Archive for December, 2019

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Canadian Small Businesses Are Facing Detrimental Barriers Impacting Growth Forecasts: Intuit

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 10, 2019 by itnerd

As 2020 approaches Canada’s economy continues to face speculation of major challenges and barriers – despite this, new research from Intuit QuickBooks Canada has shown small businesses remain optimistic.

The research showed 83 per cent of Canadian small business owners planning to grow their businesses in the next two years, however, 85 per cent of these businesses feel held back by a lack of knowledge in the hiring process.

The research also highlighted how small business owners continue to be caught in their day-to-day, and are unable to look towards future growth, for example:

  • Cashflow woes:Nearly half (45 per cent) of small business owners have difficulty with managing cash flow and a similar amount (44 per cent) struggle with payroll.
  • Big losses: 1 in 10 small businesses have had an employee leave because of a pay dispute (9 per cent).
  • Taking a personal hit:Over half have had to pay themselves late so they could pay their employees on time (53 per cent).

As well, the findings show that there’s a gap between growth potential and knowing where to start, especially when it comes to hiring.

  • Overwhelmed and unprepared:Over 2 in 5 Canadian small business owners who plan to hire feel unprepared for their business to grow (43 per cent).
  • Held back at hiring: Nearly 2 in 3 (60 per cent) don’t feel completely prepared to manage the hiring process.
  • ‘Untalented’ at hiring: 3 in 5 Canadian small business owners struggle with their lack of knowledge about sourcing talent (62 per cent).
  • It’s all about the money: Almost 3 in 5 (56 per cent) Canadian small business owners planning to hire are unsure about how to determine appropriate compensation.

You can read the blog post that is related to this report here.

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2020 Will Be A Year Of Experience-Driven Innovation: Citrix

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 10, 2019 by itnerd

Emboldened by the tightest labour market the world has ever seen, employees are demanding a simpler, smarter, more flexible way to work. And in 2020, they’ll get it. Citrix has outlined 4 major predictions they see as being the future of work and technology in 2020.

Citrix predicts that this will be a year of experience-driven innovation that will prioritize employees and their work more than ever. This shift in focus to a people-centric approach will force business leaders to discover how and where their employees work best and, powered by modern technology, will unlock a new way of working that offers higher levels of efficiency and flexibility. Citrix predicts the following in 2020:

  • The employee experience is more important than ever, resulting in new methods of tracking behaviours that can inform new technologies and processes, ultimately improving the value of the organization
  • Technology will adapt to human workflows, enhancing how an individual wants to work and adapting to that individual through people-centric computing
  • Working from home will become the new norm, allowing businesses to discover how and where their employees work best, providing flexible and accessible work environments powered by modern technology
  • Collective migration to hybrid cloud, enabling digital services to be more accessible, affordable, and capable than ever before.

Stay tuned in 2020 to see if these predictions from Citrix prove to be accurate.

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The CRTC Is Implementing Tech To Stop Scam Calls…. Except That It Will Not Work

Posted in Commentary with tags , on December 10, 2019 by itnerd

Yesterday the CRTC announced that it was getting Canadian telcos to implement STIR/SHAKEN technology to stop scam calls. You know, the calls for duct cleaning services, or the ones where scammers pose as government agencies who threaten you with all sorts of bad things if you don’t pay up. Here’s how the CRTC explains STIR/SHAKEN technology:

STIR/SHAKEN will enable service providers to certify whether a caller’s identity can be trusted by authenticating and verifying the caller ID information for Internet Protocol-based voice calls. This new framework will empower Canadians to determine which calls are authenticated, reducing the frequency and impact of caller ID spoofing.

In case you are not familiar with caller ID spoofing, which is faking the number that someone is calling from, this Wikipedia article can help with that.

Now it sounds good on the surface. You’ll be able to tell at a glance if the call is coming from a legitimate source, or is a scam call. So in theory by the time this fully rolls out in September 2020, Canadians should be safe from the scumbag scammers of the world.

Well, not so fast. There’s two reasons why this may be a short lived victory:

  • It’s entirely possible that these scammers will simply change their tactics. Right now many overseas call centers utilize VoIP calling, but route all of that activity through a private branch exchange (PBX) based in the United States or Canada.  That means it appears as a phone call originating in the U.S. or Canada. While STIR/SHAKEN would mean that scam calls originating from suspect PBX operators would start to get marked as spam, they could just set up shop with another PBX and be back in business. In other words, it would be like play whack a mole.
  • STIR/SHAKEN is currently only supported in the U.S. and Canada. Other countries would have to sign on for STIR/SHAKEN to be really effective. And as far as I am aware, that hasn’t happened with any other country on the planet. So seeing as the majority of scam calls come from countries like India, this may not make that much of a difference. And as an aside one has to question if the government of India has the will to actually implement STIR/SHAKEN seeing as scammers in that country are basically bringing in large amounts of money into their economy. Though they are doing it in less than legal ways.

So STIR/SHAKEN is a good step in terms of cutting down on scam calls. But it’s only a step. More has to be done to keep people safe from the scumbags who are behind these calls and I hope that the CRTC and others are working on that.

 

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Trend Micro Named A Leader in Cloud Workload Security

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 10, 2019 by itnerd

Trend Micro Incorporated today announced that it received the highest score in the current offering and strategy categories, and among the second highest scores in the market presence category, in The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Workload Security, Q4 2019. Trend Micro believes that this recognition underscores the leadership of its cloud offerings and strategy as the peak of the cloud security market.

Forrester rigorously evaluated 13 competitive security vendors across 30 criterion and in three distinct areas: current offering, strategy and market presence.

In addition to its comprehensiveness, Forrester recognized Trend Micro’s cloud security offering in multiple areas including:

  • “The solution is ideal for large firms with broad Cloud Workload Security (CWS) needs across workloads, hypervisors and containers.”
  • “The OS level, agent-based protections are very strong and include malware and memory protection, file integrity monitoring, host-based firewall, intrusion detection/intrusion prevention, log inspection and application binary control,” the report noted.
  • “Role-based access control (RBAC) is very flexible for administrators. Container runtime and pre-runtime checks are comprehensive, and the solution exposes a broad API for Deep Security policy control.”

Trend Micro provides optimized protection for workloads running on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, VMware and Docker, allowing customers to automate deployment for streamlined compliance and seamlessly secure DevOps.

To download a complimentary copy of the full report, click here.

Trend Micro believes that this report complements another recently published recognition by another top analyst firm. The company was named the #1 vendor in Software-Defined Compute (SDC) workload protection by IDC in their new independent report: Worldwide Software Defined Compute Workload Security Market Shares, 2018 (DOC #US45638919, NOVEMBER 2019). This report revealed Trend Micro achieved a market share lead of 35.5%, almost triple its nearest competitor in 2018.

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Review: ASUS ZenBook 14 UX434F

Posted in Products with tags on December 10, 2019 by itnerd

The ASUS ZenBook UX434F is the latest ZenBook 14 laptop to come with ASUS’s revamped ScreenPad. Which is a trackpad that’s also a touchscreen. Here’s a look at the latest effort from ASUS:

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Here’s the specs that matter:

  • 14″ UHD screen
  • 1.8 Ghz Intel I7 Whiskey Lake processor
  • 16GB RAM
  • 512GB SSD
  • Nvidia GeForce MX250 with 2GB VRAM
  • 802.11 ac WiFi
  • Bluetooth
  • Windows 10
  • 3D camera that supports Windows Hello

As for ports:

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Here you see a power port, HDMI port, USB 3.0 port, and a Thunderbolt 3/USB-C port

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And on the other side you see a headphone jack, USB 3.0 port, and microSD card reader.

Weighing just 1.3kg and measuring 7.83mm deep when closed, the ZenBook 14 is both light and slim. That makes it easy to tote around. The screen is bright, sharp, and easy to read. It is a bit glare prone though. It has a 92% screen to body ratio and has a resolution of 1920×1080 resolution. The keyboard has great feel and is great for touch typists like me. Apple could take a few lessons on how to make a great feeling keyboard from this ZenBook 14. The keyboard is backlit to allow you to work at night. The build quality is excellent. But I’ve come to expect that from ASUS as the build quality of their products is always on point. The speakers are made by Harmon/Kardon and are a bit of a mixed bag. Music sounds okay. But I wouldn’t be using it to throw a party or anything. Watching YouTube or Netflix is just fine however.

The ScreenPad 2.0 (5.6-inch ScreenPad 2.0 gives you 2160 x 1080 with a 18:9 ratio) is the ZenBook’s main talking point.

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It is a very cool and attention-grabbing feature that’s a little tricky to get to grips with at first. But once you get used to it, it works fine as both a trackpad and as a second screen. Fortunately there’s a tutorial that pops up when you first set up the ZenBook 14 can help you to get to grips with it though. You can toggle between the ScreenPad being on and off with a tap of the F6 button. One cool trick is that you can do handwriting on the ScreenPad and it even comes with a few apps that leverage it. Other apps that support the ScreenPad are of the your mileage may vary variety. Battery life was decent at 9 hours of browsing the web and using office. It takes two hours to charge in case you need to top it up during the day. I can live with that battery life and I am sure that the target audience of any person who require a ultra portable notebook can live with.

What does all this ASUS goodness go for? About $1500 on Amazon. But you can find it for less if you hunt around. If you’re a student, or someone who needs a small light laptop that has the party trick of a touchpad that doubles as a second screen, you should take a look at the ASUS ZenBook 14.

 

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Serj Tankian x HEX – The Backpack With Its Own Song

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 10, 2019 by itnerd

HEX, award winning fashion accessory brand, is proud to announce its latest collaboration with System of a Down frontman and iconic musician and artist, Serj Tankian: a backpack that brings with it a unique experience through a mix of art, music, technology and style.

Like his artwork, the Serj Tankian backpack has its own unique sounds accessible through the augmented reality app, Arloopa. With Arloopa, you can point to the bag with your phone’s camera to unlock new, unreleased music from Tankian.

The Serj Tankian bag is finished in a sleek, steel grey brushed nylon and features a lining printed with Tankian’s own “Space Clock” artwork, a unique Space Clock pin, and tonal stripes art on the front pocket and straps.

The practical everyday backpack was designed by HEX with Serj, who travels all over the world. Features include a plush lined laptop pocket, separate tablet pocket, a hidden earbud pocket, and a host of internal pockets for hard drives and other tools of the music trade. MSRP $195.95.

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5 Major Cybersecurity Threats For 2020 Identified In Straight Edge Technology Report

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 10, 2019 by itnerd

To help businesses prepare their IT security for 2020, Straight Edge Technology released a report naming five major cybersecurity threats and their solutions for 2020 and beyond.

According to the report, approximately 43% of today’s cyberattacks target small businesses. This barrage of cyberattacks on small and medium-sized businesses will only increase as more data is stored on online servers and the Cloud.

The report states that employee education is critical to business security. Modern hackers focus on social engineering attacks that target employees and rely on human error. In fact, 93% of data breaches come from social engineering attacks.

Training employees on the strategies and tactics of social engineering cyberattacks can greatly increase a business’s cybersecurity.

In the report, found here, Straight Edge Technology identifies the following five major cybersecurity threats for businesses in 2020:

  • Phishing – Hackers use false identities to trick employees into giving sensitive information. The most common methods are through email, social media and instant messaging.​
  • Malware and Ransomware – Hackers exploit security flaws to steal, freeze or destroy data.
  • Database Exposure – Hackers access databases with stolen credentials or through unprotected servers. This gives hackers access to data that they can steal.
  • Credential Stuffing – Hackers access multiple programs with weak and insecure login credentials. This is most common when the same login credentials are used for multiple programs.
  • Accidental Sharing – Employees accidentally release data that hackers can access and steal. Human error is usually the cause of accidental sharing.

The report includes the solutions and strategies businesses can implement to protect their IT from these threats. It also includes a brief history of cyberattacks and four common cyberthreats.

For questions on cybersecurity or the report, feel free to contact Straight Edge Technology.

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Clario Launches Today With A Consumer-Focused Digital Privacy & Security View

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 10, 2019 by itnerd

Clario Tech Ltd (www.clario.co), a newly formed digital privacy and security company, today announces its intent to reinvigorate the stagnant digital security industry and fight the $6 trillion cybercrime crisis, through the development of a security software solution that seamlessly integrates human support with intuitive UX and powerful features.

The new company, headquartered in the UK, has acquired both IP and human capital from Kromtech Alliance Corp., originators of the MacKeeper performance and protection app. Clario will continue to support MacKeeper for its three million active users while finalizing the development of its product, Clario.

Clario will spend $30 million in 2020 to develop and market Clario with a team of 800 people including 600 on-demand tech experts, with a goal of becoming the consumer champion in the security software space. The new product will be showcased for the first time at CES 2020 in Las Vegas and a limited number of users will be able to sign up for a preview of the product at that time. A retail version is expected to ship in Q2.

Clario will initially be focused on meeting the needs of Apple customers through apps designed for both MacOS and iOS. It plans to later support other platforms including Windows and Android.

With the completion of the acquisition of assets, Kromtech will be wound down as an operating entity. This will accelerate the transformation of MacKeeper, which has been criticized for its past use of third-party affiliates, who engaged in aggressive sales techniques to promote the sale of the software.

As part of Clario, MacKeeper has eliminated these techniques and also has now been AppEsteem certified- the gold standard for app quality and reliability – something that none of the leading brands in the market have achieved. AppEsteem’s Certification process requires companies to undergo a rigorous and demanding review that entails detailed substantive analyses for both consumer-protection criteria and multiple levels of a technical review.

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Intuit QuickBooks Canada Announces AI-Powered Product Updates

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 9, 2019 by itnerd

Today at QuickBooks Connect Toronto, Intuit QuickBooks Canada announced new AI and ML powered product updates that will enable accountants and bookkeepers to continue to conduct smarter business operations and remain ahead of their competition – now and into the future.

Updates include:

  • NOW LIVE Business Performance Overview: The new Business Performance tab in QuickBooks Online Accountant automatically takes a client’s data and pulls out what is needed — key figures, useful indicators, actionable items and more — and organizes it all into one simple, visually driven dashboard.
  • COMING SOON Optimization Centre: The new Optimization Centre gives accountants, bookkeepers an objective measure of how effectively they’ve set up each client through an efficiency score, plus concrete recommendations to improve efficiency moving forward.
  • COMING SOON Bookkeeping Review: This new expert feature within QuickBooks finds errors automatically so accounting professionals don’t have to go hunting for them — giving accounting professionals high-quality books in a fraction of the time.

Additional product innovations unique to the Canadian market were also announced and include:

  • New Sales Tax Centre: Currently live across Canada, the Sales Tax Centre has received significant investment and updates. Customers can now apply a payment to multiple filings, track partial payments, and adjust how they’re applied even after they’re recorded.
  • Groupings & Statements in Workpapers: This new Workpapers feature in the online Pro Tax offering give accounting professionals the ability to simplify their financial statements by grouping accounts, adding notes and attachments, adding a reference code/leadsheet, and then offering a formatted Excel doc to print off.
  • Standard Payroll investments:  Significant improvements continue for Standard Payroll. Starting in December, employers will now be able to track, calculate and support Taxable Benefits (non-cash) in product.

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My Upgrade To macOS Catalina

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 9, 2019 by itnerd

Two weeks ago I did my upgrade to Apple’s latest and greatest OS which is macOS Catalina. Because this version of macOS is different than macOS updates, I thought that I would take a few minutes to walk you through the upgrade process and why I went approached it the way I did.

First of all, I didn’t dive into this upgrade the second it became available. Instead I waited for two things to happen:

  1. I wanted all my apps that I rely upon to have 64-bit versions available. That’s important as Catalina only runs 64-bit apps and 32-bit apps will not work at all. If you want to find out what apps are 64-bit or 32-bit on your Mac, this article will help with that. Most of the software that I own was already a 64-bit app. But my invoicing software which is Express Invoice for Mac wasn’t available as a 64-bit version until three weeks ago. So I had to wait until that happened before I could upgrade to Catalina That’s pretty bad as app developers had Apple warning them for two years to prepare for the demise of 32-bit apps. Thus you could make an argument that the company who makes Express Invoice was asleep at the switch.
  2. Even if my invoicing software was ready to go, I wasn’t going to upgrade until the first update to Catalina appeared. That’s because of Apple’s recent history of initial macOS versions being buggy. A perfect example of this is how Apple broke WiFi a few years ago and it took them forever to fix it. You don’t want to be in the middle of something like that if you don’t have to be. So when the .1 update appeared, and I heard good reports about it, that’s when I decided to make the jump.

My first step was to make sure I did a back up of me current setup so that I could roll back if I had to. I use Carbon Copy Cloner for my backup needs and I created a disk image backup on my NAS that would facilitate a roll back if the need arose. Then I ran the installer for the OS, which strangely (at least to me) is in the software update section. The install of Catalina was quick and after some quick testing, everything was almost perfect. I had two minor problems:

  • I found a “Preboot” folder at the root of my hard disk after upgrading to macOS Catalina. This is usually hidden so that the fact that I see it is a minor problem. And deleting it is a really, really bad idea as you would leave your Mac in an unbootable state. Fixing it was a bit of a pain in the you know what. I’ll tell what I did to fix this. But what I will say is that this is NOT for the faint of heart:
    • First I had to reboot and disable System Integrity Protection. This is a feature of modern operating systems that protects the OS from being affected by malware. There’s usually no good reason to turn this off, but in this case I had to using this method. Note: You will have to authenticate using an admin account to allow you to disable System Integrity Protection. That’s a new security measure in Catalina.
    • Once you reboot to get back into Catalina I had to go into Terminal and enter: sudo mount -uw / as this makes the system volume writable (which is read-only by default since Catalina so that the OS is protected).
    • Use this command to hide the Preboot folder: sudo chflags hidden /Preboot*
    • Re-enable System Integrity Protection
  • Carbon Copy Cloner apparently didn’t like the disk images that I had made for backup purposes. Thus I ended up deleting all (with the exception of the one that I made in case I had to roll back to my previous version of macOS) of them and making new ones. It also allowed me to shrink the size of these disk images so that they take up less space on my NAS as saving disk space is always a good thing.

So how is Catalina? For the most part I like it. The things that jump out at me are:

  • Some people described Catalina as “Windows Vista for Mac” as it will prompt you to allow or deny actions such as notifications or access to hardware like cameras. Plus it has options buried in the security preferences pane to allow you to customize access for apps. In my case, I saw a brief flurry of requests to allow or deny behaviors related to some apps after the Catalina install, and have seen maybe two requests since. So I think the whole Windows Vista thing is overblown. Besides, I would rather have more security with some inconvenience than less security with ease of use.
  • I like that you can now use the Apple Watch to not only log into your Mac, and to pay for stuff, but you can also use it to allow certain security related actions. Hopefully Apple expands on that.
  • It does not seem any slower than macOS Mojave so far.
  • The removal of iTunes and the use of the finder to sync your iPhone is a total non-event. It works exactly the same way. Though for me to get WiFi syncing working, I had to turn off WiFi Sync, reboot, and turn it on and reboot again before it worked.
  • There’s a Photos app that organizes pictures by day, month, or year, while also intelligently choosing your best photos so you can relive all of your favorite memories. It took all night of processing to get that to work as I have thousands of photos, but the results are good.

So should you update to Catalina? I would say that there is no reason to sit on the fence any longer. As long as you have a backup and you have 64-bit versions on the apps that you rely on, you should be safe to dive in.

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