All posts by Paul Stradling

News

Tech News : MEPs Seek Ban On Public Biometric Surveillance

Following the recent leak of an EU draft of rules for applying to AI, 40 MEPs have called for a ban on the use of facial recognition and other types of biometric surveillance in public places.

Draft Rules

The leaked draft rules by EU lawmakers to regulate the use of AI prompted the MEPs to publish a letter outlining how the draft rules could be strengthened to offer greater privacy protection and guard against discrimination, threats to privacy, and more.

Biometric Mass Surveillance

The MEPs noted that the draft rules do not include a ban on the use of facial recognition or similar biometric remote identification technologies in public places (e.g. facial recognition systems).  The letter from the MEPs highlighted how this type of surveillance has been shown to lead to mistaken identification/wrongful reporting of subjects, discrimination of “under-represented groups” and having a “chilling effect” in a society that is diverse and used to certain freedoms. The MEPs have, therefore called for a total ban on this type of surveillance.

Automated Inference Warning

The letter also warned of how automated inference, such as predictive policing and indiscriminate monitoring using biometrics, could violate rights to privacy and data protection, suppress free speech, be counter-productive in the fight against corruption, and pose a particular risk to “LGBTQI+ communities, people of colour, and other discriminated-against groups”. The MEPs, therefore, request in the letter that the new rules should prohibit “automatic recognition of gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, disability and any other sensitive and protected characteristics”.

Other Areas of Concern

The letter also says that the MEPs would like the wording of the proposed new rules to be tightened up to cover all untargeted and indiscriminate mass-surveillance, and that the proposed exemption on the prohibition on mass-surveillance for public authorities (or commercial entities working for them) would threaten public security.

In the UK

The use of biometric public surveillance in the UK has also caused concern.  For example:

– In December 2018, Elizabeth Denham, the UK’s Information Commissioner launched a formal investigation into how police forces used FRT after high failure rates, misidentifications and worries about legality, bias, and privacy. This stemmed from the trial of ‘real-time’ facial recognition technology on Champions League final day June 2017 in Cardiff, by South Wales and Gwent Police forces, which was criticised for costing £177,000 and yet only resulting in one arrest of a local man (whose arrest was unconnected).

– Trials of FRT at the 2016 and 2017 Notting Hill Carnivals led to the Police facing criticism that FRT was ineffective, racially discriminatory, and confused men with women.

– In September 2018 a letter, written by Big Brother Watch (a privacy campaign group) and signed by more than 18 politicians, 25 campaign groups, and numerous academics and barristers, highlighted concerns that facial recognition is being adopted in the UK before it has been properly scrutinised.

– In May 2019 in the UK, following controversial incidents where facial recognition had been tested in some public places, Luciana Berger (MP) put forward a written parliamentary question about bringing forward ‘biometrics legislation’ related to how facial recognition was being used for immigration purposes at airports. Also, questions were asked in Parliament about possible safeguards to protect the security and privacy of citizens’ data that is held as part of the Home Office’s biometrics programme.

– In September 2019, it was revealed that the owners of King’s Cross Estate had been using FRT without telling the public, together with London’s Metropolitan Police Service supplying the images for a database.

– A letter published by London Assembly members Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM and Sian Berry AM to Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick asked whether the FRT technology could be withdrawn during the COVID-19 pandemic on the grounds that it has been shown to be generally inaccurate, and it still raises questions about civil liberties. The letter also highlighted concerns about the general inaccuracy of FRT and the example of the first two deployments of LFR this year, where more than 13,000 faces were scanned, only six individuals were stopped, and five of those six were misidentified and incorrectly stopped by the police. Also, of the eight people who created a ‘system alert’, seven were incorrectly identified. Concerns have also been raised about how the already questionable accuracy of FRT could be challenged further by people wearing face masks to curb the spread of COVID-19.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Biometric surveillance clearly has benefits in terms of being a tool to help with the work of government agencies and law enforcement, but many now feel that its use is advancing too far ahead of the legislation. In a diverse society where data protection rights have been tightened up and respect for privacy with it (due to GDPR), mass surveillance of this kind feels to many people like it goes against those rights, and in a ‘chilling’ way that feels as though it may affect freedom and could be used (if not properly regulated) to discriminate. The UK trials and usage of facial recognition to date has also revealed areas where the technology has been unreliable, and there may also be issues of bias.  It is not surprising, therefore, that a group of MEPs have chosen to apply pressure to tighten up the rules, although it remains to be seen if the concerns of the MEP group affect the final legislation.

News

Tech Tip – Creating An Email List In Outlook

If you’d like a quick and easy way to regularly email group of contacts (e.g. work colleagues or suppliers), Outlook gives you the ability to create a Distribution List (or Contact Group in 365). Here’s how it works:

For Outlook Online

– Log into outlook.com or select Outlook from the app launcher.

– On the Left-hand side, select Groups > New group.

– In the pop-up, name the group, give it a brief description, and select ‘Create’.

– Add group members by searching by name/email address, and they will appear under “This person will be added.”

– When all email addresses have been added, select the ‘Add’ button, and select ‘Close’.

– To send an email to the group, select ‘New message’ and in the ‘To’ field, type the name of the group you created.

For Outlook On Desktop

This is called a ‘Contact Group’ rather than a Distribution List. To build one:

– Launch Outlook and select ‘People’ (lower left).

– From the toolbar, select ‘New Contact Group’ (a ‘New Group’ button in 365).

– When the windows loads, name your contact group.

– To add members, select ‘Add Members’ and choose where to get members from – Outlook Contacts, Address Book, or New Email Contact.

– Search for the people/email addresses to add. When their entry is highlighted, select the ‘Members’ button (or double-click their entry) to add them.

– When this is one, select ‘OK’, save changes, and close the window.

– The name of the Contact Group will appear as an entry in the Outlook address book so can be selected in the ‘To’ field when creating a new email.

News

Featured Article : Employee Exit

When employees leave a business or organisation, there are many actions that need to be taken to maintain security. Here’s a summary of some of them in relation to the health and continuity of the business and to fulfil legal and stakeholder responsibilities.

Different Reasons, Same Actions

Members of organisations inevitably change over time. They may leave (e.g. to go to another job or move away) may be asked to leave, or many other reasons. For businesses or organisations to fulfil their responsibilities to themselves, their shareholders, customers, other employees, and data laws, and to allow them to act quickly when the time comes, it pays to have at least a (preferably, updated) checklist in place to ensure that security is maintained and weaknesses, threats, and disruption are minimised.

Potential Threats

Examples of the kinds of potential threats that an organisation may need to guard against on employee exit include:

– Damage, theft, and disruption – In addition to the risk of data theft, attacks on a company’s systems and network, which may have been facilitated by not having security measures or procedures in place for employees leaving/retiring, can cause costly and disruptive damage.

– Insider threat – One of the dangers of not managing the departure of an employee properly is that a business could then have an ‘insider threat’ (i.e. a former employee, contractor or partner with access rights and logins that still work). This could lead to private company business being leaked (possibly to competitors), industrial espionage, opportunities for extortion, access being gained to financial details, customers stolen, and more. A recent IBM study found that insider threats account for 60 percent of data breaches.

Examples

High profile examples of organisations that have suffered data breaches at the hands of ex-employees include:

– Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom, which suffered a large data breach in 2016, where a former employee downloaded around six years’ worth of third-party data before leaving for a new job at a major broadcaster. The data was then offered to the new broadcaster who informed Ofcom.

– Back in 2013, a disgruntled Morrison’s (ex) employee (IT Internal Auditor) Andrew Skelton copied the payroll data of 99,998 Morrison’s employees to his personal USB stick and then posted the data on a file-sharing website. This resulted in a Class Action lawsuit being launched against Morrison’s by over 5,000 employees, with Morrison’s being found “vicariously liable” for the breach.

Legal Responsibility

The examples above highlight one important reason for closing any potential holes in security on employee exit which is the legal responsibility under current data laws. The United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK-GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (an updated version of the DPA 1998) are the main legislative frameworks covering how a businesses or organisation in the UK should manage the protection and handling of data. Within these, the data controller (i.e., you and your company/organisation) hold the responsibility for data matters.

Protecting that data is important both to protect those whom the company holds data about, and to protect the company itself from legal penalties, damage to reputation and more.  As well as personal data, a business needs to ensure that other sensitive data such as financial records, intellectual property and details about company security controls are all protected.

Procedure

These threats and responsibilities demonstrate that businesses and organisations need to address them as part of due diligence. This can be done by developing a built-in company procedure when an employee leaves for whatever reason.

Checklist

This company procedure could be built around a checklist / a kind of security audit that takes the following into account:

– Emails are a window into company communications and operations and a place where sensitive data is exchanged and stored. It is also a common ‘vector’ for cyber-criminals.  With this in mind, managing the email aspects of security when an employee leaves/retires is vitally important.  Measures that can be taken include revoking access to company email, setting up auto-forwarding and out-of-office replies, while making sure that you mention who the new contact is. Also, it’s important to revoke access to/remove login credentials for other email programs used by the company to communicate with customers and other lists of stakeholders, for example via mass mailing programs with stored lists, such as Mailchimp.

– Revoking access to company systems and networks. Employees have login details and rights/permissions for company computer systems and networks. Access and logins for these should be revoked for the employee when they leave.

– CRMs provide access to all manner of data about the company, its customers, its other stakeholders, sales, communications and more. Login access should be revoked when an employee leaves.

– Collaborative Working Apps/Platforms and shared, cloud-based, remote working platforms (e.g. Teams or Slack) also contain direct access to company data. Make sure that a departing employee can no longer have access to these groups.

– If the departing employee has a personal voicemail message on the company phone, this also needs to be changed.

– A leaving employee will need to return all company devices, and this implies that a company should have procedures in place to keep a record of which company devices have been allocated to each employee.

– Retrieval of any backup/storage media (e.g. USBs) may also help to prevent some security threats.

– Although it is best to store all online documents in a shared company folder that you have control over (e.g. in OneDrive), it is possible that an employee has stored items in separate folders on their computer. Making sure that these are transferred to you or deleted when the employee leaves can help to maintain levels of security.

– Having a policy in place for the regular changing of passwords can work well anyway as a fail-safe but also, changing any passwords shared with multiple members of staff is an important measure to take when an employee leaves.

– If the departing employee was authorised to use company credit/debit cards, changing the PINs for those cards is another step that needs to be taken to maintain security with the company/organisation’s finances.

– Letting the company team/person responsible for IT security know that a person has left, particularly if the person left ‘under a cloud’, is another way that you can help to close security loopholes.

– Making sure that all company-related keys, pass cards, ID cards, parking passes, and any other similar items are retrieved is something that should be done before the ex-employee leaves the premises for the last time.

– If the employee has been issued with physical documents (e.g. a handbook) which contains information and data that could threaten company security, these need to be retrieved when the employee leaves.

– If the departing employee’s email address and extension feature on the website and/or is that employee is featured as being in the role that they are departing from, this needs to be removed from the website.  Also, check that company social media doesn’t indicate that the departed employee is still in their role (e.g. on LinkedIn and Facebook).  You may also wish to make sure that the ex-employee doesn’t feature in the business online estate (e.g. at the top of the website home page) or other prominent pages.

BYOD Threat

Where companies offer ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) meaning that employees can bring in their personally owned laptops, tablets, and smartphones to work and use them to access company information, this could pose an additional level of threat on employee exit. This threat may be lessened where companies opt for different types of BYOD such as corporately owned/managed, personally enabled (COPE), choose your own device (CYOD), personally owned and partially enterprise managed or personally owned with managed container application.  

In any case, BYOD should be always accompanied by clear policies and guidance as part of effective management.

Ex Employee’s Legal Responsibilities

It should be remembered that, although the business / organisation has legal responsibilities to protect company data, the ex-employee is also subject to the law for their behaviour. This is of particular importance where an employee, who has dealt with the personal details of others in the course of their work, leaves or retires.  For example, the ICO prosecuted a charity worker who, without the knowledge of the data controller (Rochdale Connections Trust), sent emails from his work former email account (in February 2017) containing sensitive personal information of 183 people.  Also, a former Council schools admission department apprentice was found guilty of screen-shotting a spreadsheet that contained information about children and eligibility for free school meals and then sending it to a parent via Snapchat.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Having a regularly reviewed and updated procedure in place for the steps to take during an employee’s exit is an important part of due diligence, legal responsibility, responsibility to all stakeholders, and is a way for a company to protect itself from preventable threats in the future. This procedure, therefore, feeds into business security and business continuity and is also an argument for making sure that employees work within monitored and controlled company systems rules and procedures, thereby making it easier to close all loopholes and minimise threats on employee exit.

News

Tech insight: What is happening about the huge Facebook data leak?

Facebook has recently informed over 530 million users that, in 2019, they were exposed to a data breach. The criticism that followed has prompted some to ask: what is happening? 

What data breach? 

The details of 530 million Facebook users were reportedly exposed on a hacker’s forum. The data breach included phone numbers, Facebook IDs, names, and birthdates. However, it did not include financial information, health information or passwords.  

Hackers were able to gain access due to a bug in Facebook’s contact importer code, according to the company. Most of the data reportedly came from US users, but 18 million records were from UK users. 

Who is to blame for it? 

Facebook appears to place the blame on the ‘malicious actors’. It said the story is old news and not about a recent hack of its systems. 

After the data breach in 2019, Facebook said it made changes to the contact importer to prevent similar incidents. 

Criticism after the data breach 

With the Cambridge Analytica data still casting a shadow over Facebook, the re-surfacing of this data breach has not helped. In addition, Facebook’s apparent attitude towards it has drawn a lot of criticism. 

Although Facebook sees this as old data, it may still be used by cybercriminals. If a phone number is connected to email addresses, it can be used to obtain SMS codes to sign in. 

It is unclear whether Facebook has notified all users whose data had been stolen. There is no simple way for these users to tell if they have been affected by the data breach. People do not often change their details, so they could still be at risk. 

The platform’s dismissal of the data breach as ‘old news’ sparked an apparent culture of impunity. It also raised questions about its attitude to its users’ data. 

Facebook has also faced questions on whether it should be doing more, under GDPR, to respond to European regulators. Also, there are calls for Social media companies to be more open and improve security measures. 

Other criticism includes allowing privacy and security issues to continue, because of Facebook’s market dominance.  

Have you been victim? 

It is not always clear to see if you have been victim to a data breach. However, users can check if their details have been taken on HaveIBeenPwned. 

What does the data breach mean for your business? 

The size of this breach has place Facebook under the spotlight again. Many people, particularly European regulators, are calling for greater accountability. It is another blow to user trust and could fuel action in Washington.  

For users, it’s a case of not really knowing if their data has been stolen and sold on. They will feel powerless in their relationship with the social media giant as regards to their data privacy security.  Many feel that more pressure from organisations and tougher action from regulators may be the only way to force changes. 

You can find more tech insights on our news page. 

News

Tech news: Microsoft and LinkedIn’s new features to help UK jobseekers

People across the UK have lost jobs as a result of the pandemic. However, new features from Microsoft’s LinkedIn could help the country’s jobseekers. 

The challenge for jobseekers 

Many LinkedIn users may find themselves in the unemployment battlefield, trying to stand out from the rest. They may be capable of fulfilling job roles but may not have all the necessary qualifications and experience.  

As a result, LinkedIn is launching four new tools which it says will bring users’ professional stories to life. 

Jobseekers’ cover story 

The cover story is a feature that allows users to upload a video of themselves. According to LinkedIn, it will help members showcase their personality, communication skills and goals to employers. In addition, a cover story allows freelancers to talk about their services and attract new clients.  

Service page 

The second new tool allows users to create a dedicated ‘service page’ from their profile. LinkedIn says that this could give users more “reach” to its global community of nearly 740 million members.   

How creator mode will help jobseekers 

The new creator mode allows users to engage a community and build a following in a similar way to other social networks. For example, users can use hashtags to make their ‘featured’ and ‘activity’ sections more prominent. In addition to this, users can change their ‘connect’ button to ‘follow’. 

LinkedIn users can also see when other members are broadcasting live, as their background will show when streaming begins. This feature will help increase the visibility of broadcasters’ content.  

Career coach

Finally, LinkedIn’s Career Coach app helps students understand their goals, interests, and transferable skills. The app helps align a user’s profile with current job market trends, therefore increasing the chance of being noticed.  

The Career Coach also connects them to mentors and promotes skills, which increases their chance of successful job applications.  

Apprenticeship Connector 

Microsoft also introduced its Apprenticeship Connector, which is aimed at simplifying the apprenticeship process. It lists vacancies across Microsoft’s network of partners and customers, as part of a partnership with GetMyFirstJob. 

It is hoped the partnership will help young jobseekers, bridge the tech skills gap in the UK, and assist small businesses. 

What does this mean for jobseekers? 

These features may increase the relevance of the LinkedIn platform to employers and younger jobseekers and help the platform move more into content. 

They may also help to tie Microsoft more closely within other partnerships and opportunities related to tackling the tech skills gap. Importantly for members, they will help showcase their skills, work, and identity.  

You can read more tech news on our news page. 

News

Tech News : Liquid Cooling To Maintain Microsoft’s Data Centres

Huge demands on Microsoft’s data centre servers, partly driven by a surge in Microsoft Teams user numbers has led to the tech giant opting for liquid-immersion cooling.

The Challenge

Microsoft has recognised that it has now come up against the slowdown of Moore’s Law as transistor widths have shrunk to atomic scales and are reaching a physical limit, whilst the demand for faster computer processors for high performance applications such as AI has accelerated. This has meant that more electric power is now being put through the small processors used in Microsoft’s data centres, thereby increasing the heat they produce.  According to Microsoft, this means that air cooling is no longer enough to prevent the chips from malfunctioning. The demands of a huge increase in the numbers of Teams users during lockdown and the need to maintain sustainable and energy efficient data centres have also contributed to Microsoft’s decision to try liquid cooling.

Two-Phase Immersion Cooling

Since heat transfer in liquids is more efficient than air, Microsoft’s new system of two-phase immersion cooling involves immersing servers in tanks filled with an engineered fluid (from 3M) which has dielectric properties (i.e. it is an effective insulator), thereby allowing the servers to operate normally while fully immersed in the fluid. The liquid boils at 122 degrees Fahrenheit (90 degrees lower than the boiling point of water) and this boiling effect, generated by the work the servers are doing, takes the heat away from the computer processors whilst the low-temperature boil enables the servers to operate continuously at full power without risk of failure due to overheating.

The second phase of this two-phase process refers to the vapour rising from the tanks making contact with a cooled condenser in the tank lid, thereby changing it back to liquid that rains back onto the immersed servers, creating a closed-loop cooling system.

The Result

Microsoft says that the result of it becoming the “first cloud provider that is running two-phase immersion cooling in a production environment” at its datacentre in Quincy should be the ability of the company to:

– Continue the Moore’s Law trend at the datacentre level.

– Reduce power consumption.  For example, Microsoft’s trial of using liquid two-phase immersion for cooling AI showed reduced power consumption for any given server by 5 to 15 per cent.

– Increased flexibility for the efficient management of cloud resources.

– Improved efficiency and sustainability.

– The fact that the system uses a specially developed cooling fluid, and not water, gives Microsoft the ability to meet its commitment to replenish more water than it consumes by the end of the decade.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

If your business uses Microsoft’s cloud-based services, and particularly those which involve AI and/or Teams, this switch to a new cooling technology at datacentre level should mean smooth running services with less risk of potentially costly outages and disruption going forward. For Microsoft, this may give it an advantage over cloud company competitors in terms of capacity, reliability, and sustainability credentials.

News

Tech Tip – Free Ways to Share Photos

We all take lots of photos with our smartphones, so here is a selection of some of the best free places to share (and back up) photos.

– Google Photos. Just having a Gmail account gives access to this service you can share photos with family, friends, or teammates, create albums, and grant access to those who want to share photos.

– Apple Photos. This sorts your photos, displays them in grid format for easier browsing, stores them to iCloud for ease of access from an iOS device or Mac, and automatically tags your photos based on location and content.

– iCloud. This allows photos to be shared as email attachments in Photos on iCloud or using an iCloud Link. To share photos with others via attachments from iCloud email, select the photos, tap Share > Email (attachments larger than 20 MB are replaced with an iCloud Link). See https://www.icloud.com/.

– Dropbox.  This popular cloud-based file-sharing, backup solution allows the creation of shared folders and shared links can be sent by email, social media, or instant message. See https://www.dropbox.com/.

– WeTransfer.  This is a fast, free, free file-sharing platform that requires no registration that allows the user to share photos across all devices provided they are compatible with web-based apps. Users can also choose to pay for a premium plan for password protection, 1TB of storage, and an increased transfer limit (to 20 MB). See https://wetransfer.com/.

– Flickr. This photo-sharing platform is user-friendly and has easy-to-use menus, and photo editing tools. Flickr also offers other features like auto-backups, an ad-free experience, unlimited storage, and photo stats. See https://www.flickr.com/.

– AirDrop.  This platform allows photos to be shared/sent between Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, or Mac).  The service doesn’t require a special account and sharing is particularly easy if both the sender and recipient are on a Wi-Fi network, and both have AirDrop and Bluetooth enabled.

– Instagram. Yes, it’s a social media app but if you often share photos, and your intended recipients already follow you, it’s a good free option.  It also has photo editing options. See https://www.instagram.com/.

– Cluster.  This free, private group photo sharing app can be accessed via a web browser or mobile app, users can make as many albums as they like, and can invite and connect with others. See https://cluster.co/.

News

Featured Article : Risks or Benefits of Charging Devices Overnight?

Many of us charge phones and laptops overnight but is this good for the battery and is it potentially dangerous, and how can we safely get the most from our device batteries?

Batteries

Smartphone and laptop batteries are Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion). These batteries have high energy density so they can be made small, while their rate of self-discharge is much lower than alternatives (like Ni-Cad for example) which means less charging, they have a high cell voltage, they don’t require priming (for a first charge), and there’s little or no maintenance required.  All these characteristics make them ideal as the power component in our essential, portable electric items.

That said, lithium batteries contain a flammable electrolyte which could be risky in some circumstances (remember the famous Samsung Galaxy Note 7 fires back in 2017?), they need protection (circuitry and special chips) to prevent them from being over-charged and discharged too far, they age (whether in use or not) so require replacing, and they are relatively expensive.

Likes and Dislikes

Knowing how to protect and get the best from the battery in your phone or laptop requires knowing a few basic conditions that batteries like and dislike.  For example:

Your battery generally likes:

– Partial charges that keep the battery between 20 and 80 percent.  This is because a battery degrades at its fastest rate if it is regularly charged past 80 per cent or when it drops below 20 percent. Devices seem to operate best when batteries are around the 50 per cent charge mark.

Your battery generally dislikes:

– Extremes.  This can be extremes of temperature below 32 Fahrenheit (0 Celsius) and above 158 Fahrenheit (70 Celsius) which can degrade the battery, let alone having an adverse effect on the device that the battery may be inside at the time.  This means avoiding leaving phones in warm sunlight (e.g. while sunbathing or sitting outdoors, or leaving the phone in a hot or cold car, perhaps overnight). Avoid the practice of putting phone batteries in fridges or freezers to ‘revive’ them.  Although there are positive accounts of this, it can result in degrading the battery. Charging devices in extreme temperature environments should also be avoided – room temperature is best.

– Being kept at 100 percent charge for long periods of time e.g., if charging at night.  This is when a battery can degrade the fastest.

– Apps being used while your device is charging. Using apps on your phone, for example, while the phone is still connected to the charger can heat and damage the battery and damage the device.

Overnight Charging

Overnight charging of phones and laptops frequently raises questions about efficiency, and safety.

Efficiency

Overnight is often a very convenient time to charge a phone or laptop but, since it only takes around an hour to charge a device, leaving it connected for 6 or 7 hours is not efficient. This is because phone or laptop batteries degrade fastest if left at 100 per cent for long periods of time (i.e. overnight), and a small ‘trickle charge’ is produced to compensate for any energy lost by the device.  This means that the battery is being unnecessarily used/over-used and switching to the mains power via the cable (when the battery is fully charged), could mean unnecessarily using electricity.

Safety

Although there are plenty of horror stories of phones catching fire while charging overnight, many of these appear to be where a phone has been left in a situation where there has been a lack of airflow and where it has been overheated (e.g. by being left under pillows or clothes). Generally, although not good for devices, overnight charging is relatively safe. Tips for making overnight charging as safe as possible include:

– Placing the device on protective/non-flammable surface, e.g. on a plate/saucer rather than on or under books, clothes, or on sofas.

– If possible and practical, take a phone out of the case when charging overnight.

– If you wake up in the night, unplug the devices to prevent constant trickle-charging or use a smart plug that’s on a schedule to turn off at a certain time when you’re sure the battery will have been charged.

Cables

Using high quality (preferably genuine and device compatible) chargers and cables which have correct safety marks (CE safety mark and output voltage that’s compatible with the device) can reduce the risk of fire and/or damage to the device and battery.

Replacement Batteries

Having a replacement battery fitted by a professional, as is often necessary with many new device models, is another way to avoid operational and safety problems.

Other Ways To Treat Device Batteries Well

– Other ways to maximise battery life, device efficiency and maintain safety include:

– Turn off unnecessary services on the device and use battery savers (often suggested by an on-screen prompt) to make the most of each charge.

– If a laptop must be left on overnight, remove the battery and use the adapter to power the laptop. This will put less of a burden on the battery by sending power directly to the laptop.

– Fully charge laptop batteries at least once a month to help the laptop to calibrate its estimator, i.e. to help it to accurately know how long the battery will last.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Mobile devices such as smartphones and laptops are now essential business tools. Although they tend to be regularly replaced, some knowledge of how batteries (and devices) perform best and getting into good habits as regards battery care can prevent batteries failing at important times, can improve safety, reduce costs (replacement batteries and electricity), and extend their life. Mobile and remote working has become essential for many businesses over the last year and with a surge in demand for laptops and phones fuelled by the pandemic, it is more important than ever that knowledge of how to maintain the batteries and devices is made available to improve efficiency and to keep remote workers safe as well as productive.

News

Tech Insight – The Global Microchip Shortage

With the world facing a considerable semiconductor microchip shortage, we take a look at the causes and effects of the shortage plus some potential solutions.

Why Is This Important?

Microchips are now included in virtually everything from watches to white goods and crucially in larger, high demand, big industry items such as cars.  Many products have more than one chip and as the IoT market expands, so does demand for more microchips.

Why The Global Shortage?

The global shortage of semiconductor microchips has been caused by a ‘perfect storm’ of many factors.  These include:

– Car companies slimming down manufacturing following a 50 percent slum in car sales, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

– Microchip producers switching to smartphone, laptop, and tablet chips in response to a surge in demand due to remote working because of the pandemic, thereby disrupting chip markets.

– Manufacturers of semiconductor microchips, which require huge investment in plants over many years, tend to operate with low stock levels to minimise costs. The surge in demand for chips (particularly for cars) following the first lockdowns therefore meant there were no backup supplies, chip manufacturers would need time to adapt to switch back to car chips, and manufacturers could not meet demand.

– With most chips being manufactured in Taiwan, the US trade war with China during the Trump administration caused supply problems due to sanctions (e.g. US chip firm Xilinx having to stop supplying to China, and Huawei being put on a trade blacklist).

– Under-investment in 8-inch chip manufacturing plants owned by Asian companies. Also, most of the production in Asia is concentrated into mainly the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) and Samsung, who manufacture on behalf of hundreds of other different chip companies.

– Weather and other events disrupting supply and worsening the global shortage of semiconductor microchip (e.g. droughts in Taiwan as water is needed in chip production), winter storms in February shutting-down the NXP semiconductor plant in Texas, and a fire at the AKM semiconductor plant in Nobeoka, Miyazaki, Japan last October 20. The AKM factory (owned by Renesas Electronics Corp), for example, accounts for a massive 30 per cent of the global market for the microcontroller units used in cars.

The Impact

Examples of some of the main impacts caused by the global shortage are:

– Massive disruption, damage to profits, and potential job losses in the car industry and in car supply chain businesses.  For example, Ford, Toyota, and VW are partially mothballing factories. Car manufacturers are also producing fewer of their less profitable vehicles.

– Phone manufacturers delaying model releases (e.g. Samsung considering delaying the launch of the latest Galaxy Note).  This, of course, will affect the phone company’s profits and competitiveness and will have a knock-on effect towards phone retail businesses.

– Games console shortages (also compounded by an increase in demand over lockdown).  For example, Microsoft has been facing production challenges with Xbox Series X/S. This may have knock-on effects for games console retailers.

– Knock-on effects into the development of 5G networks (e.g. in the UK and US).

Possible Solutions

The main solution to tackling the global shortage has been for countries implementing the costly and time-consuming measures of setting up their own semiconductor microchip factories to try and guarantee at least some increased level of supply, and to reduce reliance upon countries between whom there may be a difficult relationship. For example, U.S. President Joe Biden is looking for $37 billion for legislation to boost chip manufacturing in the U.S. with a view to setting up four new factories in Arizona and Texas. Also, US sanctions have forced China to start investing heavily in its local tech companies such as Zhaoxin, Huawei, and SMIC to help deal with the shortage.

These developments will take time, and with the majority of 2021’s output already sold, it is anticipated that the shortage and many of its effects may carry on for another year.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For any businesses that require semiconductor microchips for manufacturing, or for business that supply and sell goods and devices that include these chips, the near future may hold uncertainty and potentially damaging disruption and shortages which could impact upon operational decision-making, hit profits, and have a negative impact across supply chains.

News

Tech News : New Amazon AI Tool Monitors Your Business KPIs

In a move to provide more business intelligence, Amazon is launching a new tool that monitors key performance indicators (KPIs) to detect ‘anomalies’ so it can alert the business to potential problems.

Lookout For Metrics

‘Lookout For Metrics’ is the name of the new service from Amazon Web Services (AWS) which uses machine learning for business analytics to monitor KPI’s such as web page views, mobile app downloads, numbers of active users, and income to detect any anomalies and to inform the business/organisation about those anomalies.

Anomalies

The kinds of anomalies / outliers from the norm in business and operational data that AWS is referring to are spikes, dips, and other unusual patterns detected within the analytics that are outside of normal bounds across business functions.

Automated Alerts

Amazon says that that the Lookout for Metrics tool can be easily connected with event and notification services such as Amazon Simple Notification Service and AWS Lambda to created automated and customised alerts and actions when anomalies are detected, such as filing a trouble ticket.

Why?

AWS says that this kind of monitoring can help businesses to better understand customer issues (e.g. churn rates) and take action to improve customer experiences, optimise digital ad-campaigns and prevent overspends, and take action to optimise user engagement by understanding changes in metrics such as new users, app installs, in-app purchases, or retention rates.  The Lookout For Metrics Tool can, therefore, give businesses critical insights to help them make better decisions and create a more productive and efficient organisation, giving them another way to analyse how to keep up with their competitors, and grow revenues. 

AWS also points out that using this tool is a faster and more accurate way than traditional methods for anomaly detection, thereby minimising damage by saving time in finding the root cause of anomalies.  Also, the tool gives businesses a prioritised list of issues, ranked by severity, so that any business can clearly see which issues need immediate attention and which can wait.

Easy To Set Up

Lookout For Metrics requires no specialist machine learning training to start using it and Amazon says that it “connects seamlessly” to popular AWS databases and has pre-built connectors to third-party SaaS applications, thereby enabling the monitoring of metrics and anomaly detection to begin with just a few clicks.

Type of Metrics

The types of popular datasets that Lookout For Metrics can be connected to include Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), and third-party SaaS applications, such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zendesk, and Marketo.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Having access to accurate and timely business intelligence can help businesses to optimise their marketing, make better decisions, and make a business more competitive. Being able to easily set up an automated tool that’s compatible with popular datasets makes this a convenient and fast way for businesses to get a better understanding of where faults lie and where value-adding improvements can be made, and which areas to tackle first. This gives many businesses access to the kind of expert insights that would be more difficult, time consuming and costly to obtain by traditional methods.  For AWS, this provides a way to show themselves as a provider of Business Intelligence (BI) as well as many other services.