The global outage that last month prevented McDonald's from accepting payments prompted the company to release a lengthy statement that should serve as a master  class in how not to report an IT problem. It was vague, misleading and yet the company used language that still allowed many of the technical details to be figured out.  (You know you've moved far from home base when Burger King UK makes fun of you— in response to news of the McDonald's outage, Burger King played off its own slogan by posting on LinkedIn: “Not Loving I.T.”) The McDonald's statement was vague about what ..read more

Microsoft this week pushed out 61 Patch Tuesday updates with no reports of public disclosures or other zero-days affecting the larger ecosystem (Windows, Office, .NET). Though there are three updated packages from February, they're just informational changes with no further action is required. The team at Readiness has crafted this helpful infographic outlining the risks associated with each of the March updates. Known issues Each month, Microsoft publishes a list of known issues that relate to the operating system and platforms included in the latest update cycle; for March, there a ..read more

How did we get to the point where the tech industry is in the user-data business instead of the tech business? Every day, Google collects data on billions of people worldwide, according to The Regulatory Review. The dodge that users gain some benefit from ad targeting is fallacy. For example, if Google's search were decoupled from its advertising, there would be less chance for users to be misled by ignored search terms and seemingly hard-wired results. There's nothing beneficial to the user about Google's sponsored search results. That's also true of  the adjacent Google ads that follow ..read more

The European Commission (EC) has violated several key data protection rules in its use of Microsoft 365 regarding the transfer of people's personal data from Europe to other regions not covered by EU data-protection laws, a key European privacy watchdog found. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) on Tuesday chastized the EC after finding it did not take proper protective measures when sending personal data outside the EU and European Economic Area (EEA) when using the cloud-based app. To read this article in full, please click here ..read more

The European Commission (EC) on Friday said it needs more information from Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta to assess its compliance with applicable privacy and security laws in the European Union (EU). The EC, in a statement, said Meta also needs to speed up its responses to requests in December for information, which centered on election information, terrorism and the protection of minors. The company has until March 15 to provide that information, with the new info about Meta’s pay-to-opt-out-of-tracking program due March 22. To read this article in full, please click here ..read more

Apple is telling European customers that new EU competition laws will make iPhones less safe once the company is forced to open up its platforms to third-party App Stores. The company, not exactly happy about this, has published a 32-page white paper where it spells out the risks arising from the EU’s big experiment. The EU’s formal adoption of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) means Apple must make several changes to its App Store and business models. Changes include the introduction of support for third-party app stores, opening up to payment systems other than Apple Pay, and more. To read ..read more

Generative artificial intelligence (genAI) has become a focal point for many organizations over the past year, so it should come as no surprise that the technology is moving into the enterprise mobility space, including unified endpoint management (UEM). “Generative AI is the latest trend to impact the UEM space,” says Andrew Hewitt, principal analyst, Forrester. “This has been the main topic of interest in the last year. We see generative AI having impacts in multiple areas, such as script creation, knowledge-based article creation, NLP [natural language processing]-based querying of endpoint ..read more

Of all the potential nightmares about the dangerous effects of generative AI (genAI) tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot, one is near the top of the list: their use by hackers to craft hard-to-detect malicious code. Even worse is the fear that genAI could help rogue states like Russia, Iran, and North Korea unleash unstoppable cyberattacks against the US and its allies. The bad news: nation states have already begun using genAI to attack the US and its friends. The good news: so far, the attacks haven’t been particularly dangerous or especially effective. Even better news: Micr ..read more

Your enterprise security does not live in isolation — the threat environment extends across all your colleagues, partners, and friends. That's why it’s very concerning that so many businesses continue to fail to meet basic security hygiene standards, according to the latest Security 360 report from Jamf. Data is gold, which attackers recognize — even many in business don’t. Every stolen address, email, phone number, name, or even passport number is an ID attack waiting to happen, a path to enable a more complex phishing scam, or just an opportunity to call someone up and claim the target has a ..read more

Apple is preparing for future threats to iMessage by introducing upgraded encryption for its messaging service by using quantum computers. Think of it as state-of-the-art quantum security for messaging at scale, the company says, resulting in Apple's messaging system being more secure against both current and future foes. What is the protection? Announced on Apple’s Security Research blog, the new iMessage protection is called PQ3 and promises the “strongest security properties of any at-scale messaging protocol in the world.” To read this article in full, please click here ..read more