Apple Pay Headed To Canada

Apple Inc is gearing up to launch its electronic payments service in Canada in November, the first international expansion of Apple Pay, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The iPhone maker is in talks with Canada’s six biggest banks, Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank , Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and National Bank of Canada, the people told the Journal.

The banks are open to an agreement, but are not happy with Apple’s fee proposals and are worried about security vulnerabilities like the ones that U.S. banks experienced, the Journal said, citing the people.

It was still unclear if all six Canadian banks would launch Apple Pay at the same time, the Journal said.

Apple launched the service, a mobile payment app that allows consumers to buy things by holding their iPhone6 and 6 Plus devices up to a reader, in the United States in October.

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RadioShack Plans To Sell Customer Data

RadioShack plans to keep moving forward with its plan to sell its customer data, despite opposition from a number of states.

The company has asked a bankruptcy court for approval for a second auction of its assets, which includes the consumer data.

The state of Texas, which is leading the action by the states, opposed the sale of personally identifiable information (PII), citing the online and in-store privacy policies of the bankrupt consumer electronics retailer.

The state claimed that it found from a RadioShack deposition that the personal information of 117 million customers could be involved. But it learned later from testimony in court that the number of customer files offered for sale might be reduced to around 67 million.

In the first round of the sale, RadioShack sold about 1,700 stores to hedge fund Standard General, which entered into an agreement to set up 1,435 of these as co-branded stores with wireless operator Sprint. Some other assets were also sold in the auction.

The sale of customer data, including PII, was withdrawn from the previous auction, though RadioShack did not rule out that it could be put up for sale at a later date.

The case could have privacy implications for the tech industry as it could set a precedent, for example, for large Internet companies holding consumer data, if they happen to go bankrupt.

Texas has asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware for a case management order to ensure that in any motion for sale of the PII, RadioShack should be required to provide information on the kind of personal data that is up for sale and the number of customers that will be affected.

On Monday, Texas asked the court that its motion be heard ahead of RadioShack’s motion for approval to auction more assets.

The court had ordered in March the appointment of a consumer privacy ombudsman in connection with the potential sale of the consumer data including PII. RadioShack said in a filing Friday that it intends to continue working with the ombudsman and the states with regard to any potential sale of PII, but did not provide details.

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Are Cyber Criminals Hard To Catch?

Despite 100,000 cyber crimes being committed every year UK authorities only caught 12 hackers.

In fact on average just one person was convicted of an offence under the Computer Misuse Act every month for the past 23 years.

We assume that it was not the same bloke, because he would be the most luckless criminal ever.

Campaigners from the Digital Trust, which supports victims of online abuse, said police do not know how to cope with the problem.

Need more laws

Criminal justice expert Harry Fletcher, who is a director of the Digital Trust, said: “The police still concentrate their resources on traditional offences offline, but most people are more likely to be mugged online than in the street.

“The law needs to change. It should, for example, be an offence to use any technological device to locate, listen to or watch a person without legitimate purpose.

“In addition, restrictions should be placed on the sale of spyware without lawful reasons. It should also be against the law to install a webcam or any other form or surveillance device without the target’s knowledge.”

Of course just creating new laws is not going to mean that more hackers will be caught, it will just mean that there are more crimes which they could be arrested for.

The conviction rate against hackers are not bad, if the coppers do arrest someone. Between 1990 to 2006 only 183 defendants were proceeded against and 134 found guilty under the Computer Misuse Act.

Unfortunately the Trust did not see, to realize that a lot of the hacks against companies and individuals come from overseas, particularly Russian or China. Changing laws in the UK would not change anything.

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LinkedIn Acquires Startup Refresh

In a move that could produce even more automated suggestions and tips for LinkedIn users, the professional network has purchased California startup Refresh, the maker of an app that gathers news and insights about participants in meetings.

Launched three years ago, Refresh is designed to be a “digital briefing book” that can call up online information related to people that users are scheduled to meet. The information can be anything from blog posts, news articles or Facebook posts to personal notes or favorite sports teams.

The Refresh mobile and desktop app is aimed at helping people relate to one another more quickly, but it can also be used to refresh one’s memory when running into acquaintances unexpectedly.

The details of the deal were not disclosed. Refresh has stopped taking on new users and its app will shut down April 15.

“Refresh has surfaced insights associated with hundreds of millions of meetings, and has been central to countless connections and closed deals,” co-founder Bhavin Shah wrote on the Refresh blog in announcing the deal.

LinkedIn already has an app called Connected that was somewhat of a rival to Refresh. It can log the people users have met and offer updates and information about interests shared with “connections,” which are acquaintances in the LinkedIn lingo. It’s unclear whether Refresh features will be added to Connected or the LinkedIn website itself.

“Our team will focus its efforts on providing LinkedIn members with more insights to help them better do their jobs,” Shah wrote.

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Intel Sends Braswell SoC To Partners

Intel announced that it is now shipping the Bay Trail system on a chip (SoC) successor codenamed Braswell to OEM partners.

Announced almost exactly a year ago at Intel’s Developer Forum in Beijing, Braswell is a more powerful version of Bay Trail running on the 14nm fab process, designed to power low-cost devices like Chromebooks and budget PCs.

The chip maker said that devices will hit the market sometime in late summer or autumn.

“We expect Braswell-based systems to be available in the market for the back to school 2015 selling season,” an Intel representative told The INQUIRER. “Specific dates and options will be announced by our OEM partners.”

That’s all Intel will give us for now, but we were told that full details regarding the upcoming chip will be revealed at IDF in Shenzhen next week.

Braswell was expected to arrive at the end of 2014 when it was originally unveiled last year.

Kirk Skaugen, general manager of Intel’s PC Client group, said that it will replace Bay Trail as part of the Atom line, and will feature in over 20 Chromebook designs.

“Last year, we had only four designs on Chrome. Today I can announce that we will have over 20 designs on Chrome,” said Skaugen at the time.

Intel recently announced another 14nm chip, the Atom x range, previously codenamed Cherry Trail, although this will be focused on tablets rather than the value PC market segment and Chromebooks like Braswell.

In terms of power, Braswell is likely to fit snuggly above the Atom x5 and x7 Cherry Trail SoCs and beneath the firm’s recently announced 5th-generation Core products, previously codenamed Broadwell.

Unveiled at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, Intel’s Atom x5 and x7 chips, previously codenamed Cherry Trail, are also updates to the previous Bay Trail Atom line-up, being the first Intel Atom SoCs on 14nm.

These higher-powered SoCs are designed to bring improved 3D performance to mainstream premium handheld devices running full versions of Windows and Android, such as 7in to 10.1in tablets and 2-in-1 hybrid laptops priced at around $119 to $499.

For example, Microsoft quietly announced on Tuesday that the upcoming Surface 3 tablet-laptop hybrid will be powered by an Intel Atom x7. The device is priced at $500.

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Intel Debuts The N3000 Series SoC

Intel has launched Intel N3000 series systems on a chip (SoCs), which will kill off Bay Trail-M and Bay Trail-D SoCs on the desktop and mobile PCs.

CPU World also has spotted some other chips which have been revealed to the world.

Intel has also launched desktop and mobile Core i3 and Pentium microprocessors. New mobile models are Pentium 3825U, Core i3-5015U and i3-5020U. These ones are based on Broadwell 14nm.

Core i3-5015U and i3-5020U are dual-cores with Hyper-Threading technology, HD 5500 graphics and ultra low 15 Watt TDP. The processors run at 2.1 GHz and 2.2 GHz. This is 100 MHz higher than the i3-5005U and i3-5010U models, that were launched three months ago.

The i3-5015U and i3-5020U chips offer a 50 MHz higher graphics boost. Official prices of these SKUs are $275 and $281.
The Pentium 3825U incorporates a couple of enhancements on the older Pentium 3805U. It supports Hyper-Threading that allows it to process twice as many threads. It also has base and maximum graphics frequencies increased to 300 MHz and 850 MHz.

The 3805U and 3825U operate at 1.9 GHz and have 2 MB L2 cache. The 3825U processor is rated at 15 Watt TDP, and priced at $161.

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Panasonic Appears To Be On The Hunt

Japanese electronics giant Panasonic Corp said it is gearing up to spend 1 trillion yen ($8.4 billion) on acquisitions over the next four years, bolstered by a stronger profit outlook for its automotive and housing technology businesses.

Chief Executive Kazuhiro Tsuga said at a briefing on Thursday that Panasonic doesn’t have specific acquisition targets in mind for now. But he said the firm will spend around 200 billion yen on M&A in the fiscal year that kicks off in April alone, and pledged to improve on Panasonic’s patchy track record on big deals.

“With strategic investments, if there’s an opportunity to accelerate growth, you need funds. That’s the idea behind the 1 trillion yen figure,” he said. Tsuga has spearheaded a radical restructuring at the Osaka-based company that has made it one of the strongest turnaround stories in Japan’s embattled technology sector.

Tsuga previously told Reuters that company was interested in M&A deals in the European white goods market, a sector where Panasonic has comparatively low brand recognition.

The firm said on Thursday it’s targeting operating profit of 430 billion yen in the next fiscal year, up nearly 25 percent from the 350 billion yen it expects for the year ending March 31.

Panasonic’s earnings have been bolstered by moving faster than peers like Sony Corp and Sharp Corp to overhaul business models squeezed by competition from cheaper Asian rivals and caught flat-footed in a smartphone race led by Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics. Out has gone reliance on mass consumer goods like TVs and smartphones, and in has come a focus on areas like automotive technology and energy-efficient home appliances.

Tsuga also sought to ease concerns that an expensive acquisition could set back its finances, which took years to recover from the deal agreed in 2008 to buy cross-town rival Sanyo for a sum equal to about $9 billion at the time.

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USB 3.1 Coming Later This Year

The emerging USB 3.1 standard is on track to reach desktops as hardware companies release motherboards with ports that can transfer data twice as fast as the previous USB technology.

MSI recently announced a 970A SLI Krait motherboard that will support the AMD processors and the USB 3.1 protocol. Motherboards with USB 3.1 ports have also been released by Gigabyte, ASRock and Asus, but those boards support Intel chips.

USB 3.1 can shuffle data between a host device and peripheral at 10Gbps, which is two times faster than USB 3.0. USB 3.1 is also generating excitement for the reversible Type-C cable, which is the same on both ends so users don’t have to worry about plug orientation.

The motherboards with USB 3.1 technology are targeted at high-end desktops. Some enthusiasts like gamers seek the latest and greatest technologies and build desktops with motherboards sold by MSI, Asus and Gigabyte. Many of the new desktop motherboards announced have the Type-C port interface, which is also in recently announced laptops from Apple and Google.

New technologies like USB 3.1 usually first appear in high-end laptops and desktops, then make their way down to low-priced PCs, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst of Mercury Research.

PC makers are expected to start putting USB 3.1 ports in more laptops and desktops starting later this year.

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Medical Data Becoming Valuable To Hackers

The personal information stored in health care records fetches increasingly impressive sums on underground markets, making any company that stores such data a very attractive target for attackers.

“Hackers will go after anyone with health care information,” said John Pescatore, director of emerging security trends at the SANS Institute, adding that in recent years hackers have increasingly set their sights on EHRs (electronic health records).

With medical data, “there’s a bunch of ways you can turn that into cash,” he said. For example, Social Security numbers and mailing addresses can be used to apply for credit cards or get around corporate antifraud measures.

This could explain why attackers have recently targeted U.S. health insurance providers. Last Tuesday, Premera Blue Cross disclosed that the personal details of 11 million customers had been exposed in a hack that was discovered in January. Last month, Anthem, another health insurance provider, said that 78.8 million customer and employee records were accessed in an attack.

Both attacks exposed similar data, including names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, telephone numbers, member identification numbers, email addresses and mailing addresses. In the Premera breach, medical claims information was also accessed.

If the attackers try to monetize this information, the payout could prove lucrative.

Credentials that include Social Security numbers can sell for a couple of hundred dollars since the data’s lifetime is much longer compared to pilfered credit card numbers, said Matt Little, vice president of product development at PKWARE, an encryption software company with clients that include health care providers. Credit card numbers, which go for a few dollars, tend to work only for a handful of days after being reported stolen.

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Target Settles Security Breach

Target is reportedly close to paying out $10m to settle a class-action case that was filed after it was hacked and stripped of tens of millions of peoples’ details.

Target was smacked by hackers in 2013 in a massive cyber-thwack on its stores and servers that put some 70 million people’s personal information in harm’s way.

The hack has had massive repercussions. People are losing faith in industry and its ability to store their personal data, and the Target incident is a very good example of why people are right to worry.

As well as tarnishing Target’s reputation, the attack also led to a $162m gap in its financial spreadsheets.

The firm apologized to its punters when it revealed the hack, and chairman, CEO and president Gregg Steinhafel said he was sorry that they have had to “endure” such a thing

Now, according to reports, Target is willing to fork out another $10m to put things right, offering the money as a proposed settlement in one of several class-action lawsuits the company is facing. If accepted, the settlement could see affected parties awarded some $10,000 for their troubles.

We have asked Target to either confirm or comment on this, and are waiting for a response. For now we have an official statement at Reuters to turn to. There we see Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder confirming that something is happening but not mentioning the 10 and six zeroes.

“We are pleased to see the process moving forward and look forward to its resolution,” she said.

Not available to comment, not that we asked, will be the firm’s CIO at the time of the hack. Thirty-year Target veteran Beth Jacob left her role in the aftermath of the attack, and a replacement was immediately sought.

“To ensure that Target is well positioned following the data breach we suffered last year, we are undertaking an overhaul of our information security and compliance structure and practices at Target,” said Steinhafel then.

“As a first step in this effort, Target will be conducting an external search for an interim CIO who can help guide Target through this transformation.”

“Transformational change” pro Bob DeRodes took on the role in May last year and immediately began saying the right things.

“I look forward to helping shape information technology and data security at Target in the days and months ahead,” he said.

“It is clear to me that Target is an organization that is committed to doing whatever it takes to do right by their guests.”

We would ask Steinhafel for his verdict on DeRodes so far and the $10m settlement, but would you believe it, he’s not at Target anymore either having left in the summer last year with a reported $61m golden parachute.

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