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TikTok bans are a long overdue wakeup call for mobile security

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog. No Comments on TikTok bans are a long overdue wakeup call for mobile security

A GATHERING STORM The Canadian move echoes similar moves in recent weeks by the U.S. government, the European Union, and at least half of all American states. It falls short of a full-on national ban, however such legislation has been proposed in the U.S. Nevertheless, this marks a serious foreign policy rebuke from Canada to China. The growing global turbulence around TikTok reinforces the disparity between its populist perception as a non-threatening app, and accusations that it represents a major security threat on a personal, organizational, and national...

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ChatGPT’s arrival reinforces the need to embrace – not ban – AI chatbots

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WELCOME TO THE NEXT REVOLUTION Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been one of those on-the-horizon technologies for what seems like forever. But public interest and engagement has been somewhat limited. That’s largely because it’s been accessible mostly to developers, researchers, and laboratories. OpenAI’s decision to release ChatGPT to the public in November seems to have changed the game markedly. By opening up its consumer-friendly chatbot to everyday users, the organization, co-founded by Elon Musk, has sparked a global explosion of interest. At the same time, all...

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Building a mobile-friendly website? Do these 8 critical things first.

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog. No Comments on Building a mobile-friendly website? Do these 8 critical things first.

Note: This article continues our look at mobile-friendly websites, and why it has become essential for all businesses to have a mobile-first web presence. For guidance on making the business case within your own organization, check out our earlier article – Your business needs a mobile-friendly website. Here’s why. THE WORLD LEADS WITH MOBILE There is no longer any doubt that we live in a mobile world. Data from Statista confirms we’ve already passed something of a tipping point, and there’s no going back. According to this research firm, just over 59% of global...

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Your business needs a mobile-friendly website. Here’s why.

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog. No Comments on Your business needs a mobile-friendly website. Here’s why.

THE SMARTPHONE AGE Chances are that your business has already done a great job shifting into the digital space. You’ve probably got a decent website, reasonably active social accounts, and a pretty good range of ways for customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders to contact you. But it’s not enough. While you’ve been busy doing all the things necessary to build your brand, the world has changed around us. The desktop PC is no longer the dominant piece of hardware –at home or in the office. We live in a mobile world now, We can work wherever there’s connectivity – meaning...

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Hiring software developers for your team? Ask these 8 questions first

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IT’S ALL ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP That’s because as much as choosing who will design the critical code that powers your business depends on their raw technical talent, that talent can’t be brought to bear if you’re not comfortable being around them. In fact, it’s no exaggeration to suggest that the most successful software engineers are just as gifted with soft skills as they are with coding ability – and that these often-overlooked non-technical abilities are as crucial to the final outcome as anything else. Because no matter how brilliant an individual or team of developers...

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Italian ransomware attack highlights bad patch management

Written by STEP Software on . Posted in Blog, StringN. No Comments on Italian ransomware attack highlights bad patch management

TARGETING THE WEAK The newest attack impacted servers across Italy. At its peak, traffic was reduced to 26% of normal levels across the country. Servers in France, Finland, the United States, and Canada were also affected. The French cybersecurity agency, ANSSI, which issued the first alert on Friday, warned of continuing attacks against vulnerable servers in the days to come, and reiterated its guidance to administrators to patch their affected systems. So, in case we’re keeping score, here’s where we’re at: VMware identified a weakness in its products 2 years ago. The...

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Here’s why it takes so long to write great code

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PICK ANY TWO OUT OF THREE Anyone who has worked in the industry and knows what it takes to become a developer will appreciate how unfair this kind of reaction is. Because it fails to account for the years of education, training, and experience that fully qualified developers must go through. It fails to recognize the massive investment developers must make to become top-performing professionals. Developers aren’t just born, and they don’t just materialize out of thin air. They need education (and lifelong learning), real in-the-trenches experience, and unbridled passion for writing...

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Creative Disruption – why we should embrace change, not fear it

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NO LONGER JUST NICE TO HAVE All this uncertainty puts the usual year-end technology trend predictions in a somewhat darker context. And all of this got me thinking about the why of disruption. See, every year, we read the trend reports – this year’s crop was chock full of predictions involving artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, BYOD, low code/no code development, quantum computing, and others – and then we set them aside and go back to work. Sure, all of those hot trends sure sound incredibly cool – and make no mistake, nerds like us were all talking about them when we got...

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Tech layoffs don’t mean that the sky is falling anytime soon

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THE STORY BEHIND THE NUMBERS Despite the frightening reality of an accelerating string of five-figure layoff notices, the sky isn’t falling. As is so often the case in tech, there’s context beyond the numbers. And in this case, the context of the broader jobs situation across the tech and tech-adjacent spaces tells us a bit of a different story. Much of what we’re seeing is less dire-clouds-gathering-on-the-horizon than it is a structural realignment as we slowly emerge from the pandemic. Indeed, as COVID first took hold in March 2020, many tech companies found...

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FAA NOTAM outage should scare all of us into (finally) testing our DRPs

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ONE BAD FILE The Federal Aviation Administration has confirmed the event was triggered by an employee error that caused a corrupt file in the NOTAM system’s database. Worse, the backup system that would have been used to restore the database also contained the same corrupt file. This should make IT practitioners cringe – I know I sure did. That’s because the presence of a corrupt backup strongly suggests the FAA’s disaster recovery plan (DRP) had likely not been tested in the leadup to this failure. Because the only way IT leaders would have known they had a problematic backup...

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