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Firms urged to update IT systems after WannaCry attack

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Man at computer

A cyber-security body has urged Scottish companies to update their IT systems in the wake of Friday’s ransomware attack.

The Scottish Business Resilience Centre (SBRC) said the WannaCry attack took hold because routine software updates were ignored or put off.

The security breach disrupted GP surgeries, dental practices and other primary care centres.

SBRC said the attack was a “wake-up call” for businesses of all sizes.

It has recommended a number of preventative measures it says all firms should follow.

The centre is funded by a range of private and public partners, including the police, Scottish government, major banks and private investors.

A man's hands typing on a laptop keyboardImage copyrightREUTERS

SBRC recommendations include:

• Check that all Microsoft updates have been applied. If your IT is managed by external specialists, be sure to ask these questions as soon as possible.

• Microsoft issued a patch to close the vulnerability that allows this virus to spread in mid-March. This update is called Microsoft Bulletin MS17-010.

• All machines running Windows operating systems that have not had the security patch issued in March are vulnerable.

• Make sure any anti-virus software that is being run is kept up-to-date and regular scans are being run on your system.

• If you have an IT supplier, check they are conducting regular backups of all your systems and that these are not connected to your network.

• Check if your network uses the SMBv1 protocol, which helps computers share files and documents across a network. This protocol is outdated and newer versions are available.

SBRC’s chief ethical hacker, Gerry Grant, said: “Thousands of computers were infected with the ransomware – and it was able to have such an impact because routine preventative measures had not been taken.

“We can’t recommend the practice of habitually updating systems enough, however disruptive or inconvenient at the time – as soon as those updates become available.

“It can be too easy to put this off and click the ‘remind me tomorrow’ option. Unfortunately it can take a highly publicised attack such as this to affect behaviour.

“We say it so often, but the prospect of a cyber-attack can be incredibly daunting for the less tech-savvy and the temptation can be to bury heads in the sand.

“In reality, the simplest of measures such as those outlined in the Cyber Essentials scheme will put off the vast majority of criminal hackers – who tend to cast a wide net.”

[“Source-bbc”]

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Education

Teachers urged to submit GCSE and A-level questions

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Exam candidates

Teachers are to be asked to submit challenging GCSE and A-level exam questions by a key exam board, the Times Educational Supplement reports.

Cambridge Assessment, which owns OCR, hopes for “millions of questions”, with the best appearing on exam papers in England within the next five years.

OCR would check all questions to see they are of the right standard.

But there are concerns these “crowdsourced” exam questions could give some pupils an unfair advantage.

Cambridge Assessment research director Tim Oates told the TES: “Really interesting questions which – put to children – encourage them to think hard, to integrate things, to understand things and challenge their ideas a bit, are really important.

“We don’t think we should necessarily just commission those through asking a limited number of people.

“We want to know what questions teachers ask in the classroom and whether they were good for unlocking that bit of thinking or revealed that misconception.”

Currently, exam papers are drawn up by exam committees made up of teachers with detailed knowledge of each subject.

Plans are at an early stage of development and would need to be approved by the exams regulator Ofqual in order to go ahead.

However, Mr Oates said: “I can see within three to five years’ time we might be able to start doing some work [with crowdsourced questions] in formal examinations.”

‘Familiar’

OCR said questions would have to go through technical and tough quality assurance processes before being used in a real exam.

The questions submitted by teachers would also be made available to other teachers online through a question bank, so that they could be used in the classroom.

School leaders and assessment experts have welcomed the idea of an online question bank for teachers.

Malcolm Trobe, interim general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The only potential weakness I can see in the system is, if I’m sending in questions and using the same questions in preparation for the examination, if they then turn up on the exam paper it advantages those youngsters because they’re seeing a question they’re familiar with.

“You’re going to have to find a way of overcoming that.”

‘Approval needed’

But Mr Oates said schools already guessed exam questions and prepared pupils for likely questions using past papers.

He said the “crowdsourcing” approach would not create unfairness because there would be so many questions in the pool that teachers would have little incentive to drill pupils for any particular question.

OCR and Cambridge Assessment are already working on a project to crowdsource questions from computing teachers, which will be available to other teachers to use in classroom-based assessments.

[Source:- BBC]

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Education

Learn Portuguese for Rio, Britons urged

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Leonardo Espindola carries the Olympic torch on its way to Rio

Britons “should give Portuguese a go” as the Olympics get under way in Rio de Janeiro, urges the British Council.

Almost two in five of 2,000 UK adults surveyed for the charity did not know Portuguese was the official language of host country Brazil.

More than one in 10 said the language was “Brazilian”, while one in five thought it was Spanish.

Portuguese is not widely taught in UK schools but will be crucial to future trade deals, says the British Council.

Previous research by the UK’s international cultural and educational organisation identified Portuguese as the sixth most important language “for the UK’s prosperity, security and influence in the world over the next 20 years”.

That report called for a wider range of languages to be taught in schools, based on analysis of global economic, political and educational factors.

Currently, less than 1% of the UK population can speak Portuguese, says the council.

In 2015 just 2,932 students took Portuguese GCSE compared with 168,402 who took French and 93,028 Spanish, it adds.

Languages of the future

  1. Spanish
  2. Arabic
  3. French
  4. Mandarin Chinese
  5. German
  6. Portuguese
  7. Italian
  8. Russian
  9. Turkish
  10. Japanese

Source: British Council

The survey is part of the British Council’s 2016 campaign for more UK adults to take language lessons, following a general decline in language learning at both school and university level.

The campaign urges people to boost their skills in languages such as French, Spanish or German, which are traditionally taught in schools, as well as others on the list such as Arabic, Mandarin Chinese and Portuguese.

“Portuguese is a hugely important language for the UK both now and in the future,” said Mark Herbert, British Council head of schools programmes.

“With the eyes of the world on Rio this summer, we have the perfect opportunity to learn more about this fascinating part of the world and to try out some Portuguese along the way.

“Ultimately, having more of us being able to speak at least a little of a foreign language is good for the UK’s long-term competitiveness in the increasingly connected world.”

The survey was carried out by Populus among a weighted sample of 2,152 UK adults.

[Source:- BBC]

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Education

Female students urged to apply for top graduate schemes

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Female graduates at LSE

Female students are less likely to aim for top graduate jobs but more likely to land them if they apply, says the Association of Graduate Recruiters.

Its survey of leading employers found that, while 54% of students are women, they make up just 47% of graduate scheme applicants.

But they took 49% of the posts, the responses by 170 employers showed.

“Many women don’t apply for the top schemes when they should,” said AGR chief executive Stephen Isherwood.

Improving the gender diversity of graduate programmes is largely a challenge of attracting women in the first place, says the report.

Once they apply women are more likely to be hired, according to the survey sent to AGR members in April this year.

Female challenge

Even in male-dominated areas such as IT and engineering, women are proportionally more likely to succeed once they decide to apply, the survey found.

For example, women make up only 17% of IT students and 15% of engineering students, but succeed in getting 27% and 25% respectively of the places on graduate schemes in these fields, the report suggests.

This means that while men make up 83% and 85% of the student population in these fields, they find it relatively tougher to get work – taking 73% and 75% of the jobs.

But in the field of law the reverse is true – 63% of students are female but only 58% of the graduate scheme posts go to women.

Graduate employers are making efforts to boost the numbers of women they hire, the research found.

Three quarters of the firms which responded to the survey had a diversity strategy in place, and the majority said redressing workplace gender imbalance was the highest priority.

Construction and engineering firms were particularly successful, increasing the share of women hires by 3% and 4% respectively in a year, says the report.

Mr Isherwood says considerable barriers to gender equality remain.

“Graduate employers want to hire women, there are lots of opportunities out there and these candidates are more likely to succeed, so we need to address why they’re not applying. Industry-wide collaboration to tackle student perceptions will be a key step forward.

“We know women are hugely successful in the selection process. We just need them to realise it. We need to boost confidence and encourage more female graduates to reach their potential.”

[Source:- BBC]

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