VARINDIA IT MAGAZINE

In today’s fast-paced world, it becomes extremely difficult to find time and make a lot of friends. Well, here’s someone who has made over half-a-million friends and had over 40 million conversations in just one year. It is none other than Ruuh, Microsoft’s AI-powered, desi chatbot, who has turned one year old. Ruuh has a persona of a 21-year-old female who is intelligent and is capable of empathizing with her audience. Entertaining the youth with discussions on Bollywood, music, humour and travel, the past year has seen Ruuh’s popularity grow exponentially. It’s no wonder she gets almost 600 “I love you” messages every day and spends several hours chatting with her friends, with the current record standing at 10 hours.. Read More

Facial recognition solutions are expected to come to a wide range of handsets in 2018 following Apple’s FaceID and Samsung Galaxy Note 8’s Face and IRIS unlock technology. More than one billion smartphones are expected to feature some form of face unlock solution in 2020. When Apple announced Touch ID in 2013, it set a trend in consumer mobility. Smartphone OEMs around the world followed Apple’s example and integrated fingerprint sensors into their own devices. And they did so to such an extent that fingerprint-based security is now considered standard issue on even budget-priced smartphones. More than a billion smartphones are estimated to be shipping in 2018 sporting fingerprint sensors. Is Apple permanently ditching Touch ID for contactless authentication? Either way, inevitably, Apple’s rivals will adopt similar technology during 2018, which could lead to facial recognition becoming the de-facto standard for unlocking phones and the gradual elimination of fingerprint...

“A draft National Telecom Policy 2018 that is liberal and non-prescriptive in its licensing approach in Machine to Machine (M2M) communication is being given final touches. The policy should be in the public domain in the next two to three weeks for discussion and responses from stakeholders,” said Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, Department of Telecom, Ministry of Communications. Aruna Sundararajan said, “M2M is the next big opportunity for India in terms of its impact and the quantum change that it will bring about in the quality of services and delivery. The favourable impact of M2M on job creation had already set in as seen by the arrival of the first set of start-ups in the areas such as agriculture, smart cities, healthcare and water management.” She stressed that NTP 2018 would be transformative in harnessing the full benefits of M2M communications. She further said that in the M2M framework the focus would be on low-cost manufacturing, where exciting innovatio...

With the advent of the 2018 Winter Games, McAfee forewarns global fans, consumers, athletes and organizations alike of impending Winter Games-themed phishing attacks. Through these attacks, cybercriminals are most likely seeking passwords and financial information, using a number of techniques to entice victims into opening weaponized documents. Tactics include email distributed from “spoofed” corporate-branded email addresses, emails written in native languages, and the addition of attached documents marked as “protected”. McAfee has recently uncovered Operation GoldDragon, a malware attack targeting organizations affiliated with the 2018 Winter Games. Further investigation by McAfee Advanced Threat Research analysts has uncovered the consequences for victims of malware implant GoldDragon include attackers’ accessing end-user systems and collecting data stored on the device and connected cloud accounts. Potential risks include attacker’s access to customer and employee finan...

Dimension Data has extended the company’s protection from ransomware, phishing attacks, bot networks, and all types of malicious software, with Cisco Umbrella, the Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) in the cloud. The decision to incorporate Cisco Umbrella follows the company’s firsthand experience protecting its own 28,000 employees and addresses its clients’ requirement to support an increasingly mobile workforce.  Cisco Umbrella is a cloud security platform that provides the first line of defense against threats on the internet.  “In today’s expanding threat landscape, it is critical to have powerful security tools that effectively support mobility and cloud. With Cisco Umbrella, we are able to proactively stop threats on any mobile device before they happen with a secure solution that is easily integrated with existing infrastructure,” said Chris Panzeca, Senior Director, Global Strategic Partner Sales, .... Read More