internet governance dialogue and institutional
ecosystem. Written by former WGIG members and others who played key roles in
the debates on the WGIG and WSIS, the volume is a follow-up to a book
produced in the summer of 2005: William J. Drake, ed., Reforming Internet
Governance: Perspectives from the UN Working Group on Internet Governance.
Topics include: historical overview; understanding Internet governance;
institutionalizing multistakeholder cooperation; from oversight to
stewardship; Internet governance for development; and closing reflections.
Authors include: Fiona Alexander, Peng Hwa Ang and Sherly Haristya, Anriette
Esterhuysen and Karen Banks, Nitin Desai, Avri Doria, William J. Drake, Raúl
Echeberría, Baher Esmat, Juan Fernández González, Hartmut R. Glaser and Diego
R. Canabarro, David Hendon, Jānis Kārkliņš, Wolfgang Kleinwächter, Jovan
Kurbalija, Markus Kummer, Olivier Nana Nzépa, Alejandro Pisanty, Paul Wilson
and Pablo Hinojosa, and Michael Yakushev. Please note the publication will
soon be available via Print on demand and on e-book formats. From
https://www.apc.org/
Why
the Open Government Partnership Needs a Reboot The Open Government Partnership was created in 2011 as an
international forum for nations committed to implementing Open Government
programs for the advancement of their societies. The idea of open government
started in the 1980s after CSPAN was launched to broadcast That civil service had rarely allowed the public to know what
they say, write, and do in real time. They were not "open." In some
countries, the civil services are patronage tools of the parties in power. In
others, the impersonal rule of law separates political power from
bureaucratic administration. In many, patronage, clientalism, and
bureaucratic administration mix with money and corruption and the processes
of power are deliberately opaque. Many say OGP expansion is a whitewash,
giving governments a facade of openness behind which they write laws that
restrict access to executive emails, forbid foreign funding of journalism,
empower surveillance, and worse. In 2009, the Obama Administration declared
its intent to be the most transparent administration in U.S. History,
announcing that transparency and open government are good for democracy,
business, and social progress. The administration went on to create the
Data.Gov Open Data Portal, We The People Website, and the Open Government
Partnership (OGP) to spread the ideas of open government, through soft
diplomacy, around the world. Countries that join OGP must meet eligibility
criteria, which includes fiscal transparency, access to information,
public officials asset disclosure, and citizen engagement. They must commit
to creating National Action Plans with specific compliance programs to
transform their operational governments into transparent and open
democracies. Each National Action Plan is audited by volunteers in country
who compile reports on the status of each national commitment and score
nations on their road to Open Government. The Change is happening too slowly, there is retrenchment in even
the most “open” nations, and the public can feel few demonstrable benefits.
During the same period of time, member nations have submitted 100 National
Action Plans and over 2000 commitments, of which a little less than 25% have
been completed. Not bad for a global institution using collaboration and
communication to drive needed changes in government openness. But at the same
time, its not good enough. Change is happening too
slowly, there is retrenchment in even the most “open” nations, and the public
can feel few demonstrable benefits. During the same period, 247 journalists
have been killed doing their jobs. In OGP countries like Screen Shot OGP has grown from 8 countries to the 69 participating
countries. In October, OGP met for its Global Summit in It was a good idea, but it was not to be because in June the
Mexican government changed the venue for the OGP Summit to Guys: This was not my intention and I think this is an extremely
bad idea. We have expanded very rapidly over the past three years yet the
expansion is mostly superficial. We are increasing membership but not
increasing open government, and civil society is increasingly cynical about
OGP. Many are saying it is a whitewash, lipstick on a pig, giving national
governments a nice pretty facade of openness behind which they write laws
restricting access to executive emails, forbidding foreign funding of
journalism, empowering universal surveillance, and even worse. OGP is expanding too fast without delivering the real benefits
the world needs, and adding cities, expanding even further, is not going to
change the outcomes. I am a big fan of OGP and feel that the ideals and
ambition of this partnership are noble and essential to the survival of
democracy in this millennium. But OGP is a startup, and every startup
business or program faces a chasm it must cross from early adopters and
innovators to early majority market implementation and OGP is very much at
this crossroads today. It has expanded membership at a furious pace the past
three years and it's clear to me that expansion is now far more important to
OGP than the delivery of the benefits of open government to the hundreds of
millions of citizens who need transparent transformation. OGP needs a reboot. The structure of a system produces its own behavior. OGP needs a
new organizational structure with new methods for evaluating national
commitments. But that reboot needs to happen within its current mission. We
should see clearly that the current structure is straining due to the rapid
expansion of membership. There aren't enough support unit resources to manage
the expansion. We have to rethink how we manage national commitments and how
we evaluate what it means to be an open government. It's just not right that
countries can celebrate baby steps at OGP events while at the same time
passing odious legislation, sidestepping OGP accomplishments, buckling to
corruption, and cracking down on journalists. Here are some ideas for an OGP Reboot: 1. Make Steering
Committee meetings open to the public.
Why is an organization dedicated to transparency having secret
leadership meetings? 2. Make civil
society membership in the steering committee subject to democratic elections among
civil society organizational members. Why is an
organization dedicated to democracy allowing CSO's to self-select who
gets to run the organization? 3. Create electronic
voting mechanisms for OGP member nations (all citizens) to vote on changes to
the charter, admission of new members, and other matters and policies that effect the people for whom OGP is designed to benefit. 4. Create specific and automatic membership termination criteria
-- requiring members to meet specific commitments withing x years or be
automatically sent packing. 5. Create specific
criteria for ejected members to reform and be re-admitted. 6. Create an OGP
Foundation to provide specific grants to CSO organizations that promote OGP
principles through specific national programs. 7. Measure the
openness of nations based on all factors exogenous to National Action Plans.
There are so many ways nations can create plans yet still undermine open
government with policies and programs outside the scope of OGP. The OECD is
now measuring national prosperity with factors beyond GDP. OGP needs to
measure national openness with factors beyond NAP commitments. 8. Make OGP summits into cathartic international conversations
on how we can improve. The last summit was a PR love-fest of proclamations
about all the progress that has been made and no one talked about the
setbacks, challenges, and hard work overcoming corruption and violence to pry
open the dark and dusty corners of government power. An Open Government Partnership without honest conversations
confronting common challenges isn't very open at all. We can and must do
better. Doing more of the same, membership expansion, expecting better
results, is not a recipe for success. Every human organization and government
is imperfect. I don't expect OGP to be perfect. And I'm not against OGP. I'm
for it. I'm proud of it. And I want it to be better, to relentlessly strive
to improve itself -- to deliver the benefits of open government to the
citizens of its member states and the world. It just can't do that within its
current structure. From
http://gijn.org/
In Internet
Governance, Actions Speak Louder Than Words Byron Holland is the CEO of the Canadian Internet Registration
Authority, which manages the .ca domain. A decade ago, a landmark summit was
held in It incumbent upon all of us, governments, the private sector and
civil society, to work together to shrink this divide. However, how to do so,
and who gets to make those decisions, continue to be points of contention.
The historically unparalleled growth of the Internet is, as I and many others
would argue, in large part due to the bottom-up, organic approach inherent to
the governance model employed to manage its global development. Underpinned
by the principles of inclusiveness, collaboration, openness, and
transparency, the multistakeholder model has been the foundation of the
Internet’s success. The multistakeholder model ensures that all organizations
that have an interest in the Internet’s success have an equal voice at the
table when decisions about its development are made, a necessity for an
entity as complex as the global Internet. It has facilitated the development
of the greatest driver of positive economic and social change humankind has
seen in centuries, and it has the power to accelerate the flow of knowledge,
education, communication, and wealth globally. While the Tunis Agenda, the output of the WSIS in 2005, called
for a lightweight, multistakeholder approach to Internet governance, there
have been numerous attempts by certain governments to exert their authority
over critical Internet resources over the past ten years. A multilateral
approach, one that would put governments in the role of decision-maker, has
been preferred by a number of states (primarily from the BRICS group). The
negotiations leading up to this week’s meeting has seen the debate over ‘who
should run the Internet’ brought to the forefront once again. I was therefore
pleased to see that the latest draft of the outcome document—the text that
will form the basis of the discussions this week at what is known as
WSIS+10—recognizes the value of the multistakeholder model. It attaches
“great importance to multistakeholder implementation at the international level”
and goes as far to say that “building an inclusive development-oriented
Information Society will require unremitting multistakeholder effort.” Those are strong words of support for a model of governance that
is sometimes represented as the antithesis of the multilateral approach
symbolized by the United Nations. While there are many sections of the text
that remain problematic, I see this as progress. Of course, negotiated text
is one thing. Actions can be, and often are, something completely different.
While the outcome document borders on the self-congratulatory for the UN’s
commitment to the multistakeholder model in the WSIS process, I’m afraid the
reality tells a very different story. Yes, there have been open consultations
with non-state actors leading up to the high-level meeting (often held with
less than a week’s notice) and yes, the outcome document has been posted for
public comment (the last time for less than 72 hours). However, this is not
meaningful multistakeholder participation. Putting aside the very real challenges of travelling to Moving forward, the multistakeholder model will become
increasingly important in addressing the digital divide. Recognizing the
importance of the Internet to development in the global south, the UN’s
recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for universal and
affordable access to the Internet by 2020. The degree to which the SDGs are linked
to the global adoption of information and communications technologies cannot
be overestimated. Achieving these lofty goals will require an approach that
includes full multistakeholder participation. I applaud the United Nations on
its recognition of the value of the multistakeholder model for Internet
governance in the WSIS+10 outcome document. However, given the process
leading up to next week’s meeting, I am skeptical that it is any more than
high-minded rhetoric and empty gestures. From
http://blogs.cfr.org/
World-leading
Digital Governments Met in The second summit of the Digital 5 (D5), the global network of
some of the most digitally advanced governments in the world, was held in The Estonian Minister of Economic Affairs and Infrastructure,
Mr. Kristen Michal, stated that New TechLink platform launched by The British Embassy and its partners in the From
https://e-estonia.com/
It’s a
Battle for Internet Freedom Among all the questions we’ve raised about Free Basics, if there
was one that I would pick to ask Mark Zuckerberg, it would be this: Why has
Facebook chosen the current model for Free Basics, which gives users a
selection of around a hundred sites (including a personal blog and a real
estate company homepage), while rejecting the option of giving the poor free
access to the open, plural and diverse web? Research done by Amba Kak at the
Oxford Internet Institute has found that less experienced, low income groups
prefer access to an open and unrestricted Internet, and while “some access is
better than none”, the trade-off they are willing to make is how much they
use the internet, not necessarily how much of the internet they get to use.
That is, they would rather be given the choice of deciding what they want to
access, with millions of websites and apps to choose from, for say, three
days, over being given unlimited access to a limited selection. All access is priority. Why hasn’t Facebook chosen the options that do not violate Net
Neutrality? For example, in Today, Facebook, in partnership with Reliance Communications,
reserves the right to reject applications from websites and apps for Free
Basics, and forces them to conform to its technical guidelines. Services
which compete with telecom operator services will not be allowed on Free
Basics. It would need Facebook’s permission (and hence, time), for a citizen
powered crisis-response effort such as Chennairains.org to be made available
to those on Free Basics, and the flexibility and freedom with which such an
effort can evolve would be restricted or limited by Facebook’s guidelines.
Facebook is being disingenuous — as disingenuous as the company’s promotional
programmes for Free Basics to its Indian users — when it says that Free
Basics is in conformity with Net Neutrality. While Facebook argues for Net
Neutrality laws in the US, and supports permission-less innovation in that
country, in India, it wants a permission-based Internet through its
partnership for Free Basics. The perpetuation of Free Basics, would justify
similar models such as Airtel Zero. With Idea Cellular and Vodafone also
supporting Airtel in its lobbying, we would end up with each telecom operator
carving out its own private bubble from the Internet. Different people in FreeBasics and its peer telecom operator models are not open,
plural or diverse, and can be harmful for Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik, in a letter to the TRAI
supporting Net Neutrality, said, “If you dictate what the poor should get, you
take away their right to choose what they think is best for them.” If Free
Basics and its peer programmes are allowed to continue, it would leave us all
with poorer access to the Internet, and take away our right to choose. Tim
Berners Lee, one of the founding fathers of the Internet and the creator of
the world wide web, said that “giving people data connectivity to part of the
network deliberately” is a step backwards. It is sad to see Facebook spend
millions of dollars lobbying for a stand which is against the innovation of
the Open web, after benefiting from its openness. From
http://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/
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President Xi Jinping will elaborate on INTENSIFIED CRACKDOWN Since the current central leadership took office in late 2012,
the Chinese government has stepped up the crackdown on online rumors,
pornography, gambling and other cyber crimes. "These measures were aimed
at protecting teenagers and safeguarding Internet users' lawful
interests," said Lu, adding that notable progress has been made. At
least 197 people were punished this year for fabricating or spreading rumors
about the stock market rout, BOOMING E-BUSINESS As one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century, the
Internet has turned the globe into a village and profoundly changed the way
people live and do business. Since 1994, when Their success is partly fueled by government efforts, including
a push for innovation and entrepreneurship, the Belt and Road Initiative, and
"Internet Plus," a plan to link traditional industries to the
Internet. "The Internet is unleashing young people's creativity and
helping them achieve their life dreams," said Tencent founder Pony Ma.
Xi promised on different occasions that From http://www.news.cn/
Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida joked almost 70 years ago that if
This recent data isn’t the first instance of such a large
change, with quarterly GDP over the past 10 years being revised an average
1.7 percentage points from when it was first released. The Cabinet Office is
“sloppy” in its calculations, Aso recently joked to
economy minister Akira Amari, who runs that department. While economic
indicators such as confidence surveys, corporate profits and labor market
measures suggest the economy is doing fine, “GDP is just noise,” Jerram said.
“Consumption tax receipts have been much stronger than expected, even as GDP
data showed private consumption was much weaker than the government’s
forecast,” said Hiroshi Shiraishi, an economist at BNP Paribas SA in Labor survey (wages)-One of the government’s and BOJ’s main aims
is to get companies to raise wages. If the data is unreliable, then it’s hard
to see how successful these policies have been. Aso pointed out that a change
in the sample of companies surveyed may have caused the data to be
discontinuous, raising questions about its accuracy. Capital spending- The
initial reading of GDP uses supply-side industrial production data, and this
is then combined with demand-side statistics on capital spending when GDP is
updated a few weeks later. These changes partly caused the third quarter’s
GDP to be revised upward. Economists suggest the government release
demand-side data earlier so it can be included in the initial GDP
announcement. Consumer price index- Online shopping made up 2.1 percent of
retail sales in From
http://www.japantimes.co.jp
From
http://www.koreaherald.com
E-Government
Exports Exceed USD 500 Mil. By item, exports in the safety sector, such as CCTV systems and
digital inspection systems, accounted for the
largest proportion of exports, 24 percent, and were worth USD 129.28 million
last year. The second most exported items were power and electricity systems,
such as remote controllers for electric meters. They took 23 percent of
exports in the sector. They were followed by transport systems, at 19
percent. From
http://www.korea.net/
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GovChannel is a response to the public's need for convenience when
contacting governmental agencies given the website's simplistic and
user-friendly design, said Irada Luangwilai, deputy director of the
Electronic Government Agency. "Our task was solving how to create a
central portal, allowing people to access all the services from the
governmental sectors through only one channel," Irada said. Irada added that the idea was to link
Asean more efficiently through technology in light of the full integration of
the Asean community next month. She said it was not only the government's job
to bridge communication and service gaps between public and people sectors -
people also needed to advance their knowledge and awareness of technology to
keep up with the fact-changing Internet trends. "It's true that
governmental sectors need to strengthen themselves in terms of Internet
technology, but we can't be the only ones who handle things," she said.
"That's why we also focus on how to make people aware of today's
technology and processes to deal with possible Internet threats." One of
main concerns involving the government's role as an Internet platform
provider is how it could be hacked given the rising number of global hacks.
Irada however said the main issues was how to
restore hacked webpages as fast as possible. "Even webpages of world-class companies, or official
websites of some advanced countries, were still hacked," she said.
"So, we would not dare say how to prevent such hackers, but instead we
focus on how to make our database system prepared if such a scenario ever happens."
To shift paper-based services online usually shortened the time required to
complete a procedure, she added. But it was up to each governmental agency to
decide which services and information they wanted online, as it could be
hacked. Irada said it needed to be understood that Thai society had its own
contexts that may sometimes result in Internet services being developed
differently to other countries. She cited how Thais tend to stick to
traditional ways of communicating with governmental agencies. Irada accepted
that the Kingdom's unique political context was one of challenges facing that
development. However, the EGA had worked independently, free from political
influence, since its establishment in 2011, she added. "Our duties are
mainly operative and technology-based, so we basically receive orders from
any government in power at the time," she said, adding that the current
Cabinet approved GovChannel. From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
Approximately 330 calls have been made to three national
anti-corruption hotlines that were created for the public to report corruption
25 days ago, said Pham TrongDat, head of the Government Inspectorate
Anti-Corruption Bureau.Speaking at the Government Inspectorate's press
conference yesterday, Dat said a large number of calls were in the fields of
land, minerals, taxation, finance and social welfare, and abuse of an
office's power.The inspection sector acknowledged 120 cases and asked for
additional evidence and documents.According to him, the three hotlines
(08048228, 0902386999 and 01256986688) are an effective solution to collect
complaints from both civilians and officials in State agencies.The latest
Government Inspectorate report indicated that inspectors conducted more than
6,500 administrative inspections and more than 243,600 regular inspections in
different sectors last year.They discovered violations resulting in losses of
VND97.4 trillion (US$4.3 trillion) and more than The authorities reclaimed VND16.2 trillion (US$721 million) and Joining hands in crime fight Yesterday the Government Inspectorate signed off an agreement
with the Supreme People's Court to jointly fight against crimes and law
violations.The two government bodies pledged to enhance cooperation in the
process of citizen feedback, solving administrative petitions,
anti-corruption, legal document compiling and professional
exchange.Activities on information and data exchanges as well as staff
training were also among the key goals of the two authorities.Speaking at a
ceremony to mark the signing of the agreement, Chief Judge of the Supreme
People's Court Truong HoaBinh said a close working relation has been set up
for years between inspectorate agencies and people's courts of all levels
particularly in exchanging professional data and information.He said the
agreement would further strengthen the effectiveness and responsibilities of
the two agencies.Chief Inspector of the Government Inspectorate Huynh
PhongTranh called on the two bodies to regularly analyse and review their
work together to boost the fulfillment of their tasks. From
http://vietnamnews.vn/ From
http://vietnamnews.vn/
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INDIA: Haryana Govt’s
Finance Management System Bags Excellence Award Haryana Government LogoThe Integrated Finance Management System
(IFMS) of Haryana Finance Department has bagged “CSI-Nihilent e-Governance
Award for Excellence” from the Computer Society of India at the latter’s 50th
Golden Jubilee Annual Convention at New Delhi.Director General of Haryana
Treasury Accounts Sunil Sharan received this award on behalf of the Haryana
Finance Department from CSI President Prof Bipin V Mehta. CSI, a non-profit
organization constituted by the Union Information and Technology Department,
is the independent focal point for the assessment of e-Governance initiatives
in country.The IFMS project has been developed in house and is being
implemented since April 1, 2013. IFMS is the largest project managed by the
Finance Department which provides complete automation of front end as well as
back end processes. The system has been continuously evolving over the years
and providing various online services to the people. The major services which
have been made online included Budget preparation, allocation, monitoring,
bill preparation, treasury operations, pensions benefits, collection of all
type of receipts and all type of payments. Under the system, now the people
have been given the facility to view the payment received by them in their
accounts online. The State Government has also implemented e-stamping
facility for online generation of stamp paper, integrated with property
registration system. Pensioners have also been provided the facility to
submit digital life certificate on any time any where basis.The project has
also been previously awarded ‘SKOCH Order of Merit Award for From http://egov.eletsonline.com
Haryana Targets
Grassroots for E-governance Haryana is working towards delivering effective e-governance at
the grassroots level and a number of initiatives have been launched by the government
to achieve the purpose. Haryana Finance Minister Capt Abhimanyu said that
under the scheme to set up Information regarding the status of complaint is being provided
to the complainants online and through SMS. Further, the government has
issued new policy directions to make Change of Land Use (CLU) transparent,
uninterrupted and timely. The Single Window System is being strengthened to
provide all approvals to entrepreneurs under one roof, he added. The Minister
said that in order to check corruption, online facility has been given for
self certification and third party certification for inspection and
registration of boilers in industries. Also, online facility for filing
entrepreneur memorandum has been started to promote Micro, Small and Medium
Enterprises. Apart from this, e-Registration, e-Payment and e-Return filing
systems have been adopted to facilitate the businessmen. ‘C’ Form has been made
available online. State Portal has been developed to ensure 150 e-citizen
services by March 2016 and websites of all departments and boards etc have
been linked with it. Electronic Tendering System has been started in all
Municipal Corporations, Municipal Councils and Municipalities of the state
from December 1, 2014, he added. e-Disha services
have been started in the State. These include registration of birth and
death, issuance of birth and death certificates, linking of birth and death
record and fixing of any errors in birth and death records, etc. From http://egov.eletsonline.com
Good Governance Day:
Govt Launches One-Page Form for Pensioners The government will soon launch one-page form for basic
certificates, says Union Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances
and Pensions Jitendra SinghThe government has announced that a large number
of government services such as birth or death certificates will soon be
converted into a one-page format.Union Minister Jitendra Singh also launched
a single-page application form for pensioners on a day which has been
observed as Good Governance Day.At a press conference, Singh said, “For
different schemes, you have voluminous forms. Today, we are releasing
one-page application form for pensioners. We plan to convert all multi-page
or voluminous forms to single-page within a year.”He added, “The aim behind
this initiative is to make the forms as simple and small as possible for the
beneficiary. “There should be relevant and minimum information asked for in
an application form for government services and not repetitive ones.” He also said that he is coordinating with state governments and From http://egov.eletsonline.com
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A new system of state service and fighting corruption will be
introduced in Kazakhstan starting from January 1, 2017, said the article of
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev published on the website of the
country’s ministry of foreign affairs.
In accordance with the new law on civil service, admission to the
state service will be possible as a result of a complex selection and only
from local posts. Civil servants will be promoted based on their work
experience and only through competition.
Managers of private sector and foreign managers may be attracted to
civil service through an open competition. A new system of remuneration of civil
servants is being introduced, which is based on their competence and results
of activity depending on the nature, scope and results of work done by
them. The change of political
civil servants won’t affect the state apparatus, and powers of ministers and
responsible secretaries of central executive bodies have been delineated in
detail, according to the law.
Strict measures to prevent the conditions that give rise to cases of
corruption among officials are provided.
The norms of the law on state service will be extended to law
enforcement agencies as well.
Civil servants will be certified for their compliance with the new
qualification requirements. Qualification of employees must be increased at
least once every 3 years. From http://en.trend.az/ The Senate of Oliy Majlis (upper house of the parliament) of The law sets out the powers, functions of the Cabinet of
Ministers, state authorities and management in the centre and on places,
which provide e-government services, as well as the
rights of citizens, individuals and legal entities in this sphere. The order
of operation, basic infrastructure components of "electronic
government" are being set.
The senators during the session spoke about the normative-legal base
in the sphere of information-communication technologies available in the Republic,
as well as successful operating government portal of the From http://en.trend.az/ A program to further reform the banking system for 2016-2020 is
being developed in It is also planned to gradually increase the minimum capital
adequacy ratio (CAR) of the first level from 5 percent to 11 percent taking
into account the capital conservation buffer in the amount of three percent
of the total risk-weighted assets.
Since the beginning of 2016, it is scheduled to introduce the liquidity
coverage ratio (LCR) coefficient (ratio of liquid assets of high quality to a
net cash outflow for the implementation period of up to 30 days), and since
the beginning of 2018 - the coefficient of the net stable funding ratio
(NSFR) (ratio of the available amount of stable funding resources to the
required amount of stable funding).
The document will also include measures to expand the range and
quality of banking services with the widespread introduction of modern ICT,
development of private banks and reducing the government stake in the capital
of banks. There are 26 commercial
banks in the banking system of The total assets of commercial banks at the beginning of October
2015 amounted to 62.1 trillion soums (UZS), which is 10.5 percent higher than
the final index for 2014, the total loan portfolio of banks of the republic -
39.7 trillion soums (a 14.1 percent increase), the aggregate bank rose to 7.4
trillion soums from 6.9 trillion soums in 2014 (a 7.2 percent increase). The official exchange rate on December
11 is 2765.20 UZS/$1. The capital
adequacy ratio of the banking system of From http://en.trend.az/ |
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As part of
its National Innovation and Science Agenda unveiled today the government
announced it would launch a ‘Digital Marketplace’ for Commonwealth
procurement. The government said the marketplace will be a directory of
digital and technology services, with the aim of making it easier for
departments and agencies to purchase offerings from innovative small and
medium enterprises. “Currently, startups and SME suppliers of digital
services find it difficult to participate in government procurements for
large scale ICT solutions,” a factsheet issued by the government said. This
new approach will help break down these large scale ICT requirements into
component parts. The scale of each procurement is
reduced, so there is greater scope for innovative responses,” the document
stated. The government will spend $15 million on the project. The federal
government spends around $5 billion a year on ICT. The initiative is based on
the From http://www.computerworld.com.au
Government
Unveils $1.1b Innovation Agenda The federal government
has unveiled its ‘National Innovation and Science Agenda’ with a range of
investments in the Australian research sector and reforms designed to boost
startups. Initiatives covered by the agenda total $1.1 billion, the
government said. The government said it wants to boost research
commercialisation and increase Australian startups’ access to venture
capital. The package includes a range of changes to promote the startup
sector, including a 20 per cent tax offset on investments for early stage businesses
and a 10-year exemption on capital gains tax (as long as investments are held
for three years). To boost early stage investment, partners in early stage
venture capital limited partnerships will receive a 10 per cent
non-refundable tax offset on capital invested during the year. The maximum
fund size for new ESVCLPs will be boosted from $100 million to $200 million
and they will no longer be required to divest a company when its value
exceeds $250 million. Rules
governing whether businesses can claim losses will be changed. The ‘same
business test’ will be changed to a ‘predominantly similar business test’ to
allow companies to tweak their business models. Other changes will bring the
tax treatment of intellectual property and other intangible assets in line
with tangible assets. An $8 million incubator support program will back new
and existing incubators and accelerators. The government said it would make
changes to insolvency laws, including cutting the default bankruptcy period
from three years to one, introducing a ‘safe harbour’ for directors, and
making unenforceable clauses that allow contracts to be terminated if a
company is undertaking a restructure. The government said it would issue a
paper on the proposed changes in the first half of next year. "We
understand that sometimes entrepreneurs will fail several times before they
succeed – and will usually learn more from failure than from success,"
treasurer Scott Morrison said. Changes to
employee share schemes will limit the requirement for disclosure documents to
be made public. The government also said it would consult on ways to make ESS
more ‘user friendly’. The proposals follow on from the government’s changes
to the tax treatment of employee share schemes. The government will spend $36
million over five years on a ‘Global Innovation Strategy’ to boost
international collaboration, including $11 million for five ‘landing pads’
(in Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv and three other yet to be announced locations)
to “support entrepreneurial Australians”, $22 million to boost Australian
research collaboration with international research-industry clusters, and $3
million on reducing barriers to regional collaboration. The government said
the landing pads will offer advice, facilities and contacts to Australian
entrepreneurs operating in international startup hotspots. The government is
also moving to change the rules governing crowd-sourced equity funding. The agenda
includes moves to encourage research collaboration between universities and
the private sector by introducing new block grant funding arrangements, as
well as investments in research infrastructure. The government
well spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a new organisation to
help commercialise biomedical discoveries. The organisation administering the
‘Biomedical Translation Fund’ will be established in 2016. Funding will come
by cutting capital contributions to the Medical Research Future Fund by $125
million in each of 2015–16 and 2016–17, the government said. The MRFF will
still be fully capitalised by 2019–20. A $200 million CSIRO Innovation Fund
will support spin-off and startup companies. The government will contribute
$70 million in new funding. Other funding will come from royalties from the
CSIRO’s wireless networking patents and the private sector. The agenda also
includes a $20 million expansion of the organisation’s accelerator program.
The government will invest $75 million the CSIRO’s Data61 (which was born out
of the fusion of NICTA and the CSIRO’s digital productivity team). The
Coalition government previously drew criticism for slashing CSIRO funding by
$111.4 million in the 2014 budget. The government will earmark $2.3 billion
over the next decade for three research infrastructure initiatives. Funding
includes $294 million for the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA)
radio telescope and $520 million for the Australian Synchrotron. The funding
packages for the two projects will commence in 2016–17. The government said
it would also spend $1.5 billion on National Collaborative Research
Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). Earlier this year the future of the NCRIS
was in doubt as the government linked funding for the project to its
unsuccessful changes to higher education. The government said it will invest
$26 million over half a decode in quantum computing research at the
University of New South Wales' Centre for Quantum Computation and
Communications Technology. Funding will commence in 2016-17. The government
will also spend $30 million on establishing an industry-led ‘Cyber Security
Growth Centre’. The centre will be operational by mid-2016. “The Growth
Centre will bring together industry, researchers and governments to develop a
national cyber security strategy and coordinate research to reduce overlap
and maximise impact,” a statement issued by Turnbull’s office said. “This will
help all Australians and businesses be safer and
more secure online.” It will be the first initiative under the Cyber Security
Strategy, which the government said will now be released in 2016. The
government said it would invest $99 million in programs to boost digital
literacy and STEM skills among young Australians, and $13 million on
increasing. “The agenda will also commit, $13 million to increasing
opportunities for women in research, STEM industries, startups and
entrepreneurial firms,” industry, innovation and science minister Christopher
Pyne said. “Successful grassroots initiatives like National Science Week will
also continue to involve communities around From http://www.computerworld.com.au
Public
Sector Moving from E-Government to Digital Government: Analyst Many
government agencies around the world are moving past e-government, automating
existing processes, and toward digital government, where new processes of
government are developed, according to a newly published report from global
analyst firm Ovum. In its latest report on the global government technology
market, Ovum says critical to the delivery of next-generation seamless
services by governments is solving the digital identity challenge, “an issue
closely linked to culture”. Al Blake, Principal Analyst, Public Sector at Ovum,
says many countries, with a history of paper ID systems, cannot understand
what the fuss is about, “while others have been politically burned trying to
introduce such systems and have to manage citizen suspicion and pushback”.
“Countries that resolve that challenge sooner will move ahead of the pack in
digital government.” The Ovum
report also highlights that responding to the demands of citizens and
politicians for faster results requires organisation-wide change. “There is
not much point in having an agile IT unit if your procurement, recruitment,
and budgeting processes still take months,” Blake said. “First-generation
e-government initiatives focused on automating existing government processes.
We are now seeing a shift to rethinking the business of government and
linking processes to deliver a digital experience.” Blake added that in most
cases the technically easy options have been delivered, asking: “Does the
world need any more ‘fix my pothole’ apps?” According to Blake, while
‘evidence-driven policy’ has often been an aspirational goal, a number of
technical developments are bringing it closer to reality. “The increasing
availability of massive processing power, coupled with intuitive end-user
interfaces and ‘pay as you go’ delivery offerings, puts analytical
capabilities at the fingertips of policy-makers and planners that would have
been unthinkable a few years ago. This is a real game changer.” As well as
public sector agencies moving past e-government, automating existing
processes, and toward digital government, other trends identified by Ovum for
2016 are: •
Cost-effective end-user analytics tools can make evidence-based policy
achievable • Agile
government IT organizations require agile supporting business processes • Citizen identity
is critical to seamless digital government services. From http://www.itwire.com
Information – Not Votes – Will Come from the
Cloud You cannot use
the cloud for voting yet but the the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC)
will use the cloud to meet digital election demands – more than 100 million
hits on election night. It has chosen SMS Management & Technology (SMS)
and Amazon Web Services (AWS) for the hosting of its online digital services
across all public facing AEC websites. The AEC is responsible for conducting
federal elections and referendums and maintaining the Commonwealth electoral
roll. AEC websites collectively receive over 100 million hits on election
night alone. With such a large volume of traffic, the AEC has engaged with
SMS to streamline the migration of all of their public-facing websites into
the AWS cloud. The agreement with AEC includes implementation services, which
once complete, will further prepare the AEC to meet the continually evolving
digital demands of an election, during and outside the election period. SMS will
implement a highly scalable and secure solution, leveraging the AWS cloud
platform. In addition, SMS will provide ongoing cloud operational managed
services to AEC to ensure the systems constantly improve with technological
advances. Murray Rosa, Director Managed Services for SMS, said of the
project, "This is a fantastic solution for all parties involved. AEC’s
digital services are perfectly suited to a public cloud platform because of
the varying demand. SMS, together with AWS, were able to provide a highly
secure, scalable and flexible solution that responds rapidly to the peak
capacity demands required during an election period.” “We have also
introduced a number of innovative approaches that make sure we make the most
of the cloud services delivery model. The additional benefit to the AEC here
is our ability to provide a true “as-a-service” offering. This means that the
customer is only paying for what they use, not capacity or services ‘just in
case’.” AWS Head of Channels and Alliances Stefan Jansen, said; "Our
public sector customers understand the benefits of the AWS cloud to enable
scale and support agility. We are excited to be working with SMS to help the
Australian Electoral Commission manage high profile, event-driven workloads.” From http://www.itwire.com
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EUROPE:
Online Advertising Is Driven by Display in H1 2015 to a Total of �16bn, First
IAB IAB Europe, in collaboration with IHS Technology, has today
published the first ever AdEx Benchmark H1 2015 report1. The report reveals
that online advertising grew 9.7% on a like-for-like basis to a value of �16bn
for the first half of 2015 from �14.6bn in H1 2014 and is expected to reach
almost �34bn for the full year. The H1 2015 report reveals that CEE helped to
drive the growth with a double-digit increase of 12.9% whilst the more mature
markets in Daniel Knapp, Senior Director of Advertising Research at IHS
Technology and author of the research, said, "The AdEx Benchmark H1 2015
research highlights the rapid innovation of the online advertising industry.
The acceleration of the display growth rate to 12.6%, particularly in mature
markets where online is already the largest advertising medium, shows that
advancements in mobile, video and advertising technology are driving the
online ad market. We expect H2 2015 to perform better than H1 and online to
lift an otherwise flat European advertising market.” IAB Europe members can
download the report by logging into the IAB Europe website. Non-members can
request the report by contacting: adex@iabeurope.eu From
http://www.iabeurope.eu/
The proportion of Spanish companies increasing their overall ICT
budget grew to 44 percent in 2015, an increase of 20 percent from 2014, according
to a report from Kable. The survey of 165 Spanish companies also revealed
that the proportion of respondents looking at reducing their overall ICT
budget declined by 17 percent in 2015 thanks mainly to the recent economic
recovery. One of the fastest-growing investment areas has been business
intelligence technologies, with the report indicating that 67 percent of
companies have been using some form of data warehousing in their
organisations, while 68 percent of respondents plan to invest in this technology
segment over the next two years. In this regard, the report forecasts that
the Spanish business intelligence market will reach a figure of USD 291
million in 2019, growing at a CAGR of 8.0 percent from 2015 to 2019. From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
Exports of the Latvian information and communications technology
(ICT) industry in 2014 increased by 22% compared to 2013, Signe Balina,
President of the Latvian Association of Information Technology and
Telecommunications (LIKTA), said at the association's 17th annual conference
on December 3rd, cites LETA. The latest statistics show that 470 new ICT companies
were founded in From
http://www.baltic-course.com/ Slow internet speed is the biggest time waster for From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
In 2015, From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
NORTH
AMERICA: The number of Canadians who use a third-party touch-based payment
service to buy a product on service on their mobile device is forecast to
grow by 150 percent this year to reach over 1 million users, according to
consultancy Deloitte. “Last year mobile payments began to go mainstream,” said Duncan Stewart, director of TMT Research
at Deloitte in Deloitte also predicts that mobile will become the leading games
platform by software revenue in 2016, reaching 37 percent of total gaming
sales and surpassing both console and PC games. Deloitte also expects the niche product virtual reality (VR)
headsets to move from the lab to the store for consumer purchase in 2016 with
hardware and software sales totaling USD 1 billion globally and less than USD
30 million in Almost all of these From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
New Venture
Capital Fund Hopes to Make A new Toronto-based venture capital fund co-founded by a
Canadian tech veteran is aiming to change at least a corner of Stein’s ultimate goal is to create a “rich network” of talent
with experience in a variety of positions at multiple companies, and use them
to support the creation of more tech startups across Stein notes that while much of the fund’s capital is from
institutions, a significant portion is being covered by the partners
themselves. “We wanted to send a strong signal… that our group and partners
have their own skin in the game,” he says. So what will Stein be looking for when considering potential B2B cloud-based
software companies to invest in? He shares four key criteria with
ITBusiness.ca: - Whether the talent leading the company has the right mix of
skills, tenacity, commercial instinct, and dedication to pursuing their idea
to its best possible conclusion; - If it’s developing software that a large enough market segment
can use, or creating a new market, like Uber did, that is growing quickly; - Whether its product has what Stein calls “favourable unit
economics,” and can be manufactured with a reasonable margin of profit; - Whether the company’s leaders are appropriately ambitious – a
uniquely Canadian problem, Stein admits. “We’ve found sometimes in Canada that instead of saying, ‘how am
I going to build a company that in five years’ time is going to be doing $100
million in sales?’, certain folks are thinking, ‘how can I build a company
that in five years’ time will be doing three million in sales?'” he says. The
ideal company seeking assistance from Leaders Fund will have enough customers
and sales to prove their product has an established market, and that rather
than being “three guys in a garage with an idea,” Stein says, they need help
raising their efforts to another level. “If someone says, ‘Look – we have
this product and we know that when people buy it they stay with us a long
time and become evangelists, but not enough people know that we exist and we
need more money to recruit more people and build our marketing,’ that’s a
good place to be,” he says. Stein sees two major trends in Canadian tech that he expects to
dominate his attention for the foreseeable future: One is the reinvention of
traditional business challenges such as sales, marketing, and distribution
into what he calls a mobile-first perspective; and machine-learning, with
companies figuring out how to create smarter and more proactive systems that
can effectively predict what users will do based on prior behaviour. “I think
it’s a pretty exciting time for tech in general, and also for tech in From
http://www.itbusiness.ca/
Netflix Now
Available Around the World Netflix launched its service globally, simultaneously bringing
its internet TV network to more than 130 new countries around the world. The
company made the announcement, and the service went live, during a keynote by
co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings at CES 2016. LG broke the news just before
Hasting’s announcement by announcing a global partnership to facilitate the
expansion of Netflix beyond its already established markets. “Today you are
witnessing the birth of a new global Internet TV network,” said For one monthly price, members around the world will be able to
enjoy Netflix original series including Marvel’s Daredevil and Marvel’s
Jessica Jones, Narcos, Sense8, Grace and Frankie, and Marco Polo, as well as
a catalogue of licensed TV shows and movies. In 2016, the company plans to release
31 new and returning original series, two dozen original feature films and
documentaries, a wide range of stand-up comedy specials and 30 original kids
series — available at the same time to members everywhere. While largely
available in English in most new countries, Netflix today added Arabic,
Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese to the 17 languages it already
supports. “From today onwards, we will listen and we will learn, gradually
adding more languages, more content and more ways for people to engage with
Netflix,” said Netflix will not yet be available in From
http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/
E-Trike
Maker EMotors, Inc Honored as Gas emissions from transportation play a huge part in the
proportion of total global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The transportation
sector primarily involves burning fossil fuels like petroleum-based fuels,
largely gasoline and diesel. With the current problems of global warming,
government and consumers call for a cleaner technology, more ecological
products with smaller carbon footprint, and environmentally sustainable
practices and processes. With the growing demand, we may see more and more green electric-fed transportation proliferate in our
cities. In the “The award reflects the hard work and dedication of the whole
EMotors’ team, and the support of our partners and clients who have committed
to act on environmental protection,” says EMotors CEO Elizabeth Lee. “We are
honored and blessed to receive this prestigious award. We are likewise
encouraged to continue to do our best to create the change we want to see, by
helping companies lower their carbon footprint while reaping the benefits of
using efficient, clean, green, electric vehicles,” she adds. During the COP21
Climate Change Summit, there were close to 200 countries that participated in
the commitment to limit carbon emissions globally. “More than ever, the
problem of carbon emissions and pollution is front and center in the agenda
of political leaders. The key now is in the implementation. The question is
no longer ‘if’ but ‘when,’ and will you do something about it?” says Lee. As
we face more challenges in scaling down CO2 emissions, we can only clamor and
hope for companies like EMotors to continue the fight against global warming.
The Asia CEO Award is an addition to the awards and recognition that EMotors
received this year, including the BizNewsAsia’s BREW Award, and as the Green,
Electric Mobility Partner of APEC 2015. This year the EMotors joined the
roster of top-rank finalists for the Asia CEO Award that include companies
like Meralco’s Miescor, El Nido Resorts, Tuks + Oil Technology, Accenture,
and Aboitiz Power’s Hedcor, Inc. For more information and other inquiries,
EMotors can be contacted via 551-3100 or email at ehl@emotors-asia.com. From
http://manilastandardtoday.com/
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Electric car sales in From http://www.news.cn/ From http://www.news.cn/ Web
Helps to Foster Business Success in The Internet has played a vital role in spurring innovation and
fostering industrial upgrading in From http://www.news.cn/ Internet
of Things Is the Best Business The Internet of Things is the best business opportunity in the
next five years, said Zhou Hongyi, chairman of Qihoo 360 Technology Co Ltd,
at a sub forum of the Second World Internet Conference in From http://www.news.cn/ The added value of From http://www.news.cn/ Sales
of Huawei Smartphones in Huawei achieved gratifying results in 2015 year in
Central-Eastern and Northern European regions as far as consumption of its
products is concerned. The delivery amount of smartphones reached more than 3,46 million and observed an increase of 114 percent
compared with the same period last year. The expected terminal business
overall sales revenue grew more than 60 percent, out of which mobile phone
sales grew more than 125 percent on year-on-year basis, said Wang Yanmin,
President of Huawei CEE and Nordic Region Consumer BG, in a recent interview
with Xinhua. According to Huawei introduction, in 2015, the flagship Huawei's
smartphone model P8 reached the delivery amount of Through the "brand story" policy, Huawei improves the
brand awareness of costumers as far as Huawei's cell phones are concerned. In
November 2015, in the In 2015, Huawei made his second consecutive appearance on
Interbrand's best global brands ranking. In addition to this, Huawei focuses
on R&D investments and reserve personnel training, cooperates with local
universities in implementing the "Future Seed" ICT personnel
training projects. The cooperation includes prominent universities, such as
Warsaw University of Technology, Poznan Polytechnic, Poznan Supercomputing
and From http://www.news.cn/ The central bank on Tuesday announced plans to introduce green
bonds to allow financial institutions to raise funds for green projects. The
People's Bank of China (PBOC) said the green bond will widen financing
channels for projects in clean energy and environment protection. The bank stressed
that the funds should only be used to support green projects, with strict
information disclosure and independent assessment. To keep the sustainable
development of such bonds, the central bank said it will issue supporting
policies, facilitate approvals, champion tax breaks and subsidies, and
encourage more capital flow from social security, welfare and enterprise
annuity funds. The PBOC hopes the move will direct commercial banks to
improve the credit system for green projects through relending, financial
discount and guarantee. Meanwhile, a corporate bond market will be
established for green industries, and the trading quotas of energy, water and
emissions will be promoted.
From http://www.news.cn/ The revenue of From http://www.news.cn/ JD.com's
Finance Arm Gets US$1 Bln in Financing Chinese online retailer JD.com said on Saturday that its
financial arm will get 6.65 billion yuan (around 1 billion U.S. dollars) in
funding from a group of investors. The NASDAQ-listed online retailer said
Sequoia Capital China, China Harvest Investments and China Taiping Insurance
are chief among a group investors funding JD Finance, which offers a broad
range of financial services including consumer credits, loans, insurance and
wealth management products since its launch in 2013. The funding, set to complete
in the first half this year, will value JD.com's financial subsidiary at
46.65 billion yuan. JD.com said it still holds the majority stakes in JD
Finance after the funding completes.
From http://www.chinagate.cn/
Apple, partnering with Chinese bankcard association UnionPay,
launched its mobile payment system Apple Pay on Thursday in From http://www.chinagate.cn/
Apple
Pay Takes on Local Apple officially launched its much anticipated Apple Pay service
in "It's fast and no password is required. All I need to do is
placing my iPhone in front of the POS machine, put my fingers on the Touch ID
and it's done." said Wang Tian, an office worker who bought lunch at KFC
using Apple Pay on Thursday in Beijing. UnionPay has long sought to make a
dent in Alibaba and Tencent have spent the past two years working to
address that challenge. The two rivals have been locked in a breakneck race
to lure consumers to choose to use their mobile payment service in a growing
number of offline settings. Progress came after both splurged heavily to
offer discounts. Value propositions are therefore critical in persuading the
country's penny-wise users to switch to a new payment service, Shen said.
Unclear of what benefit can be reaped through Apple Pay, some are holding
out, preferring to just "wait and see." "So far, I didn't see
how it differs from the services offered by Alibaba or Tencent. There's just
not that much incentive for me to use it," said Cheng Xiaosun, an iPhone
6s user in From http://www.chinagate.cn/
From smartphone-makers to retail firms, more companies are jumping
on the mobile payment bandwagon in a bid to take the initiative for
hassle-free digital payments. As there is no single dominant player or set of
standards yet, the mushrooming mobile payment market is flooded with more
than 20 related applications in Some said that the growing number of mobile payment apps
ironically cause inconvenience due to the lack of standardized technologies,
arguing new payment services will come and go until the emergence of strong market
leaders. “Even Kakao, operator of From
http://www.koreaherald.com
Kakao,
KT to Launch Korea’s First Internet Banks Two consortiums, led by South Korean Internet giant Kakao and No.
2 telecom operator KT, were approved to launch the nation’s first
Internet-only banks next year, the banking authority said Sunday. Under the
government’s pilot program, the two banks will offer financial services from
deposits, lending and credit cards to foreign exchange transactions through
their online platforms only -- the first of their kind in From
http://www.koreaherald.com
Internet
Banks Could Spark Financial ‘Big Bang’ The upcoming launches of the nation’s first two Internet-only
banks is likely to put pressure on the overall banking industry to minimize
branch numbers and payrolls for better profitability, analysts said Monday.
In addition, they said, major first-tier banks will have no choice but to
diversify their financial products as the competition in an already saturated
market intensifies. Kakao Corp. and KT Corp. have won preliminary licenses to
run Internet-only banks, triggering memories of the remarkable success an
online-oriented securities firm has had in the stock brokerage industry.
Internet-based Kiwoom Securities, which has a workforce of under
500, saw its operating profit (100.2 billion won, or $860 million) approach
that of NH Investment & Securities (125.4 billion won) ― formerly an
affiliate of Woori Bank ― which had a payroll of about 2,700 workers last
year. The 46-year-old NH Investment is considered among From
http://www.koreaherald.com
Gov't
to Invest 250 Billion Won into IoT The government will invest 250 billion won through 2017 to
promote the Internet of Things (IoT). The government reached the
decision on Monday during the sixth meeting of the strategic committee on
information and communication that was chaired by Prime Minister Hwang
Kyo-ahn. The government plans to inject 130 billion won into six
strategic areas, including health and medicine, energy and automobiles, over
two years starting from 2016 to develop IoT prototypes. Starting in
2017, the government also plans to devise steps to install wireless charging
stations at public facilities, such as libraries. Also during the
meeting, the government decided to commercialize fifth-generation wireless
systems for the first time in the world and build a ten Gigabit-per-second,
fixed-line Internet network that would be more than 100 times faster than
existing networks. From
http://world.kbs.co.kr
Mobile
Transactions Brisk at Online Malls Online payments using mobile devices have continued to rise in From
http://www.koreaherald.com
From
http://www.koreaherald.com
CES
Gives Glimpse of Connected Future with IoT The power of Internet of Things (IoT) technology is set to
control the future, transcending its current limitations and spreading out to
automobiles and even more home appliances. This trend has been
reinforced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), as IoT was this
year’s ultimate theme. Reflecting its importance, carmakers from around the
world showcased their futuristic concept cars here, at the annual electronics
show, not at an international motor show, moving automobiles one step closer to
being electronics products. Autonomous driving technologies are one of
the main examples showing the way in which cars are no longer just tools for
getting around but have become a part of the “things” that are connected by
the Internet, thanks to IoT tech. At CES, Kia Motors Corporation
introduced its new autonomous driving technology called an “Advanced Driver
Assistance System” (ADAS). The company hopes to complete the development and
commercialization of the new feature by 2030. Kia also unveiled its electric
vehicle, the Soul, with both existing and future auto driving technologies,
including lane departure warnings, lane keeping assists, autonomous emergency
braking, autonomous parking systems, highway autonomous driving systems and
traffic jam assist systems. Kia also offered visitors a chance to try out the
autonomous driving tech at its virtual reality booth. From
http://www.korea.net
Customer
Complaints Rise as E-Commerce Thrives A growing number of customers have been filing complaints
against e-commerce operators over product quality and service in the wake of
their explosive growth in recent years, data showed Monday. The Korean online
shopping market has rapidly grown in the world's most-wired country to become
a major retail channel, with monthly transactions reaching nearly 5 trillion
won in November. The Korea Consumer Agency said it received 6,701 complaints
related to digital shopping services last year, up 21.1 percent from a year
ago. Complaints about social commerce sites surged 27.4 percent on-year
to From
http://www.koreaherald.com
Big
Data Helps SMEs Beat Goliath Firms Although many people talk about big data these days only a few
truly understand its potential and actively make use of the related
technologies in their businesses, due largely to expensive costs to build and
manage infrastructure. Businesses that have swiftly adopted the emerging
technology often pose a formidable challenge to leading market players.
Video-streaming platform Netflix is a great exemplar as it has successfully
integrated big data systems in its streaming services to meticulously analyze
what customers want -- their favorite actors and movie genres et al. The
video-streaming business model leveraging a vast trove of data on customers
has helped the California-based firm not only rake in larger revenues but also
attracts top-notch big data experts, or data scientists, which consequently
offers it a more competitive edge over other traditional video content and
services providers, like Warner Bros. A key to Netflix’s game-winning
strategy is big data, according to Hiro Yoshikawa, chief executive of big
data solution developer Treasure Data. “Netflix knows everything (about
customers),” he said in an interview with The Korea Herald last week. From
http://www.koreaherald.com
SK
Planet Steps Up Efforts to Support SMEs IT solutions developer SK Planet said Monday it has supported
around 250 small and medium enterprises to tap into global markets through
its e-commerce platform 11st in the second half of last year. The SK Group
affiliate has been running its e-commerce platform 11st with different names
in global markets -- n From
http://www.koreaherald.com
Government
to Scrap Password-Based Authentication for Online Banking Korean bank customers will soon be able to make online transactions
without using security cards or one-time passwords as the government is
seeking ways to make online payments easier so as to drive innovation in the
sector, financial authorities said Sunday. “As a part of financial
reforms, we plan to abolish the mandatory use of password-based
authentication system by revising online financial transaction regulations
during the first half of this year,” said an official from the Financial
Services Commission. The move is expected to encourage financial institutions
to develop security tools that are more convenient and safer than the OTP and
security cards that are currently used in the transfer of money through
online and mobile applications. The Financial Services Commission phased out
outdated authentication systems requiring public key certificates or Active-X
tools last year, in light of criticism about complicated online banking
systems and increasing demand for tougher security measures following a
series of data leaks. Local lenders including KEB Hana Bank have been
testing out alternative methods for self-identification such as bio
authentication technology to replace the current authentication
certificate. Coupled with the government’s recent preliminary approval
to set up the nation’s first Internet-only banks, the deregulation will
inject healthy competition in the financial industry for further development
of financial technology, experts said. However, they also pointed out
that it will take time to find alternative tools to replace the OTP method which
has proven to be effective. Adopting a new method too quickly can lead to
data breach cases and other security incidents. From
http://www.koreaherald.com
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AFTER 25 years in operations, Jakarta-headquartered lifestyle retail
giant PT Mitra Adi Perkasa Tbk (MAP) finally took the digital plunge by
officially launching its own e-commerce site, MAP Emall. The e-commerce site
will eventually carry all 150 middle- to higher-end global brands that MAP
offers, such as Marks and Spencer, Nike, Tumi, Zara, Mango and Starbucks, but
will start with 100 brands in categories such as fashion, sports, travel,
kids, department store, and beauty. “When we started 25 years ago as a
brick-and-mortar company, there was no such thing as e-commerce,” said MAP
group chief executive officer VP Sharma. “Now shopping behaviour has changed,
and brick-and-mortar retailers these days cannot isolate themselves from
e-commerce,” he said at the official launch in E-commerce to boost revenue Despite the launch of its e-commerce site, MAP made it clear
that it would still rely on its brick-and-mortar stores as its main business
line and revenue generator. However, the economic slowdown in the past two
years, the increase of import duties, and the weakening of the rupiah has
caused the brick-and-mortar business landscape to suffer. Such factors saw
MAP offering heavy discounts for its products, and the company posted a 78%
year-on-year decline in net income to Rp78 billion (US$21.3 million) in 2014
from Rp328 billion (US$24.3 million) in 2013, although total revenue soared
24.5% year-on-year from Rp9.7 trillion (US$721.4 million) in 2013 to Rp11.8
trillion (US$876.3 million) in 2014. With economic uncertainty still looming,
MAP needed to look to alternatives for growth, and e-commerce may just be the
answer. “MAP had problems with its inventory in 2014 and the first two
quarters of 2015, that was the reason why we saw a lot of discount promotions
in the last two years,” said Danareksa Sekuritas retail analyst Anindya
Saraswati. “Yet, since the e-commerce platform [soft-launched] late last
year, its management’s efforts to move inventory around have proven to be
effective, and that should improve profitability,” she told Digital News Asia
(DNA) via email. Anindya predicts that 2016 will be a better year for MAP,
with net profit forecast to be back to the three-digit billion-rupiah range,
and total revenue to increase by about 15%. New markets The e-commerce move is also about a wider market reach with a
minimum investment. “One of the advantages of going online is expanding
market reach. Most of the brands we carry are mostly available in Brick and clicks As the leading lifestyle retail company in From
https://www.digitalnewsasia.com/
The Cambodian Ministry of Commerce on Monday launched online
business registration, reducing the time to register a company from seven
days to one hour, Minister of Commerce Sun Chanthol said. "With the
online business registration, applicants can register their companies from
anywhere in the country and in the world without coming to the ministry of
commerce," he said at the launching ceremony. The applicants could pay
the application fee by electronic payment and print their own certificate of
incorporation, he said. They can register their companies at
www.businessregistration.moc.gov.kh and pay the fee of 1,720,000 riel (about
430 U.S. dollars) via e-payment service. Meanwhile, the minister called on
all existing companies to re-register their companies using the online
registration system from now until March 31, 2016. "The registration fee
will not be imposed for the re-registration of the existing companies,"
he said. "However, a penalty shall be imposed for those who do not
re-register before this due date." He said the kingdom's 42,000 existing
companies are required to re-register their companies with the new online
system. Van Sou Ieng, president of the Cambodian Federation of Employers and
Business Associations which represents over 1,000 companies, said the online
registration system demonstrated From
http://news.xinhuanet.com/
DESPITE the economic gloom, with GDP (gross domestic products)
growth expected to slow down, Kuala Lumpur-based online payment systems
provider iPay88 Sdn Bhd believes that the e-commerce sector in Despite economic doldrums, 11street bullish on Only a mere 5% of According to Chan, in 2015, iPay From
https://www.digitalnewsasia.com/
More Singaporeans
Do Holiday Shopping Online: Survey According to Visa's survey, more than 70 per cent of consumers
here shop online at least once a month, compared to 59 per cent in the
previous year. This is slightly more than the regional average of 68 per
cent. The Visa Consumer Payment Survey polled 500 people in From http://www.channelnewsasia.com/ PRIME Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha tried to play down
public concern yesterday about his government’s plan to add details about
people’s occupation and salary on national identification cards. A public
outcry has been growing since he revealed the plan on Saturday. Many people
have criticised the idea because of the potential for people to face
discrimination on the basis of their financial status. Prayut denied that the
initiative, which he expects to take effect by 2017, would divide people
according to financial status, insisting that it would instead bring many benefits
and also reduce tax evasion. "When such information is included on ID
cards, low-income people will enjoy better access to government assistance
such as free bus rides, free train rides and free [mass transit] rides,"
the PM said. He also noted that it would be clear that low-income earners,
such as those earning the Bt300 minimum daily wage, would not have to pay
tax. The prime minister said the initiative, on the contrary, would ensure
those who need to pay taxes pay it properly. "It is going to tackle tax evasion and improve tax
collection," he said. Prayut also made it clear that the extra
information would not be displayed prominently on the ID cards, but stored in
a microchip. Interior Minister General Anupong Paojinda said the income information
would be compiled, but not shown on ID cards. "The government wants such
information to help plan assistance for low-income people.
"We will study how this is implemented to ensure that it is not
going to affect people's privacy in any way," he said. Anupong said he
had instructed the Interior Ministry's permanent secretary Grisada Boonrach
to prepare necessary information so it is ready for implementation.
Meanwhile, the director of the Department of Provincial Administration's
Registration Administration Bureau, Wichian Chidchanognarth, said ID cards
could contain a lot of information. He believed that when details from
various authorities were linked via an ID-card database, people could access
various public services just with their identity cards. From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
Online
Service Providers on Their Toes After the Court Ruling Against Prachatai’s
Webmaster LEADING WEBSITES in The first measure is a programme that monitors sensitive key
words, especially those related to lese majeste, and as soon as it finds any
mention of sensitive information, it will immediately send a report to
pantip.com's response team to verify the post before taking action. The
second mechanism gets users to inform pantip.com's team to take care of the
case, while the third level of control has dedicated teams monitoring
web-board sessions where users may be discussing sensitive issues, especially
those related to the monarchy. Generally, Apisilp said, pantip.com always
monitors all the content on pantip.com and has strict measures to manage
inappropriate content. "The content management team on pantip.com is
very conservative and even though some posts may not be illegal, they may be
removed because they are inappropriate, such as sale of products or personal
tiffs," he said. In his
capacity as president of the Thai Webmaster Association, Apisilp also said
that website service providers cannot deny legal responsibility as it is
their role to monitor and remove inappropriate content from their website, otherwise it would seem they find the content
acceptable. Also, as the Computer Crimes Act authorises officers the right
to request log files, the webmaster should comply with the law. Meanwhile,
Jakrapong Kongmalai, vice president of Content Business at Sanook, another
often-used website in the Kingdom, said a lot of users visited sanook.com
daily and they were content monitoring and checking measures in place to
control inappropriate content and prevent spam. Users are also bound by the
website's terms and conditions to not duplicate topics in different web-board
sessions. He said users can only select one web-board session per topic and
that all duplicated posts will be deleted from the system, adding that
anybody found posting duplications will be blocked from sanook.com. Users are also not allowed to post
content that can provoke social violence, is an infringement of content,
phone numbers, images that may be considered inappropriate for the young or
one that violates copyright laws. Those who break these rules stand to face
legal action. From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
Thailand 2016:
Top Trends to Look Out for in Nascent but Fast-Growing E-Commerce Market The top three trends to look out for in From http://www.dealstreetasia.com/ The Big New
Trends for Smartphones and Commerce NEW GENERATION Thais have now lived much of their life on digital
platforms in the face of the four big trends, as noted by Line, the
influential chat platform in These four big trends are: Ÿ
'mobile first' or the soaring rate of mobile
Internet use; Ÿ
smartphones becoming the main viewing screen; Ÿ
m-commerce (transactions done via mobile
phones) and social commerce; Ÿ
O2O or online-to-offline services. Ariya Banomyong, managing director of Line Firstly, while The third interesting trend surrounds m-commerce and social commerce.
Regular buyers in e-commerce have started wading into the newer arenas of
m-commerce and social commerce already. About 60 per cent of total online
transactions are now conducted via mobile devices. It is predicted that mobile banking
will grow by 33 per cent this year too. From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
Online
Traders Advised to Register as Electronic Operators The Commerce Ministry urges all Facebook and Instagram traders
to register as electronic commerce operators to gain credibility for online
trade and to provide consumer protection. "Now, more merchants employ
Facebook and Instagram to offer products, since it is easy to open a shop. "We have to oversee them to build up confidence in
online trade," Rattana Theanvisitsakool, deputy director general of the
ministry's Business Development Department, said yesterday. The registration
confirms a trader's identity and business operations and can be used in
advertisements. At least 32 trade associations and 13 e-marketplaces were
scheduled to meet with the department yesterday to discuss the issue. The department targets 60,000
registered traders by year-end, about tripling the current figure. The department
has joined hands with Alibaba to have the Chinese global website's staff
train Thai online operators as a means to push local businesses to adopt
e-commerce for market expansion.
The training course is scheduled for next month. Anyone interested can
contact the 1570 hotline. The department has also teamed up with Bank of
Ayudhya to develop and connect an online payment system called Krungsri
e-Payment. Online shoppers who purchase products through
www.thaicommercestore. com, the community market
website supported by the department, can buy products and pay for them
through Krungsri accounts. From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
The transport ministry launched Vinatrucking transport trading
floor, the first of its kind in From
http://vietnamnews.vn/
Shoppers
Hunt for Online Discounts The online shopping event at the website onlinefriday.vn, with
more than 63,500 products on sale, drew great interest from consumers
yesterday. Organisers said they had sent 100 million messages to mobile
subscribers to inform them of the event. By 6pm, the website attracted 1.1
million visitors. Nearly 2,000 participating retailers offered generous
discounts on high-end clothes, books, watches, digital equipment, tourism
products and household utensils. Swatch and Guess brands gave discounts of up
to 70 per cent, while Mango, Nike and Dorothy brands offered a 50-percent
discount, as a few to name. Jose Finch, Managing Director of Zalora In response to the day, eight banks and credit institutions
offered cash-back services to online transactions. Also, express delivery
firms like VietnamPost and ViettelPost supported online retailers with
delivery costs halved. Experts said online transactions valued at VND154 billion
($6.9 million) were conducted in 2014. The figure was expected to stand at
$25 million this year. They forecast that e-commerce will continue to thrive
in From
http://vietnamnews.vn/
Most Banking
to Move Online Within a Few Years Meanwhile, if someone travels during Tet and his Visa card runs out
of money, he can expect support by asking relatives to remit money from bank
accounts to Visa cards issued by any bank through Sacombank’s electronic
banking. A senior executive of a joint stock bank in Hanoi said that with the
modern e-banking technology being applied in Vietnam, making payments for electricity,
water, Internet and cable TV with mobile devices is within reach as the
services now can be provided by most banks, while e-bank services ‘do not
have Tet holidays’. The banker went on to say that the payment technology has
entered a new development stage. Making payments with cards has become
popular because people feel safer to use cards than cash. A banker predicted
that in three to four years, the face of e-banking would be different, saying
that digital banking would not only lead to big changes in the banking
sector, but the whole society. By
that time, all personal electronic devices, from watches to smartphones, from
tablets to TVs, can handle bank transactions. From
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/
Online
Shopping Set to Take Off With the number of internet users and online shopping websites
in the country skyrocketing, e-commerce is expected to boom this year. Dau Tu
(Viet Nam Investment Review) quoted Le Thiet Bao, former director of an
online shopping website, as saying that conditions are ripe for the
e-commerce industry to develop in Last year the number of sellers had tripled, and it has nearly
4,000 vendors selling over 400,000 products across 13 categories. In terms of
logistics services supporting e-commerce, Luong Duy Hoi, managing director of
giaohangnhanh.vn, which offers shipping services, forecast that this year
e-commerce would generate 70-80 million orders. This is an attractive figure
for delivery services like VNPost and ViettelPost. Analysts said e-commerce
on mobile (m-commerce) has developed strongly and continues to do so. Tran
Hai Linh, CEO of Sendo.vn, told ictnews.vn that last year the mobile
transactions accounted for 45 per cent and is expected to rise to 65 per cent
this year. Lazada reported that "mobile is already generating over 60
per cent of the company's sales, driven mainly by increasing application
penetration." Another major online shopping platform, Zalora.vn,
reported that more than 20 million people in From
http://vietnamnews.vn/
Network
Providers Fight Against Blockage During Tet Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Bac Son
recently asked mobile phone operators to ensure that mobile networks and
Internet connection remain operational during Tet (Lunar New Year) festival.
Telecommunication and Internet operators affirmed that there will be no
blockage of mobile phone networks during the holiday. A representative of
VNPT VinaPhone network provider said that nearly 11,000 Operating systems of Viettel, the largest mobile operator in From
http://vietnamnews.vn/
On January 18 Viet Nam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT)
began commercial testing of its VNPT has installed around 100 stations in Experts say Property remains hot topic Though there is no sign yet of the price "fever" that
periodically marks the Vietnamese property market or a bubble, the market
remains a hot topic for analysts and the media. In discussions, most experts
say the market has performed impressively in recent months, with figures
showing that a strong recovery has set in after a long freeze. But they also
warn there are distinct signs of risk, especially bank credit-related. The
Government seems to be in concurrence. In its Decision No.01/NQ-CP it seeks
to severely curtail lending to high-risk sectors, in which it has included
property. State Bank of According to a report by property services provider CB Richard
Ellis (CBRE) But the decisive factor was probably banks' huge lending to both
property developers and buyers. In reality, the majority of property
developers lack funds while the sector requires large medium- and long-term
funds and there are few sources of funding for real estate firms.
Consequently, they rely completely on three main sources – owners' equity,
buyers' money, and bank loans. Besides, with most middle-class individual
buyers dependent on bank loans to buy a house, lending by banks is always the
key to the development of the property market. As a result, credit to the
housing sector grew 14.59 per cent last year and 80 per cent from three years
ago to VND360 trillion, according to the State Bank of The experts express fears that the rapid growth of the housing
market and credit poses threats of a bubble and a rise in bad debts just like
a few years ago. While the real estate market recovered rather strongly last
year and might continue to grow this year, the recovery is not really on a
firm footing yet, they warn. They also warn that the luxury apartment segment
is experiencing oversupply. But the supply of social housing and small and
medium-sized apartments, which is where the real demand is, is limited, they
say. In Another big challenge facing the market is credit-related.
According to the HCMC Real Estate Association, secondary market investors now
account for 15 per cent, up three-fold from 2014. They mainly focus on the
high-end segment, buying in and selling quickly to profit from price
differences. The experts warn if the speculation is not checked, instability
and a possible bubble loom. But things are likely to remain stable this year
if 50 per cent of the money flowing into the secondary market comes from
speculators' own pocket, they say. But 70-80 per cent of the money comes from
banks and other sources of credit, often at very high interest rates, and
this poses a big threat of bad debts. Faced with this situation, the central
bank has announced it will closely monitor property and long-term loans this
year to safeguard the quality of credit growth. The experts concur that it is
important to tighten oversight to prevent overheating, which will cause a
property bubble, especially by the banking sector over lending to the
property sector. From
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/
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Medicine prices can now be followed by mobile phones and tablets
in “The next 1,258 medicine names will go on sale at newly approved
prices from December 21. Thus, 3,540 items of medicines will be sold at new
prices.” Compared with the current price, the price of 46 percent of
medicines decreased more than two times, 24 percent – more than three times.
In general, prices have fallen for 95 percent of all the medicines.
Establishing the single price for medicines is aimed at improving the level
of medical services provided to the population and combating price gouging.
Currently, 57 percent of medicines registered in From http://www.azernews.az/ E-signature
Number Rises by 5 pct The total number of e-digital signatures issued by the From http://www.azernews.az/ New
A new universal mobile payment system that can eliminate the
need to carry a plastic card or cash will be presented in This will allow to timely pay for municipal services, mobile
communication, or pay off credit and transfer funds without any losses, as
the technology developed by AzerPay does not require the use of internet
connection or software applications. Users will get access to their account
via any mobile phone, regardless of the operating system. Protection of the
account is guaranteed by advanced solutions of the world-renowned vendors in
the synthesis with the technology of AzerPay. AzerPay offers several levels
of security: user’s number of mobile operator, the subscriber code, pin-code,
as well as combined methods of data exchange needed to authorize any
operation.Even in case of loss of a mobile phone, trespassers will not be
able to use the account. Meanwhile, the user will be able to have an access
to its account at anytime and anywhere in the world by means of the system’s
website or the around-the-clock support service. Leading experts from the From http://www.azernews.az/ From Jan.11, 2016, while withdrawing money from plastic cards a
conversion fee equal to four percent will be charged, Azerbaijan Banks
Association (ABA) told Trend Jan. 9.
The commission will be charged only during conversion operations for
withdrawing from plastic cards. This measure is aimed at reducing the cash
operations from plastic cards and stimulating non-cash payments. "Some bank customers
use cards not for their intended purpose, and us them only in order to cash
out their funds," said the source in the association. "In recent days, the population
began to actively transfer manats to their dollar cards, and then withdraw
dollars and sell them, which could lead to the emergence of black market. As
a result, other citizens could not cash out their dollar funds from their
cards, since the ATMs were empty within 30 minutes," said the
association. This decision does
not concern the clearing conversion, From http://en.trend.az/ Azerbaijani
Bank Starts Processing JCB International System Cards International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) together with the
AzeriCard Processing Centre started accepting cards of From http://en.trend.az/ Nar Acquires
CityNet Internet Provider As part of its Multi-play Strategy, Nar has acquired CityNet -
one of the largest and fastest growing fixed internet providers in Nar is planning to enrich the products portfolio of CityNet with
innovative telecommunication and entertainment services when assuring the
highest level of service and the most affordable pricing – all under Nar
CityNet branding. In the future the companies will introduce bundled products
that will include both mobile and fixed services at the same package – those
products will bring great convenience and savings for the consumers. “This
step is a very big and very important move for Nar, as we expand our services
into Fixed Internet and Pay TV areas. This move will allow the consumers to
benefit from our excellent quality and attractive offers not only in From http://en.trend.az/ Free
Internet-Banking from AccessBank AccessBank offers a unique opportunity for individuals and
private entrepreneurs - to use the system free of charge during first three
months. MyAccess is an innovative
Internet Banking system which meets all contemporary requirements. Despite
the fact that the service was launched in October 2015, it caused a great
demand among the customers. Convenience and functionality of the system have
also received a positive feedback from corporate customers who have highly
appreciated wide opportunities to manage accounts provided by the system. The
number of myAccess users has been steadily increasing – just during last two
months the number of clients connected to it has doubled. MyAccess ensures the highest security
and safety - it has been recognized as one of the safest in From http://en.trend.az/ 20 January saw a meeting of the Collegium of the Ministry for
development of information technologies and communications of the As part of the ongoing work on the further expansion of the
backbone network, a new telecommunication equipment has been put into
operation, which allowed to increase throughput in the international
direction by 10 times, up to the center of each region of the Republic by 4
times, to the district centers by 10 times. The bandwidth of the
telecommunication network of A complete transition to the electronic declaration of goods and
the registration of export-import contracts has been provided, which in turn
has helped to speed up customs clearance of goods and the provision of other
related services from three to one working day. The possibility of online payment of
taxes, compulsory and utility payments is under work out process, in
particular, the number of online transactions over the Internet has increased
by 2.3 times, while the number of users by twice. Due to the introduction of electronic
forms of relationships between state bodies and business entities, 42.8
thousand business entities registered via the Internet on a Single portal of
state interactive services in 2015, which in turn provides access to 260
different kinds of interactive services.
If in 2013-2014 entrepreneurs and citizens had received just over 102
thousand services via the Single portal, in 2015 this figure exceeded 420
thousand. An electronic system of
impact assessment of legislative acts saw an active public debate over 340
projects of normative-legal acts. Available open data portal has already been
used by more than 200 thousand times.
The number of domains in the zone "UZ" as on January 1,
2016, comprised over 25.2 thousand units, the growth compared to the same
period last year amounted to more than 130%. The number of educational
resources in the ZiyoNET network increased to more than 109 thousand (growth
rate – 139%). Hereby, it was noted that the pace of development of the
national segment of the Internet remains inadequate, in this regard, specific instructions have been given to
accelerate the adoption of organizational and technical measures to create
the conditions of new information resources to meet the information and
intellectual needs of the population, especially the younger generation. Pursuant to the Law adopted on
December 2015 "On electronic government", instructions have been
given for the acceleration of further improvement of the current legislation,
including the adoption of new normative legal acts, amendments and additions
to certain government decisions.
Participants of the meeting separately discussed issues of further
creation of conditions for employment of youth, graduates of professional
colleges, raising their economic activity and opportunities for
self-realization. The meeting
participants critically reviewed the performance discipline issues and work
with citizens' appeals, the implementation of the tasks set out in the
framework of the state programs, the decisions of the management and
government of the Republic conducted by relevant enterprises and
organizations of the sphere. The activities of the territorial offices of the Ministry
located in Andijan, Kashkadarya and Syrdarya regions were criticized. Their
efforts to introduce ICT in areas assessed as unsatisfactory overall. In this
regard, the Centre for development of "Electronic government"
system is entrusted to take urgent measures to improve the level of ICT
adoption in these and other regions of the country. In 2015, the enterprises of the sphere
of communication, Informatization and telecommunication technologies received
4432 treatments. In total 3544 complaints were received in 2015, of which 355
complaints were received directly by the fault of an industrial enterprise.
The number of complaints compared to 2014 has decreased by 19.5%. In this
context, the heads of the industrial enterprises have been entrusted with
necessary measures, in order to improve the effectiveness of work with
appeals of legal entities and individuals, as well as ensuring the quality of
services provided by operators of telecommunications and postal
services. Particular attention is
paid to the priorities of the upcoming in 2016. Among them, first of all: - commissioning of a Central database
of e-government (databases of individuals and legal entities, directories and
classifiers); - commissioning of
complexes of information systems (interdepartmental integration platform,
unified identification system, complex information system
"License", etc.); -
introduction of over thirty new advanced interactive services to population
and business entities; - further
implementation and development of modern information and communication
technologies in the enterprises of the real sector of the economy; - further development of broadband
access to the Internet on the basis of fiber-optic communication lines,
creation of data center for e-government, as well as improving the
reliability of telecommunication networks and information security; - accelerating the adoption of
organizational and technical measures to create conditions for new resources
to meet the information and intellectual needs of the population, especially
the younger generation. Following
the discussions, a decision has been adopted, which identified practical
measures for further development of information technology and communications
aimed at fulfilling the priority tasks set by the President of the Republic
of Uzbekistan at the session of the Cabinet of Ministers dedicated to the
results of socio-economic development in 2015 and major priority directions
of economic program for 2016. From http://technologies.uzreport.uz/ The Single portal of state interactive services has published the
draft Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of the From http://technologies.uzreport.uz/ |
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Turnbull’s
innovative innovation statement has yet another fan thinking it’s a great
idea: ACS, the professional association for Commenting
on the focus on gender diversity, Aynsley continued: “ACS applauds the
government’s allocation of A$ From http://www.itwire.com
ISPs Under Cost
Pressure from ‘Internet Tax’ Due to Data Retention Act Internet
Australia has started 2016 much the same way it ended 2015, calling again for
more money to be allocated by the federal government to properly compensate
ISPs for complying with the new Data Retention Act – and again warning that
providers will pass on extra costs to Internet users. The government has
allocated $128 million for ISP’s to meet compliance requirements under the
act, but
according to Internet Internet From http://www.itwire.com
SMEs Invest
in Tech to Grow Businesses, but Cloud Adoption Lags Small
businesses seem to have heeded the call by the Turnbull Government for
innovation, with many SMEs investing in new technologies – computer hardware
and software – to aid the growth and development of their businesses. But,
while many SMEs are using online activities to grow their businesses,
particularly through social media, many are missing out on the significant
time savings and benefits from working with cloud-based solutions. According
to the latest Business Monitor research from cloud accounting software
company MYOB, technology is a “hot ticket” for SMEs in terms of innovation
investment with many having “caught the innovation bug and are serious
investors in the space”. In the last 12 months, 31% of SMEs surveyed by MYOB
have cquired new computer hardware or software and 26% acquired new machinery
and equipment. According to MYOB Chief Technical Officer Simon Raik-Allen,
SMEs see that “technology can help them do business more efficiently and
service their customers better”. “And at a time
when knowledge is recognised as the key to 1. Cost to
develop or introduce 28% 2.
Government regulation 23% 3. Lack of
R&D funding 14% 4. Lack of
marketing expertise 14% 5. Access to
investment 12% “The good
news is that the Turnbull Government has placed innovation at the centre of its
policy platform, including addressing regulatory barriers around start-ups
and encouraging investment in R&D,” Raik-Allen said. “Noting that access
to investment was a barrier for some, another significant finding was that
55% of operators had not sourced any capital or finance in the last 12
months, showing that most SMEs are self-reliant when it comes to capital
cash. Of the 40 per cent that had, 18% had used one of the Big 4 banks, with
family and friends and credit card companies being the next largest source of
finance at 7% ch. Investors were a source for just 5%, and home equity helped
out 3%. We could see this mix start to change with the entry into the
Australian market of specialised small business lenders like MYOB partner On
Deck According to
Raik-Allen, while the number of cloud users are growing, a significant
proportion of SMEs are yet to embrace cloud computing. “This Business Monitor
found that 40% of SMEs are doing at least some of their business in the
cloud, which shows that many are still sticking with tried and true methods
and missing out on the significant time savings and simplification of process
made possible by working with cloud based solutions. “Based on MYOB’s own
record growth in cloud customers, we can expect the shift to the cloud to
continue.” Raik-Allen acknowledged, however, that SMEs are more likely to use
other cloud based applications such as social media to help build their
businesses. “Social media is used by just over a third of respondents –
retail and hospitality led the pack with 50% using social while just 24% of
construction and trades were utilising this medium. “With Australians being
massive users of social, this could be an area of focus for businesses
looking to unlock a wider customer base. Of those that did have a social
site, 30% said it generated more leads or customer enquiries.” From http://www.itwire.com
Govt Makes $128.4
Million Available for Data Retention Compliance Telecommunications
service providers have until late February to apply for grants to assist them
in meeting their data retention obligations under new laws which came into
effect in October last year. Earlier this month, the Federal Government
announced the opening of a grants programme of up to $128.4 million to assist
the telecommunications industry with the upfront costs of meeting their data
retention obligations. The Data Retention Industry Grants Programme consists
of a single funding round open to all telecommunication service providers who
have data retention obligations, and is designed to make a financial
contribution to service providers typical up front data retention costs, and
includes support for smaller providers. Applications opened on Thursday, 7
January and the closing date for applications is 5.00pm (AEDT) on Tuesday, 23
February 2016. The Attorney-General’s Department said today that assisting
industry with the implementation of the data retention obligations remains a
key priority for the Government. Telecommunications companies with data
retention obligations are required to retain limited communications data for
two years. Service providers with questions about the grants programme,
including the programme guidelines and application form, should click here.
In addition, a help line is available to potential applicants who can call 13
28 46, Monday to Friday between 8am - 8pm (AEDT) with the exception of
national public holidays. From http://www.itwire.com
NEW ZELAND: IT Investment Rate Slows as Businesses Put on
the Spending Brakes Worldwide IT
spending is expected to post a major slowdown in 2016, as economic weakness
in emerging markets and saturation of the smartphone market combine to result
in a significantly slower pace of tech spending growth compared to the past
six years. Having posted annual growth of 5-6 percent in constant currency
terms since recovery from the financial crisis in 2010, the global IT market
is expected to increase by just 2 percent this year (in constant currency).
According to latest IDC findings, total IT spending on hardware, software and
services will reach $US2.3 trillion in 2016 - including telecom services,
total ICT spending will increase by 2 percent to $US3.8 trillion. IT spending
was relatively stable in 2015, in spite of the volatile economy, propelled by
another strong year for smartphone shipments, which compensated for a
weakening PC market throughout the year. Smartphones accounted for half of
the overall industry growth rate of 6 percent in 2015. Spending on cloud
infrastructure was also strong throughout the year, resulting in growth of 16
percent for the server market and 10 percent for storage systems. Closer to
home, Asia/Pacific will post growth of less than 2 percent in 2016, compared
to 7 percent in 2015, largely due to the overall slowdown in China. The IT
market in From http://www.computerworld.co.nz
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EUROPE:
Is By the end of this week it could be illegal for any European
child under 16 to use Facebook - or Snapchat or any messaging service -
without the express consent of their parents. That, according to some
interpretations, would be the result of a vote by an obscure committee to raise the digital age of consent from 13 to 16. Who knew
there was a "digital age of consent"? I certainly didn't but I am
told it is built into the decisions that many online firms make about the age
they will allow people to join. In the United States a law called Coppa
(Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) gives extra online protection to
children under 13, and Europe has had a similar policy - which is why the
likes of Facebook have not allowed children in until they become teenagers.
Now, though, the European Parliament's civil liberties and home affairs
committee is considering a change which is opposed both by social media firms
and many child protection experts. A last minute amendment to Europe's Data Protection Regulation,
says this: "The processing of personal data of a child below the age of
16 years shall only be lawful if and to the extent that such consent is given
or authorised by the holder of parental responsibility over the child."
In other words, online firms that want to deal with anyone under 16 will have
to make sure they get mum or dad's permission first. That according to
several online safety experts, will make children
more vulnerable not less. In an open letter to the committee they write that
changing the age limit "would deprive young people of educational and
social opportunities in a number of ways, yet would provide no more (and
likely even less) protection." Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Some parents may be unwilling to give permission,
which could encourage their children to lie about their age Others argue that social media has provided a vital lifeline for
troubled teenagers, and the risk is that they will not feel able to go online
in search of help. Now, there are plenty of children under 13 using Facebook and
other social media sites, with and without parental consent, so it is worth
asking whether raising the age limit will make a difference. But the social
media companies and their lawyers certainly think it will make it much harder
for responsible companies to police their sites. That is why a furious
lobbying effort is going on to try to persuade European lawmakers, who meet
today and vote on Thursday, to chuck out this amendment. What is missing from
this debate so far is anyone making powerful arguments in favour of raising the digital age of consent. Time, perhaps, for
those voices to be heard. Update: I have now heard from one supporter of the higher age limit. Dr
Rachel O'Connell from the consultancy Trust Elevate - which is developing
age-verification tools - suggests that new technologies could be used by
social networks to detect under-16s and limit what was done with their data
without blocking access outright. "Social media firms could continue to
offer access without processing under-16's personal data, ie gathering data,
creating psychographic profiles of a young person and selling it to third
parties, until they got permission from a parent and young person," Dr
O'Connell said. "This would require companies to be transparent with
both parents and young people about how their data will be processed." From
http://www.bbc.com/
“It is like an app store,” added Kotka. “The more partners and
services we have, the more people in the world can take advantage of all the
good things we have to offer but also increasing Estonian economic space.”
Edward Lucas, a journalist at British magazine The Economist, became the
first Estonian e-resident a year ago. In a statement he claimed there is no reason people should not have a choice of identity provider,
as they do in other services. “People may trust a foreign government
more than they trust their own government and I think just as we have
competing credit cards – we have VISA, Mastercard, American Express and so on
– we should have competing providers of identity,” said Lucas. “This is the
way forward and I think you have done a really good job in getting your
offering on the table first.” “It’s also great to show that a tiny nation-state,
that many people do not know about, can make such a huge impact in the
world of technology,” adds Tamkivi. E-Residency costs 50� ($53) and can be
applied-for online, before picking up an identity card from one of 38
Estonian foreign representations worldwide. The online process,
and card issuance, were launched six months ago. “Estonians have
enjoyed e-services for years, we vote digitally, we sign papers digitally,
but opening up the system to foreigners is still an enormous work since we
need to translate the interfaces, amend the laws and optimize many parts of
the system,” said e-Residency program director Kaspar Korjus at the
anniversary event. “At the same time we also are winning from all these
changes, because it improves the services locally as well. I think it is the
coolest government startup in the world!” From
http://www.i-policy.org/
The 4th Annual National Survey “Citizens’ perception, uptake and
support for the e-Transformation of Governance in the Republic of Moldova”
was conducted by the Centre for Sociological Investigations and Marketing
“CBS-AXA” on the order of the e-Government Center (eGC). The survey shows
that citizens perceive e-Transformation of Government in The share of citizens who needed and accessed public services
provided by central public administration authorities in 2015 made up 31%,
remaining at the same level (30% in 2014 and 2013). A tendency of increase in
the level of access to e-servicesby population is observed. Thus, 19% of all
citizens who requested public services in 2015 performed all procedures or a
part of the procedures for obtaining a public service online, making up a
share higher by 3% than the share reported in 2014 and by 10% than the share
reported in 2012. According to the respondents, the most online accessed
public services are e-Application for Criminal Record - 26%, e-reporting to
the NCSI - 24%, e-Invoice - 23%, followed by e-reporting to the NCHI - 22%
and e-Statement (submission of income tax statement) - 19%. The degree of
satisfaction with online services remained the same as in the previous year
and made up about 66%. The level of openness of citizens to use public
services online is quite high and increases in the last 4 years. About 70% of
respondents are open to use public services online through computer and 58% -
through mobile telephone. As for the level of equipment of households with computers 68%
of citizens (10% more than in 2012) said they have at least one computer in
the household. The level of Internet usage by respondents in 2015 made up
69%, 12% higher than reported in 2012. The
citizens use the Internet mainly to communication through chat programs, to
use social networks, download digital content for leisure purposes, to read
online magazines and newspapers. The survey was conducted from October till
December 2015 and covered rural and urban areas from all regions of the
country, with a representative sample of 3,024 persons aged 18 years and
above. The margin of error makes up ± 1.8%. From
http://www.egov.md/
Microsoft From
http://uadn.net/
NORTH
AMERICA: There was a time in the “We do see particularly low-income Americans and minorities shifting
away from home broadband and instead relying solely on their smartphone—but
what we’ve seen in a variety of other research are the limits that internet
users have, when they only have a smartphone,” John Horrigan, the senior
researcher for Pew’s report, tells Quartz. Horrigan points to three main
problems with cutting the broadband cord: Most phone plans come with data
caps, which limit people’s online activities every month; smartphone
connections experience more online interruptions than broadband connections,
causing people to cut back on internet consumption; and the smaller screens
on phones make it more difficult for people to carry out activities like
applying for jobs, accessing government services, and reading news and other
information. As a result, poorer Americans who try to save money by cutting
out broadband service may end up disadvantaged by the choice. Of course, it’s
not all bad news. The trends toward cordless homes right now pose a huge
opportunity for wireless carriers, who may start to take advantage of
Americans’ dwindling interest in home broadband to beef up their features and
provide better offerings—which could end up helping the people who are losing
out. From
http://www.nextgov.com/
Up
to 70 Percent of Global Internet Traffic Goes Through Once in a while—not quite often enough to be a crisis, but just
often enough to be a trope—people in the United States will freak out because
a huge number of highly popular websites and services have suddenly gone
down. For an interminable period of torture (usually about 1-3 hours, tops)
there is no Instagram to browse, no Tinder to swipe, no Github to push to, no
Netflix to And Chill. When this happens, it usually means that Amazon Web
Services is having a technical problem, most likely in their U.S.-East
region. What that actually means is that something is broken in northern Unlike Google and Facebook, AWS doesn’t aggressively brand or
call attention to their data centers. They absolutely don’t give tours, and
their website offers only rough approximations of the locations of their data
centers, which are divided into “regions.” Within a region lies
at minimum two “availability zones” and within the availability zones there
are a handful of data centers. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to find the
entirety of AWS’ northern It’s also not too hard to go straight to those original
municipal documents with addresses and other cool information, like fines
from utility companies and documentation of tax arrangements made
specifically for AWS. (Pro tip for the rookie data-center mapper: if you’re
looking for the data centers of other major companies, Foursquare check-ins
are also a surprisingly rich resource). My weird hack research methods
returned a handful of Vadata addresses scattered throughout the area:
Ashburn, The fact that northern Virginia is home to major intelligence
operations and to major nodes of network infrastructure isn’t exactly a sign
of government conspiracy so much as a confluence of histories (best
documented by Paul Ceruzzi in his criminally under-read history Internet
Alley: High Technology In Tysons Corner, 1945-2005). To explain why a region
surrounded mostly by farmland and a scattering of American Civil War
monuments is a central point of Internet infrastructure, we have to go back
to where a lot of significant moments in Internet history take place: the
Cold War. Postwar suburbanization and the expansion of transportation
networks are occasionally overlooked, but weirdly crucial facets of the
military-industrial complex. While suburbs were largely marketed to the
public via barely concealed racism and the appeal of manicured “natural”
landscapes, suburban sprawl’s dispersal of populations also meant increased
likelihood of survival in the case of nuclear attack. Highways both
facilitated suburbs and supported the movement of ground troops across the
continental Both of these factors were at play in the unincorporated area of
northern Thanks to that concentration of network companies and a whole
lot of support from the National Science Foundation, Tysons Corner became
home to MAE-East, one of the earliest Internet exchanges and home to the
foundation of what would become that Internet backbone. Networks build atop
networks, and the presence of this backbone in Tysons Corner led to more
backbone, more tech companies, and more data centers. Today, up to 70 percent
of Internet traffic worldwide travels through this region, as the Loudon
county economic-development board cheerfully notes in its marketing
materials. An unfathomable amount of that traffic is from AWS. Amazon doesn’t
release exact numbers at to just how much of the global Internet currently
sits atop its infrastructure. In 2012, a now-lost blog post by
network-intelligence startup DeepField estimated that on average, one-third
of all daily Internet usage accesses a site running on AWS. Over the last
three years, that percentage has most likely only increased. Finding more recent numbers is tricky, although it seems agreed
upon that Amazon is the largest hosting company operating today, projected to
exceed $8 billion this year alone. While this exact calculation of how much
of the Internet sits within Amazon’s cloud is uncertain, the calculation of
how much revenue Amazon generates from that cloud is crystal clear—and
massive. According to Amazon lore, few within the company really anticipated
the scale and impact of the service when it launched—they were mostly trying
to solve an internal company problem, namely speeding up deployment of new
applications and services. The solution was to make that build-up of the
basic development infrastructure something that could be rapidly deployed and
scaled as needed. AWS emerged out of the recognition that the services Amazon
needed also met a growing industry need for web-scale application
infrastructure. Reporting on AWS history rarely spends much time on the data
centers themselves. The actual infrastructure at the heart of AWS’
infrastructure-as-a-service isn’t the thing that makes it important to
developers; it’s the services and APIs built on top of that infrastructure.
So it made sense that when I stood outside some of the Vadata buildings from
my hackish itinerary that I mostly gazed upon warehouses and vacuous-looking
colocation buildings. I had a soft spot for one of the data centers on my
itinerary: a building in Amazon didn’t invent the principles behind cloud computing, but
they made the infrastructure of cloud computing into a dirt-cheap commodity.
In Brad Stone’sThe Everything Store, Jeff Bezos is quoted comparing AWS to
power utilities: “You go back in time a hundred years, if you wanted to have
electricity, you had to build your own little electric power plant, and a lot
of factories did this. As soon as the electric-power grid came online, they
dumped their electric-power generator, and they started buying power off the
grid. It just makes more sense. And that’s what is starting to happen with
infrastructure computing.” In practice, this meant that pricing for services
was entirely contingent on actual use, an approach that allowed developers to
rapidly scale small startups into massive companies by paying for
infrastructure support on an as-needed basis and scaffolding as needs grew.
Thanks to AWS, the initial overhead for starting a service like Airbnb or
Slack (both AWS customers) is so low that those companies can afford to
expand quickly. A fenced-off data center next to a pet resort doesn't exactly
scream “one of the chief enablers of the current tech bubble,” but at the end
of the day, that's what AWS is. We found one AWS data center surprisingly easily, through a news
story rather than an obscure government document. Earlier this year, an under
construction AWS data center in Ashburn caught fire. Conveniently, the exact
address was included in the story. This apparently not-yet-operational AWS
data center is across the street from Ashby Ponds, a retirement community,
and adjoins an area dominated by office parks, other data centers, and
construction sites. It shared some familiar tropes of the region’s
defense-contractor office parks: topography and landscaping that obscured
just enough of the building to be inconvenient, high black gates, carefully
curated suggestions of “nature.” An outcropping of conduit ducts poured out
from the sidewalk alongside Ashby Ponds, like seaweed abandoned on a beach or
a lesser descendant of Cthulu reaching up from the suburban depths. The site may have been a project of real-estate investment
trust, Corporate Office Properties Trust, a company that’s been a personal
pet interest of mine for a while. Due to SEC regulations COPT hasn’t publicly
disclosed the actual tenant or their particular role in building new AWS data
centers in northern In contrast to the manicured landscapes of Ashburn and the pet
resorts of In part, the success of Amazon Web Services—arguably the success
of The Cloud itself at this point—lies in its ability to abstract infrastructural
problems into logistics problems. And for a long time, Amazon has been able
to abstract away a lot of the more discomforting or difficult facets of its
infrastructure. In the case of Amazon’s retail divisions, the realities
obscured might be the labor conditions for employees in their distribution
centers. In the case of AWS, it might be the energy use of its data centers.
When Bezos compares cloud infrastructure to the power grid, he obscures the
fact that data centers aren’t exactly analogous to electricity so much as
they’re dependent on it, to the point where Amazon has to build new power
substations for its cloud infrastructure. Although the company pledged
earlier this year to move to entirely renewable energy, Greenpeace has
previously referred to AWS as the least transparent of all major tech
companies on carbon footprint and energy use. In some ways this is why, despite the fact I know that I’ll
probably only see a building or some cable markings if I’m lucky, I keep
going on these pilgrimages to the physical remnants of the network, and I’ll
probably be doing them for a long time. At this point, it is easier to use
the data points that slip through the cracks to find an Amazon data center in
the heart of spook country than it is to actually understand in any sort of
granular detail how much of the internet currently lives on Amazon Web
Services or how serious of an environmental impact Amazon Web Services has.
The incoherent banality of northern And maybe my desire to submerge myself in that sediment, to
weave The Cloud into the timelines of railroad robber-barons and military
R&D, emerges from the same anxiety that makes me go try to find these
buildings in the first place: that maybe we have mistaken The Cloud's fiction
of infinite storage capacity for history itself. It is a misunderstanding
that hinges on a weird, sad, very human hope that history might actually end,
or at least reach some kind of perfect equipoise in which nothing terrible
could ever happen again. As though if we could only collate and collect and
process and store enough data points, the world’s infinite vaporware of
real-time data dashboards would align into some kind of ultimate sand mandala
of total world knowledge, a proprietary data nirvana without terror or
heartbreak or bankruptcy or death, heretofore only gestured towards in
terrifying wall-to-wall Accenture and IBM advertisements at airports. But
databases alone are not archives any more than data centers are libraries,
and the rhetorical promise of The Cloud is as fragile as the strands of
fiber-optic cable upon which its physical infrastructure rests. The Internet
is a beautiful, terrible, fraught project of human civilization. While I make
light of language like “pilgrim” to describe this cross-country journey, at
the end of the day it has been an affirmation of a kind of faith: faith in
the humanity of that beautiful, terrible, fraught project, and in the
possibility of being able to see ourselves in all that beautiful, terrible,
fraught truth. From
http://www.nextgov.com/
When
Are Americans Willing to Share Personal Data? When They Think They're Getting
Something in Return In a new survey, Pew researchers set out to understand why
Americans sometimes decide to share their personal data with others --
employers, retailers or social media sites, for instance -- and what makes
them think twice. It’s an attempt to delineate where the American populus’
boundaries are (are people so comfortable in the digital economy that they’re
willing to share personal information with almost anyone, or so concerned
about data breaches that they’ll protect it at all costs?). The answer,
researchers found, is complicated. In short, people are making careful risk
calculations every time they’re asked to give up personal information,
deciding on a case-by-case basis whether the potential benefits make the
exchange worth it. Pew presented 461 adults, and 80
people from online focus groups, with six hypothetical scenarios and asked
them whether they considered the privacy tradeoff acceptable, not acceptable,
or “it depends.” Scenarios ranged from facial-recognition video surveillance
in the workplace, installed to catch thieves, to a doctor’s office uploading
patient records to an online system. Pew found that Americans didn’t neatly fall into categories of
“privacy fundamentalists” or “free-wheeling” with consistent representation
across scenarios, said Lee Rainie, director of Internet, science and
technology research at the In another scenario -- an employer installs
high-resolution security cameras with facial recognition technology after a
string of thefts in the workplace to identify the thieves and keeps the
footage on file to track employee attendance and performance -- 54 percent
said it was acceptable, as compared to 24 percent who found it unacceptable.
“It is the company's business to protect their assets in any way they see
fit," one respondent said. Respondents did not like scenarios in which
they had to share location data at home or in their car, which “really
triggered anxiety," Rainie said. For instance, when faced with the
tradeoff of saving money on an energy bill in exchange for installing a
“smart thermostat” that would also track their movements at home, 55 percent
thought it was unacceptable, 27 percent found it acceptable. Respondents and
focus group participants said, when faced with an information-sharing
tradeoff, they would ask questions about whether data is shared with third
parties, how long it will be retained. Ranie added that respondents said they
“get really annoyed when there are followup encounters that they never asked
for,” like spammy or promotional emails for products unrelated to the
services they signed up for. For instance, one respondent wrote: “I would take the [retail]
deal, as long as my personal information is not shared with the third party,
such as my name and contact information. If it's just my demographics -- age,
city, what I buy -- that's OK. If they want to print coupons at the checkout
that target me as a consumer, that's OK, but not contacting me personally
(mail, email, phone, etc.) with advertising. I hate hate hate that
stuff." Respondents also felt there generally isn’t enough disclosure
about who is collecting information and how it’s used by companies. One
wrote: “I have no idea how I'd investigate what info is collected about me in
places like Google and Facebook, other than the information I've provided
them, such as my profile info.” Ranie added that there aren’t major
differences in what people are willing to share based on their demographics.
For instance, people who are younger than 50 years old are more likely than
those over 50 to share their information on a free social media site, even if
they then receive targeted ads -- 40 percent compared to 25 percent. But
respondents 50 and older were more likely to find it acceptable to have their
medical records online -- 62 percent -- than younger people, with 45 percent.
"Clearly, people place different value on different kinds
of information-sharing exchanges," the report said. The broad story,
Rainie said, is "that for most people, under most circumstances, privacy
is not an either-or proposition . . . Decisions about
sharing are driven by the context, by the . . . circumstances that
they have in their lives.” And even while consumers find a scenario
acceptable, “the trustworthiness of the entity is a real significant factor
to them. They’re very anxious to know what’s going to happen to the data
after the initial transaction is over.” From
http://www.nextgov.com/
Nielsen
Adds Facebook to Social Media Ratings with Twitter Striving to plant new seeds in the multiplatform media
landscape, Nielsen today added one very well-liked partner to its social
media metrics. With Facebook conversations now joining Twitter activity and ratings
on broadcast and cable TV and the streaming services, Nielsen hopes to be
able to more fully gauge the elusive correlation between social media chatter
and actual viewership — and the company got some applause from one of the Big
While more diagnostic than standardized in approach than, say,
the daily ratings it puts out for a prior evening’s primetime, the
often-criticized Nielsen is moving fast on the program. Aiming for a lot of
likes and ad buyer useful info, they plan to make the soon-to-be Social
Content Ratings available in the current Twitter TV Ratings markets of the
U.S, From
http://deadline.com/
From
Obama to ‘Troll Farms’: How Social Media Is Changing Politics Hundreds of Russians plug away at keyboards, spreading
pro-Kremlin propaganda on social media sites and masterminding online hoaxes
every day. They work in what have come to be known as “troll farms”, named
after the derogatory nickname used for people who spread hate on the
internet. Adrian Chen, who visited a troll farm called the Internet Research
Agency while reporting for The New York Times ,
believes that the Russians might be the most organised trolls. However, they
are not unique — social media is being used to distort political debate
around the world. In Troll farms in Silicon Valley and Western intelligence agencies worry that encryption will make
the internet ‘go dark’ When social media sites first emerged, they appeared to give
everybody the ability to broadcast their views, suggesting that a wider range
of voices would be heard than in the mainstream media. However, a system that
allows people to comment anonymously, and which
makes it easy to retweet and share messages, is vulnerable to manipulation,
particularly by organised groups with money and personnel — especially as the
mainstream media seem willing to amplify their message. Politicians have
built large followings on social networks, thrilled to be able to reach
voters directly. But political debates that engage citizens are still rare,
argues Professor Christian Fuchs, the director of the Brave new era in technology needs new ethics Advances in technology pose difficult moral questions for
humanity In the 2008 US presidential election race, Obama’s campaign was
seen as mastering the use of grass roots supporters to spread messages online
— but it also spent 10 per cent of its paid media budget on buying digital
advertising. Andrew Heyward, of the MIT Media Lab, says politicians’ social
media strategies now resemble those of brands, with Republican Donald Trump
by far the most successful presidential candidate. Mr Trump has made so many
waves on social media they have flooded into traditional media and given him
so much coverage that he is only just buying his first traditional,
mainstream media advertisements. Mr Heyward is using a new analytics tool to
track the “horse race of ideas” in the From
http://www.ft.com/
Twitter’s
Top Social Media Moments of 2015 From advocacy to cheering on sports teams, when it came to
participating in their world in 2015, Americans had phones in their hands and
social media open. As the year comes to a close, Twitter selected the most
influential moments of 2015 on the network. Here’s a look at some of the top
trending moments from the year that were central to the The record that was broken two weeks later when Caitlyn Jenner
joined Twitter on June 1. Mr. Obama joined Facebook on Nov. 9, with a video
of him walking around the South Lawn of the White House and post saying he
wanted to use Facebook as a place to have “real conversations.” He has since
posted on the page six times. Solidarity After Charlie Hebdo Attack: Days
after the calendar turned to the new year,
terrorists attacked the Cheers for the FIFA Women’s World Cup: Cheers for the women
playing in the FIFA Women’s World Cup could be heard around the world. Tweets
about the FIFA Women’s World Cup were viewed 9 billion times from June 6 to
July 5, making the tournament one of the largest global sporting events of
the year, according to Twitter. The championship game between the From
http://blogs.wsj.com/
How to Bypass
Internet Censorship The exposure of the NSA’s PRISM program has highlighted the
implications of Internet censorship and mass surveillance and it’s impact on Internet freedom and net neutrality.
Internet censorship is not a new concept, as a select few countries have been
publicly advocating the use of Internet censorship to prevent their residents
from enjoying the ultimate tool for freedom of speech against oppressive
regimes. Internet censorship goes far beyond the simple concept of blocking
Facebook or YouTube at your school or office. Companies may be justified in
modifying their networks to boost employee productivity, but monitoring and
blocking Internet traffic just because it is in direct conflict with their
ideals and policies is an entirely different matter. Freedom of speech is one
of the most important aspects of a democratic society,
however, Internet censorship is something that we should genuinely be worried
about. There are multiple ways in which governments, Internet Service
Providers (ISPs), and surveillance agencies monitor Internet traffic. At VPN
Creative we aim to help our audience circumvent Internet censorship measures
and explain how to bypass censorship and other restrictions for complete
online anonymity. In this article, you will find: Global Trends In Internet Censorship The Methods Used to Impose Internet Censorship IP Blocking DNS Filtering and Redirection URL Filtering Packet Filtering Man-in-the-middle (MITM) Attacks TCP Connection Resets/Forged TCP Resets Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) How To Bypass Internet Censorship Using Virtual Private Network (VPN) Using Proxy Server Using SSH Tunnel Or HTTPS Encryption Using DNS Server Using Tor The Future of Internet Censorship Global Trends In Internet Censorship It is estimated that more than a billion people are affected by
Internet censorship, and according to a report by
the Guardian, a large part of Internet censorship problems are related to
Middle Eastern and Asian countries. Most of the developing countries of the
world are major culprits in this regard, who resort to various forms of
Internet censorship strategies to dictate their authority over their
citizens. Although The Methods Used to Impose Internet Censorship IP Blocking IP blocking is one of the primary forms of Internet censorship.
It involves blocking the IP address of a website that is deemed to host
questionable content. Many ISPs, as well as government agencies, resort to
blocking IP addresses hosting websites with content against their policies,
even if the IP address is shared by multiple websites. Therefore, all
websites that share a hosted IP address face the problem of being banned and
losing out on a significant audience, immaterial of whether they host good
content or not. The Solution: Being one of the most primitive forms of
Internet censorship, it is easy to get around IP blocking by using a proxy
address or a VPN to hide your traffic from the ISP or government filter. When
you use a VPN or a proxy service, you are essentially connecting to the
Internet via a proxy IP address. This will ensure that your ISP only sees
your proxy IP address, thereby keeping your web browsing behavior anonymous. DNS Filtering and Redirection DNS filtering and redirection is more complex and advanced than
simple IP blocking. In this type of censorship, the filters are designed so
as to prevent the DNS (Domain Name Server) from resolving the correct domain
name. In some cases, these filters will also return incorrect IP addresses,
which will prevent the website from displaying properly. Several countries
such as URL Filtering URL filtering is a common censorship tool adopted by ISPs,
government agencies, schools, public organizations, and private companies
that scan the keywords in the URL to block them from their users. This is a
double-edged sword, as some websites might offer genuine information that is
completely unrelated to the blocked keyword, but are nevertheless blocked due
to the presence of a questionable keyword in their website. The Solution: URL
filtering can be circumvented by using an encrypted connection. This can be
achieved by using a VPN or Tor, as the primary aim of using an encrypted
connection is to hide your web browsing activity from censorship filters. You
can also access blocked content by typing in escape characters into the URL
bar, but this requires a detailed technical knowledge of HTML. Packet Filtering Packet filtering is the process of filtering content based on
data packets that are sent or received through a network access point. In
this technique, the firewall is designed to analyze data packets for
keywords, IP addresses, ports, content, and other rules as determined by the
firewall guidelines. Packet filtering allows for blocking entire data
packets, or to let through specific data packets that satisfy the firewall
conditions, thereby allowing more freedom to ISPs and data censorship
agencies for controlling the flow of information. The Solution: The solution
to counteract censorship through packet filtering is to anonymize your data
packets by encrypting it using a VPN or Tor. ISP packet filters are unable to
read encrypted content, which helps you to access the web without any form of
Internet censorship and complete online anonymity. Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) Attacks The MITM attack is one of the most preferred censorship
techniques for countries that are more proactive in their control over the
transfer of information over the Internet. Countries such as TCP Connection Resets/Forged TCP Resets TCP Connection Reset is a technology that was initially designed
by hackers to initiate a Denial Of Service situation but was quickly adopted
by several countries as a reliable means of internet censorship for the
masses. In such a technique, when the existing filters block a TCP
connection, all subsequent connections and requests are automatically blocked
for all users. Such a Forged TCP reset will also block websites and users
that route their traffic through the blocked IP address. TCP connection
resets were successfully implemented by Comcast during the famous scandal of
2007, where Comcast used this technique to block peer-to-peer traffic.
However, Comcast was ordered by the US FCC on August 2008 to cease using TCP
connection resets on any of its users. The Solution: TCP connection resets
can be circumvented by tweaking your firewall to ignore the TCP connection
resets. You can easily tweak your device’s firewall settings or change your
antivirus’ firewall configuration to ignore the reset packet. Chinese internet
users use this technique to bypass forged TCP resets that are enforced by the
Great Firewall Of China. Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) Deep Packet Inspection goes a step beyond simple Packet
Filtering. DPI uses tools that have the capability of inspecting the inner
data of a packet, which essentially lets anybody read private emails,
browsing history, and even eavesdrop on communications using VoIP. DPI was
used extensively by NSA in their PRISM program, and while DPI was initially
designed to fight against spam and viruses, several countries such as How To Bypass Internet Censorship Using Virtual Private Network (VPN) A VPN is considered to be the most reliable tool for bypassing
internet censorship and to enjoy complete online anonymity. A VPN is used to
encrypt your internet traffic through secure channels, and will offer you the
option of connecting to the internet from a server that can be situated
anywhere in the world. This allows you to mask your original location, and
the encryption will allow you to keep your browsing data hidden from
censorship filters or surveillance agencies. Browse through our list of top
VPN service providers to find your preferred VPN company that offers
excellent online privacy according to your web browsing needs. Using Proxy Server There are several free as well as paid proxy servers that allow
you to change your IP address and mask your original location. While this is
considered to be the most basic tool for bypassing internet censorship, using
a proxy server does not guarantee complete online anonymity. Proxy servers
lack any form of encryption and your ISP can see your web browsing data
unless you use a free proxy server along with encryption tools. This will
drastically affect the speed of browsing and can also lead to severe downtimes.
VPN services are more advantageous and reliable than free proxy servers, but
you can use proxy servers if you are just looking to bypass internet
censorship that does not involve heavy internet usage. Using SSH Tunnel Or HTTPS Encryption There are free browser add-ons such as HTTPs Everywhere that
allows you to browse the web through an encrypted connection using just your
browser. You can also use an SSH tunnel by tunneling your traffic through a
secure server. However, SSH tunneling is mostly available as a paid option,
unless you have access to a free remote SSH server. Encryption
tools such as HTTPs Everywhere is also largely limited in their reach
and utility, as such tools won’t work well with certain websites. Therefore,
a VPN will make more sense to bypass internet censorship. Using DNS Server Using a DNS server or a smartDNS option is useful for countries
that adopt DNS filtering and redirection as the primary censorship tool.
SmartDNS also allows for better streaming without buffering issues, as it
does not involve any kind of encryption or rerouting traffic through multiple
servers. Therefore, a DNS server is the most preferred option for unblocking
media websites such as Netflix, BBC iPlayer, YouTube, and other similar
online on-demand video channels. Several VPN companies offer a wide variety
of DNS options that are relatively inexpensive and easily accessible. Using Tor Tor is a free alternative to VPN and allows you to browse the
web anonymously. Tor was also reported by NSA to be one of the most difficult
tools to break in terms of encryption, and according to leaked documents from
the NSA to the Guardian, NSA has reported Tor to be the “the king of
high-secure, low-latency internet anonymity.’ Tor also continuously beats
several censorship tools from countries such as The Future of Internet Censorship VPN seems to be one of the most advanced and effective means of
bypassing internet censorship and protecting private data. In this day and
age where internet communications are constantly monitored, a VPN offers
freedom of speech and fights censorship to offer power back to the people.
However, it is increasingly looking like even VPN providers are under the
radar for providing a free internet, and several countries such as From
https://vpncreative.net/
Digital Fundraising: 15 Popular
Crowdfunding Sites for Social Causes
Millions of dollars for basic necessities like food, clean water
and temporary shelter — as well as for longer-term projects like the
rebuilding of schools, hospitals and houses — can be raised through
relatively small amounts of money from individuals and entities across the
globe, mostly through the Internet. Crowdfunding, as the movement and
practice is known, leverages social media and web-based communication to
solicit small monetary contributions from a large group of people. The
emergence of more specialized crowdfunding websites suggests that this type
of digital fundraising is becoming more common in the development and
humanitarian community. Here are 15 popular crowdfunding sites for social
causes and development initiatives, based everywhere from From
https://www.devex.com/
Digital
Enablement - Bridging the Digital Divide to Connect People and Society In the future, more connections, sensors, devices, data, video, analytics
will lead to even more productive agriculture, healthier individuals,
stronger economies, thriving ecosystems, and efficient transport. A new
divide between things will accentuate a deeper divide between the people that
use them. Precisely because the digital divide is deepening between the
digitally enabled and the digitally excluded, it’s never been more urgent to
provide digital enablement. Increasing the value of that connection by
providing people and organizations with the relevant skills and services is
the second necessary step towards digital enablement. Without this the
digital divide will actually deepen. Huawei’s Global Connectivity Index finds
that a 20% increase in ICT investment will grow GDP of a country by 1%. The
ITU has shown that there is an important relationship between ICT development
and other development indicators in developing countries. There are a number
of barriers to digital enablement including availability, affordability,
attitude and ability, each of which needs to be addressed at three levels:
the network connection, the device, and the cloud application. From
http://www.huawei.com/
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Chinese tech companies are making good on President Xi Jinping's
promise that DIGITAL DIVIDE The Internet is of course integral to this initiative, with the
Fourth Industrial Revolution, based on greater digital data exchange, now
sweeping the world. Developing countries lag behind in Internet
infrastructure; they are weak links in a chain as international trade
increasingly moves online. In some countries, less than 7 percent of the population have Internet access compared with the global
average of 46 percent, rising to 80 percent in some developed countries,
according to Zhao Houlin, secretary of the International Telecommunication
Union. "The essence of the Internet is connectivity, and herein lies the value of information. We need better IT
infrastructure for information to travel smoothly," said Xi in his
opening address to the conference on Wednesday. "Only in this way can we
narrow the digital divide between countries, regions and communities and
ensure full flow of information." A TRULY WORLD WIDE WEB Chinese Internet companies are keen to capitalize on demand
abroad and help close these gaps. Alibaba has plans for a global e-commerce
system called E-WTO. Phone maker Xiaomi is studying the African market after
success in From http://www.news.cn/ From http://www.news.cn/ Home
Appliance Makers Turn "Internet Plus" into a Reality TCL, Changhong and Konka transform their operations by plugging
into new technologies Chinese home appliance makers are giving dimensions of
reality to the "Internet Plus" strategy championed by Premier Li
Keqiang. Slowly but surely, they are pressing ahead with the task of
integrating Internet technologies with their various operations. The result
of that strategy is consumers on the move can now control their television,
refrigerator and air conditioners at home through their mobile phones. In
other words, Internet technologies, which were hitherto used largely in
low-end manufacturing, are making medium and high-end manufacturing
intelligent as well, marking Chinese industry's emphasis on technological
innovation and upgradation. Electronics giant TCL Corporation is leading the
drive. Its 2014 strategy for transformation of its operations, titled
"Double Plus", is now taking the form of "Intelligence Plus
Internet" and "Products Plus Services", with focus on a new
business model and user involvement. "We have switched focus from
product management to user management. We provide intelligent products and
services using the Internet, big data and cloud computing," said Liang
Qichun, assistant president of TCL. The Guangdong-based company has
established an open, interactive system to guide and motivate prospective
users/buyers of its appliances to participate in the whole process of product
design, development, testing and evaluation. "We conduct big data analysis
of user needs, behaviors and habits through the establishment of a user
database to make personalized smart products," said Liang. Thus, TCL now
makes a range of smart products like TVs, set-top boxes, cell phones,
wearable devices, IMAX home theaters. Its smart home system is a solution to "manage
multi-terminals by using just one machine". Management and remote
control of a number of smart appliances is unified through an intelligent
app. The company has established a smart TV platform, Guangzhou Huan Network
Technology Co Ltd, which connects 32 million smart terminals. Through tie-ups
with Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd and video streaming website
iQiyi.com, it has built a TV ecosystem that offers videos, games and life
services. That's not all. Through another tie-up with the China Research
Institute of Film Science and Technology, it promotes GoLive TV, which moves
a cinema into the living room: users can watch a movie playing at a cinema in
real time. There are already more than four million users of GoLive. In
December of last year, TCL struck a strategic pact with LeTV Holdings Co Ltd
to jointly develop innovative products/services to leverage their combined
user base and supply chain resources. This emphasis on modern technology
seems to be having a positive impact on its sales. In the first three
quarters of 2015, TCL's revenue reached 74.11 billion yuan (11.6 billion U.S.
dollars), up 7.08 percent year-on-year. Net profit came in at 2.07 billion
yuan. "In future, we will continue to strengthen cross-border
cooperation and provide users with rich and differentiated content
experience," said Liang. TCL is also giving its modern manufacturing
methods a touch of "green". It aims to protect the environment by
reducing emissions. In 2009, it set up TCL-AOBO Environmental Protection and
Development Co Ltd in "Through the introduction of a top-class production line
and the use of advanced technology, we have established a recycling
industrial chain to safely process electronic waste in order to reduce
pollution and ensure comprehensive utilization of resources," said
Liang. About four million home appliances and electronic products have been
processed and recycled in 2014. TCL tied up with Internet search engine
company Baidu Inc to give its recycling drive an online dimension. Users need
to merely upload photographs of their electronic waste. TCL would then use
its networks of sales, service, logistics and specialized recycling, to
provide door-to-door recovery service. Shi Wanwen, TCL's senior
vice-president, said the company aims to build an effective waste appliance
recycling and processing platform. Towards that end, TCL upgraded its
overseas factories, including the production line in The CHiQ refrigerator can remind users about the expiry dates of
food on its shelves through image recognition technology which it accesses
via cloud computing. Similarly, the CHiQ air conditioner can detect the
temperature of human body and automatically adjust the ambient temperature.
For its part, Konka wants to transform itself into a platform for content,
apps and net-friendly hardwares from a product-maker. Through tie-ups with
partners, Konka is seeking to make its smart TVs capable of playing varied
content like games, shopping, health and educational videos. Wu Siyuan,
chairman of Konka Group, said in 2014 that "we make efforts to build
Konka into a hardware company which knows the most about Internet".
Zhang Yanbin, assistant director of All View Cloud, a Beijing-based
consultancy specializing in home appliances, said, "It (transformation
of manufacturing) is an inevitable trend, otherwise Chinese home appliance
enterprises will be phased out." Owing to the rising cost of human
resources, falling profits and fierce competition, Japanese electronics
giants such as Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Sharp have
exited the Chinese home appliance market gradually and turned to
business-to-business or B2B activities, construction, nuclear power, housing,
automobiles and Internet of vehicles. "Compared with their Japanese
counterparts, Chinese enterprises still have some advantages, including the
comparatively low manpower cost, the adoption of Internet in production, and
regularly updated technologies," said Zhang. He also said the home appliances industry is still very
promising as demand still exists, and the speed at which products are updated
is faster than before. "We should improve the quality of products by
means of intelligent manufacturing to rebuild the image of brands and enhance
the international influence of brands," said Zhang. Liang Zhenpeng, an
independent home appliances and IT analyst, said, "The Internet is just
a tool and an external factor to push the transformation." He said
Chinese manufacturers should focus on transformation of their operational
models spanning R&D and every stage of the production process.
From http://www.news.cn/ Internet Adds Spin to Life has been hard for Jin Yuhua and her husband. They moved
from "I have been to some illegal processing centers on the outskirts
of "The problem is the lack of raw materials, which is also a
problem for From http://www.news.cn/ 620
Mln Chinese Surf Internet via Cell Phone About 620 million Chinese, nearly half of the country's
population, had used mobile phones to access the Internet as of the end of
2015, an official report showed. The number of Chinese surfing the Internet
via phone increased by 63.03 million in 2015, accounting for 90.1 percent of
the total 688 million Internet users in the country, according to the report
released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) on Friday.
Mobile phones have become a major driver of growth in From http://www.chinagate.cn/
Microcredit
to Help in Pension Plans Zhuhai Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau has promised to provide microcredit for some poor landless
farmers who struggle to meet the supplementary payment requirement of pension
insurance. So far 11,099 landless people have applied to make the
supplementary payment of pension insurance and more than 10,000 people have
received the first-month's pension of 700 yuan each. However, some people
have doubts about the policy, and some people can't afford the supplementary
payment. Therefore, Zhuhai Municipal Human Resources and Social Security
Bureau decided to seek microcredit for applicants who meet the requirements.
"For people with serious economic difficulties and severe disabilities,
government subsidies will be introduced," stressed an official from
Zhuhai Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau. In another
development, enterprises face a shortage of manpower, especially technical
talents, mainly due to unpredictable demand, uncompetitive wages and high
requirements for talents. In this regard, Zhuhai Municipal Human Resources
and Social Security Bureau will continue to do research on the demand of the
human resource market and vigorously organize public job fairs. It's expected
that more than 40 non-profit job fairs will be held in the city. Besides, the
bureau plans to organize Zhuhai's key enterprises to go to From http://www.chinagate.cn/
From
http://www.koreaherald.com
LG
Uplus Develops Smart Parking System LG Uplus, From
http://www.koreaherald.com
More and more people are connecting to the Internet through
their smartphones instead of with their desktop computers. This trend is
shown in the recent "2015 Survey of Internet Usage" conducted by
the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the Korea Internet and
Security Agency. According to survey results, nearly every household has
Internet access and household members use smartphones to access the Internet
at home. Six out of 10 Internet users shop online through their smartphones,
and seven out of 10 people save or transfer money from their bank accounts
using a mobile phone banking app. More than 70% of Internet users in their
60s chat with their children and friends using instant messaging apps like
Kakao Talk or Line. In 2015, 98.8% of Korean households had Internet
access and smartphones made up the biggest share -- 78.3% -- of gadgets used
to go online at home. Nearly everyone in age groups between their teens and
40s used the Internet: 99.8% of teens, 99.9% of people in their 20s, 99.8% of
people in their 30s and 98.8% of people in their 40s. Though the ratio is not
as high as in younger age groups, 89.3% of people in their 50s and 59.6% of
people in their 60s used the Internet. Among users in their 60s, 72.3% used
instant messaging apps. The increase in Internet access through
smartphones was explicitly shown in terms of online shopping and banking.
Even though the majority of online shoppers (79.0%) still shopped using their
desktop computers, the rate over the past three years has steadily declined,
from 86.2% in 2013, to 81.4% in 2014 and to 79.0% in 2015. In the meantime,
online shopping using a smartphone has steadily increased during the same
time period, from 43.2% in 2013, to 58.6% in 2014 and to 67.8% in 2015. Also,
it was found that smartphones and tablets were used more for online banking
(76.3%) than traditional desktop computers (61.5%). The "2015
Survey of Internet Usage" surveyed 25,000 households nationwide from
Aug. 1 to Oct. 15, 2015. More specific data are available at the Ministry's
website or at via the KISA's Internet Statistics Information System
(isis.kisa.or.kr). From
http://www.korea.net
Gov’t
Informatization to Advance Wellness, Creative Economy The government will increase its investment in national
informatization projects in order to realize the current administration's
core visions of a creative economy and happiness for the people.
Informatization projects include, among other things, developing new
technologies in the information and communications technology (ICT)
sector. The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning announced its
implementation plan for national informatization in 2016 on Jan. 18. Under
the plan, the government will invest some KRW 5.384 trillion this year in a
total of 8,105 projects aimed at improving informatization across the
country. This is up 3.3 percent, or up KRW 1.71 trillion from last year’s KRW
5.294 trillion. By sector, the government has expanded investments in
new ICTs, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and big data.
It will inject KRW 135.6 billion into the IoT sector this year, a 96 percent
increase over last year’s KRW 69.2 billion. Investments in cloud computing
will rise to KRW 341.8 billion, up 76 percent from the previous year’s KRW
193.7 billion. The government’s investment in big data will jump to 145.3
billion in 2016, showing a 108 percent increase over last year’s KRW 69.8
billion. From
http://www.korea.net
LG CNS to
Build Bus Traffic Control Systems for Malaysia’s MRT LG CNS, the information technology solutions unit of LG Group,
said Thursday it has won a deal to install bus traffic control systems for From
http://www.koreaherald.com
LG Uplus
Starts High-Speed Internet Service in Network operator LG Uplus said Sunday that it had started an
Internet service that offers connection speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second
over cable in From
http://www.koreaherald.com
Telecom
Carriers to Offer Faster Tri-Band LTE Service from March The nation’s top three telecom carriers – SK Telecom, KT and LG
Uplus – plan to offer the world’s fastest tri-band LTE service from March
when updated handsets are launched. The breakthrough comes as they have
succeeded in applying the 256 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation or QAM
software technology that bundles more bits into the
spectrum being used. According to LG Uplus Tuesday, the application, the
first of its kind in the world, will enhance data transmission speeds and
network capacity by about 33 percent. The company said it has enabled
peak speeds of up to 400 megabits per second, which means the time taken to
download a 1 gigabyte movie will be reduced from 27 to 21 seconds. From
http://www.koreaherald.com
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The From
http://www.dealstreetasia.com/
SETTING up an information and communications technology (ICT)
community learning centre is proving a major boost for both students and villagers
in Saraburi's Kaeng Khoi district - despite the challenges in paying for it. However, Jakkrit admitted that maintaining an ICT centre can be
tricky. Most support or on-site maintenance services had expired last year,
while funding for Internet fees had dried up. Another burden was the cost of
replacing broken-computer gear. Other centres had to close down after their
computers were stolen, he said. Jakkrit recalled that before the ICT centre
was established 85 schoolchildren had to share hardware at a ratio of three
students per computer. As two
students had to watch while one classmate used the computer, it was no
surprise many lost interest in such courses. The Ministry of Science and
Technology set up this centre two years ago to give the local community
access to computers. Chanpong Wattanamuka, a 35-year-old local Chinese banquet
business owner, told The Nation he had learned about a computer years ago,
but had forgotten most of what he learnt. He joined a basic workshop in which
he learned how to make brochures and business cards. He said after that he
would compose his own menu of delicious dishes and attach a business card to
it. Narong Panjanukul, a
40-year-old Tha Tum Disaster Prevention and Mitigation volunteer, said it was
his first computer course. The knowledge would come in handy, he said, as
motorists passing through the area on a shortcut to Nakhon Ratchasima to
avoid the often congested From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
‘Grassroots
Internet Fund’ Still Unable to Expand Nationwide ONE of the government’s 200 New Year gifts was a free phone call
and free Wi-Fi access to all who wanted to send New Year messages between
December 30, 2015 and January 2, 2016. But, many in rural areas missed out on
this. USO has invested Bt1.5 billion to build USONet or telecentres at
250 schools, 377 communities and 40 other locations for the underprivileged
and disabled persons. USO also spent another Bt500 million in projects for
the physically challenged, such as the Digital Accessible Information System
(Daisy) for the Blind, which includes "talking libraries" and a
1414 hotline for Daisy users to listen to books being read on the phone. The
USO also launched the Thai Telecommunications Relay Service (TTRS) last
August in collaboration with the Universal Foundation for Persons with
Disabilities to facilitate people with hearing and talking disabilities to
communicate with others. TTRS also facilitates communication with public
offices through online interpreters. Some 180 TTRS public booths will be set
up nationwide by 2017. However, judging from the fact the USO has Bt20
billion in reserve, many are worried that it has only used Bt2 billion so far
and not achieved its target of expanding the "grassroots Internet"
access.USO Bureau director Wares Borvonsin said that since 2012, the fund has
collected about Bt23.216 billion, but things slowed down since the National
Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) took over. He said the Finance Ministry
also borrowed Bt14.3 billion from the fund on May 26, 2015 to repay a loan it
had taken for urgent water-management and road-transport projects. "The remaining Bt9 billion should be enough to propel an
all-access basic telecommunication service, but we just have to wait for an
approval from the government and the NCPO to resume work," Wares added.
KamolratIntaratat, chairperson of the Asia-Pacific Telecentre Network, said
the USO budget's key purpose is to create a balance in people's access to
telecommunications. She said that most countries collect fees of 3 to 5 per
cent from operators to implement projects that boost citizens' knowledge and
skills to use and access basic telecom infrastructure. "This is like
returning to society. The country is in an age of new media where people use
information communications technology [ICT] as part of their daily lives.
Hence, telecommunications network services like mobile phones, Wi-Fi and Internet
should not be limited to city dwellers or urban people, but should also cover
rural residents, the elderly, the disabled and ethnic minorities," she
said. She said many Thais still do not know about USO, and that was why it
should not be managed by a single agency or just the NBTC. Other groups
working with the underprivileged should also be allowed to participate, such
as the Social Development and Human Security Ministry and educational
institutes, to ensure the money is used to truly and effectively benefit all
groups of people, she said. From http://www.nationmultimedia.com/ Non-cash payment has gradually become a trend in From
http://vietnamnews.vn/
HN
to Install Cameras at Bus Stations, Monitor Traffic Laws As many as 40 surveillance cameras will be installed at bus
stations to assist authorities with traffic management, said a Ha Noi Police
official. Senior Lieutenant-colonel Nguyen Van Tong, deputy head of Ha Noi
Traffic Police Division, said the installation of cameras would help police
apprehend coaches that illegally pick up passengers at bus stops and issue
appropriate fines. The traffic police are to work with local police to patrol
bus stops during Tet (Lunar New Year), he said. Nguyen Tung Anh, director of
Ha Noi Bus Station Joint Stock Company, said the company had set up measures
to cope with the overcrowding of passengers at bus stations during Tet.
Meanwhile, plans have called for deploying 3,430 coaches per day to handle
the increasing number of passengers, which is expected to double, compared to
normal. Also, Ha Noi Railways Station authorities said the station intended
to add trains to assist in the movement of passengers at stations in the
city, especially on routes from Ha Noi to Thanh Hoa, Vinh, Lao Cai and Viet
Tri. From
http://vietnamnews.vn/
VN
Viet Nam needs a road map for full termination of second
generation network ( Pham Duc Long, general director of the Viet Nam Post and
Telecommunications Group (VNPT) said the group stopped investing in Analogue termination The capital has prepared infrastructure and is counting the
number of poor households to give them support in shifting from analogue TV
to digital.According to the requirement from the Steering Committee for
Digitising television plans, Ha Noi would stop the broadcast of analogue TV
on three channels of VTV6, H2 and VTC9 from the beginning of March.The
municipal People's Committee has asked relevant departments and agencies to
draw up plans to support all poor households having set-top boxes for the
digitalisation process.Statistics from the Department of Information and
Communications showed that Ha Noi has 34,409 poor households.It is estimated
that the city would use VND70 billion (US$3.1 million) to support poor
households to have set-top boxes for the switch to digitalisation of
television programmes. From
http://vietnamnews.vn/ Telecom,
ICT Firms Bring Agriculture Sector into Focus Many telecom and information and communication technology (ICT)
enterprises have prepared services and solutions targeting the agricultural
sector and farmers given mobile services market saturation. Mobile packages for farmers Telecommunications Service Corporation (VNPT-VinaPhone) has
introduced Nong thon xanh (Green rural areas) service to provide mobile
information for farmers, shortly after MobiFone launched a similar service in
December 2015. Viettel, one of the three largest telecom networks in ICT applications for farmers Aside from mobile packages, Viettel has deployed ICT
applications for the agricultural sector. Bui Quang Huy, deputy director of Viettel’s community solution
center, said that the enterprise has launched the website at nhanong.com.vn
to give information support to farmers and the agricultural sector. Each
month, Viettel posts revenue of around VND7 billion from ICT application
development for the sector. At present, Viettel is facing a lack of staff
knowledgeable of the agricultural industry. Having 56 million subscribers,
including 10 million farmers, Viettel plans telecom charge reductions or
exemptions for ICT applications and solutions, especially in the agricultural
sector, Huy said. Not only telecom firms but also ICT companies have launched
programs to seize the opportunities in the agricultural sector. Recently, FPT
Corporation has cooperated with its Japanese partner Fujitsu to launch ICT
solutions for agriculture in As part of their cooperation project, the FPT-Fujitsu Akisai
farm and vegetable factory was opened to develop modern agricultural
production models for application in the country based on Fujitsu’s
information technology (IT) solutions and experiences in agriculture. They
will apply the greenhouse and vegetable factory models to grow agricultural
products of high added value. FPT will organize a seminar on the models
applicable to From
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/
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The Chennai civic body has passed several resolutions relating
to additional parking spaces, modern bus shelters, solid waste management and
night shelters.With the condition of authorised parking spaces leaving a lot
to be desired, the Chennai Corporation Council decided to conduct e-auction
for 186 parking spaces in the city.The number of parking spaces managed by
TEXCO has come down from 143 to 66. As many as 77 parking spaces have been
found to be ‘not feasible’ owing to other infrastructure projects, such as
Metro Rail. The Chennai Metro Rail Limited and other departments are using
these parking spaces to implement their projects.The e-auction of new parking
spaces in roads such as Wall Tax Road, Ethiraj Salai, Harris Road, Egmore
High Road, Esplanade, Wallajah Salai and EVK Sampath Road is expected to
augment the revenue from parking lots and solve parking problems faced by
motorists in many areas. Despite Chennai City Traffic Police giving their nod
for a list of 353 new parking spaces on its roads, the Corporation’s field
officers found 114 of them to be infeasible. The central region covering
Thiru-Vi-Ka Nagar, Ambattur, Teynampet, Kodambakkam and Valasaravakkam has 87
spaces for commissioning parking lots. The north region will get 77 parking
lots. The south region with just 22 parking spaces has the least of them. The
Corporation will generate a revenue of Rs. 5.4 crore
per annum from the e-auction of parking lots. From http://egov.eletsonline.com
Growth of Internet
Slowed Down in 2015, Says UN Report Growth in Internet use has slowed down, posting 6.9 per cent growth
in 2015 against 7.4 per cent in 2014, says a United Nations report. According
to the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) 2015 Development Index
(IDI), although some 3.2 billion people are now online, representing 43.4 per
cent of the global population, the number still falls significantly short of
reaching the anticipated goal of 60 per cent by 2020. The number of Internet
users in developing countries has almost doubled in the past five years
(2010-2015), with two thirds of all people online now living in the
developing world. The number of mobile broadband subscriptions rose from 0.8
billion in 2010 to 3.5 billion in 2015, while the number of fixed broadband
subscriptions has reached 0.8 billion. From http://egov.eletsonline.com
The Delhi Government has recently launched a mobile app to
rescue homeless people. The users can take pictures and post those on the
app, after which rescue operation will be initiated. The Delhi Urban Shelter
Improvement Board (DUSIB) will automatically locate the person and the
nearest team will be sent. The users will have a list of shelters and can
inform about the closest shelter. The user will also be informed via email
and phone notification after the completion of a rescue operation. A total of
198 shelters have been created which have the capacity to accommodate 16,338
homeless people. Moreover, DUSIB has formed 23 rescue teams and a 24-hour
control room has been set up which will receive complaints on homeless people
as well as request for donations. From http://egov.eletsonline.com
IRCTC App Can Now Book
7200 Tickets Every Minute RCTC, the world’s largest eCommerce portal in From http://egov.eletsonline.com
WB
Govt to Set Up Innovation Centers for Farmers As part of its efforts to update farmers on farming schemes,
training and support, the West Bengal Government is working on a plan to set
up innovation centers in 19 districts. The pilot project is expected to be
launched in Burdwan. This information was shared by Pradip Mazumder, Advisor
on Agriculture and Allied Sectors to the Chief Minister of West Bengal at the
stakeholders’ meet organised coinciding with the second Krishi Unnayan Mela,
a three-day Agricultural Exhibition & Conference organised by CII in
association with Department of Agriculture, Government of West Bengal at the
Utsav Maidan. The meet, where senior government officials, banks, corporate
and major farm mechanisation companies came under one roof, turned out to be
a lively forum of brainstorming session for preparing a roadmap on how
farmers in the state can improve productivity. Subjects such as farm
mechanisation and the necessity of after sales support for the farmers from
the manufacturers, government subsidy and knowledge support for farmers for
better decision making on product purchase were also discussed. From
http://egov.eletsonline.com All Indian Railway
Contracts Online from Next Year
Prabhu also said that in the past the Indian Railways used to
take six years to issue a tender for a project after it's announcement,
but added that such an extensive time lag was a thing
of the past. "My colleagues in the Railway Board tell me that earlier
when a project was announced, it would take six years for a tender to be
issued... The time gap has been reduced to six months. My target is to reduce
it even further and make it completely transparent," Prabhu said.
Besides, in a bid to modernise, the railways ministry was also pushing for a
roll out of new, modern coaches which would change the way in which a typical
journey by Indian Railways was often perceived, Prabhu said. "We have
already rolled out first few coaches. But it will take time because there are
thousands of coaches which need to be renovated and re-fitted. Once that is
done, people will experience a different type of travel experience when they
travel by Indian Railways," Prabhu said. The bi-weekly Rajdhani Express,
which was flagged off by Prabhu, along with Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant
Parsekar will depart Margao Railway station at 10: From http://www.siliconindia.com
Andhra
Govt Creating Andhra Pradesh
Government has launched a project to introduce overhead optic fibre cable
(OFC) network for cable TV and internet connections, the first-ever by any
state in the country. The proposed length of the OFC network is be about From http://egov.eletsonline.com Google,
Twitter to Provide Real-Time Info on The Government of Delhi has joined hands with Google and Twitter
to provide live information on bus services, their routes and timings during
the odd-even formula implementation in From
http://egov.eletsonline.com Smart Energy for
Building Smart Cities On the verge of becoming a global city Technology to improve energy Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) is producing Euro Setting up the solar projects When we are talking about the Smart Cities, I would like to talk
about the renewal aspect of the smart energy because it’s a real smart
energy. About three-four years back when renewable energy production was almost
zero in Madhya Pradesh, there was a huge advertisement of the successful
inauguration of The green city component For any city to be declared Sustainability in spotlight With the initiative undertaken by the Government of India to
make Smart Cities, a lot of work will be done in the country and we have a
huge task ahead of us. The pace of migration from rural parts to urban ones
is quite fast and by Smart Gram Smart Panchayat If you look at the whole infrastructure of a city, the villagers
and panchayats are the feeders of the Smart Cities as we are going forward.
But if one starts neglecting these, then there will be a lot of problems to
be faced. So, to overcome this problem, we have given a slogan called ‘Smart
Gram Smart Panchayat,’ which will be carried forward. It is divided into four
parts—the first is having a top-quality infrastructure, the second involves
delivery of services through the software and system of operations. The third
is the livelihood, which quite relates to the From
http://egov.eletsonline.com
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Mobile Eye Clinic, one of the unique social projects conducted
by Azercell Telecom, leading company of mobile market in From http://www.azernews.az/ Application for the Azerbaijani citizenship will become easier as
the State Migration Service has introduced electronic registration of
documents. The panel of the State Migration Service has approved the
administrative regulations on the admission of applications and documents in
connection with the Azerbaijani citizenship. Applications and documents in
connection with acquiring citizenship of Other necessary documents include a reference from the place of
residence on family composition, receipt for paid state duty, copy of the
permission card for permanent residence in the From http://www.azernews.az/ Customs
Declaration Gets Digital Electronic signature will be used while approving customs
declaration in The traditional method of declaration of goods involves the use
of hard copy, which does not ensure efficiency. Today, From http://www.azernews.az/ From http://en.trend.az/ SSPF
Switching to Online Targeted Social Assistance From http://www.azernews.az/ The ISP LLC "Super iMAX" (Trademark EVO+) together
with JSC "Toshshahartranshizmat" launched the initiative to
organize access to the Internet through Wi-Fi on public transport in From http://technologies.uzreport.uz/ |
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There is a
dark side to digital disruption and the growth of ‘sharing economy’ business
models such as Uber, according to Transport Workers Union (TWU) national secretary
Tony Sheldon. In the case of Uber not only is the income of taxi drivers
being eaten into but the service’s contractors are themselves often driving
part-time in order to supplement the wages of their full-time job, the union
leader said today. While new business models and emerging technologies such
as 3D printing and artificial intelligence can deliver significant
productivity gains, but this isn’t necessarily reflected in the wages and
working conditions of employees. “This is the great challenge of digital
disruption – how do we capture the benefits of higher productivity, higher
income and less working time but avoid the worsening inequality that previous
technology revolutions have wrought?” Sheldon said in remarks prepared for an
event on digital disruption held by think tank PerCapita. The choices
are either a form of “digital Work Choices” — referring to the wildly
unpopular industrial relations program pursued by the Howard government — or
“harnessing innovation in a way that spreads prosperity”. “Perhaps the most
important step is to balance market power across society – across employees,
contractors, small business and big business – and to retain a strong safety
net for those displaced by technology,” Sheldon said. “This requires not just
a set of minimum rights, but the renewed application of community values
across markets.Individual rights must be balanced with community ones. Much
of our public debate focuses on the freedoms of businesses to organise as
they see fit, or the freedoms of self-employed contractors to negotiate their
own conditions.But we mustn’t forget the freedoms of workers to enjoy kids’
birthday parties, or local footy grand finals, or school working bees.” There
is a need for Australia to maintain a strong social net, the unionist said,
including a decent pension, liveable Newstart payments, universal free
healthcare and comprehensive superannuation policies to help workers
accumulate savings. Paying for
that safety net requires a “reasonable contribution on the part of the
companies that are profiting so much from the digital revolution,” Sheldon
said. “In the worst cases, these companies and their apps are ripping through
the economy while ripping communities apart.Disruptive firms need to be
accountable for the labour markets and supply chains they create, and the
impact of these on communities.” Sheldon cited as an example Google’s payment
of $11.7 million in company tax while booking over $2 billion of income
through advertising in From http://www.computerworld.com.au
IA Wants a
Lift in Our Efforts to Enable a 'Digital' Internet “Much is
being made of the lessons we can learn from countries such as “We can
continue to debate technology choices, but we cannot wait any longer to get
Australians connected. History will ultimately reveal the best Internet
delivery technology for a vast country like ours. However, history will also
certainly judge us poorly if we lag behind in the next era of global
innovation because we failed to provide an open and accessible Internet
underpinned by ubiquitous high speed broadband,” Patton warns. At the United
Nations this week, Internet Society’s Kathy Brown called for a sharper global
focus on Development and Human Rights in order to build a “people-centred
Information Society and to put the building blocks in place to continue to
“champion these two crucial imperatives”. With 80,000 members, 145
organiations and 112 volunteer Chapters in 92 countries, Brown said the
Internet Society – and the recent global World Summit on the Information
Society – acknowledged that there is only one way to build the Internet
future – “and that is by working together”. Brown told the UN General
Assembly that the Internet Society “stands ready to join with all of you -
and with all stakeholders around the world” - to reach a common vision of an
“open, global, trusted Internet for everyone, everywhere”. From http://www.itwire.com
Concerns
Remain over Data Retention Funding Shortfall Internet The average
cost per customer of the scheme over a decade would equate to between $1.83 and
$6.12 per customer per year, the study found. The data retention grants
program will operate over three years and be administered Attorney-General’s
Department. Guidelines (PDF) for the grants scheme issued by the department
state that the program “aims to address smaller providers’ greater need for
financial assistance and to take into account the differentiated impact of
data retention across various segments of the telecommunications industry”.
Applications for funding must include a telco’s turnover, the number and type
of services it offers that are covered by the data retention regime, the
number of subscribers, the total data storage capacity needed to comply with
the scheme, and details of the activities related to achieving technical
capability to comply with its data retention obligations. Funds available to
individual businesses will be determined by a score that takes into account
the size of the business (with smaller scale businesses receiving a higher
score) and a figure dubbed the ‘typical implementation impact’ (taking into
account the number of subscribers, storage requirements, eligible services
and annual turnover). The guidelines state that the government may make
public the funding given to individual applicants. From http://www.computerworld.com.au
Government
Mulls Expanded Draft
amendments to Australian copyright law unveiled late last year by the government
would expand the ‘safe harbour’ scheme that limits the liability of Internet
service providers for copyright infringement. Currently the Copyright Act
1968 contains a safe harbour scheme that means, providing certain conditions
are met (such as removing access to copyright material when requested), an
ISP can’t be liable for damages if a customer employs its services to
infringe copyright. Beyond providing Internet access the relevant section of
the act covers a number of other activities, such as providing an online
storage service that may be employed by a customer to store pirated material.
However, the provisions only apply to carriage service providers, defined as
telcos and ISPs that supply network services to the public; the measures exclude,
for example, universities that supply Internet access to their students and
purely online service providers such as search engines or cloud storage
providers. The exposure draft of a bill that amends the Copyright Act would
replace ‘carriage service provider’ with 'service provider'. The new term
would include providers of network access and online services. Extending “It is
appropriate to proceed with the amendments contained in the Bill before the
Commission reports as those amendments simplify the operation of the Act and
are likely to be consistent with the recommendations (if any) made by the
Commission in relation to limitations and exceptions to copyright,” the
document states. The Productivity Commission expects to issue its draft
report in March or April this year. The Department of Communications is
seeking submissions on the exposure draft bill until 12 February. From http://www.computerworld.com.au
IT Bounces
Back but Demand for Executives Still Uncertain The
employment outlook for senior executives in the IT sector remains uncertain
as the 2016 business year gets into stride. While recovering to some extent
from its low point in June last year, demand for executives in IT is mostly
project-based, making the year ahead one of uncertainty. According to the
latest Executive Demand Index from EL Consult, the IT sector has bounced back
from its losses in demand from 2015, but that’s off a very low base and the
outlook for the next 12-months is a mixed bag. EL Consult managing director
Grant Montgomery says in the IT sector companies are now looking for
efficiency dividends, particularly through the use of internet apps and
associated B There’s some
reason for cautious optimism in the IT sector, which has totally reversed the
losses it made in October, rising 19% compared with the prior month to allow
it to have bounced almost totally from its low point in June 2015. According
to “For
example, in the notes from its latest meeting the Reserve Bank board said the
global economy was expanding at a ‘moderate’ pace, the volatility in
financial markets had ‘abated’. The level of employment growth is ‘stronger’
and a low level of inflation. If we do get a Christmas rally, then Glenn
Stevens, the Governor of the Reserve Bank, would have to be labelled one of
the helper Christmas elves.” In this latest December report, EL says across
the market sectors, Engineering bounced back from its recent losses to record
the largest gain, “thanks largely to improvements in print-based advertising”.
“Engineering has had a significant movement, taking back all of its losses of
the previous month and then moving ahead,” “Overall, From http://www.itwire.com
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AFRICA:
Morocco has witnessed an unprecedented event as citizens of all
ages decided to shut down their phones last weekend, in an unparalleled wave of
discontent after a decision by the National Telecommunications Regulatory
Agency (well known under its French acronym ANRT) aimed at blocking all
software that use Voice over IP (VoIP) technology in the kingdom. The ANRT
stated that the reason behind the ban relates to a lack of accreditation for
some leading VoIP technology services like WhatsApp, Skype and Viber,
pointing to article 1 of ANRT/DG/ 04-04, which deals with the status of IP
telephony in On Facebook, at the time of writing, his video calling for the
boycott had received more than 493 000 views and 19,238 shares. “Internet
belongs to everyone and it is free. Nobody has the right to ban it,” Amine
said. “If they ban VoIP today, I wonder what new decisions they will take
tomorrow?” Amine wondered, calling for young Moroccans to join the boycott
and make their voices heard. The aftermath of the video had a tsunami-like
effect. The boycott call grew louder as social media influencers like
Skizofrene, Marouane Lamharzi Alaoui, Mustapah Swinga and others subscribed
to Amine’s initiative, with most of them sharing dozens of videos and posts
to initiate people to join the movement, all reiterating what would be the
movement’s silver bullet emblem: “Internet is a free space that should never
be censored.” From a technical perspective, other arguments were advanced as
well in a bid to decipher the ban. Moroccan tech expert Rachid Jankari gave
an interview with Al Jazeera to cast the spotlight on the technical aspect behind
the decision. The man believes that “the authorities resorted to block such
applications due to Moroccans’ increasing usage of VoIP services to the
detriment of normal phone calls, incurring huge losses in the meantime to
telecom companies. “With more and more Moroccans resorting to the use of VoIP, the
country’s main servers experience a huge pressure due to the high traffic
such technology needs,” Jankari noted. Indeed this may hold true if we take
into consideration the rocketing amount of From
http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/
On 15 December 2015, the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of
the European Union reached an informal agreement in trialogues with the
European Parliament on the 'Data Protection' Package which will set out new
European rules on privacy in the digital age. The agreement reached by the
Luxembourg Presidency will have to be confirmed at the level of the Council
of the EU by the 28 Member States, and will be addressed by a Coreper meeting
to be held before 21 December 2015. The 'Data Protection' Package, under
negotiation since the European Commission put forward the proposal in January
2012, includes a Regulation establishing the general framework for the
protection of personal data and a Directive on the protection of personal
data processed for the purpose of law enforcement. Following the adoption of general approach on the Regulation in
the JHA Council of June 2015 and the adoption of a general approach on the
Directive in the JHA Council of October 2015, the co-legislators ─ the
European Parliament and Council of the European Union acting under the
Luxembourg Presidency ─ have been engaged in intense negotiations in order to
reach an agreement before the end of 2015. The Regulation: New rules adapted to the digital age The work carried out during the trialogues since June 2015 on
the Regulation has made it possible to produce a balanced text. While
individuals will benefit from enhanced control over their personal data,
companies will also see their needs with regard to the processing of data
taken into account in order to avoid any obstacles to economic development in
the digital age. Xavier Bettel, New elements of the agreement on the Regulation: A strengthening of the rights of citizens: for example, the
possibility of contesting targeted online advertising and the possibility of
transferring personal data from one online service to another (social
networks, for example); A reduced administrative burden for companies: for example, the
requirement of prior notification of a supervisory authority is abolished and
obligations imposed on companies are adjusted on the basis of the potential
threat to privacy which may be caused by the activities of the company in
question; Enhanced cooperation between the national authorities of the 28
Member States in order to apply a single set of rules: for example, companies
active in several European markets should no longer be subject to conflicting
decisions; Harmonised rules within the European Union applicable to all
actors operating in the European Union: the same level of protection will be
applicable for all European citizens, even if their personal data is processed
by companies established outside of the European Union. A two-year timescale
for the application of the Regulation is provided for from its entry into
force. The Directive: Increased exchange of data between police and
judicial authorities The Luxembourg Presidency can also claim to have successfully
dealt with two challenges with regard to the Directive: following the general
approach adopted in the JHA Council of October, the conclusion of the case
during the trialogues demonstrates the priority accorded to it by the
Luxembourg Presidency. The Directive seeks to guarantee increased protection
of personal data and to facilitate the exchange of data between law
enforcement authorities within the European Union. New elements of the agreement on the Directive: The Directive will apply to the cross-border processing of
personal data, as well as to the processing of personal data by police and
judicial authorities at strictly national level. Accordingly, police and
judicial authorities should no longer apply different rules according to the
origin of the personal data. Transferring personal data from competent
authorities to private entities will be possible under specific conditions.
It constitutes a legal framework that will enable police authorities to take
swift action in cases of a terrorist attack or other emergencies. As well as
protecting the rights of individuals, the Directive makes it possible for
police authorities to limit both the information held in on the data and
access to the processed data. The framework allows for police authorities to
neither confirm nor deny whether they are in possession of personal data in
order to avoid compromising ongoing investigations. From
http://www.eu2015lu.eu/
Cybersecurity
Leaders Submit EU Digital Security Measures The European Cybersecurity Industry Leaders (ECIL) workgroup has
presented a report to European Commissioner for the Digital Economy Gunther
Oettinger focusing on the need to make the EU more trustworthy and digitally
secure. The report includes a set of recommendations to strengthen the
continent’s cybersecurity industry, including the need to create a level
playing field within From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
EU Data Protection
Regulation: New Legal Considerations for Security Professionals How the upcoming EU data protection regulation is forcing
businesses to change. The upcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation
means all businesses risk massive fines and potential compensation sanctions
should they fail to protect customer and employee personal identifiable
information. Law firms are assessing requirements and the pressure will be on
your organisation to be prepared. In this Webinar, you will learn more about: The present state of the EU General Data Protection Regulation The upcoming changes and what they mean to you What you can do to best prepare for the new legislation From
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/
A 35-year-old citizen of According to the indictment, Mihailovski operated a credit card
payment processing company called Mystique Enterprises LTD, doing business as
PSBILL. Mihailovski and his
company were part of an international cybercrime ring that netted $71 million
by infecting victims’ computers with “scareware” and selling rogue antivirus
software that was supposed to secure victims’ computers but was, in fact,
useless. The prosecution of Mihailovski is part of Operation Trident
Tribunal, a coordinated enforcement action targeting international cybercrime
rings that caused more than $71 million in total losses to more than one
million computer users through the sale of fraudulent computer security
software known as “scareware.”
Scareware is malicious software that poses as legitimate computer
security software and purports to detect a variety of threats on the affected
computer that do not actually exist.
Users are then informed they must purchase what they are told is
anti-virus software in order to repair their computers. The users are then barraged with
aggressive and disruptive notifications until they supply their credit card
number and pay for the “anti-virus” product, which is, in fact, fake,
according to the news release. The scareware scheme used a variety of ruses to trick consumers
into unknowingly infecting their computers with the malicious scareware
products, including web pages featuring fake computer scans. Once the scareware was downloaded,
victims were notified that their computers were infected with a range of
malicious software, such as viruses and Trojans and badgered into purchasing
the fake antivirus software to resolve the non-existent problem at a cost of
up to $129. An estimated 960,000
users were victimized by this scareware scheme, leading to $71 million in
actual losses. Mihailovski is the second foreign national prosecuted in the
scheme. In December 2012, Mikael
Patrick Sallnert, 40, a citizen of Critical assistance in the investigation was provided by the
Security Service of Ukraine, German Federal Criminal Police, Netherlands National
High-Tech Crime Unit, London Metropolitan Police, Latvian State Police,
Lithuanian Criminal Police Bureau,
Swedish National Police Cyber Unit, French Police Judiciare, Royal
Canadian Mounted Police, Romania’s Directorate for Combating Organized Crime,
Cyprus National Police in cooperation with the Unit for Combating Money
Laundering, the Danish National Police, and the Austrian Federal Ministry of
Justice. To avoid falling victim to a scareware scheme, computer users should
avoid purchasing computer security products that use unsolicited “free
computer scans” to sell their products.
It is also important for users to protect their computers by
maintaining an updated operating system and using legitimate, up-to-date
antivirus software, which can detect and remove fraudulent scareware
products. Computer users who think they have been victimized by scareware
should file a complaint with the FBI’s From
http://www.tukwilareporter.com/
Almost 70 percent of Germans are worried about the protection of
their personal data on the internet. They are mainly afraid of financial loss
(65%), identity theft (53%) and intrusion into their privacy (48%), according
to the GfK study 'Data & Protection 2015/2016'. Concerns have not
decreased compared with the same study from two years ago. It showed a
significant increase in fear of the misuse of data for planning terrorist
attacks (19.6%). The amount of respondents who have been victims of data
misuse has gone up from 7 percent to 9 percent. These people are generally
more scared, with 95.2 percent said they feared data
misuse. Those who have been affected do not refrain from online services more
than others but they do tend to take more safeguarding measures, such as
using more complicated passwords. They also make sure not to save their
passwords on the hard drive, and tend to get email addresses only for the use
of registrations or games. More than two thirds of German internet users only
accept a certain degree of surveillance on the internet and restricted data
protection, compared with only half of them in 2013. However, only one in
four respondents agrees with the use of data for
advertising when using free online services, and only one in three wants
customised advertising. GfK said 32 percent of respondents think that the
government does enough to protect its citizens' data, compared with 28
percent in 2013. Internet users have the most trust in doctors (88%), small
retailers (83%) and health insurers (77%) with the use of their personal
data. The least trust is given to providers of internet services from the From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
The government of Any legislative amendments required by the EU directive on
network and information security, which is currently being discussed, will be
implemented as part of the strategy. The Directive requires each EU state to
draw up a national strategy to achieve and maintain a common high level of
security of network and information systems. The working group was chaired by
Olli-Pekka Rantala, Director-General of the Data Department at the Ministry
of Transport and Communications. The group included representatives from a
broad spectrum of businesses and organisations specialising in corporate
information security risk management. The proposal for the Information
Security Strategy will be submitted to the government for adoption. From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
The Poppy Wood, chief of staff at Cyber London, explained that
although the first phase of the Early Stage Accelerator will take place in The government claim UK cybersecurity is currently worth ￡17.6bn , having grown
an impressive 70% since 2013 – employing around 100,000 people. Culture,
media and sport secretary, John Whittingdale, praised the From
http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/
NORTH
AMERICA: Twelve months ago when I became ITWorldCanada.com’s contributing
writer on cybersecurity the state of things was pretty bleak: 2014 marked
another record year of data breaches, there was no miracle technology that
would seal the cracks in an enterprise and every expert was predicting
attackers would find new ways to get around defences. As I look ahead to 2016
every expert I talk to says attacks will continue to find new ways of getting
around defences, there’s no miracle technology coming that will seal the
cracks in an enterprise and it will probably be another record year of data
breaches. In the face of that what’s a CISO to do? For one thing, continue sealing the cracks in the enterprise the
old-fashioned way: Security awareness training, using two-factor
authentication wherever possible, network segmentation, limiting the number
of people with administration privileges and access to sensitive data,
patching, increase spending on intrusion detection and prevention (including
analytics), be part of a threat intelligence (either formally by buying a
service, or informally with colleagues) and solid backup and restore. On top
of that, have a tested disaster recovery plan. In addition, be aware of
certain trends experts say will mark 2016 as different from the year before.
Here’s some of them: –The evolution of technology means IT departments more
than ever have to understand what business units want, and then propose
secure ways of doing it, says Bob Hansmann, director of security analysis and
strategy Ratheon Websense security labs. Whether it’s the Internet of Things or new mobile payment
systems the enterprise is being exposed to new risks daily. CISOs have to be
prepared. “IT needs to start offering options,” he said. Unfortunately,
“they’ve become the department of no for the past few years” which in some
eyes makes them irrelevant. “Too many organizations assume (supplying)
vendors have security right,” he said. For example, there’s no such thing as
‘the cloud:’ There’s a server somewhere. “I need to make sure if I’m a
responsible IT team that the cloud services I’m sending sensitive data
through have done a proper job with security.” –He also warns CISOs whose
firms have or are about to sign on for cyber insurance that insurers will
dictate some of their strategies. Insurance companies will refuse to pay for
breaches caused by ineffective security practices, Websense warns. To support
this note that in its predictions Forrester Research pointed out that in one
unresolved case, a cyberinsurer has denied a claim where spearphished
credentials were used to facilitate fraud, arguing that it was an authorized
system user who initiated a money transfer; –New Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) will be used in active
spam and other malicious campaigns, Websense believes. The number of gTLDs as
of November exceeded 700 domains, and about 1,900 more are in the waiting
list. As new top-line domains emerge, they will be rapidly colonized by
attackers well before legitimate users. Taking advantage of domain confusion,
criminals and nation-state attackers will create highly effective social
engineering lures to steer unsuspecting users toward malware and data theft.
–The structure of the Internet is aging, meaning forgotten and ongoing
maintenance will become a major problem for defenders, says Websense. That
includes organizations with out of date certificates, old and broken javascript
versions and new applications built on recycled code with old vulnerabilities
(think Heartbleed). –A number of experts are warning that attackers are
increasingly being drawn to the potential of exploiting the so-called
Internet of Things. “Hackers look for newer technologies and ways to exploit
vulnerabilities where people aren’t thinking about security as much as they
are on a Windows device,” pointed out Doug Cooke, director of sales
engineering for Intel Security in From
http://www.itworldcanada.com/
Whether it’s sharing images during a national emergency, a
building’s blueprints to firefighters or the criminal history of a driver
behind a certain license plate, the ability to send and receive information
during an emergency — and do it in a way that first responders across the
country can access — is an invaluable resource in need of access. But this
week, the minds behind the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) took
a major step toward reaching that goal when it issued a Request for Proposals
for the nationwide public safety broadband network to “modernize
communications for first responders and other public safety personnel across
the This makes FirstNet the first high-speed, nationwide wireless
broadband network dedicated to public safety. Although FirstNet is housed in
the Department of Commerce, it operates as an independent entity and receives
its funding directly from Congress. “We worked with public safety across the
country and we’ve done consultations in states and territories all across the
country to receive feedback,” Kennedy said. “That has been built into this
RFP. We wanted to make sure these objectives meet the needs of all public
safety; in different states, different territories, different
needs for police, fire and emergency medical services.” Kennedy said the
current plan is to have the spectrum clear and ready to go by the contract
award time. Questions and capability statements are due Feb. 12 through March
17, with RFPs due April 29. The contract structure would likely be five-year
renewals leading up to a 20-year time frame, Kennedy said. That allows for an
assurance on good performance but also long-term certainty for return on
investment. Kennedy said he expects proposals to be backed by group efforts
since the RFP is structured as “one nationwide approach.” “We would expect
folks to team together so if you have hardware providers and software
providers and other folks that are looking at covered leasing agreements to
provide network services, that they would all come together as a team to go
ahead and put a proposal in together,” Kennedy said. “It’s very likely to be
coalitions that come together to do that, or some large companies that bring
some key teammates to the table.” Kennedy said the RFP asks for offers “that
will allow us to meet the 16 key objectives of public safety and provide
broadband services that include video, voice and data.” Those objectives,
according to the RFP, range from financial sustainability to cybersecurity to
service capacity and life cycle innovation. “[We’re] looking to make sure we are meeting the needs of
cybersecurity for public safety,” Kennedy said. “These kinds of objectives
across the board will entail, at the end of the day, having a critical
mission network that provides the kind of broadband services that police officers, firefighters, paramedics and EMTs
will utilize every single day in their daily operations as well big
emergencies.” Kennedy said FirstNet is using international commercial
standards from the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which is what
most commercial cellular networks use today. “There will actually be the
ability for commercial users through other providers to be on the network,
but they will always have the ability for public safety to prioritize their traffic
and preempt any traffic in a … national emergency, to have a seamless public
safety experience on that network,” Kennedy said. “That’s something that has
been missing. I think we’ll really give the experience to public safety that
they’re looking for through that priority and preemption.” From
http://federalnewsradio.com/
10
Cybersecurity Issues to Expect in 2016 (Industry Perspective) Micro-segmentation defense, attacks by rogue intelligence
officers and quantum encryption investment are among many things to keep an
eye on in 2016. With attacks on organizations ranging from the 1. MORE SECURITY LEADERS WILL ADMIT THAT CURRENT SECURITY
TRAJECTORIES ARE FAILING, AND LOOK AT NEW STRATEGIES AND METHODS WITH MORE
REALISTIC ODDS OF SUCCESS. I’ve said it, RSA President Amit Yoran said it and more chief
information security officers (CISOs) will be saying it in 2016: The security
industry has failed. Since enterprises have transformed beyond four walls to
embrace mobile, cloud, the Internet of Things (IoT) and integrated supply
chains, they will begin to look for different ways to address security in
these new environments. As Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing
over and over again and expecting different results.” And more leading CISOs
in government and commercial enterprises will stop pretending that spending
more money on yesterday’s ineffective technology will, this year, yield
different results. 2. YEAR OF THE MICROS: IN 2016, MICRO-SEGMENTATION,
MICRO-VIRTUALIZATION, MICRO-PRIVILEGES WILL UNITE TO CHANGE THE GAME. Organizations often use IT segmentation to ensure that a
break-in to one segment of an enterprise won’t affect the security of the
other segments. It’s a strong premise, but its execution has failed over the
years. Early attempts like “air gaps,” which physically separated networks
into different buildings or rooms, proved wildly expensive. Firewalls and
virtual local area networks (VLANs) followed, but these are complex to manage
and have high error rates. In 2016, we'll see the adoption of new approaches
that work better in today’s evolved environments. Micro-segmentation is the
future. It allows enterprise managers to easily and quickly divide physical
networks into thousands of logical micro-networks without the historic
security management overhead. In 2016, enterprises will look to
micro-segmentation as a way to take back control of the enterprise network
without having to deal with firewall rules, outdated applications, remote
users, cloud-based services and third parties that all have become attack
vectors in today’s world. Companies up and down Highway Companies like Bromium are leading the way in
micro-virtualization. They’re taking the concept of “sandboxing” one step
beyond separating programs to launch virtual machines that surf the Web for
you with hardware isolating any incoming malware. The micro-privileges
concept says that every employee within an organization should have the least
amount of privilege required to do their jobs, particularly at the top. This
means that the higher you are in an organization, the less privilege you
would have, because the risk of attack is so high. All three “micros” will
become easy to deploy and operate in 2016, and will work together to start
changing the playing field advantage back to the good guys. 3. ROGUE INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS WILL BECOME A SIGNIFICANT THREAT
CATEGORY WHEN EMPLOYEES USE GOVERNMENT-OWNED SPY CAPABILITIES FOR THEIR OWN
PURPOSES. Many state-sponsored attacks attributed to governments worldwide
have actually been executed by government employees who were motivated by their
own ideological issues — and did not have government authorization. In 2016,
rogue intelligence officers will emerge as a separate category that business
and government organizations will need to monitor and control in a different
way than they would a state-sponsored attack. 4. BOARDS WILL TAKE CHARGE OF SECURITY, WITH CLEAR PROACTIVE
DIRECTION. Security is no longer a technology issue,
it’s a business issue that requires prioritization from the top down. This is
why the security function will evolve and no longer report solely to the CIO.
In 2016, boards will start to care and take real action so that cybersecurity
expertise is a requirement across the C-suite. 5. XP EVERYWHERE WILL COME BACK TO BITE Support for Windows XP ended in early 2014, and security updates
to users around the world ceased. However, XP still supports a multitude of
critical systems – think ATMs, government networks, hospital devices, and
workstations for electric, gas and water utilities — making them vulnerable to
hackers. This makes a significant attack in 2016 as a direct result of “XP
everywhere" as not only possible, but probable. 6. CYBER MEETS KINETIC … AND THAT COULD BE FATAL. Until now, the worst thing that could happen to a machine under
cyberattack would be “the blue screen of death.” Now, however, attackers can
control the machines, which means they can crash
your car, stop your heart or blow up public infrastructure. When cyber starts
to meet kinetic, the issue escalates beyond data loss and reputation
management to physical destruction and even death. We could very well see the
real-world results of this in 2016 as digital and physical worlds collide and
are targeted by state-sponsored conflicts and stateless terrorists. 7. CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE COMES UNDER WIDER ATTACK. When critical infrastructures like financial systems and
utilities fail, we all suffer. Because it is owned by private companies,
protecting every aspect of 8. RANSOMWARE MOVES FROM HOME TO BUSINESS. You’ve heard of ransomware: a malware attack that blocks a
user’s access to digital property — essentially holding it hostage — until a
certain amount of money is paid through an online payment method like Bitcoin
to retrieve the lost data. It’s a common and successful scam targeted at
individuals who find it easier to pay up than get help. Next year, these
types of attacks will also be aimed at the enterprise. I predict that
companies will have data encrypted under ransomware to the tune of millions
of dollars. 9. EMERGING SECURITY TECHNOLOGY WILL DISRUPT MANY HISTORICALLY
DOMINANT BRANDS IN THE MARKET. The companies we know and love from the security history books
will be overtaken by emerging security brands that are doing things in a
different way. In the next 12 months, new players that think and act
differently — and enable the enterprise to do the same — will begin to take
market-share from vendors that continue to push yesterday’s technologies. 10. 2016 WILL BE A YEAR OF MASSIVE RAMP-UP IN THE ARMS RACE
AROUND QUANTUM ENCRYPTION. All security is currently based on encryption, i.e., the
inability of modern computers to calculate a very long key in a reasonable
amount of time. But with governments and Google hot on the quantum trail,
soon quantum computers will be able to break down encryption quickly, and
we’ll need a completely new security model. Enter quantum encryption, which
is designed to resist this enormous new computing power. In 2016, there will
be an increase in funding and R&D investment to develop quantum
encryption as a way to resist the quantum computers of the near future. From
http://www.govtech.com/
Cybercrime
Is Booming and the Internet of Things Will Just Make Things Worse Hackers are getting better and businesses are increasingly at
risk, according to a new report from global security consultants PwC.
Worryingly for corporate digital security chiefs, this problem is expected to
get worse as the Internet of Things gains in popularity. Here’s how bad
corporate cybercrime is right now: The number of detected security incidents
climbed 38 percent in 2015 compared to a year earlier, according to PwC, and
has been growing at a steady double-digit clip over the last five years. The
total number of incidents captured in the survey now stands at 59 million,
although the true figure is likely to be much higher. “The numbers have
become numbing … prevention and detection methods have proved largely
ineffective,” says the PwC report. These digital break-ins cost the global
economy somewhere between $375 to $575 billion a year, according to a 2014
study (PDF) by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Breaches originating from cloud-connected
devices devices jumped by 152 percent in 2015 compared to a year earlier, PwC
says. That’s hacking of things like wearables, “smart” lighting
systems and other embedded sensors in the corporate environment. And over the
next five years, the world of such devices, or
“Internet of Things” is expected to grow from 13 billion devices to 30
billion, according to research firm IDC. That means there will be a lot more
devices to hack. The highly vulnerable nature of current IoT devices is the
subject of a forthcoming report by Spanish carrier Telefónica. John Moor, an
author of the report and director of the IoT Security Foundation, tells
Quartz that insufficient regulatory oversight and safety standards from
manufacturers are some of the reasons why IoT will be hacker-prone. Moor says
websites like Shodan, a search engine for unsecured webcams connected to the
Internet, are just the start of IoT’s security problems. “Everybody’s falling prey to it. It’s not just kids in rooms.
The scale is large, the scope is everywhere,” he says. Companies are
responding by throwing more money at the problem. Security budgets have risen
gradually, averaging around 3.5 percent since 2010, according to PwC. But
companies spent much more last year, with average budgets rising by 24
percent, perhaps in response to a spate of high-profile hacks that included
Sony Pictures and British telco TalkTalk. In a sign that companies are taking
security more seriously, about half of all companies surveyed by PwC now have
board-level discussions about the safety of their digital systems. For
vendors selling alarms, locks and remedies to increasingly nervous
enterprises, business couldn’t be better. That’s what Andrey Nikishin,
special project director for future technologies at security firm Kaspersky
Lab, believes. Nikishin is another author of the Telefónica report, and he
keeps IoT devices out of his home. “Where others see opportunity, I see
threat,” he says. According to Nikishin, the security industry began to
stagnate five years ago, as anti-virus software was commoditized. But
business is booming now, and he expects security to be high on corporate
agendas in the coming years. “In five years, security will be seen as an
investment, not a cost. Chief technology officers are now important members
of the board. In five years, chief security officers will be the same,” he
says. From
http://www.nextgov.com/
Obama
Proposes USD 19 bln Boost to Cybersecurity US President Barack Obama has directed his administration to
implement a Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP) that takes near-term
actions and puts in place a long-term strategy to enhance cybersecurity
awareness and protections, protect privacy, maintain public safety as well as
economic and national security, and empower Americans to take better control
of their digital security. The President sees cybersecurity as one of the
most important challenges facing the But the President believes that more must be done so that
citizens have the tools they need to protect themselves, companies can defend
their operations and information, and the Government does its part to protect
the American people and the information they entrust to it. The
Administration will invest over USD 19 billion in Cybersecurity as part of
the President’s USD 4.1 trillion budget for FY 2017, representing an over 35
percent increase from FY The Commission is tasked with making detailed recommendations on
actions that can be taken over the next decade to enhance cybersecurity
awareness and protections throughout the private sector and at all levels of
Government, to protect privacy, to maintain public safety and economic and
national security, and to empower Americans to take better control of their
digital security. The National Institute of Standards and Technology will
provide the Commission with support to allow it to carry out its mission. The
Commission will report to the President with its specific findings and
recommendations before the end of 2016, providing the country a roadmap for
future actions that will build on the CNAP and protect our long-term security
online. From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
Bringing
Innovation into Cyberdefense Technologies Hackers use innovative thinking when breaching systems, why
can't government? When I spoke on the need for cybersecurity innovation at
the January ITEXPO conference in HOW BIG GOVERNMENT, BIG BUSINESS STIFLE CYBERDEFENSE INNOVATION One of the most difficult challenges in offering superior
technologies to big government and big business is the massive amount of
bureaucracy you must penetrate. As a cyberdefense expert and adviser, I know
how to choose the best technologies while addressing the hurdles of
bureaucracy. Like the hacker, I have no brands, bosses or bureaucrats
influencing my objective selection (though I do admit to national loyalty as
an American). I can focus on correcting cybersecurity problems and find the
best in defense technologies to address them. I have discovered that
government and business are sometimes their own worst enemies. While
government decisions are sometimes based on confusing politics, industry
makes decisions based on a technology's return on investment or a corporate
purchase that has now made a technology part of their company. This type of
thinking not only delays needed new cyberdefense technologies from getting
in, but can cause old technologies to be used due to political and business
decisions. These inferior technologies are known and hackers can already can penetrate them. A perfect example of this
was the U.S. Office of Personnel (OPM) data breach and the solution of the
problem (EINSTEIN) that is plagued itself with problems. We need to find
better ways of offering quicker technical responses to cyberdefense technologies
or hackers will always be one step ahead. THINK LIKE A HACKER Today if you are offering even an urgently needed technology
there are two main factors that will give you road blocks. Government is making
political decisions and industry is making monetary decisions. This is the
worst place to be when offering a disruptive technology but is exactly where
I have been in the last few years. I use a simple formula in addressing these
road blocks. One is know your problem and predict how big it will become. My
past articles written over a period of five years given me a discipline of
putting my name on not only disclosing the problem but offering some
suggested solutions to the massive weaknesses were are facing in cyber
defense. With limit resources this is difficult but I have had the luxury of
standing back from politics and business and staying focused on the problem
and the fix just like a hacker focuses on getting in. Now, you can't
disregard the reality of politics and business, but you must surround
yourself with people who excel at such things so you can maintain your focus
on correcting problems. This approach has allowed me to surrounded
myself with the best in both technology and business. PROTECTING INNOVATION WITH INNOVATION In an article in The Wall Street Journal by President Barack
Obama titled, "Protecting U.S. Innovation From Cyberthreats," both
the cyber attack threats and the immediacy in addressing these threats was
clear. The president’s analogy that, “government IT is like an Atari game in
an Xbox world," was a perfect example of how much catch-up is required
by the federal government when it comes to cyberdefense systems. In fact, the
president is pushing a new Cybersecurity National Action Plan that includes
$3 billion to kick-start an overhaul of federal computer systems. This is the
right move to stop the bleeding. But let's go back to the hacker: All the
employment and training in the world cannot stop a hacker's millisecond attack.
People don't think in milliseconds; technology does. We need to find
technologies that can proactively defend in milliseconds, or we will lose our
defense capabilities to the first strike capabilities of hackers. This can be
done, but will require big changes in our current cyberdefense technologies;
we cannot continue using the patch and pray cyberdefense systems we employ
today. The reason hackers can hack in the first place is that the 3rd-
and 4th-generation software used today can be exploited because it was made
to connect and automate things -- not view or secure digital processes. The
code and algorithms are, by nature, vulnerable to attacks. And new
cyberdefense techniques such as analytics and business intelligence software
may actually be adding to the prevalence of cyberattacks as they also run on
3rd- and 4th-generation software. In fact, my colleagues and I have been
warning that security software's use of analytics and business intelligence
software will be the next attack targets. Why steal a database when you just
hack the analytics and business intelligence software to see what a company
is doing? We can't continue this way. We need a true paradigm shift in
cyberdefense technologies. WHERE THE CYBERSECURITY INDUSTRY WENT WRONG There is a great article in the Washington Post called, "A
History Internet Security." It gives a great snapshot of where we
started with Internet security and why we have the problems we do. The lack
of security was intentional. No one thought the Internet would get so big or
be used in so many ways. Interestingly enough, the reason the Internet was
first developed was to create a survivable network even if an atomic war
occurred. The survivable network was a great idea. Offering little to no
security was not. As an independent adviser I have worked with some of the
best in both technology and business. Together we have seen the problems and
have again and again come back with confidence to the same solution. First
and foremost, we need to understand that cyberdefense is just the viewing and
auditing of selected security policies in milliseconds for a specific
process. It is validating what we want to happen, not what
we don't want to happen. This is how we can protect critical systems
and intellectual property residing on the Internet. The entire cybersecurity
industry has been looking at cyberdefense in the wrong way and frankly has
used the wrong technologies in the wrong place when addressing it. To clarify
the needed changes we must make in cyberdefense technologies, my colleague
Tom Boyle, CEO of On Point Cyber, Inc., commented on what the problems are,
what changes must be made and how they should be implemented. From
http://www.govtech.com/
Umass
Security Expert Receives $541,458 Grant to Combat Internet Censorship Current anti-censorship techniques, whether used by people
simply trying to get on social media or by dissidents and human rights
workers, are mostly based on trial and error rather than on solid theoretical
foundations, said Houmansadr in a press release about the grant. This
"cat and mouse" or "whack-a-mole" approach means they can
be defeated by most state-level censors, he explained in a press release.
"Censorship resistance tools exist already to help people circumvent
those who block free access to the Internet," he said in the release.
"But they have different levels of success against different types of
censors, depending on the user's location and how aggressive the censoring
government is. "My goal is to make it much,
much easier to bypass censorship no matter where you are in the world."
In the email, he wrote "I believe that repressive governments who
actively practice Internet censorship are not and will not be happy with
research on censorship evasion that my colleagues and I are involved with. "No one should or could claim that they can offer
the ultimate solution in five years, especially because the current Internet
doesn't allow it. "But I want to advance the state of the art and
improve the availability of effective techniques to help the good guys." From
http://www.masslive.com/
The It was a landmark year for proponents of an open Internet, but
that doesn't mean the debate over Net neutrality has been to put to bed.
After nearly a year of intense debate about how to regulate Internet traffic,
the Federal Communications Commission in June put into effect a set of Net
neutrality rules designed to ensure that all Web traffic is treated the same.
Before the ink was dry on the FCC's regulations, broadband providers sued the
government to get them thrown out. Federal regulators head back to court this
week to defend the rules. Oral arguments in the case will be heard Friday in
a federal appeals court in What's Net neutrality again? Net neutrality is the idea that all traffic on the Internet should
be treated equally. This means your broadband provider, which controls your
access to the Internet, can't block or slow down the services or applications
you use over the Web. It also means your Internet provider can't create
so-called fast lanes that force companies like Netflix to pay an additional
fee to deliver their content to customers faster. Although there is broad
agreement with the basic premise of Net neutrality, the FCC's rules have
become a lightning rod for controversy because the commission has
reclassified broadband as a public utility. That change places broadband
providers under some of the same strict regulations that have governed
telephone networks for more than 80 years. It's this issue that prompted
telephone companies and cable operators to band together and sue the
government. They argue the new classification lets the FCC impose higher
rates and will discourage companies from building or upgrading their
networks. The FCC says it has no intention of regulating rates or quashing
innovative business models. The agency argues it reclassified broadband only
to ensure it could fight legal challenges that Internet providers may lob its
way in the future. How did we get here? The issue of how or even if the government should have rules to
protect the Internet has been percolating for more than a decade. The FCC had
adopted a set of principles for an open Internet in 2005. Three years later
when the agency tried to reprimand Comcast for violating those principles,
the federal court ruled the FCC had no authority to take such action. In
2010, the agency made good on its promise to protect the open Internet with
its first set of true Net neutrality regulations. Verizon challenged these
rules in court, and in 2014, the court once again questioned the FCC's legal
authority. But in a small victory for the FCC, the court acknowledged the
agency's concern that large broadband providers might abuse their power and
suggested employing a sounder legal argument based on the 1996
Telecommunications Act. Chances are you didn't care about any of this. The
general public didn't start paying attention until June 2014. That's when
comedian John Oliver devoted part of his HBO show, "Last Week
Tonight," to accusing cable companies of shaking down regulators to get
a rewrite of the rules. Thanks to Oliver's 13-minute rant, which called on
viewers to flood the FCC with comments supporting an open Internet, 4 million
Americans contacted the agency, crashing its servers. With the public
rallying support for stricter regulations, President Barack Obama threw his
weight behind the plan to reclassify broadband. The issue has been
politicized along strict party lines, with the two Republican FCC
commissioners opposing the rules and the three Democratic commissioners supporting
them. So what now? The fight continues on Friday with oral arguments, and the
decision will likely spill into 2016. Coincidentally, the case will be argued
before the same court that struck down the FCC's two previous attempts at Net
neutrality. What's more, David Tatel, the judge who wrote the majority
opinion for the court in the first two attempts to defend the FCC's Net
neutrality efforts, is on the three-judge panel. It's difficult to say what
Tatel's involvement could mean for the outcome of the case. He's certainly
the most experienced judge on the panel when it comes to this issue. In both
opinions, he chided the FCC for overstepping its authority, but the agency
believes the reclassification of broadband follows the blueprint Tatel laid out
in his most recent opinion. Others believe that the FCC misread Tatel's
opinion and that the agency has overstepped its authority in reclassifying
broadband. With the same court and the same judge deciding the fate of these
latest rules, the FCC and consumers are likely to get a clear indication of
just how open the Internet will be in the future. From
http://www.cnet.com/
ProPublica
Descends into the Dark Web to Protect Readers in Internet Censored States The Dark Web, the name granted to the thousands of sites that
require an anonymity browsing tool such as Tor to access, has landed its
first major media site in ProPublica. Mike Tigas, a developer at The New
York-based independent, non-profit publication told Wired of the move which
was made to afford its readers additional privacy protections. Using the
encrypted Tor router system, individuals could mask the fact that they
visited ProPublica (and the other less savoury sites than frequent the dark
web), making it a useful way to skirt around government surveillance and
censorship. Tigas said: “Everyone should have the ability to decide what
types of metadata they leave behind. We don’t want anyone to know that you
came to us or what you read.” Although Tor users can visit ProPublica on the
standard web, it noted that readers could be in danger of being flagged on
the site if they land on one of the few pages without SSL encryption. The
publication, through its secure dark web channel, will also accept anonymous
tips and leaks through in the hope that those divulging the data will remain
safe. “Personally I hope other people see that there are uses for hidden
services that aren’t just hosting illegal sites,” he said lauding the
presence of ProPublica and Securedrop on the dark web. From
http://www.thedrum.com/ |
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More than 80,000 cyber security incidents, such as malware, defacement,
backdoor and phishing, have been dealt with in the first nine months of From http://www.news.cn/ Survey
Shows IT Security Breaches Rise in A survey conducted by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers
(PwC) has found a five-fold increase in information security breaches detected
in companies across China's Hong Kong and mainland this year when compared to
last year, local media reported on Friday. Among the 330 or more companies
surveyed, 1,245 such incidents were reported, up from 241 last year. The
increase in thefts of internal records, strategic business plans and
financial data were worse than any other kind of data loss such as leaks of
customer records, the survey found. The companies said current or former
employees were responsible for about half of the leaks. Kenneth Wong, leader
of PwC's cyber security branch in the mainland and From http://www.news.cn/ Discussion of sovereignty over the Internet has long been a
taboo, dismissed in Western media as violation of freedom. The time has come
to drag the issue into the cold, hard light of day, and Google, for example, violated a written promise made when
entering the Chinese market by not filtering its search services and then
blaming From http://www.news.cn/ Tech
Firms Cooperate to Address Cybersecurity Risks Chinese IT companies are acting to defend their country against
cyber attack risks, which are increasingly a threat to national security.
China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC) signed a memorandum
with Microsoft on Thursday to form a joint venture that will create a secure Windows-based operating systems for Chinese
government organs and state-owned enterprises. The CETC will hold a
51-percent stake in the venture with registered capital of 40 million U.S.
dollars. "The new company will dedicate itself to improving "This year, major network security breaches have become
more frequent and increasingly serious due to technological advances, which
calls for upgraded emergency responses to safeguard our country's cyber
security," said Yun Xiaochun, chief engineer with the CNCERT. In
addition to the CETC, other Chinese tech companies are also moving to make
the country's cyberspace safer. China Electronics Corporation (CEC), another
state-owned IT giant, exhibited its latest products ranging from operating
systems to CPUs at the WIC. "We want to create products to cover the
whole industrial chain, not just in one or two areas," said CEC General
Manager Liu Liehong, adding that the company is helping the government figure
out a top-level design for a secure Internet system. "Chinese companies
need to make breakthroughs both in software and hardware," said Zuo
Xiaodong, vice president of the China Information Security Research
Institute, a government think tank. "Without domestically-created
hardware, it's like building a castle on sand," he said. The need to
contain cybersecurity risks also creates business opportunities for smaller
private companies. Fan Yuan founded information safety firm DBAPP Security in
2007, when he came back to From http://www.news.cn/ From http://www.news.cn/ More
Than 10,000 Chinese Computers Hacked in a Year More than 10,000 computers in From http://www.news.cn/ Online
Platform Launched to Register Fund-raising Victims The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has launched an online
platform to record investors and investments in illegal fund-raising cases.
The website will be used to help investigation in such cases and will be the
basis for investors who were swindled out of money to receive compensation
for their loss, the MPS said. Investors in online peer-to-peer broker ezubao
and its related companies, which are under investigation for alleged illegal
fund-raising, will be given priority when registering their loss
(ecidcwc.mps.gov.cn). Police investigations found substantial evidence that
ezubao cheated about 900,000 investors out of more than 50 billion yuan (7.6
billion U.S. dollars). The P2P platform had been in operation for 18 months
when it was shut down by police in December after conducting transactions
involving 70 billion yuan. Most investment projects featured on the company
website were fake, police said. The ministry said
the platform was established to facilitate investigation into the ezubao case
and the handling of the assets involved. The ministry urged investors to
honestly register their unredeemed investments via the website. Once
verified, the registered data will be the basis for return of their funds.
The platform, which was launched Saturday, will be open for investors of
ezubao to register through May 13, the MPS said. The statement added the
website will be used for other major illegal fund-raising cases in the
future.
From http://www.chinagate.cn/
A suspected cyberattack has made access to Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe’s website difficult, and police have started an investigation, Chief
Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Thursday. Suga said in a press
conference that international hacker group Anonymous has claimed
responsibility for the attack. “We haven’t determined whether it is
Anonymous,” he said. “But I think the police will take appropriate measures
during their investigation, such as analyzing the communication logs.”
Recently in From
http://the-japan-news.com
IoT
Guidelines Aim to Combat Cyber-Attacks The government will likely request
manufacturers to be responsible for the security of Internet of Things (IoT,
see below) devices sold to consumers to defend against cyber-attacks, The
Yomiuri Shimbun has learned. The move comes amid a growing number of products
capable of connecting to the Internet across almost every field, including
household appliances and automobiles, observers said. The Internal Affairs
and Communications Ministry and the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry will
create a task force to compile draft guidelines that will cover a range of
industries for measures to strengthen information security on IoT devices
within the week, sources said. The task force will include information
security experts, legal experts and employees who are engaged in the
development of IoT devices. Remote-controlled devices and IoT devices capable
of sending and receiving data are being produced in fields like housing and
home appliances, and are also starting to become common in the automotive and
medical fields. Experts have raised concerns that IoT devices could risk
information being stolen and that they could cause physical damage if they
are subjected to the same kinds of cyber-attacks seen in computers. At Black
Hat, an international conference for hackers held last August in IoT devices don’t have unified security regulations, so makers
have been deciding on measures at their own discretion — making it difficult
to determine if their countermeasures have been sufficient. The IoT security
guidelines are expected to cover all of the nation’s industries since small
and medium-sized companies unfamiliar with information security are expected
to enter the IoT business. A government source said there is talk of “looking
into a system that absolves manufacturers of having to take responsibility
when customers suffer any damage, provided that the devices are appropriately
designed and produced in line with the guidelines.” A network of various
objects capable of connecting to the Internet, making them easy to use — like
an air conditioner featuring temperature controls adjustable via smartphone.
According to IDC, a From
http://the-japan-news.com
Record
54.5 Billion Cyberattacks Detected in A record 54.51 billion cyberattacks were detected in 2015 —
double the number of the previous year — as hackers took control of security
cameras and other devices, a survey by a government-backed institute says.
The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT)
used around 280,000 sensors to detect the cyberattacks, it said Saturday.
These included those aimed at remotely controlling systems connected to the
Internet and checking the vulnerability of server software. IP addresses
traced to From
http://www.japantimes.co.jp
From
http://world.kbs.co.kr
Ruling Party
Hold Forum on Cyber Terrorism The ruling Saenuri Party held a forum on threats of cyber
attacks and national strategies. The party’s central committee on Monday held
the forum at the National Assembly to discuss the rapid increase of cyber
attacks by From
http://world.kbs.co.kr/
KT Lays Out
Blueprint for Safety Network
From
http://www.koreaherald.com
Gov't Raises
Cyber Alert Level amid Signs of N. Korean Hack Attacks South Korea raised its cyber alert level following the influx of
malicious e-mails presumed to have originated from North Korea amid a spike
in cross-border tensions after Pyongyang tested a fourth nuclear device early
this month, the government said Monday. The country's cyber alert was marked
up one notch to "yellow" from the normal "blue," the
Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning said. It said authorities
detected an increase in e-mails that impersonate government organizations,
including the presidential office and the foreign ministry, as well as
Internet portal managers. "North Korea has attempted cyber attacks
previously to spark public anxiety and hostility against the
government," the ICT ministry said, adding that the latest series of
e-mails could be part of North Korea's broader provocations following what it
claimed was a hydrogen bomb test on Jan. 6. From
http://www.koreaherald.com
Lawmaker: N.
Korea Will Launch Cyber Attack Against
From
http://world.kbs.co.k
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“They all have different threats. But this is an area in which
it's a cat and mouse game. There are very many smart people out there who will
try and find a way to penetrate systems for a variety of reasons. We have to
- from the cyber-security, cyber-defence side - find ways to try and prevent
them or to plug the holes if there are holes in them which we will find out
later." From
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/
THE Business Development Department will soon meet with representatives
from leading online trading websites in a bid to ensure only registered
enterprises trade on them. The move aims to prevent unscrupulous traders
luring consumers. Deputy director-general Rattana Theanvisit-skool said the
department would meet with representatives from pantipmarket.com, kaidee.com,
prakard.com, pramool.com, and thaisecondhand.com. "With the emerging
growth of online trading, the government needs to set up some regulations to
manipulate this trading system so that it will prevent problems in the
future, as many consumers have been cheated," she said. To better
regulate online trading, the department has asked a number of companies to
register as online traders or risk being barred from the Internet. They
include thaicommercestore.com, thaitrade.com, tarad.com, weloveshopping.com,
pantavanij.com, and www.lnwmall.com.
Next year, the department is targeting the number of registered online
traders tripling to about 45,000. Rattana said that to increase online
trading efficiency and promote e-commerce growth, the department would
cooperate with other government agencies and the private sector. They include
the International Trade Promotion Department, the Office of Small and Medium
Enterprises Promotion, and the Board of Trade of Thailand. From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
Computer
Crime Law Interpreted Broadly THE 2007 Act on Computer Crime was, as the date says, enacted
eight years ago under the previous junta government. Countersigned by the
then-prime minister General Surayud Chulanont, the Act has been notably used
by authorities to enforce laws on lese majeste, libel and defamation. One of
the most frequently mentioned articles of the Act, Article 14, reads: If any
person commits any offence of the following acts [they] shall be subject to
imprisonment for not more than five years or a fine of not more than
Bt100,000 - or both: (1) that involves import to a computer system of forged computer
data, either in whole or in part, or false computer data, in a manner that is
likely to cause damage to a third party or the public; (2) that involves import to a computer system of false computer
data in a manner that is likely to damage the country's security or cause a
public panic; (3) that involves import to a computer system of any computer
data related with an offence against the Kingdom's security under the
Criminal Code; (4) that involves import to a computer system of any computer
data of a pornographic nature that is publicly accessible; (5) that involves the dissemination or
forwarding of computer data already known to qualify under (1) (2) (3) or
(4). However, the Act has also long associated - in Article 14's
frequent enforcement in combination with defamation laws and redundant
prosecutions - with increased punishment of defendants and an inability for
parties involved to compromise. According to Sarinee Achavanuntakul, an
independent academic on cyber freedom, one of the Act's drafters told her the
Act was essentially designed to counter cyber crimes such as 'phishing' and
'pharming'. In the most recent case, factory worker Thanakorn Siripaiboon was
charged on Dec 8 with committing offences under the Computer Crime Act's
Article 14, and the Criminal Code's Article 112 on lese majeste and Article
116 on sedition. His alleged crimes on Facebook include copying and reposting
an infographic intended to expose the alleged scandal in the construction of From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
Hackers
Reveal Flaws in Cyber Security Framework: Experts THE RECENT hacking of government websites has called into
question the government’s cyber security standards and risked its reputation for
management, but a single gateway was not a solution to that problem, cyber
security specialists said yesterday.What the government can do is upgrade
cyber security standards and adopt cyber security best practices as well as
draft a national policy framework and regulations for cyber security. Police
websites and about 300 Courts of Justice websites were hacked by sympathisers
of the Anonymous group in protest against the Koh Tao double-murder verdict.
That led to a suggestion from police to bring back the single gateway plan to
tackle the problem.PaiboonAmonpinyokeat, a cyber security |specialist and
lawyer, said the government should establish a computer or electronic law
court as a special court dedicated to oversee all cyber cases including
hacking and e-commerce fraud. The cases could be civil or criminal. The
computer court would be staffed by prosecutors and judges with specialised
knowledge of cyber security and it should be a department of general law
courts."Almost all countries also have a computer or electronic law
court to take care of computer, cyber and electronic cases. "Having this
kind of court can help speed up the processing of these cases. The special
court can be established by a royal decree of the court," he said. Self-regulation For prevention, the government should encourage Internet service
providers (ISP) to practise self-regulation by observing a code of conduct,
while the government can subsidise them through the budget. The single
gateway was not the right solution to address the hacker problem because the
cause of this problem was the low-level cyber security standards of the
government's websites. The government needs to raise its standards, he added.
PrinyaHom-anek, another cyber security |specialist, said cyber security should
be declared a national priority. The country should have a national cyber
security framework endorsed by the prime minister; a national cyber security
council to oversee national cyber security policy and a national cyber
security agency to deal with national cyber security matters. These measures
require laws to establish them. "The single gateway is not the solution
so it should not be done," he said.Government organisations or agencies
with a low budget or not enough funds to invest in a cyber security system
should use the cyber security outsource services provided by a managed
security service providers (MSSP). MSSPs will have security operation centres to manage and monitor
cyber security for government units under a standard service level agreement.The
trend is for more hacking since most government websites do not comply with
cyber security standards.According to the information leaked in newspapers,
the hacked information was not critical, but even so, this incident badly
hurt the government's reputation for risk management, he
said.MorragotKulatumyotin, managing director of Internet Thailand (INET), a
major ISP, said the government should treat this hacking attack as a wake-up
call to improve cyber security standards and information security management.
It should follow international standards and security guidelines that
invaliding in for people, process and tooling, such as ISO27001. "The
government should utilise existing mechanisms such as the Computer Crime Act
to be a more effective tool to handle and address the hacking problem. "The Internet is a network solution that requires the
collaboration of all parties from ISPs to the upstream, the international
Internet gateway |service providers and the international network
providers," she said.ChatchaiKhunpitiluck, spokesman for the Information
and Communications Technology Ministry, said the right solution is government
cloud computing. The ICT Ministry will promote the government cloud to
encourage the government to send critical information hast fast to the cloud
rather than keep data on their own computers. "A single gateway is not
on the ministry's |agenda," he said.However, IT
experts said the court website hacking incident was mostly seen as
defacement. And the court's website was not too tough to hack since it has a
third-level domain name that is sub-domain name system. It means that almost
all of the claimed numbers of websites being hacked were actually sub-domain,
such as xxxx.court.go.th. If just one website - www.xxx.go.th - was
|successfully breached, the invaders could vandalise a lot of websites
easily. From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/ Trend Micro
Sees Revenue Growth from Cybersecurity Solution CYBERSECURITY company Trend Micro ( From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
Threats to information security are becoming more serious and
may be used as a tool against the State to attack important infrastructure,
freeze Governmental activities or destroy the economy. Nguyen Thanh Hung,
deputy minister of information and communications, spoke about these risks
during a meeting on Wednesday regarding the implementation of information
security laws and initiatives to ensure e-Government information security.
Along with the promotion of information and technology (IT) application and
e-Government, information security was also crucial, the deputy minister
emphasised. Security vulnerability posed a permanent risk to all countries
and "We now have a powerful legal document to direct the
sector's development," Hung said. "It is expected to meet the
requirement of protecting the e-Government and critical information systems
of the country in line with the Internet's development environment in From
http://vietnamnews.vn/
Social
Network Sharing Makes Users Easy Target for Cybercriminals Almost 30 per cent of social network users share their posts,
check-ins and other personal information with everybody who is online, not
just their friends, which leaves the door wide open for cybercriminals to
attack since users are unaware of just how public their private information
can be on these channels, Kaspersky Lab has warned. Though over 78 per cent
of internet users have a social media account, the study found a distinct
lack of awareness amongst them One in nine respondents did not think people
not on their friends list could see their pages or posts. The research found
that users are putting themselves in danger by adding friends, with a
surprising 12 per cent admitting they add anyone to their list regardless of
whether they know them or not. Thirty-one per cent will also accept
connections from people they do not know if they have friends in common,
again exposing them to unknown people – even cybercriminals. The study found
that a quarter of those surveyed would have no hesitation to click on a link
sent by a friend without asking what it is or considering the possibility
that the sender's account has been hacked. To ensure social network sharing
does not cause danger, Kaspersky Lab advises internet users to be cautious
about whom they befriend and trust. It is also essential that privacy
settings are at their highest to ensure status updates are only shared with
real friends, the company said. From
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/
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Cyber incidents have not
only risen sharply in 2015, but also lean more towards cybercrimes with
financial motives. According to KPMG Cybercrime survey report 2015, 72
percent of Indian companies faced cyberattack in 2015.In a survey of more
than It was also alarming to
note that 54 percent indicated that spend on cyber defences is less than 5
percent of IT spend, the report stated. “The last few years have seen
multifold increase in cybercrimes across regions and sectors. Given the
proliferation of connected technologies, organisations today face a
significant challenge to be resilient against cyberattacks and incidents. It
is also important that the management realises that these are no longer a
one-time phenomenon. The nature of cybercrime is constantly evolving,
specifically with attackers having a solid arsenal of the ever evolving
stealth attack,” said Mritunjay Kapur, Partner and Head, Risk Consulting,
KPMG in India.The report also analyses the impact and complexity of
cybercrime in India. As businesses throw their doors open to technology, they
also expose themselves to the risk of cybercrime that can have far reaching
damages ranging from financial, reputational, operational and in certain
scenarios, can also impact the physical safety of employees and assets, with
47 percent citing the risk of disruption of business processes and 49 percent
claiming a reputational damage to the organisation. While surveying the
potential vulnerable system targets of cybercrime, 65 percent respondents
indicated that email servers are likely targets while 46 percent stated end
user systems. In the case of industries, though financial services and
pharmaceuticals are still the favourite target for cyberattacks, the year
2015 has witnessed attacks across industries.Critical infrastructure is being
seen as an attractive target for cyberattacks.About 65 percent respondents
stated that cybercriminals carry out attacks for financial gains while
another 46 percent believe corporate espionage to be the motive, the report
highlighted.Cyber risk assessment is not a focus area for several enterprises
across functions and people. Their emphasis is only on technology with 74 percent
respondents stating that a detailed annual IT and cyber risk assessment is
not carried out. From http://news.siliconindia.com Process to Certify Private Cloud Services
Begins The Government has floated a draft Request for Proposal (RFP)
for accreditation of Cloud services of private cloud providers in the
country. The government is offering an altogether new model of Cloud
Computing to the users through ‘GI Cloud’, christened MeghRaj. The focus of
MeghRaj is to evolve a strategy and implement various components to ensure
proliferation of Cloud in Government verticals through private cloud players.
The aim of the Cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of the
government’s Private cloud environment available for use by the Central and
state government departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate
ICT-enabled service improvements and also provide flexibility in terms of
choice of technology. DeitY proposes accreditation of the Cloud service
offerings of private service providers, so that end-user departments could
leverage in addition to the National Cloud services offered by NIC for
e-governance solutions. The Cloud services, offered under National Cloud as
well as accredited Private cloud service providers, will be published through
a GI Cloud Services directory, which will be used by the various government
departments and agencies. Players like Reliance Communications, NIC, Reliance Jio, TCS,
Wipro, Microsoft, Amazon and others are actively participating in the draft
RFP for Private cloud players, insiders reveal. GI Cloud or MeghRaj will be a
set of discrete Cloud Computing environments spread across multiple
locations, built on existing or new infrastructure, following a set of common
protocols, guidelines and standards issued by the Government of India. The
primary purpose of this RFP is to enable DeitY to provisionally accredit the
Cloud service offerings of private service providers for an initial period of
two years. This will be an open accreditation process to allow for new
entrants into the accredited list of Cloud service providers as well as
re-accreditation of the already accredited Cloud service providers. From http://egov.eletsonline.com
NASSCOM-Mumbai Police to Hold ‘Cyber Awareness
Month’ As a part of its efforts to educate the public and private sector
partners about Internet and cyber security, NASSCOM-DSCI has announced “Cyber
Awareness Month” initiative in collaboration with the Mumbai Police. The
initiative is aimed at building preventive measures to counter the increasing
threats of cyber security through the notion of “Precaution is better than
Cure”, according to a NASSCOM press note. As a precursor to this initiative,
NASSCOM also held a workshop for academia in the city today, featuring
notable speakers, including Prashant Announcing the initiative, Nandkumar Sarvade, CEO, Data Security
Council of India, said, “Safeguarding cyberspace has become a key priority
for governments, businesses and citizens across the world. Countries have to
take appropriate steps in their respective jurisdictions to create required
laws, endorse the implementation of necessary security practices, and
continuously educate both corporate and home users about cyber security. It
is a global problem that has to be addressed by all stakeholders jointly.”
Cyber security is a multi-dimensional concept which includes many disciplines
and fields from daily life. The amount of time spent by individuals online
across the world is increasing each day. Parallelly, cybercrime too has seen
a rise globally as well as in From http://egov.eletsonline.com
Security
Mantra: Detect, Share, Stop Threats Fast The National Association of Software and Services Companies
(NASSCOM) and the Data Security Council of India (DSCI) together organised
the “10th Annual Information Security Summit” on Dec 16-17, 2015 at J W
Marriott in Taking the proposition forward, NIIT Chairman Rajendra S Pawar
said, “By the time cyber security industry becomes $35 billion, which is our
target for 2020, we are looking at greater people’s participation in this,
directly or indirectly.” He went on to reflect on how people’s participation
can take the security industry to the next level. “Making Prevention a
Reality with the Power of a Next-Generation Security Platform” was the theme
of the presentation of Riyaz Tambe, Head of Systems-Engineering, India &
SAARC, Palo Alto Networks. He talked about the
common trends in data breaching, like past-based Firewall, Static IPS, use of
O-Day Malware and ID certificates. He also said that 100 per cent visibility
is one of the pillars of effective network security. The security platforms,
like Wildfree, Threat Prevention Security and UKL Filtering, provided by Palo
Alto Networks were also introduced to the audience. Satinder Singh, From
http://egov.eletsonline.com Digitalisation Is Fine but Privacy Issues
Remain Birth CertificateChennai Municipal Corporation joins Mumbai, From http://egov.eletsonline.com
Net Neutrality Debate: TRAI Gets 80 Pct
Replies via Facebook As TRAI gears up to frame the net neutrality rules, telecom
operators have favoured differential pricing for data services even as nearly
80 percent replies to the regulator's consultation process follow the
Facebook 'templates' for its controversy-ridden Free Basics platform.While
net neutrality activists continue to oppose any differential pricing regime,
saying it would amount to curbs on freedom of choice to access Internet,
Facebook has launched a massive campaign to project its Free Basics platform
as a tool to spread web connectivity.An analysis of a record 2.4 million
comments, received by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to its
consultation paper on differential pricing for data services, shows that
1.894 million replies are in support of Free Basics, of which 1.35 million
views are through '@supportfreebasics.in' and without the senders' individual
e-mail IDs while further 544,000 comments have come from
'@facebookmail.com'.On the other hand, the net neutrality campaigners have
submitted 4.84 lakh comments through forums like 'Save the Internet'.Besides,
there are comments from telecom and Internet service providers, industry
bodies and individuals. The telecom operators including Airtel, Vodafone,
Idea, Reliance Communications and their respective associations have
supported differential pricing for data services, while Internet service
providers have opposed the plan. "For the growth of data service, price differentiation for
data services can be allowed," operators have submitted.Reliance Jio
Infocomm though has not submitted its comments on the matter.A debate on net
neutrality stirred across the country after Airtel decided to charge separately
for Internet-based calls but withdrew it later after people protested. The
debate heated up after Airtel launched free Internet platform Airtel Zero and
later Facebook also launched its Internet.org platform, renamed as Free
Basics.Nasscom said issues concerning differential pricing for data services
need careful consideration because of their possible impact on net
neutrality.The IT industry body said data plans offered by telecom companies
to the consumer has to be neutral between their own and competing Internet
platforms and services.COAI represents telecom majors like Airtel, Vodafone,
Reliance Jio Infocomm, Idea Cellular, Telenor while AUSPI represents Reliance
Communications, Tata Teleservices, SistemaShyam Teleservices and Quadrant
Televentures.The associations in a joint letter said differential pricing is
permitted under present regime as long as there is a clear differentiation in
the classification of subscribers.The letter further said a content provider
can have a non-exclusive agreement with the TSP so that the zero-rated
service could be made available to other TSPs. The associations have opposed the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT)
method saying it is not the right way of differential tariff as the same has
the potential to be misused.To justify their stand, telecom operators cited
example of e-commerce companies signing exclusive deals to sell mobile
handsets, tatkal tickets offered by Indian Railways fortravelling in same
train, mineral waters at higher price in multiplexes etc. Industry chamber
Assocham, ACTO, global telecom body GSMA also favoured allowing of
differential pricing for data.The debate which at some point became
Facebook's Free Basics versus net neutrality saw mixed reaction from
public."Seeking discriminatory data plans is it self a privilege wanted
by the data companies. Now Free Basics by Facebook is also on its way to
ensure that net neutrality becomes a history in From http://news.siliconindia.com
Survey Finds Cybercrime as the Fastest Growing
Risk EY’s 2016 Global Forensic Data Analytics Survey, Shifting into
high gear: mitigating risks and demonstrating returns suggests that rising
risks around cybercrime, internal fraud, and bribery and corruption have been
key concerns for Indian organisations over the past two years. The The survey conducted by EY’s Fraud Investigation & Dispute
Services practice revealed that businesses need to cope with a host of
reforms driven by both, risk factors and regulations. This has augmented the
scope of risk aversion and detection that the company board and the senior
management need to implement internally. Mukul Shrivastava, Partner, Fraud
Investigation & Dispute Services, EY, said, “The risks faced by
organisations on account of cybercrime are ever increasing. However,
organisations continue to be reactive and use FDA tools just for
investigations. They need to switch tracks and use FDA techniques to
proactively counter such risks. Using FDA, organisations can effectively analyse
their internal data sets (network traffic, emails, logs, etc.) to identify
threats based on historic data, learn and then improve their IT systems and
controls.” Anil Kona, Partner, Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services,
EY, said, “Organisations have started realising the benefits of proactive
forensic data analytics to identify fraud. With the cases of fraud increasing
alarmingly, we can leverage the power of forensic data analytics for
continuous monitoring, insider threat management, early warning alert
generation, etc. to detect frauds very early and prevent them in most cases.” With just 55 per cent of the global respondents saying that
their FDA spend is sufficient, a drop from 64 per cent in our 2014 survey, it
is no surprise that three out of five say that they plan to spend more on FDA
in the next two years. In From http://egov.eletsonline.com
Several top businessmen engaged in import and export of goods
have lost millions of rupees due to an internet-related fraud.At least Rs.
140 million (US $ 1.7 million) have been defrauded from 12 businessmen by an
unidentified gang, who hacked the businessmen’s emails and computers to
obtain sensitive financial and trade details. Computer Emergency Response
Unit senior engineer Roshan Chandraguptha said his organisation had
instructed the 12 businessmen who had lost at least Rs. 140 million to lodge
complaints with the Police.“We received 12 complaints on such financial scams
and the unit directed the victims to lodge complaints to the Police as the
unit has no authority to take legal action with regard to this,” he said.
Chandraguptha said the financial scams occurred after entering an unknown
third party between two business partners who do their business via
emails.Most businessmen who do their businesses with business partners broad
use emails to order their goods. When they send the order they receive emails
from the other party by mentioning the bank account and the amount of money
that they need to pay for that order, he said. “According to most victims, they suddenly received an email from
their business partner with a new bank account number by mentioning that he
or she has changed the bank account.Due to their confidence in their business
partners, most businessmen deposited the money to these accounts without
verifying the information,” Chandraguptha said.The senior engineer urged the
public to be vigilant when making financial transactions via emails and to
verify the information regarding the change of account numbers, mobile
numbers or any other information receiving from their business partners or to
use other social media sites such as ‘WhatsApp”, Facebook, Twitter, etc. to
deal with the business partners without depending only on emails as these
racketeers cannot hack all these sites at once. From http://www.dailynews.lk
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Top Three
Cyber Threats for 2016 – and the Need for a More Skilled Cyber Workforce Someone will
click on a link in a highly targeted spear phishing campaign; an employee
will go rogue and release a password – the keys to the IP kingdom; and
Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) will mop up the rest. Then you need the
right staff skills to manage this. Global, independent, non-profit,
association, ISACA reveals this and more in its January 2016 Cybersecurity
Snapshot - a poll from its nearly 3000 members. The top three threats that
global IT and security professionals are most concerned about for their
organization this year are: 52% Social
engineering ( 40% Insider
threats ( 39% Advanced
persistent threats ( These items
outranked options frequently associated with cyberattacks, including malware
(Australian 32%), unpatched systems ( One major
concern was that the cybersecurity skills gap continues to pose a significant
obstacle to organizations seeking to expand their cyber workforce. 45% say
that they are hiring more cybersecurity professionals in 2016, yet 94% of
those hiring say it will be difficult to find skilled candidates. 60% say
identifying who has adequate skills and knowledge will also be difficult.
“The aggressive increase in cyberattacks worldwide is feeding a growing chasm
between demand and supply in the cybersecurity talent wars. It is also
shedding light on a critical problem in our industry: identifying job
candidates who are truly qualified to safeguard corporate assets in a
landscape that is highly complex and constantly evolving,” said Eddie
Schwartz, CISA, CISM, CISSP-ISSEP, PMP, international vice president of ISACA
and president and COO of WhiteOps. ISACA was the first to combine
skills-based vendor-neutral cybersecurity training with performance-based
exams and certifications to address the cyber talent shortage with the launch
the CSX Practitioner certification in August 2015. Another key
issue was about cybersecurity legislation and reporting of cyber-breaches. # 63% of
global IT professionals oppose giving governments
backdoor access to encrypted information systems. ( # 59% feel that privacy is being compromised in an effort to
implement stronger cybersecurity laws ( There is
marked scepticism about the likelihood of organizations sharing data breach
information voluntarily as called for by the recently passed U.S. Cybersecurity
Information Sharing Act of 2015. # 83% favour
regulation requiring companies to notify customers within 30 days of the
discovery of a data breach – up 10% from 2014 (Australia 90%) # 72% of US
respondents say they are in favour of the U.S. Cybersecurity Information
Sharing Act of 2015, which encourages cyber-threat information sharing
between the government and the private sector. Yet, only 46% believe their
own organization would do so voluntarily if it experiences a data breach. “The Cybersecurity
Snapshot shows that the professionals on the front lines of the cyber-threat
battle recognize the value of information-sharing among consumers, businesses
and government, but also know the challenges associated with doing so,” said
Christos Dimitriadis, Ph.D., CISA, CISM, CRISC, international president of
ISACA and group director of information security at INTRALOT. Cybersecurity
has become a high-stakes, boardroom-level issue that can have crippling
consequences for any C-suite executive who lacks knowledge about the issues
and risks. Strong public-private collaboration and ongoing knowledge-sharing
are needed to safeguard our organizations from cybercriminals,” he added. From http://www.itwire.com
The Most
Innovative and Damaging Hacks Of 2015 Not a week
went by in 2015 without a major data breach, significant attack campaign, or
serious vulnerability report. Many of the incidents were the result of disabled
security controls, implementation errors, or other basic security mistakes,
highlighting how far organizations have to go in nailing down IT security
basics. But looking beyond the garden-variety attacks and vulnerabilities
lends great insight into the future of malicious activity and how to defend
against it. And 2015 had its share of intriguing invasions, each of which
highlighted the modified techniques that lead to new forms of breaches or
pinpoint areas in need of new defenses. The past year saw cyber criminals
adopting innovative approaches and state-sponsored actors becoming bolder.
Motivations shifted, with financial gain no longer the sole reason for
launching an attack. Inflicting physical damage, stealing trade secrets,
hacking as a form of protest -- 2015 was a year in which malicious activity
served many ends. The
increasingly interconnected world means bad guys can cause a lot of damage;
more important, many malicious actors now have the skills and means to carry
out chilling attacks. Below is a roundup of some of the most significant
incidents of the past year, each of which pushes the overall security
conversation further, showing new paths and needs for defense.
Which ones did we miss? Bitcoin
under barrage Bitcoin --
and the idea of crypto currency in general -- captured mainstream attention
this year, in part because of nefarious actors who used the platform as cover
for payment. Ransomware gangs have demanded payment in bitcoins before
unlocking victims’ files and folders, and blackmailers have demanded bitcoins
in exchange for not launching DDoS attacks against websites. But bitcoin made
security headlines several times in 2015 for a different reason: Thieves kept
stealing bitcoins ... lots of them. European exchange Bitstamp suspended
trading after discovering one of its operational bitcoin storage wallets was
compromised in early January. The exchange is believed to be the world’s
third busiest and handles approximately 6 percent of all bitcoin
transactions. About 19,000 bitcoins, or roughly $5 million, were stolen at
the time. That wasn’t the only bitcoin attack, as China-based exchange BTER
reported in February that 7,170 bitcoins, or roughly $1.75 million, were
stolen from its cold wallet system. Thieves stole 10.235 BTC, or roughly
$2,500, from bitcoin startup Purse in October. Consider it
a twist on the traditional bank heist: Instead of looting bank accounts,
exchanges are raided. In addition to showing there is real financial value
associated with the virtual currency, the thefts highlighted the need “for an
internationally recognized security standard” for bitcoin, said Florindo
Gallicchio, director of information security in the Optiv Office of the CISO.
In February, the Cryptocurrency Certification Consortium (C4) proposed 10
standardized rules for the creation, storage, audit, and use of bitcoins, as
part of the Cryptocurrency Security Standard (CCSS). While the amounts stolen
aren’t insignificant, they pale in comparison to the 850,000 bitcoins, worth
close to $450 million, that disappeared from
Japanese-based As is often
the case with technology, the exchanges have thus far focused on
functionality and usability, with security an afterthought, said Steve
Donald, CTO of Hexis Cyber Solutions. Many of the attacks relied on social
engineering to gain a foothold on to the exchange’s network. Exchanges need
to adopt secure code development practices, as well as dynamic and static
code analysis to protect their applications. “Bitcoin exchanges should be
highly incented to improve security as this will be a requirement before this
new type of currency will achieve wide scale usage,” Donald said. Cyber goes
real-world Cyber
attacks that result in damage in the physical world happen far more often on
TV shows than they do off-screen. It was scary when the Shamoon malware attack
partially wiped or totally destroyed hard drives of 35,000 computers at Saudi
oil company Aramco back in 2012. We saw the blurring between cyber and
physical again -- to be fair, the attack actually happened in 2014 and the
report providing the details were released shortly before the end of the year
-- at an unnamed German steel mill when attackers manipulated and disrupted
control systems. The blast furnace could not be properly shut down, resulting
in “massive” damages, according to reports. There is a tendency to think
cyber attacks are about stealing data or knocking systems offline. There can
be real-world damage, too. An attacker can potentially compromise a
pharmaceutical company’s production process or quality control systems and
modify the recipe for a particular drug. Hospital systems are also vulnerable
to attack, especially since many legacy systems still in use cannot be
secured. As much as 20 percent of hospitals are vulnerable to attacks that
can disable critical care systems, Gallicchio said. “People can
be physically hurt from a cyber attack,” Gallicchio said. Industrial control
system security comes up a lot in conversation, but the incident at the
German steel mill highlights the fact that the threat is no longer
theoretical. One of the challenges facing industrial control system security,
especially in manufacturing, is the simple fact that the systems are
typically controlled and administered by operations and engineering
departments, not IT. The operations and engineering teams are focused on
reliability and make decisions at the expense of security in order to
maintain uptime. Improving defenses requires “a mix of basics and more
contemporary defenses,” such as ensuring proper segmentation and access
controls between different networks, Donald said. Financial
crime goes big There were a
number of attacks against financial institutions in 2015, but none was more
audacious than the Carbanak crime ring, which targeted more than 100 banks
and other financial institutions in 30 nations. Kaspersky Lab estimated the
gang had stolen as much as $1 billion since late 2013 and had managed to stay
under the radar for two years because it kept each transaction between $2.5
million and $10 million. The scale of attacks against
financial institutions indicate criminals are moving away from
low-value consumer-related attacks such as identity and credit card theft in
favor of high-value attacks. “The old ‘smash and grab’ jobs are becoming
carefully orchestrated and executed jobs,” said Mike Davis, CTO of
CounterTack. The FBI also warned of an increase in social engineering
campaigns where an attacker sends an email purporting to be from the CEO or
another senior executive to the CFO or another executive authorizing a wire
transfer. If the recipient is tricked and doesn’t validate the email’s
authenticity before the transfer, that money is gone, usually for good. While
external attackers still pose the biggest threat to financial organizations,
2015 showed insiders can cause damage as well. Earlier this year, a former
employee of Morgan Stanley pleaded guilty to stealing confidential data from
more than 700,000 customer accounts while he was interviewing for a new job
with two competitors. And external attackers target insiders who already have
access to sensitive data. Encryption, dynamic security policies that travel
with data, and robust multifactor authentication
controls are some of the defenses financial institutions should consider to
ensure that unauthorized individuals can’t read anything they shouldn’t be
allowed to see, said Ron Arden, vice-president of Fasoo. Health care
on the breach radar Some of the
biggest breaches in 2015 involved health care organizations, including
Anthem, Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, Premera Blue Cross, and CareFirst, to
name a few. Eight of the 10 largest health care breaches happened in 2015,
according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It’s no
surprise the attackers went after health care, since the companies tend to
have valuable data, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers,
medical records, and financial information. The data is difficult to change,
meaning it has a longer shelf life and can be used in a variety of follow-up
attacks. Attackers accessed more than 100 million health care records in
2015. While some of the breaches may have been part of identity theft and
other cyber crime activities, security experts believe Anthem was the work of
Chinese state-actors. The attackers may have been after data on specific
individuals for intelligence purposes, or they may have wanted intellectual
property relating to how medical coverage and insurer databases are set up.
The Chinese government has denied any involvement in the attacks, and Chinese
authorities recently arrested individuals they claim had targeted Anthem for
cyber crime purposes. “Just like
how the financial verticals evolved to the next-generation bank heists, we
will soon see attackers use health care information records to support more
sophisticated business models,” said Itzik Kotler, co-founder and CTO at
SafeBreach. These attacks were successful in large part because health care
companies have not traditionally invested as much on security initiatives as
financial institutions have. The Anthem breach, in particular, showed how far
some health care companies lag on basic security best practices. As Target
shook the retail sector out of its complacency in 2014, Anthem made the
health care industry sit up and notice the very real dangers it faces. Worse,
encryption practices around sensitive data had no effect. In many health care
breaches, users were socially engineered out of their credentials, letting
attackers easily bypass encryption controls. It doesn’t take a lot, either.
Attackers stole 80 million personal records from a large health care
insurance company by compromising only five user accounts, Eric Tilenius, CEO
of BlueTalon, said. “Every company should ask, ‘How much data would be
exposed if a user account gets compromised?’ and then work to limit that
exposure,” he said. “It doesn’t
matter how strong your security platform is, if employees aren’t properly
trained in best security practices, it all can go out the window,” said Garry
McCracken, vice president of technology at WinMagic. Attacks as
part of a long game Perhaps the
most intriguing, significant, and shocking security incident of 2015 was the
attack against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. The personal data of
millions of government employees, The method
of attack followed a formula: Target a subcontractor in a social engineering
attack and steal credentials to gain access to the network. Plant malware on
a system and create a backdoor. Exfiltrate data for months, undetected. The
level of poor security practices at OPM “was astounding,” including lack of
consistent vulnerability scanning and two-factor authentication, as well as
untimely patch management, said Bradshaw. The OPM breach also emphasized
organizations' vulnerability to social engineering. Government employees and
contractors are now subject to security awareness training programs to learn
about the dangers of spear phishing and other social media threats. Vulnerabilities
out of control The attack
against Hacking Team over the summer was an eye-opener. The Milan-based
company developed and sold surveillance software to government agencies
around the world. The company relied on zero-day vulnerabilities to develop software
that was difficult to detect and could intercept communications. When an
unknown individual released more than 400GB of data stolen from Hacking Team,
including email communications, business documents, and source code, security
researchers uncovered proofs-of-concept for three different zero-day
vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player. While Adobe scrambled to fix the flaws
as quickly as possible, cyber criminals were able to create exploits and use
them in large-scale attacks. “Hoarding
zero-day exploits at both the national and private level is dangerous for
everyone. We can’t expect to come out on top if we are sitting on these types
of vulnerabilities,” said Tom Gorup, security operations leader at security
consulting firm Rook Security. Not reporting the vulnerabilities to the
vendor for fixes means someone else can come along and find the same bug. If
it was found in the first place, it stands to reason someone else will
eventually find it, too. As Hacking Team learned the hard way, anyone can be
breached. And once the vulnerabilities are public, everyone is at risk.
Zero-day exploits are not like physical weapons in that the original owner
has control over how and when it is used. The weapon can be used right back,
with devastating consequences. “We need to refocus our cyber efforts to a
defensive posture and let our infantry and airmen handle the offensive
efforts,” Gorup said. Government
services leak too much info As attacks
against government agencies go, the IRS Transcript Service breach was small
beans. Only 100,000 people had their information exposed through this breach,
which is significantly less than the 21.5 million affected by the OPM breach.
The attackers plugged in the victim’s name, address, and Social Security
number into the IRS Get Transcript service to obtain detailed information
such as income, employer name, and dependents. More uniquely, attackers used
legitimate services to convert basic personally identifiable information to
determine detailed data that could be used to falsify tax returns and other
forms of financial fraud. The same method can conceivably be used with the
Department of Motor Vehicles' online renewal process or with a property
appraisal site maintained by the county. With the information obtained
through these services, identity theft becomes easier. It was especially
effective, as attackers enjoyed a 50 percent success rate using the stolen
data, noted Morey Haber, vice president of technology at BeyondTrust. “Many
sites like the Get IRS Transcript website exist all over the Internet for
state, local, and federal governments. The IRS was an easy target, but so are
the others,” Haber said. Forget cars,
what’s happening with airplanes? Vehicular hacking
burst on to the scene in 2015 and grabbed a lot of security headlines, but we
should be worried about all the things we don’t know regarding attacks on
airplanes. About the time researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek were
exploiting a Chrysler’s UConnect infotainment system to remotely control a
2014 Chrysler Jeep Cherokee, there were reports the group behind the OPM
breach had successfully obtained records of origins and destinations of
United Airlines passengers, as well as passenger manifests. Another group of
attackers also disrupted the IT systems for LOT Polish Airways, which
resulted in the airline canceling 20 flights and grounding 1,400 passengers.
Then of course there’s the FBI’s claim that security researcher Chris Roberts
caused a plane’s engine to climb when he was poking around aircraft systems
while on a United Airlines flight. The jury’s out on whether Roberts actually
managed to take over the jet. Should these
attacks concern us? Are airplanes at risk? Both United and Getting
around Apple’s walled garden Palo Alto
Networks this year uncovered XcodeGhost, a malware attack that infected iOS
applications and existed in the App Store for months before being detected.
The attack relied on iOS developers downloading a compromised version of
Xcode, the iOS dev kit. Compromising a toolchain is not a new attack method,
and XcodeGhost was extremely successful at infecting developers on a wide
scale. The real danger lies in what lessons the XcodeGhost team learned from
its success and how it will try again. The way the malware infected iOS apps
before they were distributed into the App Store was completely new, said Ryan
Olson, intelligence director at Palo Alto Networks. Developers are vulnerable
and attackers can piggy-back on their apps into the App Store, past Apple’s
vaunted security measures. “While the XcodeGhost malware was not particularly
dangerous, it was groundbreaking in the way it gained access to millions of
devices,” Olson said. XcodeGhost
showed people that Apple’s walled garden can be breached and at a wide scale.
It forced app developers to clean up their systems, re-issue their
applications, and be better about where they get their developer tools. In
order to defend against similar attacks, iOS developers need to understand
their dev systems and apps are valuable to attackers looking for ways to
target iOS users. “XcodeGhost was the first truly widespread malware that
impacted non-jailbroken phones, it was a massive eye-opener for iOS users who
had previously thought they were invulnerable to attack,” Olson said. Juniper’s
unauthorized backdoor scandal Juniper
Networks recently uncovered unauthorized code in its Juniper NetScreen
firewalls that could allow attackers to decrypt VPN traffic. The issue arose
from the fact that Juniper used Dual_EC_DRBG, a known flawed random-number
generator, as the foundation for cryptographic operations in NetScreen's
ScreenOS. Juniper claimed it used additional precautions to secure the random
number generator. It turned out the safeguards were ineffective. The backdoor
in Dual EC can be viewed as two parts, where one adds a second keyhole that
overrides the normal lock on a door, and the other is a specific lock cylinder
that fits that keyhole, Matthew Green, a cryptographer and assistant
professor at In the end,
someone somewhere was able to decrypt Juniper traffic in the Understanding
2015 It’s clear
from looking at the attacks and breaches this year that the IT security
industry is not well-positioned to defend itself. Knowing is half the battle,
but there’s a long road ahead for organizations that don’t follow the basics
of security best practices. “Security isn’t cheap, and when you’ve
historically underinvested in security, what it takes to catch up in both
technology investment and human capital is expensive,” said James Carder,
CISO at LogRhythm and vice president of LogRhythm Labs. From http://www.computerworld.com.au
Over 39,000 reports
about cybercrime were received from individuals and organisations in 2015 by
the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN). ACORN was
launched in November 2014 and is a joint project between the
Attorney-General’s Department, CrimTrac, the
Australian Crime Commission, federal, state and territory police. Online
fraud and scams made up 49 per cent of reports made to ACORN with 19,232
reports received. Online trading issues which affect Australians who buy and
sell goods online were the second highest type of cybercrime reported with
8368 reports received (22 per cent of total reports). According to ACORN, AusCERT
general manager Thomas King said ACORN was a "great first step" but
there could be more explanatory notes included with the cybercrime reporting
categories. “The feedback that we get from people who do report [crimes] is
that it is not something you can do in real time. My concerns are that people
can report whatever they want. For example, if someone is getting cyber
bullied at school there have been reports which have clogged up the more
important ones,” he said. “If you are on triage for ACORN, they only have so
much manpower they can give to that and you literally have to go through and
read every one.” King said that the proposed mandatory data breach
notification legislation will help provide much better metrics. “Companies
will have a bit more reason to report cybercrime and ACORN would seem to be a
good start that people with modifications could report to meet their
legislative obligations.” From http://www.computerworld.com.au
TSSR: Concerns Persist
over Government’s Telco Security Reforms The
government’s second attempt at a draft bill intended to strengthen the
security of Australia’s network infrastructure has had a better reception
among industry stakeholders, but major telcos have expressed continued
reservations about the ‘Telecommunications Sector Security Reforms’ (TSSR).
The proposed legislation will boost the government’s power to give directions
to telcos in relation to infrastructure security, including issues such as
vendor choice and network design, as well force carriers to inform government
security agencies of significant changes to their networks. A public
consultation on a revised exposure draft of the Telecommunications and Other
Legislation Amendment Bill concluded last month. A joint submission by the
Australian Industry Group, the Australian Information Industry Association,
the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association and Communications
Alliance, details of which were revealed in January, said that although the
revised draft was superior to the government’s initial proposal, the bill
will still potentially result in the diversion of resources away from
ensuring the security of communications infrastructure into compliance with
the TSSR regime. Submissions
from individual telcos, including Vodafone, TPG, Telstra, and Optus, and
Telstra include a number of suggestions for changes and clarifications to the
draft bill and its explanatory memorandum. Telstra’s submission said that in
its view the bill was now “workable in a practical sense”. In contrast, TPG’s
submission acknowledged government efforts to respond to telcos’ concerns but
repeated its call for the TSSR bill to be dumped. “TPG believes that the
objectives of ASIO and the Attorney-General’s department would be much better
served by increased information flows from those agencies to
telecommunications providers that would substantiate the risks and by
education for customers of telecommunications services,” the telco argued.
Vodafone reiterated its concerns about “regulatory overreach through the
relatively unfettered powers proposed to be given to Government officials to
influence decisions relating to the way in which we manage our network and supply
services to our customers.” The telco called for the competition effects of
the proposed legislation to be assessed. “ From http://www.computerworld.com.au
According to
a Deloitte security expert, “One group
that was taken down by the FBI was charging only $300 to $500, but they had
made $30 million the previous year,” Galligan said. Nunn-Price said a lack of
awareness of security at all levels, underinvestment in security, and a
shortage of skills all contributed to making She added
that Deloitte had found a solution to Cyberlocker, one of the most common
ransomware tools, which it had shared openly. The former FBI agent said that
both government and non-government organisations in the From http://www.computerworld.com.au
The hosted
private cloud market will continue to grow at a low double-digit CAGR,
reaching $US39 billion through to 2019. Technology Business Research believes
continued widespread enterprise adoption of cloud solutions will drive steady
revenue growth for vendors across all cloud segments, particularly for hosted
private cloud vendors that offer the flexibility of public clouds with the
added layer of security due to the dedicated instance nature of hosted
private cloud. “Security is a driver and a barrier of hosted private cloud
adoption and will greatly affect the private cloud landscape through 2019,”
says Cassandra Mooshian, Cloud Analyst, TBR. “The
best case scenario for hosted private cloud vendors is that customers favour
the added security benefits of a hosted private cloud environment over a
public cloud environment, while the worst case is another large-scale
security breach compounds lingering security concerns and leads to a halt in
cloud adoption.” Mooshian
says the mix of IaaS to SaaS in hosted private cloud being weighted more
heavily to IaaS suggests enterprises are bringing their own application
licenses to vendors’ IaaS solutions. “This indicates an opportunity for
vendors to capitalise on by bringing traditional software to cloud
environments for their enterprise customers that are not ready to restructure
their software consumption patterns but want to exploit cloud economics to
reduce costs,” Mooshian adds. For Mooshian, data centre hosting experts,
especially IBM and HP, will benefit from this added hosting opportunity,
while it will be more difficult for software providers to transition their
software licenses to subscriptions in private cloud. From http://www.computerworld.co.nz
The "These
crimes can have a devastating impact. For example, individuals may lose all
their stored data or have their information stolen. For organizations, cybercrime
can ruin business reputations and result in major financial losses." From Xinhu Why Cyber Security Will
Become “Everyone’s Business” in 2016 The impact
of cyber security on Cyber
security will move into the boardroom (and everywhere else) “It’s been
moving up the corporate agenda for some time and in 2016, more than ever,
cyber security will be recognised as a boardroom issue,” Bartlett says. “In a
lot of ways, cyber security is like health and safety - it needs to form a
key component of the company’s risk management system, and Directors need to
undertake their due diligence, get proper advice and demonstrate that they
are taking action. “Shareholders will expect nothing less.” Attackers
will get more and more sophisticated “It’s easy
to get caught up in the cloak and dagger intrigue of cyber security as a vast
and intricate problem, but the reality is that attackers are developing
methods and tools faster than most organisations are evolving their
protection,” Bartlett adds. “That said, basic attacks like dropping a USB
stick with malicious code on it in the hope that an unsuspecting person will
plug it in, remain all too prevalent.” Many
organisations will fail to focus on the basics “The fact
that most attacks still come in via the most obvious security holes is precisely
because these gaps exist in the first place,” Skills will
remain in demand “Ethical
hackers, security executives and consultants are and will remain in short
supply,” Managed
Services will provide most of the answers “Many
organisations are realising that 24/7 coverage of the network environment is
needed to assure the security of operations - but that it can’t be delivered
internally,” People and
culture will remain the weakest link “Even the
most secure systems can be compromised with social engineering,” From http://www.computerworld.co.nz
Cyber Security Joins
the Top Table as Risk Dominates Kiwi Director Discussions Cyber security
has finally joined the top table in “Risks
change and evolve and the need to stay current is emphasised by this report.
Technology is an integral part of business capability and boards need to take
responsibility to be able to lead in this new era.” Arcus says technological
disruption continues to be a prominent business risk, with cyber-risk
emerging as a key external risk for the first time. Most directors are
confident that they could handle a major IT disruption with 90.6 percent
saying they have a procedure in place to manage, although just 19.4 percent
can manage data loss and even more 35.2 percent are not able to keep up with
technological advances. Marsh Executive Director, Steve Walsh, says the
ranking of cyber risk in this year’s survey to the second highest
organisational risk, shows how things have changed in 24 months. “Technology
is such a critical part of any organisation’s operation that it can be very
detrimental if it fails or if you can’t keep up with the competition,” he
says. Walsh says that boards must address technology issues as part of their
regular risk reviews. “Any organisation that doesn’t have strategies in place
to deal with these issues, such as cyber, is leaving themselves
hugely exposed,” he adds. For Arcus,
cybersecurity and digital strategy were on the minds of directors in an
“unprecedented way”. “Most businesses use or rely on technology to operate -
cyber risk is a reality of our times - so the ability of boards to consider
it as part of enterprise risk is critical in ensuring directors are confident
about business resilience,” he adds. Directors perception of their own personal
risks only decreased slightly on 2013 results with reputational risk 61.3
percent (62 percent in 2013), being held personally liable for a legislative
breach at 39.2 percent (42 percent in 2013) and loss of personal assess if
called to account at 38.1 percent (42 percent in 2013). Directors still
remained worried Directors’ and Officers’ Liability Insurance may not respond
in the event where a claim is needed to be made. In addition, directors also
worry about what’s in a policy and whether they have sufficient cover. “It is
interesting to note that in a two year period these results have only shifted
marginally - an individual’s reputation is still considered to be paramount,”
Walsh adds. “I do find this result surprising - especially in light of the
incoming health and safety changes. The failure of directors to conform to
the new legislation could see directors face huge penalties.” Walsh says that
directors also saw corporate governance requirements as the biggest emerging
risk over the next 24 months. Other emerging risks included identify
fraud/theft, environmental issues and business continuity. From http://www.computerworld.co.nz
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AFRICA:
The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) in collaboration with
the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) are
carrying out a National ICT Survey on the impact of ICT in the business
environment and public institutions. The survey will take five months at a
cost of USD 644,000 and is the first of its kind in From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
EUROPE:
Some USD 5.5 B will be generated by 10 000 working in Additionally, online trade (traditionally at low levels in the
country) will see a substantial boost, alongside online services offered by a
number of sectors such as banking and telecoms, the latter triggering a
process of closing down a number of bank offices and store branches. With an
increase in revenues of Chinese technology giants in the Bulgarian market, a
further expansion of Chinese capital should be expected, according to the
analysis. Despite "critically low" levels of technology development
in the state and municipal administration (mainly owned to the lack of good
communication between the country's political leadership and the IT
businesses), a good development in 2015 to have effect this year is the
opening of Sofia Tech Park "regardless of the lack of experience and the
notable absence of knowledge on the technology industry in Bulgaria". From
http://www.novinite.com/
Germans
Say Smartphone Most Important 21st Century Invention Germans consider the smartphone to be the most important
invention of the 21st century, according to a recent YouGov survey. Almost
one in two respondents named the smartphone out of a list of 23 inventions,
and 32 percent stated the importance of mobile internet, with just as many
selecting GPS systems. Those navigation devices are most popular among older demographics, and rank first among those aged 55 or older,
but are not even in the top five for respondents between 18 and 24. For this
age group, GPS systems are on par with mobile messengers such as WhatsApp at
20 percent. For young respondents, certain internet pages such as YouTube
(20%) and Wikipedia (25%) are very important too. In all age groups, 66
percent of all respondents have some or great confidence in the correctness
of the online encyclopaedia. However, traditional encyclopaedias such as
Brockhaus are still perceived as more trustworthy, with 81 percent of people
asked trusting the correctness of the content. From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
This research project by Aric Toler, a contributor at RuNet Echo
and Bellingcat, will create a series of guides, tutorials, and walkthroughs
on understanding and conducting open-source research on the Russian-language
Internet (RuNet). The primary focus of the project will be providing
instruction on the nuances of Russian-language research relating to the
conflict in eastern The project will help researchers, journalists, and anyone
interested in understanding more about the Russian Internet to verify sources
and understand information found on Russian social media. It will provide
some techniques for media forensics involving images and videos, including
the different levels of verification needed for different uses: journalistic,
evidentiary, as well as other avenues. The motivation for carrying out this
project is to satisfy a demand among English-speakers for learning materials
about carrying out and verifying open-source research on the RuNet. There is
a wealth of information on the RuNet that is of interest to specialists,
journalists, and the general public in the English-speaking world. There are
currently no guides, however, that provide instruction for navigating and
verifying these sources that differ from English-language counterparts.
Important sources for research data include exclusively Russian-language
social networks like Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, along with others that
function in Russian-language pockets on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and
elsewhere. Open-source research can complement traditional journalism by
generating leads and supplementing on-the-ground reporting. For example, the
author of this project, Aric Toler, provided open-source research on a
particular Russian soldier who fought in Ukraine to VICE News journalist
Simon Ostrovsky to assist him in following his “journey” from his hometown to
the battlefields of Ukraine (see “Selfie Soldiers: Russia Checks Into
Ukraine”). In another example, open-source research from Bellingcat into the
downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 provided material for a 60 Minutes
Australia investigation at the site of the tragedy. Each installment of RuNet
Echo’s guidebook includes a detailed tutorial, accompanied by case studies,
teaching readers how to conduct a particular kind of open-source research. How to Conduct Open-Source Research on the Russian Internet So You Want to Conduct Open-Source Research These general instructions address specific ways to assess the
reliability of photographs, videos, and human sources, with a special focus
on the Russian Internet. What You Need to Know About Russian Social Networks to Conduct
Open-Source Research Outside of the familiar English-language social networks of
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and others, there is a handful of social media
platforms used either exclusively or primarily in the post-Soviet world. Want
to Research the Russian Internet But Don't Speak Russian? We Can Help.
Conducting open-source research is especially challenging when you don't
speak the language of your research topic. Thanks to the Internet, however,
even these obstacles don't make it impossible. Unearthing Local Stories on the Russian-Language Internet While a lot of open-source research on the RuNet is possible
thanks to broad Internet searches, sometimes it’s best to drill down to the
narrowest sources available. Herein Lie the Secrets of Geolocation This guide will provide instruction on using satellite images,
with a focus on historical imagery, and available street-level imagery
accessible for Russian and Ukrainian cities. From
https://globalvoices.org/
From
http://www.dw.com/
From
http://www.telecompaper.com/
2015 showed that people working together can succeed in the
battle against corruption. Although corruption is still rife globally, more
countries improved their scores in the 2015 edition of Transparency International’s Corruption
Perceptions Index than declined. Overall, two-thirds of the
168 countries on the 2015 index scored below 50, on a scale from 0 (perceived
to be highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived to be very clean). Yet in places like
Grand corruption is the abuse of high-level power that benefits
the few at the expense of the many, and causes serious and widespread harm to
individuals and society. It often goes unpunished. This year Transparency
International is calling on all people to take action by voting at unmaskthecorrupt.org.
We want to know which cases the public most believe merit urgent attention to
send a message that we will take a stand against grand corruption. The results The index covers perceptions of public sector corruption in 168
countries. From
https://www.transparency.org/
A Continue reading the main story Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed
columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around
the world. The ruling was not entirely out of the blue. A key architect of the spy bill is the president of Advertisement Continue reading the main story When Brazilian legislators passed the Marco Civil, the
government signaled to its citizens and the international community that it
took “net neutrality” and digital sovereignty seriously. It was, in effect,
declaring that the democratic principles of freedom, privacy and human rights
were equally applicable in cyberspace as in the physical world. That ethos
continued in 2014, when Consider the response of the authorities to the huge street
protests of 2013: The Brazilian Intelligence Agency and the Army’s
cybersecurity command actively monitored civilian protesters and politicians.
And the government now regularly clashes with tech companies like Apple and
Google over access to users’ personal data. Every government deals with
similar tensions, but each must strive to strike a balance between protecting
civil liberties on one hand, and the possible overreach of a country’s
security apparatus on the other. Having emerged from authoritarian rule just
30 years ago, Brazilians are especially sensitive to encroachments on their
basic freedoms, including digital ones. People still remember, for example,
how habeas corpus was suspended in the wake of the 1964 military coup. From
http://www.nytimes.com/
NORTH
AMERICA: The public sector serves a population more technologically savvy
and advanced than ever before. The use of mobile phones, acceleration of
social media and overall speed at which technology continues to evolve have set the bar high for local and federal governments to
keep up with these changes. Couple this with a
strong legislative environment that continues to introduce new programs and
services that require 21st-century technology, and we can see a clear
transformation on the horizon in the way governments operate on a fundamental
level. It has been three years since the federal government issued the
Digital Government Strategy, which put smart, secure and affordable
technology at the forefront of moving toward a more digital, data-centric
government. Still, government entities, both federal and local, are just now
beginning to see the value in making public services more accessible in the
cloud and via mobile devices. Gartner’s digital government maturity model calls it the
“managed” level, where jurisdiction has finally recognized the importance of
digital data. This kind of “digitization” takes years to fully implement, because
of budget constraints and the protracted procurement process that often
hinders the federal government. Another year of implementation is still
required for the public sector to assess the success or failure of such
technological changes. This is why local and federal government entities are
just now starting to reap the benefits of implementing a digital government
strategy. In addition, legislation under the U.S. Patriot Act and Government
Paper Elimination Act, as well as recent programs such as the Affordable
Healthcare Act, have legalized electronic signature applications and made the
use of digital document management systems not only available, but a
requirement in some cases. Such legislation has paved the way to evolve dated government
practices into 21st-century processes, where the paperless office and hybrid
cloud services are now the most effective ways to serve today’s citizens. The
sheer size and scope of ongoing government projects -- from subway systems,
airports and underground highways, to the digitization of health care, both
local and federal, and the internal revenue service -- create an even greater
need to re-vamp an antiquated infrastructure and keep moving towards a more
digital government. That’s very good news, considering the findings of a 2014
Brookings Institute study found that government IT systems are still running
on software built more than 50 years ago! Greater efficiency is critical for the future of public service
management -- as are factors that support affordability, usability and
security. The federal government spent $75.6 billion on IT projects in 2015,
according to the same Brookings Institution study. This number is expected to
increase by 2 billion in 2016, according to the Office of Management and
Budget, which means the public sector has more
resources than ever to move the digital government strategy forward. As we
ring in 2016, we will see a significant acceleration within three key
technologies as the public sector fundamentally transforms its services to
meet the needs of 21st-century population. 1. The Use of Public Cloud Technology Cloud technology will continue to evolve in 2016, as government
entities seek to find more efficient, affordable and secure ways to make
public services available to citizens. The Federal Cloud Computing Strategy,
implemented in 2011, required federal agencies to consider using cloud-based
technology -- and it is just now beginning to reap positive results among
larger state entities. In fact, the public sector has not only experienced
more efficiency, but it’s also starting to trust the security and reliability
of storing sensitive information in the cloud. Government entities can have
total control of data, but also have the ability to share this data with the
public via hybrid cloud technology. Federal adoption is paving the way for
smaller, more resource-stretched local governments to follow suit. In 2016,
we should take note of public sector services that leverage more hybrid cloud
technology in order to allocate IT resources and expensive enterprise
software that’s already been purchased. Reducing costs and speeding up
deployment and procurement will drive this trend. As government entities seek
to share enterprise resources, greater integration in the cloud will also be key. Developing internal cloud infrastructure will cease
as governments now see the value in leveraging commercial government cloud
technology from providers like Microsoft and IBM. 2. Mobile Engagement It should come as no surprise that individuals are using
multiple devices to accomplish a single task and smartphones and iPad devices
have officially outpaced the use of laptops, according to comScore. But the
government has been much slower to follow suit. In 2016, engaging with
citizens via mobile will continue to evolve as mobility remains top of mind
for public services of all kinds, from transportation to tax reporting and
localized health care. In light of this, we can expect government entities to
test the waters with engaging citizens via mobile. Whether it’s making public
services and data available on multiple channels or communicating with
citizens via online chat, text message or forums, the public sector knows
that to put the needs of tax-paying citizens first, it must start making
services and communication available via multiple devices and channels. A
trend for governments to start leveraging their own platforms as
"services” to reach the public should also be watched in 2016. Local
governments will make use of their existing infrastructure by allowing public
access to services, for example, filing and e-signing documents for health
care programs, as well as public data, more available to local citizens. 3. Apps and Services Architecture Government entities are finally experiencing value in leveraging
technologies that automate daily business processes, such as document
management, customer service communication and financial transactions. Yet,
agility, integration and flexible deployment are dictating the way in which
these processes are used, accessed and implemented. As previously discussed,
more resource-stretched government entities will seek to leverage
already-purchased enterprise software and, as the public sector works toward
one common goal of digitization, integration will continue to be of upmost
importance. A key way in which government entities can share software and
applications and integrate services will be through developing microsite
architecture, because this kind of architecture is scalable and can
distribute and deliver software and applications via hybrid cloud and
on-premise. Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies report covers this in
great detail. Making public sector services easily available, while minimizing
cost and complexity, has been an ongoing challenge for government entities,
even with the constant introduction of new legislation to spur this forward.
The public sector is only just now starting to reap the benefits of
efficiency and security by moving toward a more digital practice. The
ever-growing digital needs of today’s citizens, combined with the constant
flow of new and bigger government projects makes the need to progress in this
initiative more important than ever before. As such, we can expect a rapid
increase in certain technologies as the public sector fundamentally
transforms its services to meet the needs of a 21st-century population. From
http://www.nextgov.com/
Lawmaker
- The “I’m interested in what we can do better .
.. to make sure we are building back toward the
first,” said Coons, who co-chairs the Senate Competitiveness Caucus. Next
steps might be to make greater investments in research and development,
“wiser investments in human capital,” and reducing effective corporate tax
rates, “ensuring that businesses can compete fairly around the world."
Joined by Sens. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and Cory Gardner, R-Colo., at a discussion
co-hosted by ITIF, Coons described proposed legislation that could amplify
the nation's technology contributions, such as the Startup Act, in its newest
iteration, which aims to relax immigration restrictions on people with
advanced STEM degrees, among other provisions. According to the report, which judged countries on net
contribution to global innovation per capita, From
http://www.nextgov.com/
ICT
Investment Trends in Utilities: Summary ICT aids utility companies by providing digital technologies
that offer opportunities for transformation. ICT systems play a critical role
in reducing risks, and improving efficiency of utility companies. Kable's
report shows that ICT led digital technologies are creating industrial
revolution within utilities. With an increased focus on improving their
customer experience, utility companies are embracing the disruptive
technologies of cloud and mobility Key Findings - Utility companies are looking to increase their investments in
software and services in 2015, compared to 2014, to evolve their services at
par with the industrialized nature of global economy. - While utility companies are investing in business intelligence
solutions to analyze large volumes of operational data and improve their
responsiveness in the evolving industry, mobility investments are aimed at
enhancing their real-time operations and to streamline their business
processes. - As customer services form the core of their operations,
utility companies are focusing on call center and customer relationship
management services to cut costs and meet the increasing customer
expectations. Synopsis ICT investment trends in utilities presents the findings from a
survey of 135 utility companies regarding their Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) investment trends. The survey investigates
how utility companies currently allocate their ICT budgets across the core
areas of enterprise ICT expenditure: hardware, software, IT services,
communications, and consulting. The report illustrates the core technologies
banks are investing in, including business intelligence, security products,
and mobility. Understand the approach adopted by utility companies to
purchase technology and get a better insight into ICT vendors and services
providers when pitching their solutions to utility companies. The report
focuses on utility companies' ICT expenditure trends for specific business
areas and technologies, identifying the top three IT projects, and
understanding the business challenges faced by organizations. In particular, it provides an in-depth analysis of the
following: - How ICT budgets are set to change in - Allocation across the core elements of IT spend, including
hardware, software, services, communications, and consulting - Distribution of ICT money in areas such as the networks, applications,
service desk, and data centers - Which ICT functions utility companies are interested in
outsourcing - Utility companies' investment priorities based on their budget
allocations across core technology categories such as business intelligence,
security products, and mobility. - Factors that are influencing utility companies' investments in
each technology category - How utility companies' IT budgets are currently allocated
across various segments within a technology category - Utility companies' distribution of their ICT budget across
various segments within a technology category - Vendor satisfaction ratings for various core and advanced
technology categories - Insight into utility companies' preferred buying approaches - Business and IT objectives that utility companies are looking
to achieve through their IT investment strategies - Factors that are influencing utility companies' decisions to
select an ICT provider Reasons to Buy - Understand how the utility companies ICT landscape is set to
change in 2015 to prioritize your target market - Comprehend how ICT money are being allocated by utility
companies in specific geographies and size bands to improve your market
penetration - Make effective business decisions by recognizing the
opportunities within each of the core areas of ICT spend (hardware, software,
IT services, telecommunications, and consulting) - Realign your sales initiatives by understanding the current
strategic objectives of utility companies - Enhance your market segmentation with the included, detailed
breakdown of opportunities within selected technology categories (business
intelligence, security products, and mobility) - Prioritize your focus areas by understanding which factors are
influencing utility companies' decisions when selecting an ICT provider -
Understand the changes in customers'
priorities and identify the business and IT objectives that utility companies
are looking to achieve through their ICT investment strategies From
http://www.prnewswire.com/
Some
3.2 Billion People Now Online, but Some 3.2 billion people are now online, representing 43.4 per cent
of the global population, but the number still falls significantly short of
reaching the anticipated goal of 60 per cent by 2020, according to a United
Nations report released today. While the proportion of households projected
to have Internet access in 2020 will reach 56 per cent, exceeding the
‘Connect Although the 2020 goal is not on track to be achieved, the report, widely recognized as the repository of the world’s
most reliable and impartial global data and analysis on ICT development,
notes that all 167 countries improved their IDI values between 2010 and 2015
– meaning that levels of ICT access, use and skills continue to improve
worldwide. It also showed that almost 7.1 billion people, over 95 per cent of
the global population, are now covered by a mobile-cellular signal. “ICTs
will be essential in meeting each and every one of the 17 newly-agreed
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and this report plays an important role
in the SDG process,” ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao said, referring to the
ambitious economic, social and environmental targets that the UN has set for
the year 2030. “Without measurement and reporting, we cannot track the progress
being made, and this is why ITU gathers data and publishes this important
report each year.” ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau Director
Brahima Sanou called progress encouraging in many areas. “But more needs to
be done – especially in the world’s poorest and remotest regions, where ICTs
can arguably make the biggest difference, and help bring people everywhere
out of extreme poverty,” he added. By the end of this year, 46 per cent of
households globally will have Internet access at home, up from 44 per cent
last year and just 30 per cent in 2010. In the developed world, 81.3 per cent
of households now have home Internet access, compared to 34.1 per cent in the
developing world, and just 6.7 per cent in the 48 UN-designated least
developed countries (LDCs). Latest data show that growth in Internet use has slowed down,
however, posting 6.9 per cent growth in 2015, after 7.4 per cent in 2014.
Nonetheless, the number of Internet users in developing countries has almost
doubled in the past five years, with two thirds of all people online now
living in the developing world. Fastest growth continues to be seen in mobile
broadband, with the number of mobile-broadband subscriptions worldwide having
grown more than four-fold in five years, from 800 million in 2010 to an
estimated 3.5 billion now. The number of fixed-broadband subscriptions has
risen much more slowly, to an estimated 800 million today. “More action will
also be needed to ensure that targets for growth and inclusiveness are not
missed in developing countries, and in particular in LDCs,” ITU stressed in a
news release. “The Connect 2020 Agenda aims to ensure that at least 50 per
cent of households in developing countries and 15 per cent of households in
LDCs have access by 2020, but ITU estimates that only 45 per cent of
households in developing countries and 11 per cent of LDC households will
have Internet access by that date.” In 2015, From
http://www.un.org/
In the News 2015: The Year's Telecoms Highlights LAP OF THE GODS BT has returned to the mobile
sector, signing up more than 200,000 customers since launching an MVNO service
on EE's network in March. The launch came less than a month after BT
finalised a ￡12.5 billion
takeover of the aforementioned operator. Presuming the deal passes all the
requisite regulatory tests–the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) gave its
preliminary blessing in October–the DOWN AT&T completed the
acquisitions of Iusacell and Nextel in China Unicom and China Telecom received
FDD LTE licences this year, enabling them to offer full BUYING AND SELLING IN It has been a busy year in BOARDROOM BLITZ Vivendi is making its presence
felt at Telecom Italia. Having built up a stake of around 20.5% in the
Italian incumbent, the French media group is starting to exert pressure at
board level. At a shareholder meeting in December, Vivendi won the right to
appoint four new members to Telecom Italia's board. Vivendi also blocked a
savings share conversion plan that would have resulted in the dilution of its
stake. Vivendi is not the only new Telecom Italia investor that could
potentially have a say in its strategy. French businessman Xavier Niel–who
has built up a long optional position of 15.14%–is monitoring the situation
and will "review a wide variety of investment considerations,"
including Telecom Italia's operations, assets, prospects and business
development. With mobile consolidation on the horizon due to Wind and 3
Italia's proposed merger, and with doubt still hanging over Telecom Italia's
continued presence in CABLE MEGA DEALS No sooner had Comcast abandoned
its $45.2 billion plan to acquire Time Warner Cable (TWC) than Charter swept
in with a $56.7 billion deal of its own. It is planning a three-way merger,
including Bright House, which it agreed to buy for $10.4 billion earlier in
the year. Meanwhile, French cable group Altice is due to arrive in the FOUR IS THE MAGIC NUMBER Four-player mobile markets are
proving a key topic of discussion across From http://www.totaltele.com/ Last week brought a positively Orwellian moment to the debate
about Internet freedom. Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke at a
state-organized Internet conference in Wuzhen, in The real danger in Xi's remarks is the word "order,"
because he envisions not only politeness but also obedience. In From
http://www.tulsaworld.com/
Internet Governance
Outlook 2016: Cooperation & Confrontation In 2015 we
saw many agreements on Internet Governance. 193 Governments agreed in the UN
General Assembly on the WSIS 10+ Outcome Document. They agreed to extend the
mandate of the IGF for ten years. They agreed to strengthen the multistakeholder
approach. And they agreed to make more efforts to bring the next billion
users online until 2020. The UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) agreed on
a number of confidence building measures to strengthen cybersecurity.
Governments agreed that countries have the same rights and duties under
international law offline and online. The UN Human Rights Council agreed to
establish a new rapporteur on privacy in the digital age. The Bad News The bad news
is that the good news is only one side of the coin. The majority of the
agreements are nothing else than "agreements in principle". With
some exceptions they do not really solve problems. The devil is in the
detail. And the documents which enabled governments in 2015 to agree on
language disguise a fundamental disagreement on substance. The different
political and economic interests of governments and corporations, diverse
cultural and social values, historical experiences of individual countries
and the controversial ideologies of political leaders did not disappear in
2015. And they will not disappear in 2016. The risk is high, that the
Internet in 2016 will mirror the global political trends of growing
confrontation, radicalization and re-nationalization. The best we can hope
for in 2016 is that we can secure an environment which will allow the
Internet Governance ecosystem to continue to innovate, to grow, to evolve and
to keep extreme and polarizing positions under control. This would mean that
2016 could become a year with a mix of cooperation and confrontation. And
this would not be a bad thing. One of the
key questions of the 2016 Internet Governance agenda will be whether the
Internet remains the open, free and unified network as we know it since the
invention of the TCP/IP protocol in 1975. There are growing tendencies to
split the Internet into smaller parts: into national Internet segments or
special Internet economic zones. National firewalls or wallet gardens could
lead to a fragmented Internet. 25 years ago the removal of physical borders
for the free flow of ideas and information did open the door for an
incredible wave of innovation, economic growth, job creation, social
activities and enhancement of individual rights and freedoms. Today, the
re-erection of frontiers in the borderless cyberspace implies the risk to
reverse such a development with could lead to unpredictable economic
downturns, new social unrest and irrational political reactions. This is a
complex issue. On the one hand it is a natural process that the ongoing
growth of complex systems reaches a moment, where sub-systems emerge on top
of the basic infrastructure and that such subs-systems develop their own
life. 25 years ago the Internet had less than 4 million users, now it has
more than 4 billion. In 1991 there were no search engines, no social
networks, no apps. Now search engines and social
networks have billions of users and we have thousands of new services and
applications. Such a complexification has consequences. Under
certain circumstances fences around sub-systems can be justified or are even
needed to secure the functionality of specific services. There can be good
reasons for introducing checkpoints to get the dark side of the Internet
under control. On the other hand, the risk is high that a re-bordered
Internet will dwindle down innovation, reduce market opportunities, block
social interactions and introduce censorship and mass surveillance.
Governments and the whole Internet community has to
fight the evils of cyberspace: terrorists, criminals, hate preachers,
pedophiles. But it has to be done in a balanced way. One has to avoid that fundamental individual rights and freedoms are
undermined. And one has to avoid that economic opportunities for innovation without
permission and the low entry barriers for newcomers with creative business
models are not blocked. The medicine to fight the various Internet diseases
has to be administered in a way that it does not kill the patient. And it has
to be done in a cooperative way with the involvement of all stakeholders. Spaces for
Confrontation Let's have
look into the 2015 Internet Governance agreements to find out where we can
expect more agreements or disagreements in 2016. There will be three main
battlefields in the Internet Governance Ecosystem: Cybersecurity,
Cybereconomy and Human Rights. And at the moment there are more questions
than answers. 1.
Cybersecurity. Governments
agreed in the GGE that states have the same rights and duties under
international law offline and online. But they could not agree what does this
mean for war and peace. In the offline world, a war is defined by the UN. And
it is the UN Security Council which has some competences if international
security it threatened. Chapter 7 of the UN Charter gives states the right to
self-defence in cases of an attack. Does this apply for a cyberwar? There is
no definition, what a cyberwar is. A war in the offline world means death,
damages and destruction. Neither the attack against And what
about espionage? 2.
Cybereconomy: WSIS 10+
agreed that there is a need to bring the next billion Internet users online.
There is broad agreement that the development of a digital economy is key for economic growth and job creation. The Boston
Consulting Group has found that countries with a developed Internet economy
have higher growth rates and less unemployment than countries with an
underdeveloped Internet economy. The last 15 years we saw the emergence of
the Silicon Valley giants in the There is a
growing economic competition in the digital field. Regional trade pacts as
TTP and TTIP do not include so far a special chapter on digital trade, but
some paragraphs cover online protection of intellectual property and personal
data and also domain name dispute resolution in the ccTLD space. Trade
negotiations are rather different from Internet Governance discussions. TTP
and TTIP are secret negotiations by governments only. Internet Governance
issues are discussed in open and transparent spaces with the participation of
all stakeholders on equal footing. If the trade world and the Internet world comes together, do we will see the next "clash of
cultures"? What will happen if the WTO starts negotiations on a Digital
Trade Pact behind closed doors and without the involvement of
non-governmental stakeholders? After the decisions by the European Court of
Justice on the 3. Human
Rights Governments
agreed in the WSIS 10+ Outcome Document that the information society has to
be based on human rights. They reaffirmed the UN resolution 69/166 that
"the same rights that people have offline must also be protected
online". Governments agreed to link the WSIS process to the Millenium
Development Goals (MDG). But if it comes to the right to freedom of
expression there is no agreement what "illegal content" is. And
what about the damage of individual privacy if governments introduce mass
surveillance to fight criminals and terrorists? There is a broad agreement,
that access to the Internet can be seen as a human right. But there is just
lip-service if it comes to put money on the table to finance enhanced access.
In 2015, more than 80 percent of the developed world was online, but only 34
of the developing countries. Nearly four billion people are still offline. In
the WSIS 10+ Outcome Document 193 governments recognized that bridging the
digital divide "requires greater und sustainable investment" (para.
40), that "private investment" is "critical" (para. 43)
and that there is a need "for an ongoing evaluation of new innovative
financing options" (para. 45). How concrete is this? Doesn't it sound
like "Waiting for Godeau"? Places for
Cooperation In 2016 the
two main Internet Governance conferences will take place in 1. OECD
& IGF The previous
OECD Ministerial Conference on the Information Economy (Seoul 2008) was a
milestone in promoting the Multistakeholder Modell within an
intergovernmental organization. The OECD has now Advisory Committees where
the technical community, businesses and civil society are self-organized and
make recommendations to the governments of the OECD member states. There is
not always agreement as it was seen in the process to draft OECD Principles
for Internet Policy Making (2012). But the input from non-governmental
stakeholders has enriched the discussion. And one can expect that the OECD is
deepening such a multistakeholder approach with the forthcoming There is an
ongoing agreement that IGF should not become a policy making body. But the
free and frank exchange of ideas and information among all stakeholders on
equal footing within the IGF framework enables decisions makers to qualify
their policies. And it paves the way for the emergence of innovative
mechanisms as it was demonstrated in 2014 by the Net Mundial Conference in 2. The
United Nations A main place
for Internet Governance discussion in 2016 will be the UN Commission for
Science and Technological Development (UNCSTD). The role of the UNCSTD was
strengthened by WSIS 10+. The UNCSTD has now to report not only via the
ECOSOC to the annual UN General Assembly, it has also a mandate to cooperate
with the High Level Political Forum of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development. And it got a mandate to reactivate the Working Group on Enhanced
Cooperation (WGEC) which has to produce a report for the 72. UN General Assembly
in 2017. The 19th UNCSTD session is scheduled for May In the 71st
UN General Assembly, which starts in September 2016, there are now three
committees which will discuss Internet related issues. The report of the GGE
in 1st committee (security), the report of the UNCSTD in the 2nd committee
(economic and social development) and the report of the Special Rapporteur on
privacy in the digital age, Joseph Cannataci in the 3rd committee (human
rights). The first draft of Mr. Cannataci's report will be presented to the
spring meeting of the UN Human Rights Council which starts end of February 3. One can also
expect that the agendas of the big annual summit meetings of world leaders
will include issues like cybersecurity, digital trade and human rights. The G
20 meeting will be hosted by 4. ICANN
& IETF In the
Internet Governance Microcosms, the management of critical Internet
resources, the completion of the IANA transition and the further development
of the new gTLD program will dominate the 2016 agenda. During ICANNs 54th
meeting in End of
January 2016 the ICANN Board, after it has received the full packages from
the two groups, will send the proposal to the National Telecommunication and
Information Administration (NTIA) of the US Department of Commerce. The A completion
of the IANA transition would be also useful for ICANN itself. There is an
urgent need that ICANN — under its new CEO - is concentrating its limited
energies and capacities on its core business: the management of names and
numbers. The new gTLD program, introduced in 2012, was a revolution for the
Domain Name System (DNS). On the one hand the new gTLD program is a big
success. Nearly 1000 new gTLDs have been delegated in the last two years.
However, the new gTLD market is still in its infant stage and less than 10
million registration in the new gTLD space is below
the high expectations. ICANN's new established "Competition, Consumer
Trust and Choice Review Team" (CCT-CRT) will have a lot to do. A report
is expected at the end of 2016. A lot to discuss during the three ICANN
meetings in 2016 (March in 5.
Multistakeholder Platforms Next to the
many intergovernmental and international units, there are more and more
multistakeholder platforms which contribute to global Internet policy making.
There are at least six platforms where we can expect in 2016 innovative and
creative input.
6. Other
Mechanisms In the last
years we did see also the growth of a large number of projects and programs
for Internet education, knowledge production, research and documentation. One
can only hope that this large body of knowledge, which is now available and
will grow in the coming years, will be used by policy makers, business
leaders, technical experts and civil society activists to find a rational
approach to the large number of controversial issues which are waiting for a
solution on the 2016 agenda for Internet Governance. Among such
programs are, inter alia
20 Years
after the Declaration of Cyber-Independence Twenty years
ago, on February 8 1996, John Peter Barlow published his "Declaration of
Cyber-Independence in Davos/Switzerland. This was five years after the
invention of the World Wide Web and in the early days of the information
society. Full of emotions the famous rock singer and activist of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) declared: "Governments of the
Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from
Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the
past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty
where we gather. ... We are creating a world where anyone,
anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear
of being coerced into silence or conformity. Your legal concepts of property,
expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all
based on matter, and there is no matter here. ... We will create a new
civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than
the world your governments have made before."
Today we know that John Peter Barlow was partly right and partly wrong. He
was right, that the Internet changes the world. But he was wrong that the
Internet creates a new world with a new civilization. With all the new
devices on our fingertips, we are still living on our old planet. And when
the UN recognized that "the same rights that people have offline must
also be protected online" one can add in 2016 that "the same problems
that people have offline they have also online". From
http://www.circleid.com/ IT Predictions
for 2016 from World Communication Awards CTO of the Year The legacy of enterprises’ investing heavily in ‘going digital’
in 2015 can be seen in the sheer number of new applications and developing ICT
estate in many IT departments. These conditions mean executives across
departments have been battling it out, as organisations look to carefully
manage their expansion into the cloud, whilst at the same time deal with
their existing infrastructure that is not cloud ready. So, how are businesses
going to tackle their brave new digital future in 2016? It seems that many of
them have learned from the past and are using these experiences to drive
future development for the year ahead. “Somewhere in the cloud” doesn’t
cut it any longer, organisations need to be bold and continue to transform
their ICT estate. With this in mind, here are my four predictions for
2016: 1. We’ll see hyper-convergence at a platform level We have already started to witness a shift in the enterprise ICT
market to IaaS and managed IaaS as a response to a growing desire for
organisations to consolidate their networking, storage and computing.
Enterprises are getting a boost from new evolving cloud services as they look
to overcome the challenge of managing existing infrastructure, while
embracing cloud. Services based on hyper-convergence demand a network which
is constructed to allow them to seamlessly work together, as well as the
ability to run applications across distributed architectures, in-house,
hosted and legacy clouds. Soon we will see an increased amount of services
based on the hyper-convergence of network and cloud computing resources.
This, in turn, will result in platforms that quickly consolidate and discover
customers’ enterprise IT platforms while enabling DEVOPS expansion and
skills. 2. Internet of Things (IoT) will get a boost from increased
deployments of distributed clouds The growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) will be a big trend
in cloud next year. The rise and deployment in hyper-scale distributed cloud
platforms with localised instances is about to bring IoT to the spotlight.
The new developments will enable the rapid expansion of IoT, especially into
areas of health and finance where the proximity and location of the data is
either regulated or required to offer a responsive service. 3. Big Data will stay local Big data is changing the way companies do business. Not only is
it driving decisions at the board level, it also enables businesses to remain
agile and drive competitive advantage. But big data is only getting started
and its focus is shifting from the importance of data, to the location of
data. The recent ruling regarding the European Safe Harbour agreement,
focussed attention on the importance of the data location, with many
organisations more determined than ever to take a closer look at both by whom
and where their data is served. Add to this the need to analyse Big Data
pools, to extract meaningful actionable insight and you have a scenario where
the raw data will be processed locally and the less bulky analysed results
can then be distributed to central locations and facilities where it can be
acted on. The mixture of the complications associated with moving large data
sets and the increasing appetite of regulators to impose rules on data
privacy, will encourage the development of local and distributed models for
data processing to come to the fore in 2016, as organisations look to
re-think their data strategy. 4. Containerisation as a platform will start to become a viable
enterprise alternative. It’s clear the message is getting through that cloud is an
enabler of tools and services when and where it is appropriate to use them.
Rather than being just another bandwagon to jump on, it can actually change
some really fundamental things about how you run your business,
let alone what your business is. But this technology was just getting
started: The widespread, but most importantly, more strategic use of cloud
and further abstraction away from the physical kit will lead to the next step
in enterprise infrastructure based on containers. The ability to rapidly
create and deploy applications globally will start to replace legacy models,
saving money and time and providing higher levels of agility. The IT department will carry the responsibility for driving a
successful enterprise transformation in 2016. Enterprises’ ICT/cloud platform
will need to give them control and assurance over the location of their data,
provide processing proximity for new Big Data and IoT applications, and be
engineered to play nicely with new services based on hyper-convergence and
containerisation. But they cannot often achieve this by tearing out or
replacing existing, large platforms with a vaguely defined cloud.
Organisations must consider how they can work with their existing
infrastructure, while incorporating a new technology or service and deciding
how they fit together within the business. Cloud is not a static concept but
continues to evolve, and the potential for enterprises to achieve both
operational stability and agility lies in the geographical distribution of
the chosen cloud solutions, the network integration available and the higher
levels of virtualisation necessary for meeting emerging enterprise needs. Put
simply, it needs to be sensitive to legacy parts which will remain in place
for a while longer. From
http://www.totaltele.com/
Internet
Freedom: Rhetoric Versus Reality Introduction In the last few years the Internet has borne witness to and
facilitated a great deal of social and societal change. From Hilary Clinton's
positive 2010 address; ‘Remarks on Internet Freedom', to the Tunisian and
Egyptian revolutions that showcased the power of social media, the internet,
its use and power, has been at the forefront of recent news.1 However, equal
to, if not overtaking the positive and enabling factors of the Internet in
recent years are the many controversies surrounding it. While undoubtedly
carrying the potential to do great good, the Internet has been plagued with
numerous impediments, setbacks and controls that greatly damage its offered
freedoms. ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, Tempora, Prism, DMCA and adult content opt in,
are all examples of recent controversies surrounding freedom on the
Internet.2 What is particularly surprising is that all of these restrictions
to freedom stem from the very states that laud Internet freedom so highly. The US and UK being so publicly supportive of Internet Freedom
in rhetoric, yet so thoroughly undermining it in action represents a key
impediment to global Internet Freedom. If the leading global states are
unwilling to forward Internet Freedom in any more than word, how can others be expected to in deed? The current system of Internet
governance in general presents a relatively hostile environment within which
to foster Internet Freedom. The power of large corporations and companies is
immense and the influence they have is equal to their power. Both of these
factors further impede the proliferation of Internet Freedom in a way that is
currently being decided in the courts of the Distinct Aspects Internet Freedom is an amalgam of two distinct aspects. The initial
aspect is the actual physicality of connection; being able to access
infrastructure such as computers, phone lines or mobile devices. With the
rapid pace of technological advancement, the dropping costs linked to Moore's
Law and programs like the Mark Zuckerberg fronted internet.org, access rates
to infrastructure are increasing rapidly.3 There are numerous other programs
that aim to reduce the digital divide and new Internet users are joining the
web each day. Therefore, this piece will concentrate primarily on the second
aspect of Internet Freedom; unfettered access to online content. Recently declared a human right under the 2012 United Nations
Human Rights Council resolution ‘The Promotion, Protection and Enjoyment of
Human Rights on the Internet' (HRC 2012, Resolution A/HRC/20/L.13), online
interactions are now afforded protection equal to offline, real world
interaction.4 The HRC 2012 resolution links to The Universal Declaration of
Human Rights Article 19, specifically the protection of free speech as an
attempt to further Internet Freedom through uncensored discourse and content
regardless of frontiers.5 Although now considered a human right, the HRC 2012
resolution has appeared relatively impotent since its adoption and there are
still extensive levels of censorship online. There are numerous reasons for
online censorship but one of utmost pertinence is that it is almost
impossible to form a global consensus on content and access that will attract
global support. As with any contentious subject there will be differing norms
and views. The Internet is no exception. Different States have different
societal norms and these are reflected in Internet content and acceptable
online subjects. Simply put, not everyone wants to have free and unfettered
access to the Internet. The ideals of Internet Freedom are prevalent mainly
in Western states. Many states view much Internet content as offensive and
adversely influential, one just has to consider the ‘Innocence of Muslims'
riots of 2012.6 Of course in any state there will be a continuum between
those that wish to access all material and make their own decisions and those
that wish to be shielded from certain content. The logical outcome of this
would be to make the Internet completely free and have consumers set their
own individual parameters of censorship, however as shall be expounded, this
is not a realistic proposition and generally leads to a level of censorship
that will vary from region to region, state to state. Rhetoric Versus Action in Western States The This kind of hypocrisy is incredibly damaging to any of the
legitimate claims or attempts at supporting Internet Freedom. Even more
recently in October 2015, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA)
bill was passed.9 CISA allows technology companies to share information on
cyber threats with US authorities and other companies in order to enhance
group security, however the bill is vague enough to allow for large scale
personal data sharing without a warrant.10 President Obama signed the bill
into law, which was attached to the federal funding ‘omnibus' bill, on the
same day that the rest of America was preoccupied with the release of the
newest Star Wars film. If leading states such as the Internet Freedom is a continuum line of liberty and security,
the more freedom, generally the less security and vice versa. As has been
briefly shown the Internet is a powerful tool indeed at a state level for
surveillance and other means. One expects a degree of control and
surveillance in nondemocratic states such as China and Cuba and these abuses
of freedom are well documented.11 The propensity to abuse Internet freedoms
by democratic states however provides a much bigger impediment to Internet
Freedom as a whole. If the states that support Internet Freedom are not
willing to adhere to their own rhetoric the hypocrisy is an instantaneous
barrier to spreading the freedoms they claim to support through foreign
policy. Presumably it will also raise questions as to why the Corporate Power The current system of laws and Internet governance that stems
from the As has been shown they can be overruled by popular public
opinion but only with the backing of equally large organisations. The CISA
bill however, was not so easily curtailed. Even the HRC 2012 resolution, that
protects human rights on the Internet, appears to offer little real
protection. The Electronic Frontier Foundation keeps a track of While clearly this is a hypothetical scenario, the beginnings of
a slippery slope are becoming apparent. If Internet governance does indeed
place further filtering and responsibilities on ISPs and other
intermediaries, then Internet Freedom as a global prospect becomes severely
impinged. In another recent and pivotal turn, the US court of appeals for the
District of Columbia has made a ruling against net neutrality.18 Net
neutrality is the equal and non-preferential treatment of all websites and
services and is integral to the spread of global Internet Freedom through
equal and unfettered access.19 The DoC court ruling while not final if upheld
would enable ISPs to boost or curtail speeds to specific sites. It would also
mean that ISPs could charge connection fees to popular sites such as
Facebook, YouTube and Twitter or bandwidth hungry sites such as Netflix or
Hulu.20. Should this ruling be upheld it would become a major impediment to
global Internet Freedom. With ISPs providing
services based on a discriminatory and profit based model the potential for
ISPs to block or throttle access to competitors' sites would be great.
Clearly this limitation of content would run completely contrary to the basic
tenets of Internet Freedom and as such represent the potential for a severe
impediment to the spread of global Internet Freedom. Multi-Stakeholderism A Case of Too Many Cooks As previously mentioned, the current power of lobbying bodies
and the move toward intermediary liability runs counter to the proliferation
of Internet Freedom. It becomes increasingly apparent that the current
multistakeholder system can only facilitate a restricted level of Internet.
Multistakeholderism is such a complex method of governance that is does
little to promote and facilitate the free potential of the Internet. This
governance system is an incredible complex one that finely balances many
different systems, governments, companies and states. However, this balance
is potentially very precarious given that "different logics, languages
and political cultures enter the scene, when different stakeholders share the
same political arena".21 There are so many bodies involved in the
multistakeholder approach, and as previously discussed, the different
societal, political, economic and security views, culminate to create
incredible difficulty for minor issues to be resolved let alone an issue such
as global Internet Freedom. Potential Alternative Systems The Internet has become very adept at governing itself on a
small scale. Many popular websites such as Reddit and Imgur run based on a
user generated ranking system and simple algorithms.22 There is very little
outside governance for these sites. Many other sites use similar systems to
rank content. Wikipedia and other Wikis use a system of user generated
content and collaboration.23 Likewise relevant to self-governance is the
manner in which the Internet community has rallied around contentious freedom
of speech subjects and house bills like SOPA and PIPA, or used social
networking to bring around governmental change. In these scenarios large
bodies of citizens can bring around revisions under the assistance, but not
control, of larger organisations. It would appear that a similar, ground up rather than top down
governance would facilitate global Internet Freedom far more effectively. Clearly
this would require a complete change to the governance of the Internet, or
deference to consumers by large companies. Neither of these systems seem particularly realistic options and as such perhaps do
not represent satisfactory substitutes to the current system, however they
are representative of the possibilities of an alternative. Clay Shirky offers
a very cogent argument in a 2012 TED talk, whereby he postulates that open
source programming could revolutionize the notion of government through widespread
public collaboration.24 Perhaps a similar system could be applied to Internet
Governance which would have the corollary of advancing a global form of
Internet Freedom, if indeed that is what the collaborators chose to accept.
The Internet is still a relatively young technology and has undergone
numerous changes and revisions in governance, technological aspects, content
and use to warrant optimism over positive changes however unlikely they seem. Conclusions As has been argued, the multi-stakeholder approach to Internet
governance does little to actively promote unfettered and free access to the
Internet. The sheer number of interested regulatory parties and the
divergence of views, laws, governments and norms do little to facilitate, and
much to impede the global spread of Internet Freedom. The recent slew of
highly contentious rulings and discoveries emanating from some of the biggest
proponents of Internet Freedom is likewise exceptionally damaging to the
promotion and furtherance of freedom as supposedly protected under HRC 2012.
The sheer financial, and influential power held by
some of the leviathan companies and parties currently involved in trying to
bring around change in the governance and supply of the Internet shall prove
to be a real issue of freedom in the coming months and years. While some of the recent initiatives such as SOPA and PIPA were
quashed, it remains to be seen if the current onslaught on net neutrality
will attract enough defensive support to reverse the rulings. If not this
could pose to be a critical blow for Internet Freedom. This writing has
merely touched the surface of the issues at hand. The implications of
Internet Freedom and its assistance or impediment has a knock on effect for
International Relations as a whole. The battles currently being fought in the
From
http://www.studentpulse.com/
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Chinese President Xi Jinping called for promoting
innovation-driven development by grasping opportunities in the Internet era
on Wednesday. Xi made the remarks while visiting an expo, themed "Light
of the Internet," displaying the latest Internet technologies and
products in From http://www.news.cn/ President Xi Urges to Build a
Community of Shared Future in Cyberspace Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday urged all countries to
jointly build a community of shared future in cyberspace. Xi made the remarks
when addressing the opening ceremony of the Second World Internet Conference
(WIC) in the river town of In addition, Xi called for measures to maintain cyber security
and promote its orderly development, comparing security and development to
"the two wings of a bird." "All countries should work together
to contain the abuse of information technology, oppose cyber surveillance and
cyber attacks and reject arms race in cyberspace," Xi said. The
president said From http://www.news.cn/ Widely-used
Smart Products to Drive Big Data Usage Smart televisions could well be the springboard for big data
use, considering that the penetration rate for such products is already 70 to
80 percent in According to Wikibon, a US-based research and consultancy firm,
the total size of the global big data market is about $28.5 billion, a 53.2
percent growth from the levels in 2014. The size of big data market in From http://www.news.cn/ Brain-like
Computer Chip Developed by Chinese Scientists The human brain is the world's most sophisticated computer, but
a group of Chinese scientists have developed a computer chip that works much
like the brain. Jointly developed by scientists from From http://www.news.cn/ The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT)
began to research and test From http://www.news.cn/ Television
Goes Smart as New Ecosystems Form in Competition in the Chinese smart television segment, which
heated up last year, is expected to further intensify this year. Beijing
Funshion Online Technology Co Ltd, which was established in 2005 as a
technology company specializing in broadcast, content search and distribution
of streaming media, fired the first salvo by releasing its first smart TV
model on Dec 10. Funshion's competitors could get restless over its low
prices: 1,799 yuan (277 U.S. dollars) for a 43-inch screen model, 2,299 yuan
for a 49-inch one, and 2,799 yuan for a 55-inch set. What's more, Funshion's
three models use 4K, the latest in ultra high definition or HD technology.
Most smart TVs in That is, offline distribution channels are key
to smart TV sales. This is where Gome and Haier become integral to the
ecosystem that also includes online sales channels of Funshion and discount
e-retailer vip.com. "The complete industry chain has been integrated
under this ecosystem. We will enjoy the advantages of lower costs and better
product quality this way. We won't rely on higher sales of TV sets for
profits. This way, consumers benefit the most. They will be able to enjoy
better 4K smart TVs at lower prices," said Luo. Funshion has set an
ambitious goal for itself: sale of at least 12 million smart TVs within three
years. It is confident enough to promise buyers of its products that any TV
set requiring repairs within six months of purchase, will be replaced with a
new one instead. According to Luo, Funshion's smart TV drive is in line with
its ambition set 10 years ago, which was to take the lead in this segment. He
believes smart TV is the next growth point for the home appliances industry
and the next big opportunity for online content providers. Zhang Yu, CEO of
market research company Nielsen-CCData, sees in smart TV huge room for growth
of industry players as it has the potential to become an indispensable part
of family life. According to statistics provided by All View Cloud, the
penetration rate of 4K TVs was only 14 percent in 2014, when their sales were
6.26 million sets. In the first ten months of 2015, the penetration rate
surged to 32 per cent on sales of 14.84 million sets. It is expected that the
penetration rate will reach 80 percent by 2020.
From http://www.news.cn/ A new wave of artificial intelligence (AI) could fundamentally
change the world, with driverless cars navigating through traffic jams,
celebrity avatars chatting with fans on Twitter and robot caregivers and
companions in nursing homes. This is the far-off future as presented by
Pulitzer-winning New York Times tech reporter John Markoff in his new book, "Machines
of Loving Grace," in which the longtime observer of HUMANS STILL IN CONTROL For many other AI technologies, Markoff warned against
overestimating the speed of change or how quickly they will thwart humans.
Progress in self-driving cars, for example, may be slower than expected,
according to Markoff, who was the first reporter to cover Google's
self-driving project. The idea of driving without a driver has been so
commercially popular that Google, Tesla, and Chinese Internet giant Baidu are
all working on developing the technology. However, Markoff said it might take
many years to overcome technological barriers and ethical and regulatory
problems related to self-driving cars. "Cars will increasingly have
intelligence and become smarter, but you won't be able to take drivers out in
ten years," he said. Just as robots are unlikely to grab the wheels from
drivers' hands in the near future, Markoff remained skeptical that smarter AI
will soon replace human labor, causing mass layoffs. Markoff said he is
curious about the reactions of Chinese people toward AI, such as Microsoft
chat-bot Xiaoice. He said the chat-bot seemed more popular in China compared to
the West, and Chinese people treated it more as a companion, citing Microsoft
data indicating large percentages of Chinese users have texted "I love
you" and "Thank you" to Xiaoice. "I believe it says
something different between our cultures," he said. Markoff said aging societies such as From http://www.news.cn/ From
http://www.koreaherald.com
S. Korean
Reclaims Top Spot on ICT Development Index
From
http://world.kbs.co.kr
From
http://www.koreaherald.com
ICT Ministry
to Invest W4tr in R&D The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said Sunday
that it would set aside 3.94 trillion won ($3.35 billion) to fund research
and development projects for science, technology and information and
communications technology in 2016. The fund is part of the ministry’s
initiative, dubbed the comprehensive execution plan, aimed at speeding up
innovation in the nation’s science and ICT sectors and creating new growth
engines for the economy. Around 2.96 trillion will be invested in the
science and technology sectors while the remaining 980 billion won will be
spent on ICT projects. First and foremost, the ministry will try to foster
projects to develop original technologies in emerging areas, such as those
for bio- and nanotechnologies, autonomous vehicles and space technologies. It
will also focus on supporting research for convergence technologies, such as
those combining the “Internet of Things” ― Internet-connected products ― and
big data. From
http://www.koreaherald.com
PM Calls for
Regulatory Reform for ICT Venture Growth Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn called Friday for a dramatic reform
in regulations to foster the growth of venture firms in the information
communication technology (ICT) sector. "More dramatic reform of the
regulation is needed to revitalize ICT ventures such as fintech and Big
Data," Hwang said, referring to a combination of finance and technology.
He made the remarks in a luncheon meeting with 12 heads of local venture
firms. Hwang also said that the government will make more efforts to boost
support measures to foster the growth of ICT venture firms, especially
venture startups seeking to tap into the global market. From
http://www.koreaherald.com
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A number of business sectors are eager to cash in on
fourth-generation wireless broadband technology as a way to offer new kinds
of services to customers.This follows the successful auctions of licences on
the 1,800- and 900-megahertz spectra late last year, when Advanced Info
Service (AIS) and True Corp were the winners in the 1,800MHz auction, and
True and Jasmine Mobile Broadband in the 900MHz one. Total Access
Communication (DTAC) has expanded its existing AnuwatLuengtawekul, chief financial officer of Thanachart Bank,
said E-commerce will, therefore, also play an increasingly key role
in the online market, he said. Meanwhile, KematatPaladesh, president of
Bangkok Media and Broadcasting - the operator of PPTV channel - said From http://www.nationmultimedia.com/ E-Payment
System Ready by 2018 Government agencies will invest Bt3 billion in the national
infrastructure. While Bt2.5 billion of the government investment sum is
geared for tax-related infrastructure, the remainder will be used to develop
the database on individuals eligible for subsidies and welfare. The steering
committee also re-solved to set up five working groups, to ensure completion
schedules are met. The first group will work on the Any ID scheme, which is a collaboration between the Finance Ministry and the Bank
of Thailand that allows anyone to transfer money by using their ID card,
mobile number or e-mail address, Apisak said. The second will focus on
electronic data capture/chip terminals, aiming to expand the number of
card-receiving machines from 400,000 currently to 2 million by 2018. Both of
these groups will be headed by the governor of the central bank. The Revenue
Department will take charge of the third group, which is responsible for the
e-tax payment system. The Finance Ministry permanent secretary, meanwhile,
will lead the other two groups, which will focus on the integrated e-payment
system for government and state agencies, and the low-income-individuals
database. These last two groups will also take charge of educating the public
about the e-payment system, the minister said. From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
‘Smart
Cities’ Needed to Fight Climate Change, Dr Bindu Lohani Says THE From
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/
More than 106,300 new ".vn" domain names were
registered in the first 11 months of this year, bringing the total number of
".vn" domain names to 343, 370, a year-on-year increase of 16.4 per
cent, according to the Viet Nam Internet Network Information Centre (VNNIC).
The VNNIC held a conference last Thursday to review its activities this year
and discuss plans for next year. The ".vn" domain name was the most
registered country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) in the ASEAN region and is
now expanding in However, only 23.6 per cent were used, and 180,000 domain names
that were not being used had been revoked. The number of IPv4 addresses
allocated to From
http://vietnamnews.vn/
Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Thanh
Hung emphasised that connected data and information exchanges were urgently
needed to develop e-government, as well as for building a national database.
The deputy minister spoke at the 2015 Information and Technology Day (IT Day
2015) on the theme, "Digital information exchange standard for a smart
society" in Ha Noi on Thursday. Data that is not shared will not be
effective, and it would be a waste of investment when building a database, he
said. The connection and sharing between information systems of government
and ministries, agencies, localities and enterprises or between the national
database and specialised database will only be implemented when connection
and exchange standard systems are unified across the country. The Ministry of
Information and Communications has issued the framework for e-Government in For information exchange standards, the ministry has implemented
the project on building digital information and information exchange standard
system studying and proposing nine technical regulations and 117 technical
standards on software, digital information content, standardised
e-information, data and information exchange. Deputy Minister of
Transportation Nguyen Hong Truong said that promoting IT applications,
especially increasing the exchange of digital information in traffic
management would ensure long-term growing value for the transportation
sector, as well as infrastructure. However, many difficulties had arisen in
practical implementation as the system of the State administration had
specific characteristics, while functions and tasks of ministries, agencies
were different, he said Besides, there were differences in scales, and
economic, cultural and social characteristics between regions. Therefore,
according to Deputy Minister Truong, building the standard requires
co-operation between ministries and social organisations, enterprises,
research institutes and universities nationwide. "The IT application can
only be successful when IT applications and administrative reforms are
tightened," Truong said. Highlighting on the necessity of information
exchange standards, the deputy minister of transportation said that data
should be consistent and synchronised across the country so that systems can
chat and connect with each other. From
http://vietnamnews.vn/
The Viet Nam Information Technology Press Club announced the top
ten domestic information and communication technology (ICT) events of 2015. 1. Bkav Corporation launched its first made-in-Vietnam
smartphone, Bphone on May 26.A standard edition phone, with a storage
capacity of 16GB, is on sale at a price of VND9,990,000 (more than
US$450).The event attracted not only the interest of the domestic media but
also the international media for a long time. 2. The National Assembly passed the Law on Information Security
at its 10th session of the 13th tenure on November 19.The law consisted of
eight chapters and 54 clauses.The law regulates cyber information security,
rights and duties of agencies, organisations and individuals in ensuring
cyber information security, and technical standards on cyber information
security, in addition to business, human resource development and state
management on cyber information security.The law is considered an important
legal document in boosting cyber information security in the country. 3. The Viet Nam Post and Telecom Group (VNPT) completed its
restructuring by establishing three corporations.The three corporations are
VNPT-VinaPhone, VNPT-NET and VNPT-Media.The establishment of the corporations
helped VNPT's production and business activities form a value chain from
"content", "infrastructure" to "customers".With
this, VNPT completed Phase 2 of its restructuring plan and are moving to
Phase 3. 4. The government issued Resolution 5. The Viettel Telecommunications Group (Viettel) officially
inaugurated its 6. The government portal tried out a fan page on Facebook called
"Thong tin ChinhPhu" or "Government information" on
October 20.The page aimed to carry news about the government activities
faster and wider on the Internet.The government expected that through the fan
page, government information would reach people faster. 7. The National Numbering Plan took effect in March, including a
plan to change all 11-digit mobile phone numbers into 10-digit numbers and
change telephone area codes.The change of telephone area codes will be
carried out within two years. 8. 2015 is considered the year Vietnamese telecom providers
introduce over-the-top (OTT) services, worrying about the moving of users to
free apps like Zalo and Viber.VinaPhone launched its OTT app, called
VietTalk, in the beginning of the year. In April, Viettel introduced Mocha.On
August, MobiFone announced its pilot app, called
Halo. 9. The central city of 10. Google CEO SundarPichai visited Viet Nam on December 22.He
had a meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and talked with
Vietnamese tech start-ups, students and enterprises in Ha Noi.This was the
first time a high-level leader of Google visited Viet Nam.Earlier, in the
beginning of December, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, also attended a
seminar on social network, mobile phones, big data and cloud computing in HCM
City. From
http://vietnamnews.vn/ Meanwhile, terminal device manufacturers have geared up for the
‘ From
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/
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In recent times, digital marketing has become a vital part of
promoting a product. As the time elapses the method is evolving towards the
better way. We always can foresee or expect what is going to happen in the
field of marketing. So, let’s take a look at new trends that will take front
row in Digital marketing in 2016, reports Mediapost. Google and Microsoft
have already put out the path for VR to take over in the near future. In the
market the Virtual Reality headsets are available and most of us love the
concept of virtual reality. Further-more, when VR takes over the usual 2 dimensional
videos, VR videos will have advertisements before the videos go online and it
will be the next big thing. From
http://www.siliconindia.com In the year 2016, a wide variety of digital technology
has been introduced to help Businesses, entrepreneurs and employees offering
them the ability to leverage technological advances. This is a crucial
element to the success of businesses and start-ups. Many innovations over the
past few years are creating new opportunities for businesses exploring the
new digital frontier. Mentioned here are the six crucial digital trends to
keep up in the progressing year.
From http://news.siliconindia.com 'Technology Vision
2035': Racing against time to realise the ‘Vision As an autonomous body, Tifac is a think tank under the science
and technology department of the central government. It identified 10 major
challenges requiring attention, resources and solutions in the next two
decades for the benefit of people.The key challenges are development,
empowerment, inclusiveness, sustainability, environment, education, health,
urban infrastructure, resources, socio-economic policies, solutions,
electronic communication and quality research.The council, under the
chairmanship of top nuclear scientist-cum-technocrat Anil Kakodkar,
identified 12 sectors to realise the grand vision in the next 20 years,
spanning education, medical sciences and healthcare, food and agriculture,
water, energy, environment, habitat, transportation, infrastructure,
manufacturing, materials and information and communication technology
(ICT).“The vision 2020 was envisaged in the backdrop of liberal reforms since
the early 1990s, when the country was emerging from economic bankruptcy. It,
however, provided directions for national initiatives in science and
technology to make India a developed country by 2020 through affirmative
action in 16 sectors across the spectrum,” Tifac executive director Prabhat
Rajan noted in the report. Admitting that the ‘Technology Vision In the past two decades, India galloped in space, nuclear and
missile technologies, life sciences and biotechnology, cantered in civil
aviation, services and road transportation but trotted in food and
agriculture, manufacturing and electronics.“On the flip side, in healthcare,
life span increased by 10 years to 65 years from 1988 to 2013, while infant
mortality declined to 41 per 1,000 from 94 per From http://news.siliconindia.com
Reliance Jio to Boost Digital
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Work on creation of an electronic inventory database of real
estate throughout The Azerbaijani government has allocated $8 million for the
project. The purpose is aimed at providing reliable, transparent and
efficient system of registration of real estate. This project consists of
four components: registration of real estate, which will provide more
efficient services to clients in the registration of property rights and the
use of automated systems and online services; improvement in the management
of state property; usage of geodetic innovations; conducting of trainings.
Earlier, the government voiced plans to improve the real estate management to
ensure efficiency and transparency in the property system. The country will
introduce the information and communication technologies, advanced management
mechanisms, modern regulatory framework and simplified procedures. In
addition, From http://www.azernews.az/ The cost of broadband services in From http://www.azernews.az/ The information age presuppose developing of the information and
communication technologies at fast pace to ensure security and stable
development of any country of the world. “Our country has taken important steps towards building the
foundations of an information society.” The head of state noted the milestone
events in the ICT sector of Azerbaijan including creation and developing of
the Electronic government, expanding of the broadband internet services,
launching of the telecommunication and low-orbit satellites, etc. “Projects
highly appreciated by influential international structures – Trans-Eurasian
information superhighway and Europe-Middle East Information Superhighway,
which were initiated by Azerbaijan, are successfully implemented,” he noted.
“Creation of technological parks, the use of advanced technologies in
education, state support of innovation projects of industrial and investment
nature serve to the development of high-tech sector in the country and the
region.” Visiting the exhibition, the head of state was informed that Bakutel
2015, brings together more than 200 companies, and
the number of debutants in the exhibition accounts for 15 percent of the
total number of participants. Over the years, BakuTel has acquired the status
of main business event, where new IT-products and services demonstrated, and
strong contacts and new businesses are created. One of the major event that opened the exhibition was signing of an agreement
between The exhibition features stands by leading ICT companies, mobile
operators, communications operators, and distributors of world-known brands.
However, Bakutel is not only an exhibition, but also a number of workshops
for participating companies. In addition to business meetings and
negotiations, surprises, contests and quizzes using IT-technologies were
organized for all visitors and exhibitors. The head of state visited both
local and foreign pavilions at the exhibition. At the stand of the
Communications and High-Tech Ministry, the president was informed in detail
about the Electronic Government portal and the Data Center. The E-Government
portal, launched in 2012, brings together more than 80 state organizations.
Currently, 45 institutions render citizens more than 650 e-services.
Moreover, 35 non-state actors were also connected to this portal and use
these services. Over the past two years, the number of users of the portal
increased 10 times to 2.5 million people. Since last year, issuing of
electronic certificates has also started. Meanwhile, the The exhibition also presents the first resident of the newly
created Mingachevir High Tech Park – HTECH Invest company,
that aims to provide an assembly of production of the internationally
renowned companies in the field of information technology in From http://www.azernews.az/ Azerbaijani
SMEs to Get Boost in 2016 Business entities are the driving force of the real sector of
any economy and this area is of particular importance in Given today’s realities, this decision can be very useful as
SMEs are now not only able to flexibly adapt to the market and actively shape
the market environment, but also gain economic benefits. They can more easily
upgrade the production, respond to changing market conditions, and contribute
to the expansion of employment. What can SMEs expect as their ‘New Year
gift’? Firstly, the updated procedures will increase the number of taxpayers
using simplified taxation. If earlier the volume of taxable transactions
exceeded 120,000 manat ($114,231) with imperative registration for VAT per
month, this amount will be up to 200,000 manat ($190,386) the next year. In
addition, the order of cancellation of registration for VAT will change. This
will be possible if the total amount of taxable operations of the taxpayer
within 12 calendar months did not exceed 100,000 manat ($95,193), whilst now
it is 60,000 manat ($57,116). Thus, from now on companies with turnover of up
to 200,000 manat ($190,386) will benefit from a simplified tax system,
providing for the payment of 4 percent in tax with turnover registered in Legal entities using simplified tax system are exempt from VAT,
income tax and property tax, and individuals do not pay VAT and income tax.
Small and medium-sized enterprises represented as objects of trade and public
catering will have an advantage to pay using simplified tax system next year
regardless of the size of their turnover. New simplified tax rates applied in
this segment will be 6 percent for entrepreneurs engaged in trading
activities, and 8 percent for entrepreneurs engaged in catering. The taxation
in the sphere of housing development will also be simplified from 2016. Legal
entities and individuals engaged in housing construction in Space industry will also enjoy new opportunities beginning from
2016. Enterprises engaged in this field will be released from the payment of
property tax to promote the development of space industry. The list of
taxpayers who are deprived of the right to use the simplified system of
taxation include manufacturers of excisable goods, credit and insurance
companies, investment funds, professional participants of the securities
market, pawn shops, private pension funds, etc. However, the year to come
will bring not only benefits but also new disciplinary rules for
entrepreneurs. Fines for violations the rules applying cash calculations in
the areas of trade and catering will be increased. The first penalty in a
calendar year will increase from current 400 manat ($381) to 2,000 manat
($1,904), the second penalty will comprise 4,000 manat ($3,808), and the
third will be 6,000 manat ($5,712). By applying these steps, From http://www.azernews.az/ How Much
Development Data Is Enough? Rapid advances in technology have dramatically lowered the cost of
gathering data. Sensors in space, the sky, the lab, and the field, along with
newfound opportunities for crowdsourcing and widespread adoption of the
Internet and mobile telephones, are making large amounts of information
available to those for whom it was previously out of reach. A small-scale
farmer in rural The evidence is weak, for example, that monitoring initiatives
in agriculture or environmental management have had a positive impact.
Quantitative analysis of decisions across many domains, including
environmental policy, business investments, and cyber security, has shown
that people tend to overestimate the amount of data needed to make a good
decision or misunderstand what type of data are needed. Furthermore, grave
errors can occur when large data sets are mined using machine algorithms
without having first having properly examined the decision that needs to be
made. There are many examples of cases in which data mining has led to the
wrong conclusion – including in medical diagnoses or legal cases – because
experts in the field were not consulted and critical information was left out
of the analysis. Decision science, which combines understanding of behavior
with universal principles of coherent decision-making, limits these risks by
pairing empirical data with expert knowledge. If the data revolution is to be
harnessed in the service of sustainable development, the best practices of
this field must be incorporated into the effort. The first step is to identify and frame frequently recurring
decisions. In the field of development, these include large-scale decisions
such as spending priorities – and thus budget allocations – by governments
and international organizations. But it also includes choices made on a much
smaller scale: farmers pondering which crops to plant, how much fertilizer to
apply, and when and where to sell their produce. The second step is to build
a quantitative model of the uncertainties in such decisions, including the
various triggers, consequences, controls, and mitigants, as well as the
different costs, benefits, and risks involved. Incorporating – rather than
ignoring – difficult-to-measure, highly uncertain factors leads to the best
decisions. When put in the service of sustainable development, such a model
will often involve projecting the impact of interventions on livelihoods and
the environment over several decades. This process is most successful when
stakeholders as well as experts are recruited to identify the relevant
variables and their relationships. These participants must be trained to
provide quantitative estimates of their uncertainty for the different variables.
For example, experts might estimate with 90% confidence, based
on available data and their own experience, that farmers’ average maize
yields in a given region are 0.5-2 tons per hectare. The third step is to
compute the value of obtaining additional information – something that is
possible only if the uncertainties in all of the variables have been
quantified. The value of information is the amount a rational decision-maker
would be willing to pay for it. So we need to know where additional data will
have value for improving a decision and how much we should spend to get it.
In some cases, no further information may be needed to make a sound decision;
in others, acquiring further data could be worth millions of dollars. This process is repeated until there is no further value in
acquiring data and a sound decision – a logical conclusion, based on the
information, values, and preferences of the decision-makers or
decision-making body – is reached. It provides decision-makers and
stakeholders insights into how to improve policies to maximize positive
outcomes and reduce risks, such as the possibility of low rates of adoption
or limited institutional capacity for effective implementation. It is not enough simply to assume that the data revolution will benefit
sustainable development. Ensuring that it does will require recognizing the
importance of rigorous analysis in every data-collection effort and the
formation of a new generation of decision scientists to work alongside
policymakers. From http://www.azernews.az/ High-tech
Plant to Appear in Production
of equipment for oil and gas industries is still profitable for energy rich Currently,
the state gives a priority to production of competitive industrial products
and equipment in From http://www.azernews.az/ It would be useful for From http://en.trend.az/ From http://www.azernews.az/ Azercell
Keeps Leading Position in Twitter Azercell Telecom, leading mobile operator of In order to get a certificate a company should demonstrate high
level of response rate to the daily growing inquiries of the page fans. Along
with large number of users, Azercell is also leading for several years for
the active use of the page by the fans.
Azercell was the first mobile operator to have launched its official
pages in the leading social networks, as well as offering online customer
service. This was aimed at maintaining a closer link with customers and
prompt delivery of information on innovations. As a result, Azercell
subscribers get an opportunity to enjoy 24/7 high-quality service by using
features of six different social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Disput.az,
Google+, YouTube and Instagram. Any inquiry via these social networks is
being delivered within a few seconds. Holding its leadership in the field of
telecommunications, Azercell aspires to be the first in other innovative
areas as well and to provide its subscribers with access to the latest
technologies. Azercell Telecom
LLC was founded in 1996 and since the first years sustains a leading position
on the market. Azercell introduced number of technological innovations in From http://en.trend.az/ It seems that From http://en.trend.az/ |
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Will Rise in
Digital Services Disrupt Telcos in 2016? Personalising
the customer experience, improving operational efficiency and moving to new
delivery models are some the top IT trends to expect from telcos in 2016.
That according to global analyst firm Ovum, who claims that telco IT trends
are being driven by the need to keep up with the growing market competition,
the industry’s shift toward digital services, and the need to gain business
agility. According to Ovum’s latest report, 65 percent of telcos plan to
increase IT spend in 2016, with 32 percent planning
to increase spend by six percent or more. Over the next year, telcos will
invest in analytics tools to improve the customer experience, undertake BSS
transformation projects to improve operational efficiency, and optimise
network performance, and they will search for more effective delivery models.
“The telecoms industry’s shift toward the digital delivery of services has
created a need for agile operating models,” says Chantel Cary, Research
Analyst, Ovum. “It is driving telco IT trends over
the next year, particularly transformation projects aimed at improving the
BSS stack to enable restructuring of tariff systems, adding billing
convergence and real-time charging capabilities, and integrating billing
systems with customer management systems.” Cary says it is also important to
note that, although telcos are increasing their IT spend, they are still very
budget-conscious and will strategically undertake IT projects that can
provide quick returns on investment. “We also expect to see telcos shift away
from the on-premise deployments of IT systems in favour of cloud delivery
models,” From http://www.computerworld.co.nz
Business
Trends Driving Technology - 2016 Hitachi Data
Systems (HDS) say there are five business trends driving technology in 2016. # # Smart
cities will be built by smart companies # Business
silos will be unified by cross modal IT #
Trans-regional business will be enabled by multi cloud # Skills
shortage sparks talent pursuit So begins a
very nice, if very informative luncheon at the QT in Sydney hosted by Adrian
De Luca Senior Director, Solutions and CTO, Asia Pacific Hitachi Data Systems
and Nathan McGregor, VP and Managing Director, HDS Australia & New
Zealand. De Luca has been making predictions for some time now and its always interesting to hear what he thinks. “We (HDS)
no longer talk about products to our clients – it is all about giving
information to them, educating them what is possible and offering solutions,”
he said. “Technology is now shaping business investment in innovation – it is
no longer about business driving technology.” The
remainder of this article has been paraphrased. 2016 will
see enterprises experiencing major digital transformation as they strive to
improve a host of key functions, not just in technology but also across the
entire organization. There has been a resurgence in
confidence among chief information officers (CIOs) that digital channels will
generate more revenues for the business. According to the Gartner CIO Agenda
Insights report1, only 16% of CIOs expected the revenues in their business to
flow through digital channels in 2014, but the proportion more than doubled
to 37% in 2015. The push is also coming from chief marketing officers who are
finding that traditional ways of marketing are not as effective any more.
Chief financial officers are also discovering that consumer and supplier
transaction models have shifted. There is now an almost universal
understanding within businesses that all functions need to look at how they
can transform their own practices through digitization. Smart
companies will build smart cities Smart cities
have been more than a topic of interest in the Asia Pacific. Many countries
in the region are rolling out Government-backed initiatives, ranging from
eGovernment and public safety to intelligent transportation, in order to
tackle the challenges of rapid urbanization. Although intentions remain
strong, few governments have the experience or the financial means to build
and run these initiatives on their own. Instead, they are partnering industry
innovators who have invested deeply into the Internet of Things (IoT). These
players bring their own intellectual property to the table and are able to
assemble ecosystems of technology providers, integrate their systems and
deliver solutions that will turn smart cities into a reality. As governments
open the door for private-sector participation through initiatives such as
Digital India and Smart Nation Cross-modal
IT will unify business silos Many IT
organizations have understood the need to evolve into two separate modes of
operation in order to meet the demands of the digital enterprise. This is
called bi-modal and its only part of the issue. Mode 1 covers applications
that handle traditional in-house systems of record such as customer
relationship management and ecommerce systems. These support core business
operations and are thus built around predictability, accuracy and
availability. Mode 2 comprises systems of customer interaction and insight,
such as those handling mobility and big data analytics. These systems provide
customers with mobile access to business services and enable businesses to
tap on huge datasets for predictive modelling, allowing them to test
hypotheses in order to respond quickly to the dynamics of the marketplace.
These systems emphasise agility and speed. In 2016, we will see the more progressive
organizations starting to cross-leverage these two modes of IT. They will
introduce modern agility features into their Mode 1 systems and greater
predictability and manageability into Mode 2. Companies that are successful
in creating a standardized, converged IT
infrastructure and in building data lakes across their data assets will
realise the greatest benefits. Those who introduce agile methodologies and
build application programming interfaces (APIs) for their businesses services
will also have the upper hand over their competitors and attract more
customers who are demanding simpler digitized interactions. Multi-cloud
will enable transregional business The emerging
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) promises to bring significant benefits to economies
in the Asia Pacific. To realize the full potential of this agreement, it will
be critical for countries in the region to plan and invest in the next
generation of technology infrastructure to connect their economies now.
Today, as many as 70% of organizations are either using or evaluating hybrid
clouds across the region. The TPP will not only lower the barriers to
consuming intercontinental cloud services, but also make it easier for
companies to expand across the Asia Pacific region. Companies that adopt a
multi-cloud strategy will not only use it to minimize the risk of widespread
data loss or downtime due to localized component failure in the cloud
computing3 environment, but also to springboard into new countries faster and
easier. The emerging provisions in TPP to protect offshore data and avoid
electronic duties will create greater confidence for businesses to harness
this new mode of building IT. Several IT providers have already started to
lay the groundwork for this. They are expanding data centre capacity to cater
to the anticipated growth in cloud computing and investing in
cross-continental high-speed connectivity to create direct routes between key
economies in Skills
shortage will spark a talent pursuit The
shortfall in IT skills will force organizations to re-examine how they
address the talent deficit while continuing to innovate and remain
competitive. The solution will lie not just in churning out more IT graduates
with skills that are in demand, such as DevOps and data science;
organizations will also need to find ways to appeal to young talents by
providing a flexible working environment while investing in their existing
employees to bridge the skills gap. The up-and-coming “Gen Z” worker is
expected to go through an average of 17 jobs in his or her lifetime. These
workers will develop a broader variety of skills and be exposed to multiple
industries over the course of their careers. They are driven more by their
contribution to society than the logo of the company they work for.
Organizations will need to figure out how to tap into the energies of the
“Gen Z” cohort, focus on continual learning and manage the generational shift
in IT talent. Crowdsourcing will emerge as a way for organizations to enlist
a wider pool of talents. This will enable them to avoid the slow ramp-up of
having to hire people to complete tasks or projects, and allow them to tap on
potentially more creative solutions to problems. At the same time, those who
invest in cloud-based tools such as video conferencing, real-time messaging
and file sync-and-share and provide effective training for their existing
employees will see an increase in productivity. From http://www.itwire.com
The
technology and science sector features prominently in the Federal
Government’s Innovation strategy, with everything from funding for a STEM
literacy program to extra funding for the CSIRO and incentives to help boost
the startup sector as part of a $1.1 billion economic reform package. Prime
Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Industry and Innovation Minister delivered the
government’s much anticipated Innovation Statement today, including
significant tax changes as part of the package to give a boost to businesses,
including technology startups. The strategy sees businesses get easier access
to the $5 billion spent by the government on IT each year, available through
a new digital marketplace. And, to help startups, early-stage investors will
receive a 20% non-refundable tax offset based on the amount of their
investment as well as a capital gains tax exemption. Measures to encourage a
return to This
includes changes to visa laws designed to make it easier for Australian
companies to attract overseas IT professionals back to work in The $1.1
billion package to encourage innovation throughout the economy includes: • $ • $ • $ • $ • $ Delivering
the statement at the CSIRO, Prime Minister Turnbull said the changes would
assist From http://www.itwire.com
2016 Australian
Broadcast Industry Trends - OTT to Thrive Mobile consumption
is up, over the top (OTT) will thrive, and advertising will be even more
laser focused. iTWire has been following the Telstra
owned Ooyala with interest. You can read its last article here. Paula
Minardi, Broadcast Industry Marketing Manager, Ooyala has penned the
following article. As the New Year begins, the broadcast industry continues
to see rapid change driven by shifting consumer viewing habits. Ooyala
recently published its “State of the Broadcast Industry Consumers
around the globe (particularly Millennials) are undoubtedly watching more
video content on mobile screens than ever. The shift is due in part to viewer
preferences for individually-tailored and on-the-go content experiences, but
also to the increase in quality content available and created just for those
screens, and the widespread penetration of mobile devices. According to
eMarketer, Viewers do
seem to prefer mobile apps, with their stronger user experience, over mobile
browsers. Remarkably, Australian smartphone users spend about 33 hours per
month on mobile apps vs. just less than 4 hours on mobile browsers. They also
tend to be a socially-savvy lot; eMarketer noted that OTT to
Thrive Everybody
who’s anybody in the global broadcast business has OTT at the top of their
to-do lists this year...if they haven’t already checked it off. While
traditional TV still dominates in the Australian home, the country remains an
important market for OTT growth, given that it ranks the highest globally for
wireless broadband penetration while pay TV penetration is still only around
30%. SVOD alone is expected to be in over 3 million Australian homes by 2020,
as there are now several key local and global SVOD players in the space,
including Netflix, Presto and Stan. Broadcaster catch-up TV services have
also added competitive pressures, so look for the market to heat up as more
consumers move away from more traditional TV environments, including FTA. Live linear
TV delivered via OTT is becoming a core need for providers who want to remain
competitive and grow in the year ahead (ask Seven and Nine). This is
particularly true as sports remains a key live content category in Ad Tech to
Rise Broadcasters
worldwide are increasingly turning to programmatic advertising to make better
use of their full digital and linear video portfolios, and provide marketers
with more precise targeting by linking inventory, data and audiences. Expect
programmatic to rapidly gain ground in 2016, led by anchor events like the
Summer Olympics, more premium inventory, and further innovations in the
space. A growing
challenge regardless of the trading method is that more audiences (especially
Millennials) are skipping ads, blocking them or simply opting for ad-free OTT
environments. Australian viewers are particularly bothered by catch-up TV ad
loads that they don’t have to endure with an SVOD experience. And, consumers
used to skipping ads on their DVRs are now using ad blockers
to skip them online, which has become a global problem to the tune of
$41 billion in 2016. Ad blocking rates of 18% have been seen in From http://www.itwire.com
Many Australians
think Andrew
Cartwright, SVP and Country Manager at MasterCard says that while speed and convenience
continue to drive the popularity of card payments, the readiness to flip from
coin to card could also be a result of increased safety concerns - more than
one in three (36%) Australians surveyed believe that society would be safer
if cash wasn’t around. Cartwright believes that the safety advantages
associated with cards will play a big role in the adoption of a cashless
society. “Australians have long considered credit and debit cards a fast and
convenient way to pay, but what we are starting to see is a real
understanding of, and appreciation for, the safety benefits of cards over
cash. “Australians know that in the instance their wallet is stolen or lost,
any cash is as good as gone.
However, knowing they’re protected against any unauthorised purchases
on their cards provides the peace of mind they need in an already unfortunate
scenario.” The survey also found that as the likelihood of a cashless country
increases, businesses are urged to stay ahead of the curve, with one in three
Australians (39%) believing retailers need to do more to embrace new payment
innovations to help eliminate cash. But,
Mastercard says cash-only businesses may have a longer way to go in the eyes
of modern shoppers, with the survey finding most Australians (89%) have
negative perceptions of ‘cash-only’ businesses, associating them with being
very small (70%), trying to avoid declaring income or paying tax (42%), and
being unsophisticated (19%). Mastercard does say, however, that retailers in From http://www.itwire.com
Telstra Adds IoT
Support to Telstra today
announced that it has enabled support for Category 1 devices on its LTE
network. Cat 1 LTE is intended for connecting devices that are part of the
so-called ‘Internet of Things’. In the past, M From http://www.computerworld.com.au
NEW ZEALAND: Is A rise in
salaries, bonuses and work benefits suggest that 2016 is a good time to be a
tech professional in Meanwhile,
the national median base salary is on the rebound at $82,000, up by 1.82
percent from its previous level of $80,500 as recorded in July 2015. “While
still not back to its record high levels of $ Bonuses Another
upward trend is the percentage of tech professionals in Gender Gap Another trend
that is evident from the report is that the gender pay gap emerges after 10
years of experience. “Male and female base salaries are on an equal keel
during the first 10 years of experience,” Burley adds. “Afterwards the gender
pay gap arises as female base salaries show a slight dip in income for the
next four years (a gap of 9 percent), relative to their male counterparts.
“The reasons for this trend can be attributed to women taking a break from
their careers to raise and support family and often returning to the
workforce working flexible and less hours.” Looking ahead, Burley says that
the future is looking bright for tech professionals across From http://www.computerworld.co.nz
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