Is quality still job one at Toyota?

The global automaker took a hit last month after its 14 Japan-based production facilities were forced into shut down for 36 hours.

The culprit? A filled-up hard drive that stymied an attempted maintenance update to its production ordering system.

It’s a preventable event that holds implications for all of us, automaker or not. 

A new report from CDW Canada and IDC Canada contains some sobering news for Canadian businesses: the number of successful cybersecurity breaches in 2022 more than doubled over the previous year.

The data reinforces a troubling cybersecurity trend that can have some dire implications for businesses in any geography. We owe it to ourselves to pay closer attention – or risk becoming victims ourselves. 

As space missions go, Russia’s Luna-25 and India’s Chandrayaan-3 couldn’t have been more different.

Russian space officials said their lunar probe “moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon” as it attempted a soft landing on August 19. India’s mission, however, successfully soft-landed on the Moon’s south pole four days later, a milestone Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “belongs to all humanity.”

As dramatic as both missions were and are, they hold critical lessons for software developers in terms of what to do – and not to do – when planning and executing a project. 

As the death toll from the wildfires that destroyed most of the resort town of Lahaina on Maui, Hawaii continues to rise, questions are increasingly being asked about why the state’s emergency alert system – considered one of the most comprehensive in the world – failed to fully activate.

While answers remain few as investigators sift through the rubble, the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in over a century is serving notice to technology professionals everywhere. It’s time to assess if their disaster recovery plans (DRPs) are woefully inadequate in light of expanding risks associated with climate change. 

In a world where a new cybersecurity breach is revealed practically every day, the LastPass attack remains one of the most concerning.

Months after the makers of the popular password management app revealed that the platform had been compromised, customers continue to grapple with the fact that a third-party tool designed to make them more secure instead had the opposite effect.

The lessons from this historic event are both significant and far-ranging – even if you’ve never used the app at all. 

If you think the current cybersecurity crisis is concerning, it could be getting even worse.

In Gartner’s recently published report, Predicts 2023: Cybersecurity Industry Focuses on the Human Deal, the research firm shares some worrisome statistics on the state of staffing and leadership in the sector.

Left unchecked, the research suggests talent shortfalls could continue to widen if organizations fail to prioritize human factors. 

Apple’s crusade to tighten privacy in its App Store is shifting into another gear. The company is cracking down on developers who use a technique called device fingerprinting to track user activity – even if they’ve opted out.

Specifically, the company wants devs to explain why they’re using certain application programming interfaces (APIs) and third-party software development kits (SDKs) in their apps. As part of its app store review process, it is also requiring developers to update their privacy documentation.

Those who fail to comply could find their apps denied approval in the App Store. 

Elon Musk’s decision to kill the Twitter bird and rebrand the platform under the X banner has touched off a fresh wave of debate over the company’s future.

But amid the furor over what is arguably the most controversial corporate shift in direction of the technology era, lessons in marketing best practice are being learned – and developers are emerging as key to it all. 

Meta’s wannabe-Twitter-killer, Threads, is having quite the ride.

After charging out of the gate with 100 million downloads in its first 5 days – the fastest in history, beating the previous record-holder, ChatGPT, which took two full months – engagement fell by half during its second week.

Normal new-product ups-and-downs notwithstanding, concerns over the new app’s appetite for end-user data are raising questions over privacy. Given the track record of its maker, Meta, on securing end-user data, it’s easy to understand why.

Developers might want to take notice. 

No one doubts that generative AI is the next big thing in tech.

But all that promise comes with a dark side that’s prompting organizations of all types to ponder the ethical implications of using it.

To some, it’s an ominous minefield. But it doesn’t have to be.