VARINDIA IT MAGAZINE

If, for any reason, you need to observe your tracks while you are browsing the web on your desktop, you have plenty of options to keep anonymous. Thanks to Mr. Orbot, Android users, too, have a splution to use the Tor network to anonymise their web browsing sessions and avoid being monitored. Now, thanks to Onion Browser ($0.99), iPhone and iPad users also finally get an easy option to tunnel their web traffic through the Tor network. Now a days each and every browsers are trending to be equipped with exactly on demand features. There are bookmarks or easy access to search, and after all for advanced feature like remember password, block cookies etc. are driven by cookies (temporary storing data in a Virtual medium), enable user agent spoofing on the same IP and machine. As world wide web trafic is on action, and all these browsing activities should channelise through a secured transport layer, which is called secured socket Layer (SSL) and is a part of dedicated HTTPS mechan...

Google has launched its Tez person-to-person payments app last year and now it is adding a chat feature to it. As per latest reports, the feature is being rolled out and lets users send messages related to each transaction. The feature will apparently be helpful for tracking the context of payments and so on. It may be yet another messaging solution from Google, and comes at a time when WhatsApp has just launched its own in-app payments system for India. The WhatsApp payment system is seen to have a big potential and be a huge deal since the messaging service has over 200 million Indian users, representing the majority of smartphone owners in the country. Paytm, India's largest mobile payments company, also has more than 200 million users, and added a similar chat option late last year..... Read More

Acer has become the “No.1 Gaming Brand” in India across laptops, desktops and monitors as per IDC’s Q4 2017 report. Acer has emerged as the leading brand with 25.4% market share in the gaming laptops and 41.9% marketing share in gaming monitors and beats Dell, HP, MSI and Asus by a significant margin in Q4 2017. Acer gained the top spot in the gaming market with its critically acclaimed and widely popular Predator and Nitro gaming series. Acer in India has the widest portfolio of PC gaming products which includes laptops, desktops, monitors and accessories specifically designed for beginners to professional gamers. Commenting on the achievement, Chandrahas Panigrahi, CMO & Consumer Business Head, Acer said, “We are extremely delighted to achieve the No.1 position in the gaming category across laptops, desktops and monitors. Our strong commitment in developing exceptional gaming notebooks, desktops, and monitors has helped us to win the hearts and minds of our custom...

HP Inc has announced a new line of sanitizable and secure laptops, displays, and all-in-one desktops. Designed for healthcare workers in hospitals and clinics, the new laptops can be easily cleaned with germicidal wipes, without the worry that moisture will damage the electronics. The products address the problem of health care-associated infections (HAIs), which result in 1.7 million illnesses in the U.S. each year - and 99,000 deaths. The laptops have integrated radio frequency identification (RFID) readers for single sign-on authentication, which allows workers to sign in by tapping their badges on the laptop’s touchpad. It also has fingerprint identification. HP has announced the products at the HIMSS18 health care event.... Read More

FICCI has announced in an official statement that it has appointed Dilip Chenoy as its Director General. Chenoy had been the Managing Director and CEO of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), from which he resigned in late 2015 amid reports that the government was unhappy with the functioning of the skills development body. He was appointed by the previous Congress-led UPA government. In his earlier stint, he served as the Director General (DG) of SIAM and Deputy DG .... Read More

Hackers infiltrated Tesla (Electric Vehicle Company) which is in Amazon cloud environment and stole computer resources to mine for cryptocurrency, according to the security firm RedLock.  There is a new trend in security called cryptojacking. With this a question mark is on whether the public cloud is safe to deploy? Breaches at cloud service providers were almost never the fault of the hosts like Amazon, Microsoft, Google as the public cloud security is a shared responsibility. Organizations of every stripe are fundamentally obliged to monitor their infrastructures for risky configurations, anomalous user activities, suspicious network traffic, and host vulnerabilities. Public cloud environments are ideal targets due to the lack of effective cloud threat defense programs. According to RedLock’s Cloud Security Report-alert, the electric vehicle company was reportedly running one of hundreds of open-source systems and they found it accessible online without password pr...

Malware sophistication is increasing as adversaries begin to weaponize cloud services and evade detection through encryption. This is used as a tool to conceal command-and-control activity. To reduce adversaries’ time to operate, security professionals said they will increasingly leverage and spend more on tools that use AI and machine learning. This has been reported in the CISCO annual cybersecurity report. The report also shows 50 percent of organizations in India are reliant on automation, 53 percent are reliant on machine learning, 51 percent are highly reliant on AI. While encryption is meant to enhance security, the expanded volume of encrypted global web traffic (50 percent as of October 2017) - both legitimate and malicious - has created more challenges for defenders trying to identify and monitor potential threats. Cisco threat researchers observed more than a threefold increase in encrypted network communication used by inspected malware samples over a 12-month per...

Microsoft has announced the completion of its first renewable energy deal within the Karnataka state of India. The agreement will see Microsoft purchase 3 megawatts of solar-powered electricity from Atria Power to help power its new office building in Bangalore. This will meet 80 percent of the projected electricity needs at the new facility. This deal is part of a state government of Karnataka program to encourage investments in local solar energy operations, in line with the larger Indian government goal to ramp up solar power generation to 100 gigawatts by 2022, as part of India’s efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. “Investing in local solar energy to help power our new Bangalore office building is good for Microsoft, good for India and good for the environment,” said Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India. “We are proud to be deepening our long history of partnership and investment in India with this agreement. This deal will help us grow sustainabl...

Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”) and Gulf Bridge International (“GBI”) announced a strategic agreement to unlock the capacity on GBI’s India-Middle East-Europe submarine cable system. Under the agreement, Airtel will acquire the ownership of the India leg of GBI’s India-Middle East-Europe submarine cable. Airtel will also pick up a significant capacity on Middle East-Europe leg of GBI’s cable system. Airtel and GBI have also agreed to formulate joint Go to Market strategies and leverage the footprint of their respective global networks to serve global customers. Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO for Global Voice and Data Business, Bharti Airtel said, “We are delighted to announce this agreement with GBI. With this, we are adding a large capacity to meet the growing data, content demand in markets like India as well as serve the connectivity needs of global carriers and enterprise customers. The agreement offers great synergies to Airtel and GBI as both partners will able to build...

Nokia has announced the appointment of Sanjay Goel as President of Global Services and member of the Group Leadership Team (GLT) from April 1, 2018. Goel will report to Nokia President and Chief Executive Officer, Rajeev Suri. Igor Leprince, who previously held the Global Services position, will support Goel during a transition period and then leave Nokia to pursue opportunities outside the company. "I want to thank Igor for his contributions to Nokia. I warmly welcome Sanjay to the GLT, and look forward to working together to further strengthen Global Services," said Rajeev Suri. Goel was most recently head of Global Services Sales. He brings with him the experience of senior leadership roles in Services over the last ten years at Nokia. He has a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering with a specialization in Electronics and Communications from the Manipal Institute of Technology in India.... Read More

According to an announcement on Weibo, Xiaomi has announced that the launch of its most-awaited device – Mi MIX 2S – is scheduled for March 27 in China. With this announcement, the company cleared doubts around the launch of next Xiaomi flagship device rumoured to be held at the ongoing Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018. The Xiaomi Mi MIX 2S will be the successor to the Mi MIX 2. It is also reported to be the first Xiaomi smartphone that will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor. The Xiaomi Mi MIX 2S is expected to be launched initially in China and India, along with some European countries. As per the invite image shared on Weibo, the device will be packed with the latest Snapdragon 845 SoC along with a random number – 273741 – which is speculated to be the AnTuTu score of the smartphone. Early reports suggest that Xiaomi Mi MIX 2S may feature a 5.99-inch Quad-HD+ display with 18:9 aspect ratio, 8GB of RAM along with 256GB of internal storage, and 3,400mA...

Netflix’s current global subscriber base is somewhat around 120 million members, but surprisingly the next 100 million will be from India. Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix said this at the Mobile World Congress. “India will be a major driver for Netflix’s future growth with the company already benefitting from low internet costs and the expansion of 4G in the country,” he said. “It has been very fortunate for us that the launch of Reliance’s Jio 4G LTE network in the country in 2016 had increased competition and reduced data prices.” According to a report, Netflix will be a “giant exporter of Indian content”, with its recent Indian original movie Love Per Square Foot performing well in markets like the UK and US. Netflix, a report cited that at the end of last year it had 117.6 million streaming members – 54.75 million in the US and 62.83 across its international markets.... Read More

The increased digitalization of organizations, driven by the rapid adoption of technologies such as cloud computing and data analytics, has increased the importance of data. Enterprises are increasingly adopting cloud-based services in order to take advantage of the many business benefits of not having to purchase, manage, upgrade, and replace systems and applications. Of course, all amidst all this data still has to “live” somewhere. But a question is whether all types of data keeping is necessary? With the technology evolving and prominence of Social media and cloud computing, it creates anytime-anywhere access to information and systems. Most customers don’t give much thought to where their data is stored. That needs to change. Data Sovereignty covers privacy regulations that a government mandates for digital data that has originated, been converted, or stored “in the country.” Data created in a country will be subject to the laws of that country. Data Sovereignty privacy ...

CtrlS has launched Bengaluru’s 1st Tier-4 data center (also certified as World’s 1st LEED Platinum certified Green data center) in Bengaluru’s Electronic City. The CtrlS Tier4 Data Center, which will provide mission-critical data center services to India’s leading internet, banking, insurance, and other clients, was launched at a grand event, and was attended by Shri Priyank Kharge, Hon’ble Minister for IT, BT, S&T, Government of Karnataka; Margarent Anderson, Senior VP, SAP Labs India; Sameer Garde, President, CISCO; and Prakash Mallya, Managing Director, Intel India, and other IT industry leaders. The new CtrlS data center will provide India’s growing tech giants with reliable, robust data management and distribution networks, with near 0% downtime, 100% redundancy and Industry’s lowest PUE of 1.35. Shri Priyank Kharge, Minister for IT, BT, and S&T, Government of Karnataka, spoke at the launch, and said, “I am happy that CtrlS latest data center is being situa...

Vertiv, formerly Emerson Network Power, has announced multiple additions to its executive team as it accelerates into its second year as a private company. The new appointments fortify the business for anticipated growth in 2018 as Vertiv continues to reposition itself in its key markets and organize around its core tenets: customer focus, innovation, employee development, and speed. “The executive team we have put together over the past 12 months has been instrumental in the acquisitions and ongoing integration of Energy Labs and Geist,” Vertiv Chief Executive Officer Rob Johnson said. “They bring exceptional experience and enthusiasm to everything we do, and have embraced our culture of collaboration, innovation and transparency.... Read More

Every opportunity comes with a cost. One thing that comes to my mind is that if someone had developed one App with a cost, why he will give his customers free of cost. You are using the App or services which means that you are the first customer. You are the data and asset of the App developing company. They may not do any direct business with you but your information/data could make the App development company the next millionaire or billionaire. For instance, see the business model of Facebook, they acquired WhatsApp and now WhatsApp got very popular with the power of instant messaging and have entered into the payment business after they saw good customer base. They may even move into banking if the payment business becomes a success. After you are used to the communication method, it becomes difficult to leave a technology behind. If WhatsApp wants to charge a certain price (may be a small amount) for using its App, I am sure at least there will be 70% conversion rate. It...

A directive reportedly issued by the Department of Telecom (DoT) to all the telecom operators in the country has asked them to start issuing 13-digit mobile numbers to customers. A senior BSNL official has confirmed that the directive from DoT had come on January 8, 2018, post which the company has started working on it.  Under this latest development, starting from October 1, 2018 the existing mobile users’ numbers will be ported to 13-digits. The last date to complete the process would be December 31, 2018. “It is decided that 13-digit M2M (Machine-to-machine) numbering plan will be implemented from July 1, 2018. From this date onwards, all new M2M mobile connections will be allocated 13-digit numbers only. Migration of existing 10-digit M2M numbers will start latest by 1 October 2018 and shall be completed by 31 December 2018,” the official was quoted saying in the report.... Read More

Karvy Data Management Services has acquired HCL Services, a subsidiary of HCL Info systems in a deal of Rs. 108 crore. The sale of HCL Services Ltd was approved by HCL Info systems' Board that consists of domestic enterprise services business, the company said in a BSE filing. The deal amount of Rs 108 crore, which includes the tax refunds of Rs 87 crore, which would be paid to the company to the extent received. The transaction is expected to close by .... Read More

MyGov, an innovative platform to build a partnership between Citizens and Government with the help of technology for growth and development of India has appointed Arvind Gupta as its CEO. Previously, Arvind Gupta headed the BJP’s Information and Technology Group and advised the party on e-governance, digital outreach and other technology initiatives. He led the Digital and Social Media campaign for Team Modi/BJP during Elections 2014 and the subsequent state elections. He is an innovation evangelist who has over 20 years of experience in leadership, policy & entrepreneurial roles, both in Silicon Valley & in India. He is an active member of Industry Forums such as NASSCOM, TiE and Founding Member of ISPiRT (Indian Software Products Industry Round table) and Guest Speaker at Global B-Schools and CxO events. He is also an Eisenhower fellow for Innovation.... Read More

“The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will unveil the 5G or fifth-generation roadmap by the end of the June this year and take a lead in technology as well as use- cases,” said Aruna Sundarajan, Chairperson, Telecom Commission & Secretary (T), at an ASSOCHAM event held in New Delhi.  “The DoT has received good inputs on 5G in the new telecom policy or NTP 2018 which is yet to be unveiled. The draft of the NTP 2018 is in the final stages and will be put in public soon. By the end of the financial year, there will be pan-India 4G network rollout,” said Aruna Sundarajan, Chairperson, Telecom Commission & Secretary (T), Department of Telecommunications, while inaugurating an ASSOCHAM Summit on Connected Devices-Connected World conference.  “The networks are not only accelerating the rollout of the 4G, but are getting ready for 5G. India will have full 4G coverage by the end of the next financial year,” added Sundarajan..... Read More