Security firm Avanan has warned that Microsoft Teams users are being targeted by hackers who are attaching .exe files to Teams chats. These files put a Trojan on the end-user’s computer which is used to install malware, eventually leading to the user’s computer being taken over. The security advice is to use protection that downloads all files in a sandbox and inspects them for malicious content, deploy robust, full-suite security that secures all lines of business communication (including Teams), and not to click on any unfamiliar file in a chat.

Organising your open apps on the screen in a way that suits you can be a great help to productivity and can save time. Here’s how to choose the right snap layout in Windows 11:

Samsung’s new Galaxy smartphone range makes use of repurposed discarded nylon fishing nets which have been used to create a material from which to manufacture the brackets which hold the volume and power keys in place.

Combining Sustainability And Innovation

As part of the Samsung Electronics ‘Galaxy for the Planet’ vision, the company says that it has combined sustainability and innovation to develop a new material that gives ocean-bound plastics new life. The company’s goal is to use recycled material across all new mobile products by 2025, incorporating various recycled materials within its products.

Helping To Tackle The Problem of Discarded Nets

It is estimated that 640,000 tons of fishing nets are abandoned and discarded every year (UNEP figures). These nylon nets do not naturally break down and are likely to litter the oceans for hundreds of years. The results are the trapping and entangling of marine life, damage to precious coral reefs and natural habitats, and small pieces of the nets ending up in human food and water sources.

Devices Shown At ‘Unpacked’ Event

Samsung, which revealed its new Galaxy devices on 9 February at its ‘Unpacked 2022’ (biannual) event says that they reflect the company’s ongoing effort to eliminate single-use plastics, and to expand its use of other eco-conscious materials, such as recycled post-consumer material (PCM) and recycled paper. Samsung says that this transformation will help it to bring leading product design to market and deliver better environmental impact at the same time.

Water Bottles Too

The company says that it is also using recycled/repurposed discarded water bottles to make materials that can be used to manufacture parts for its devices.

Other Measures

Other measures that Samsung says it’s taking as part of its ‘Galaxy for the Planet’ sustainability vision are:

– Taking steps to eliminate all plastics in mobile packaging by 2025.

– Reducing standby power consumption for all its smartphone chargers to below 0.005W by 2025.

E-Waste, Including Phones, Still A Big Problem

Even though Samsung is taking measures and has a plan to create and incorporate recycled materials into its new devices, there is still the big global challenge of a growing mound of e-waste to tackle. 50 million tonnes of electronic waste is produced each year and a 2019 report by Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE) and the UN E-Waste Coalition predicted that, at the current rate, global e-waste production could reach 120 million tonnes per year by 2050. This equates to electronic waste weighing more than all the commercial airliners ever made! Phone handsets and other devices are part of the electronic waste problem and although some schemes are under way to recover the precious metals for them, more needs to be done to create greener devices.

Ethical Phones

Ethical phones (e.g., the likes of Fairphone), and other devices which are manufactured with fair trade, welfare of workers, repair, and recycling already built into the business model, are another way that some companies are trying to improve sustainability. These devices could have more positive environmental impact than traditional manufacture and could slow and cut the flow of e-waste, plus help countries to meet their environmental targets.

The Right To Repair

Greater adoption of the ‘right-to-repair’ is another way that device manufacturers can help slow down the rate and reduce the pile of electronic waste. For example, Apple is introducing a “self-service repair” programme which gives iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 customers access to parts and information which will allow them to repair their own phones.

What Does This Mean For Your Organisation?

This combination of sustainability and innovation is a positive idea which appears to make something good come from a serious ecological issue. It’s a shame that only some parts of the phone can be made from the discarded nets but it’s nevertheless a start, and its also good that this is part of an ongoing plan to use recycled material across all new mobile products from Samsung by 2025. Although this is promising, it is going to take a much greater effort, investment, and some significant innovations from manufacturers across several sectors and throughout supply chains to find more ways to make more of an impact on the problem of growing mountains of polluting e-waste. Much greater efforts are needed to create devices which are ethical, make the maximum use of recycled materials, and have sustainability at the core of their design.

Under the the draft Online Safety Bill legislation, adult websites (i.e. pornographic) site operators will be legally required to verify the age of website visitors or face tough penalties.

Online Safety Bill

For those who run commercial porn sites, the bill, which expected to be introduced to parliament in the next few months, looks likely to mean that:

– Their users may be asked to prove their age, e.g. by proving they own a credit card or confirming their age using a third-party service.

– Failure to comply with the legislation could see commercial porn site bosses held criminally liable. Also, for their business, this could also mean fines up to 10 per cent of their global turnover, or Ofcom (the UK’s communications regulator) blocking their websites from being accessible in the UK.

A Step In The Right Direction

Child safety groups, who have been seeking age verification on porn sites (and who were disappointed when similar measures dropped in 2019), have welcomed the measures in this now strengthened bill as a step in the right direction. However, the NSPCC, for example, has noted that the “legislation still falls short of giving children comprehensive protection from preventable abuse and harmful content”.

Reddit & Twitter Users Too

The draft Online Safety Bill also applies to a wide variety of online services and social media platforms. For example, when the bill moves into law, UK users of platforms such as Twitter and Reddit, on which can be found quantities of explicit adult material, may find that they need to verify their age before being able to login. The alternative, which would be complicated and challenging for social media platforms, would be to somehow remove all adult material from their services in the UK.

Also, Facebook & TikTok

Other obvious platforms which may require age verification under Online Safety Bill laws could be Facebook and TikTok.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For those who operate commercial porn websites, this new bill, when it moves into law, could obviously be a threat. For third-party verification service providers, the bill is clearly an opportunity. For the big social media platforms such as Facebook, although the idea has been welcomed, the details of the bill are unlikely to be popular. Nevertheless, platform bosses will be aware that executives can be personally given serious penalties (with a two-year grace period) which is likely to make them take some notice. Facebook, however, is already moving into a new, more controllable area with its Metaverse. Although parents and child safety advocates may take some comfort that the bill may provide better protection for their children, there is an argument that proving age verification may not provide protection from other sites where pornography exists and could threaten the privacy and security of users (i.e., data breaches and scammers). Furthermore, there is an argument that the need to scan social posts could, as highlighted by the Open Rights Group, mean encryption will need to be halted, further affecting privacy and security.

Following recent announcements of a toughening-up of the (draft) Online Safety Bill, we look at what the bill is, and what its implications are.

What Is The Online Safety Bill For?

The UK government’s Online Safety Bill is (draft) legislation that’s designed to place a ‘duty of care’ on internet companies which host user-generated content in order to limit the spread of illegal content on these services.

The idea of the Online Safety Bill is essentially to prevent the spread of illegal content and activity (e.g., images of child abuse, terror material, and hate crimes), as well as to protect children from harmful material, and also to protect adults from legal but harmful content.

The Bill applies to social media platforms, video-sharing platforms, search engines, and other tech services, and requires them to put in place systems and processes to remove illegal content as soon as they become aware of it. The Bill also requires these services to take additional proactive measures with regards to the most harmful ‘priority’ forms of online illegal content.

Priority

The kinds of priority offences listed in the draft bill are terrorism, child sexual abuse, and exploitation. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s Secretary of State also has powers to add further priority offences (with Parliament’s approval) via secondary legislation once the bill becomes law.

Other Illegal Behaviour

The Bill can also be applied to other illegal behaviour including more activities recently made illegal, which have emerged alongside the ability to target individuals or communicate en masse online.

In summary, the main groups of offences that the Bill now covers are are:

– Encouraging or assisting suicide

– Offences relating to sexual images (revenge and extreme pornography)

– Incitement to and threats of violence

– Hate crime

– Public order offences (harassment and stalking)

– Drug-related offences

– Weapons / firearms offences

– Fraud and financial crime

– Money laundering

– Controlling, causing or inciting prostitutes for gain

– Organised immigration offences

Strengthened Recently

Following Criticism that the original draft Bill’s scope hadn’t gone far enough and that services/firms would only have been forced to take such content down after it had been reported to them by users, the Bill has now been strengthened (hence the quite extensive list of offences shown above). On 4 Feb this year, Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries announced that the Bill had been strengthened in the following ways:

– The addition of extra priority illegal offences; i.e. revenge porn, hate crime, fraud, the sale of illegal drugs or weapons, the promotion or facilitation of suicide, people smuggling and sexual exploitation. The naming of the new offences is designed to remove the need for them to be set out in secondary legislation later. The government says that it will also enable Ofcom (which issues the fines under the Bill) to take quicker enforcement action against tech businesses which fail to remove the named illegal content.

– The requirement for services to be proactive and prevent people being exposed in the first place rather than waiting for users to report incidents before taking the content down.

Three More New Offences Being Considered

The government is also considering the Law Commission’s recommendations for three other offences to be created and added to the Online Safety Bill, namely. cyberflashing, encouraging self-harm, and epilepsy trolling.

Back in July, the Commission recommended other new offences which the Digital Secretary has only just cofirmed will be created and legislated for in the Online Safety Bill. These are harmful and abusive emails, harmful social media posts and WhatsApp messages, as well as ‘pile-on’ harassment (where many people target an individual with abuse e.g., in a comments section). These new offences do not apply to regulated media – print and online journalism, TV, radio, and film.

Named Individuals

One large aspect of the debate around the Online Safety Bill is the naming of specific individuals/executives in offending companies. The draft Bill, for example, already included the ability to impose criminal sanctions of named tech executives. These sanctions (i.e. prison sentences) however, were originally due to be delayed for two years (a grace period) after the laws are passed but some UK MPs have been asking the government to remove this long grace period before criminal sanctions can be faced. Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries, who has personal experience of having been targeted by trolls, is believed to favour a six months timeline (grace period) before the imposition of prison terms for those tech execs who fail to remove “harmful algorithms”.

Freedom and Legal Commentators

Freedom groups, such as the Index on Censorship and the Open Rights Groups have expressed concerns about Silicon valley companies making outsourced decisions about whether speech is harmful or not. Some legal commentators have also expressed concern that the Bill essentially allows the government to delegate all aspects of investigating and making judgements about online crimes to the tech companies/social media platforms.

Tech Companies

The big social media platforms have expected the Bill for some time and although they have given no major reactions to the most recent announcements, they are thought to be broadly in agreement with its aims. For example, Monica Bickert, vice-president of content policy at Meta (Facebook) said recently (in the Telegraph): “While we won’t agree with all the details, we’re pleased the Online Safety Bill is moving forward.”

Other Comments and Criticism

The NSPCC recently criticised the Bill for (in an open letter to Nadine Dorries) for not doing enough to put children at its the heart. Also, the Labour Party has said that the bill needs to go further in terms of tougher sanctions on executives who breach the new laws.

Enforcement

Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator will be in charge of issuing the fines for offences under the bill.  For example, Ofcom will be able to issue fines of up to 10 per cent of annual worldwide turnover to non-compliant sites or block them from being accessible in the UK.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Tech companies, particularly social media platforms, have been forced to make changes for several years now in response to a series of trust-damaging events (e.g. Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, the platform’s use for influence in the previous US election and UK referendum), pressure from governments, and widespread concerns from users about the safety of young and vulnerable people online. The government sees the recently boosted powers of the (draft) Online Safety Bill as a way to send a much clearer message now to online services, particularly social media platforms that these issues now need to be taken more seriously, with the threat of possible prison terms for executives designed to make companies take more notice and make more changes. Facebook already appears to have started morphing into something different for the future (Meta) and, for example, Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down last November. The aims of the bill appear noble in terms of the extra protections against a much wider range of offences that it may offer, but it remains to be seen how well it will work in reality when it passes into law, and whether it needs to be strengthened further.

Microsoft recently announced that it will be blocking Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros by default as a way to stop the spread of malware. Since these macros are important automation tools for Microsoft Office apps, how is this going to work?

What Are Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Macros?

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) for Office is the programming language behind Excel and other office apps. VBA can accomplish almost every operation that can be performed with a mouse, keyboard, or a dialog box. Also, it is the automation of repetitive tasks that is one of the most common uses of VBA in Office. VBA macros, therefore, are a series of instructions written (in VBA) into a single command to automate tasks e.g., with a single click.

What’s The Problem?

Microsoft says that although VBA macros are tools designed to make routine entry work simpler, they have long been abused by hackers and bad actors to deliver malicious payloads such as ransomware to unsuspecting users. For example, Tom Gallagher from Microsoft’s Office Security team recently said that “A wide range of threat actors continue to target our customers by sending documents and luring them into enabling malicious macro code”. Mr Gallagher has also highlighted how malicious code is usually part of a document that originates from the internet (email attachment, link, internet download, etc.). Once enabled, the malicious code can gain access to the identity, documents, and the network of the person who enabled it.

Safest Option – Block Them By Default

Since, as described by Microsoft’s Tom Gallagher, VBA macros are obtained from the internet, Microsoft says, therefore, that the most secure option is now to simply block them by default.

Message Displayed

With macros being blocked, instead of being allowed to enable macros just by clicking a button, users will instead see a message bar notifying them that macros are blocked, next to an option to learn more. Although it will still be possible to enable macros, this will require users to travel go through more layers, thereby reducing the possibility of accidentally clicking on a phishing email.

What And When?

Microsoft says that, for now, the functionality will be limited to the Windows version of Microsoft Office and will be enabled in Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and Word.

The new change will be rolled out in a preview (version 2203) in the Current Channel, due in early April. This will then be gradually rolled out to the Monthly Enterprise Channel and Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This change by Microsoft, which was prompted by ongoing cloud migration and increased remote and hybrid working, is designed to increase safety and security, particularly for remote workers. What it essentially does is to make it much more difficult for users to be fooled into running malicious code via social engineering while, at the same time, keeping a path for legitimate macros to be enabled through a trusted route where appropriate. The advice to IT and security teams is to work with any parts of the business that use macros in their Office files and, with any independent software vendors that are critical to the business who use macros within Office files.

The UK government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport has announced funding of up to £23 million for AI and data conversion courses in England.

Help Underrepresented Groups To Join World-Leading Industry

The government says that the funding will create (postgraduate) conversion courses that could help underrepresented groups get tech jobs, even if they have no previous experience in the field.  The intention is that the courses will help these underrepresented groups, including women, minorities and people with disabilities not just get tech jobs, but to become a new generation of experts the UK’s world-leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data science industries.

Companies Encouraged To Contribute To Funding

Also, the government is encouraging companies to play their part in creating a future pipeline of AI talent by match-funding the AI scholarships for the conversion courses. The idea is that industry support could help to get more people into the AI and data science job market quicker, as well as strengthening their businesses. The government says that an independent organisation, to be announced later this year, will be responsible for encouraging industry participation and investment into the AI Scholarships scheme.

Part of National AI Strategy

The new scholarships and courses are part of the government’s ‘National AI Strategy’ to invest in (and plan) the AI ecosystem over the next ten years, with the intention of boosting the UK’s leadership as a global science and AI superpower. The scholarships follow on from the ‘Industrial Funded AI Masters’ programme supported by the government since 2019 to increase AI skills across the UK with industry investment.

The DCMS Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy, Chris Philp said: “We are doubling the number of AI scholarships previously available to underrepresented groups to build a diverse and inclusive workforce fit for the future of tech.”

Also, the Science Minister George Freeman said of the new £23 million investments in AI scholarships and courses: “The UK is one of the world’s most advanced AI economies, with AI already playing a key role in everything from climate science and medical diagnostics to factory robotics and smart cities.”

“It is therefore essential that we continue to equip our workforce with the skills they need in this important technology, while also making the industry accessible to talented people from all backgrounds.”

First Round of Courses In 2019 Successful

The government says that the new courses will build on the success of the first round of AI conversion courses in 2019, delivered by the Office for Students. These supported 28 universities in England to set up and provide degree conversion courses in AI and data science. This  £13.5 million AI Scholarship programme resulted in successes including:

– A diverse group of students being able to study AI and data science – 76 per cent were women (twice the traditional masters computing courses rate), nearly half (45 per cent) of scholarship students were Black, and 24 per cent had disabilities.

– 70 per cent of the total students, and 84 per cent of the scholarship students were from outside London and the Southeast.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The UK has long had a tech/digital skills gap as well as problems attracting and helping women and other underrepresented groups into the tech industry. The UK government is also keen to carve out a place for the UK as a world leader AI. These challenges and this big ambition (from skills gap to world leader) is clearly going to require some serious funding and organisation and that’s where the National AI Strategy, the 2019 scholarships, plus this new funding come in. The size of the ambition and its associated costs mean that the government is also keen to get the help of match-funding from companies with the promise that their business and the AI and data science job markets will be helped. Another benefit of the investment in these scholarships could be not just boosted representation, but that more students from many different backgrounds could contribute fresh perspectives and innovation to data science and artificial intelligence. AI is going to play an increasing role within business in our lives going forward so it makes sense that the economy and UK businesses could benefit from the UK becoming a centre for AI development and expertise.

UK, US, and Australian cyber experts are warning of a “growing wave of increasingly sophisticated ransomware attacks”. Lindy Cameron, the chief executive of the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), has warned that ransomware is “a rising global threat with potentially devastating consequences”. Businesses can get advice about how to prevent and protect against ransomware at the NCSC ransomware hub here: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/ransomware/home.

Windows 11 has Microsoft Teams as a pre-installed app that users can access from the Taskbar by clicking the ‘Chat’ icon. To connect with anyone, if they’re on iOS, Android or Mac, here’s how:

– Click on the Chat icon in Windows 11 Taskbar and click on the Get started button.

– Confirm the Microsoft Teams account.

– Next, click the ‘Let’s go’ button.

– Find your contact and click on it.

– Type and send your message or select the ‘Meet’ icon > ‘Copy meeting’ link to organise a meeting.

Computer hardware company HP has announced that it has acquired ‘CHOOSE Packaging’, a packaging development company and inventor of the only commercially available zero-plastic paper bottle in the world.

Paper-Based Bottles

Edinburgh-based CHOOSE Packaging’s paper-based bottles are made with naturally occurring, non-toxic materials and are an alternative to single-use PET packaging plastic bottles. The paper-based bottles can hold a wide variety of liquid products and the company aims to minimise plastic pollution by offering plastic-free alternatives to everyday products. The plastic-free bottles produced by CHOOSE don’t require fossil fuel derived ingredients like PET plastic bottles do and CHOOSE believes that their plastic-free bottles offer a viable alternative that can really help in the journey towards zero impact living.

Why?

HP’s Savi Baveja, Chief Strategy & Incubation Officer, says that the acquisition “is a great example of how we continue to strengthen our capabilities in attractive verticals like sustainable packaging while also driving progress against HP’s broader sustainability goals.”

HP also says that there are more than 150 million tons of single-use plastics produced each year and by integrating ‘CHOOSE Packaging’ into its Personalisation & 3D Printing business it can focus on scaling its technology. This will mean that HP can “expand and disrupt the market” with its new fibre-based, 100 per cent plastic-free packaging.

CHOOSE Packaging Says…

CHOOSE packaging clearly believes that HP’s global power and reach as a tech company will transfer to (and fit in well with) its ambitions to quickly establish itself as a serious contender in the $10 billion fibre-based sustainable packaging market. James Longcroft, founder and Managing Director of CHOOSE Packaging said of the acquisition by HP “HP’s world-class capabilities and expertise can help scale our impact at a global level. We are thrilled to join the HP team and couldn’t have chosen a better match in terms of our shared goals for business, technology, sustainability, and a values-oriented culture.”

Helps Big Drinks Companies Reach Their Environmental Goals

CHOOSE Packaging already works with several large global companies including Accolade Wines, one of the biggest wine companies in the world, Henkel, one of the world’s largest consumer and industrial goods companies, and Malibu Rum, the well-known Pernod Ricard brand. These companies are already aware of the huge demand for sustainable alternative packaging and can see how having HP on board can help them more quickly reach their own goals of reducing their use of plastics in favour of environmentally friendly alternatives.

What Does This Mean For Your Organisation?

For HP, this acquisition is a way to expand its reach into a huge new market and new green technologies that are going to become much more important in the future. For CHOOSE, HP appears have the core capabilities and global reach and power, as well as shared values that they’d been looking for. For drinks and other FMCG manufacturers, the plastic-free packaging offers a real opportunity to meet and to be seen by consumers to meet their own environmental targets and tackle the challenge of having a genuinely viable and flexible green packaging alternative. There is already demand among consumers for greener packaging in the products that they buy, and PET plastic bottles have been a particular concern. Much wider use of the CHOOSE packaging is, therefore, likely to be well-received by end users, thereby prompting more FMCG companies to adopt this packaging, or a similar alternative.