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Hopes rise Trump will modernize feds’ technology

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Hopes rise Trump will modernize feds' technology

Tech groups are hopeful the Trump administration will do more to modernize the government’s technology systems on the heels of a new executive order on cybersecurity.

President Trump’s cyber order provides new steps for agencies to boost their security and counter digital threats, and was well received by industry groups.

Experts still caution that the cybersecurity changes won’t be effective unless the government gets rid of outdated computer systems, which are more vulnerable to security threats.

Tommy Ross a policy analyst at the Business Software Alliance (BSA) a D.C. trade group representing tech companies called “new resources” for updating the government’s IT “necessary.”

The order touches on modernizing technology, but observers said they wanted to see a more concrete plan.

The industry, though, is hopeful the president and lawmakers are poised for a breakthrough.

It’s a problem that already has the attention of Congress, where Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), has introduced the Modernizing Government Technology Act.

“A move towards modern technologies can keep our information and digital infrastructure secure from cyberattacks, while saving billions of taxpayer dollars,” Hurd said in a statement introducing a new version of his bill earlier this year.

The bill has bipartisan support and tech industry experts are also rallying behind it.

After Trump’s cyber order on Thursday, the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), a Washington, D.C.-based trade group that represents companies Apple, Google and Microsoft, called on lawmakers to advance Hurd’s bill.

“Adequately strengthening cybersecurity will also depend on the federal government’s efforts to prioritize modernizing its aging and vulnerable information technology (IT) and pledged to continue to work with the administration and Congress on initiatives such as the bipartisan Modernizing Government Technology Act (MGT Act),” ITI wrote in a statement.

“The single biggest opportunity facing the new administration is modernization, which requires smart investments in security technologies that can help government agencies understand and reduce their cyber risk,” agreed Amit Yoran, chief executive of Tenable Security.

Supporters say they have a strong case for bringing the government’s technology into the 21st century. Efforts to improve cybersecurity won’t amount to much they say if the computers, servers, networks and other technology in operation are fundamentally insecure.

Patrick Morley, CEO of Carbon Black, a Massachusetts cybersecurity company, likened it to having an alarm system and security camera for a home, but failing to lock doors and windows.

“What IT and security needs is to work hand in hand,” Morley said. “If the two aren’t connected tightly it’s not going to work. You need to be doing both things in conjunction.”

[Source”cnbc”]

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Education

Schools fear business rate rise will be ‘breaking point’

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Child with abacus

A sharp rise in schools’ business rates could push some budgets beyond breaking point, say head teachers’ leaders.

Business rates, charged on property in England, are due to change in April for the first time in seven years.

Calculations by consultancy Gerald Eve suggest changes to the rateable value of schools mean some will face 40% bill increases.

The government said its own figures suggested state schools overall would see a 2% fall in rates.

Public money

Andrew Altman, a specialist schools partner at Gerald Eve, said the firm estimates that the total rates bill for schools in England is about £791m.

But it estimates that this could rise by £131m to about £922m by 2021-22 as the revaluation changes work through.

The figures amount to a rise of about 17% by 2021, said Mr Altman, but this “hides the fact that about a quarter of schools could see actual rate increases of about 40% in the first year”.

Mr Altman said he feared that council-run schools would be particularly badly hit as academies have their costs, including rates, met fully, directly from Whitehall.

He said that he expected many schools to appeal against their new business rate rises and questioned why public sector properties were subjected to business rates at all.

“It’s circular. It’s all public money. It’s a very expensive tax to collect and appeal,” he added.

National Association of Head Teachers’ general secretary Russell Hobby said a sharp increase in business rates would “add to the perfect storm school leaders are experiencing.

“It cannot be right that more and more of the money to schools is being taken back to central and local government.”

Mr Hobby said schools were already having to find money, which would otherwise be spent on pupils, to fund the Apprenticeship Levy which also comes into force from April, as well as staff insurance contributions and pension costs.

“The burden on schools is becoming too much,” he added, urging the chancellor to “act in next month’s Budget to ensure schools have the resources they need”.

‘Fall of 2%’

In a statement, the Department for Communities and Local Government said it did not recognise the Gerald Eve figures and state schools would see a 2% fall in their bills – equivalent to £16m a year.

“The revaluation of business rates means nearly three-quarters of properties will see no change or a fall in their bills,” said a spokesman.

The National Day Nurseries Association said its members, who operate as small businesses, feared their business rates could double.

Research late last year by the Lambert Smith Hampton commercial property consultancy estimated rises of 45%, or higher in more affluent areas.

NDNA chief executive Purnima Tanuku said these rises would be “a huge burden” when nurseries were already facing “severe financial pressure” due to the national living wage and uncertainty surrounding the financial viability of the government’s plan to double the number of free childcare hours for working families.

[Source:- BBC]

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Internet

Banks Rush to Buy Cyber Liability Insurance as Digital Payments Rise

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Banks Rush to Buy Cyber Liability Insurance as Digital Payments Rise

At a time when cyber threats are on the rise for banks for increasing cashless transactions and effects of demonetisation, insurers see rise in demand for cyber insurance and cyber liability insurance, in particular.

This is despite the fact that the industry base for cyber insurance is currently as low as Rs 60 crore.

There are various cyber insurance covers available in the country, but it is the cyber liability insurance which is in maximum demand for the banks, say insurers.

Non-life insurers that provide cyber insurance cover include New India, National, ICICI Lombard, Tata AIG, HDFC Ergo and Bajaj Allianz.

Country’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI), which fell victim to cyber frauds some time back, is now considering insurance to protect its 30 crore customers.

“We have always seen maximum security in all our IT systems. We are now considering to avail cyber insurance covers for our customers,” SBI managing director Rajnish Kumar told PTI here.

“We are actively examining the issue. The only thing that we have to ensure is that insurance costs fit into our scheme,” he added.

Recently, in one of the biggest ever breaches of financial data in the country, customers of 3.2 million debit cards belonging to different banks were hit by cyber frauds where their ATM details were compromised. Several victims even had reported unauthorised usage from locations in China.

The worst-hit card-issuing banks in the episode included SBI, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, YES Bank and Axis Bank.

Banks either had to replace or asked users to change the security codes of as many customers. Even though SBI didn’t suffer any big financial losses due to the data compromise episode, still as a precautionary measure, it had blocked 6 lakh debit cards.

Bank of Baroda, which had seen around 1 lakh of its debit cards being compromised in the recent episode, is also keen to go for such insurance covers in future.

“We are here to ensure protection of our customers and hence we will definitely go for cyber insurance cover as and when it was required for the bank,” Bank of Baroda MD & CEO, PS Jayakumar said.

Insurers said they do see uptick in demand for cyber insurance covers by banks.

“We are in talks with quite a few banks to provide cyber insurance cover to them,” New India chairman and managing director, G Srinivasan said without divulging any details.

“Cyber threat is on the rise in recent times for the banks and hence they must go for cyber insurance cover,” he added.

[Source:- gadgets.ndtv]

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Internet

Cloud Data Traffic to Rise to 14.1ZB by 2020, Says Cisco Report

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Cloud Data Traffic to Rise to 14.1ZB by 2020, Says Cisco Report

Cloud data traffic is expected to rise 3.7 fold – up from 3.9 zettabytes (ZB) per year in 2015 – to 14.1ZB per year by 2020, a new report by global networking giant Cisco revealed on Friday.

According to the sixth annual Cisco Global Cloud Index 2015-2020 report, the rapid growth of cloud traffic is attributed to the increased data migration to cloud architectures owing to their ability to scale quickly and efficiently support more workloads than traditional data centres.

Business workloads will grow by 2.4-fold from 2015 to 2020 but their overall share of data centre workloads will decrease from 79 to 72 percent and during the same time, consumer workloads will grow by 3.5-fold.

“In the six years of this study, cloud computing has advanced from an emerging technology to an essential scalable and flexible part of architecture for service providers of all types around the globe,” said Doug Webster, Vice President, Service Provider Marketing, Cisco, in a statement.

By 2020, database/analytics/Internet of Things (IoT) workloads will account for 22 percent of total business workloads, compared to 20 percent in 2015.

By 2020, 68 percent of the Cloud workloads will be in public Cloud data centres, up from 49 percent in 2015, the findings showed. Fifty-nine percent of the consumer Internet population will use personal Cloud storage, up from 47 percent in 2015.

Video streaming workloads will account for 34 percent of total consumer workloads by 2020, compared to 29 percent in 2015. The amount of data stored on devices will be five times higher than data stored in data centres by 2020, the report added.

[Source:- gadgets.ndtv]

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Education

Rise in number of Welsh students securing university place

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

University seminar

The number of Welsh students securing a university place has risen by 9% in the past four years, figures have shown.

University and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) statistics revealed 19,320 Welsh students have had their applications accepted as of 1 September – 14 days after A-level results.

Of those, 10,920 are due to study in Wales and 8,260 in England.

This is up from 17,790 who entered higher education at the same point in 2012.

According to Ucas, 140 Welsh students are set to attend university in Scotland while just 10 will study in Northern Ireland.

Figures also showed 1,310 Welsh students had won a place through clearing.

A breakdown across the UK shows a 15% rise in English students being accepted into higher education in the past four years along with a 19% increase in Scottish students and a 14% rise in Northern Irish students.

In total, 498,270 students across the UK have been accepted into universities so far.

There are still places available at universities across Wales via clearing – although Cardiff University said on its website that vacancies for 2016 have been filled.

Olivia Jones, of Universities Wales, said it was encouraging that the majority of Welsh students have chosen to study in Wales.

“With 92% of graduates from full time first degree courses in Wales employed or in further study six months after leaving – a higher percentage than the UK average – this is an attractive offer for prospective students,” she said.

“Universities across Wales are committed to increasing opportunities for people from a diverse range of backgrounds to higher education and firmly believe that every person, regardless of circumstance, should have the opportunity to access a higher level learning experience that is appropriate, relevant and valuable.”

[Source:- BBC]

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Internet

Internet users in India to rise by 40%, smartphones to double by 2023: McKinsey

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Untitled-9NEW DELHI: With data costs falling by 95 per cent since 2013, India will see internetusers rise by about 40 per cent and number of smartphones to double by 2023, McKinsey said in a report.

It also expects core digital sectors to jump two-fold to USD 355-435 billion by 2025.

The report ‘Digital India – Technology to Transform a Connection Nation’ by McKinsey Global Institute said the country is one of the largest and fastest-growing markets for digital consumers, with 560 million internet subscribers in 2018, second only to China.

Indian mobile data users consume 8.3 gigabits (GB) of data each month on average, compared with 5.5 GB for mobile users in China and 8-8.5 GB in advanced digital economy of South Korea. Indians have 1.2 billion mobile phone subscriptions and downloaded more apps — 12.3 billion in 2018 — than residents of any other country except China.

“Our analysis of 17 mature and emerging economies finds India is digitising faster than any other country in the study, save Indonesia — and there is plenty of room to grow: just over 40 per cent of the populace has an internet subscription,” it said.

While a government push has helped digitise the economy, private sector firms such as Reliance Jio has helped bring down data costs by more than 95 per cent since 2013, it said, adding the cost of one gigabyte fell from 9.8 per cent of per capita monthly GDP in 2013 (roughly USD 12.45) to 0.37 per cent in 2017 (the equivalent of a few cents).

“Private-sector innovation has helped bring internet-enabled services to millions of consumers and made online usage more accessible. For example, Reliance Jio’s strategy of bundling virtually free smartphones with subscriptions to its mobile service has spurred innovation and competitive pricing across the sector,” the report said.

As a result, monthly mobile data consumption per user is growing at 152 per cent annually — more than twice the rates in the United States and China. Average fixed-line download speed quadrupled between 2014 and 2017.

“India will increase the number of internet users by about 40 per cent to between 750 million and 800 million and double the number of smartphones to between 650 million and 700 million by 2023,” it said, adding the potential for India’s internet subscriber base could reach 835 million by 2023.

McKinsey said India’s internet user base has grown rapidly in recent years, propelled by the decreasing cost and increasing availability of smartphones and high-speed connectivity, and is now one of the largest in the world.

The average Indian social media user spends 17 hours on the platforms each week, more than social media users in China and the United States.

The share of Indian adults with at least one digital financial account has more than doubled since 2011, to 80 per cent, thanks in large part to the more than 332 million people who opened mobile phone–based accounts under the government’s Jan-Dhan Yojana – a mass financial-inclusion programme.

“By many measures, India is on its way to becoming a digitally advanced nation,” McKinsey said. “Just over 40 per cent of the populace has an internet subscription, but India is already home to one of the world’s largest and most rapidly growing bases of digital consumers. It is digitising activities at a faster pace than many mature and emerging economies.”

India’s core digital sectors, comprising of IT-BPM, digital communication services and electronics manufacturing, accounted for about USD 170 billion — or 7 per cent — of GDP in 2017–18.
“We estimate that these sectors could grow significantly faster than GDP, and their value-added contribution could range from USD 205 billion to USD 250 billion for IT-BPM, USD 100 billion to USD 130 billion for electronics manufacturing, and USD 50 billion to USD 55 billion for digital communication services, totalling between USD 355 billion and USD 435 billion and accounting for 8 to 10 per cent of India’s GDP in 2025,” it said.

It said India is on a fast track to adopt key digital attributes, and the number of smartphones and internet subscriptions could continue to increase rapidly in the next five years.

[“source=economictimes.indiatimes”]

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