Author: Andy Miller

A.I. Powered Bar-staff. Who’s Next?

Posted on by Andy Miller

In what’s been called the world’s first ‘A.I. Bar’ (developed by British data science product company DataSparQ) ordering a drink at a busy bar has been made easier, faster and fairer by using facial recognition technology to place customers in an “intelligently virtual” queue.

Solving Old Problems

Information and statistics (DataSparQ) show that pub-goers in Britain spend more than two months over a lifetime queuing for drinks and that people pushing in at bar queues is the biggest gripe.  Who to serve next as efficiently as possible without causing an argument, and how to spot underage customers at busy times are challenges faced by many bar workers.  Also, solo drinkers and females can find busy bars intimidating and frustrating.

The new DataSparQ ‘A.I. Bar’ Software-as-a-Service product, which costs landlords from just £199 a month and uses a standard webcam, display screen and Internet connection to link up to A.I facial recognition technology appears to be able to address all of these challenges.

How It Works

The A.I. Bar, which has been tested in London, uses a camera linked to the machine learning technology to spot those persons arriving at the bar.  The system displays a live video of everyone queuing on a screen above the bar and a number, which appears above each customer’s head, representing their place in the queue. The system also protects customer privacy by deleting the data (pictures of faces) within 24 hours.

For bar staff, the ordered numbering of customers, and the fact that customers are clearly aware of their number in the queue reduces the chance of arguments. The system shows the bar staff on an iPad, exactly who to serve next thereby helping bars and pubs to maximise their ordering efficiency. The system also tells bar staff who they should ask for I.D. to verify their age, thus helping the pub/bar to stay on the right side of the law.

More Pints Served

In tests of the system, the before and after data has revealed there was an overall reduction in serving times with equivalent of more than 1,600 pints extra poured over a year compared to the average UK pub.  This could equate to a potential 78million additional pints poured a year if the UK’s 48 thousand pubs adopted the A.I Bar technology.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For UK pubs and any business which have to deal with busy bars (hotels, clubs, live music venues and festivals), this system is an example of how the latest technology can be used in a practical setting to solve a number of age-old problems that have troubled drinkers, owners and staff alike.  If this system was widely adopted, the efficiencies created, the extra beer sales, and the reduction of potentially intimidating situations in pubs could benefit the wider pub and drinks trades, and could go some way to helping at a time when so many pubs are being forced to close.

Tech Tip – Bouncer App

Posted on by Andy Miller

If you’re concerned about privacy on your phone, and if you’d like to stop power-hungry apps from abusing their permissions by running processor-heavy tasks in the background the ‘Bouncer’ app enables you to grant permissions for applications temporarily.

With the Bouncer app, you can grant permissions for apps for a temporary period and once permission is granted, the Bouncer app will automatically remove that permission either when you exit the app in question or when a certain amount of time has passed.

The Bouncer app is available (Beta) on the Google Play Store.

Free Ransomware Killers Save £88M in Ransoms

Posted on by Andy Miller

Free downloadable ransomware tools launched by Europol in association with several cybersecurity firms as part of the ‘No More Ransom’ initiative are estimated to have saved businesses £87.6 million.

Who / What Is Europol?

Europol is the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation.

No More Ransom

‘No More Ransom’ is the name given to the initiative launched July 29th 2016 by Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre.  This is the National High-Tech Crime Unit of the Netherlands’ police and McAfee that works to help victims of ransomware to retrieve their encrypted data without having to pay ransoms to criminals.  The idea is that, by restoring access to their infected systems free of charge, victims now have a third choice they did not have before.

Portal

The ‘No More Ransom’ portal ( https://www.nomoreransom.org/ ), which was originally released in English, is now available in 35 other languages, and thanks to the cooperation between more than 150 partners, provides a one-stop-shop of tools that can help to decrypt ransomware infections – see https://www.nomoreransom.org/en/decryption-tools.html.

Impressive Stats

Europol has reported that its ‘No More Ransom’ portal has visitors from 188 countries and since its introduction in 2016 has enabled 200 000 victims of ransomware recover their files free of charge.  In money terms, Europol reports that this equates to $108 million / £87.6 million that cybercriminals have not been paid in ransoms.

For example, No More Ransom’s tools led to 40,000 decryptions of the ‘GandCrab’ ransomware, thereby stopping those victims from having to pay over £41 million.

More Tools This Year

This year has seen the introduction of 14 new tools, thereby enabling the portal to provide the means for users to decrypt 109 different types of potentially crippling ransomware infections.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Until the introduction of Europol’s ‘No More Ransom’ portal three years ago, victims of ransomware were faced with a very stark choice of not paying the ransom (potentially losing all their data and/or suffer a permanent shutdown of certain computer systems) or pay the ransom and not only have to find a very large sum of money but also run the risk of the attackers still doing nothing to help even though they’d been paid.  In both cases, the balance of power was very much in favour of the criminal rather than the victim, who may have accidentally downloaded the virus with a mistaken single click in the first place.

The growing number of tools on the No Ransom portal offers businesses that vital third option of being able to restore their valuable data free of charge, thereby providing a practical, easily available way to defeat ransomware attackers.  This could lead to criminals moving away from ransomware as it becomes more difficult to make money from this attack method.

Business owners should remember, however, that even though the No Ransom portal offers real hope, it should not provide an excuse not to take as many preventative security measures as possible in the first place such as educating and training staff and keeping anti-virus software and patches up to date.

Vulnerability in Contactless Card Allows Bypassing of £30 Limit

Posted on by Andy Miller

Researchers from security company Positive Technologies have reported found a vulnerability in Visa contactless cards that could lead to your bank account being drained if your card fell into the wrong hands.

Device

The researchers developed a ‘skimming’ device which was able to intercept communications between a contactless card and payment terminal, thereby allowing the £30 spending limit per transaction to be bypassed without requiring the entry of a PIN number. The device was found to work with cards from five different UK banks. It has been reported that the hack would also work on cards and terminals outside the UK.

The device developed by the researchers, tells the card that verification is not required, even if the payment amount is greater than £30, and the device tells the terminal that verification has already been made, thereby allowing the user to potentially make purchases to an amount that could drain the victim’s bank account.

Visa

Visa is reported to have urged consumers to continue using their cards with confidence because the threat is not really scalable due to it coming from a device that has been made by researchers that is highly unlikely to be in real use anywhere by criminals at this point. Visa is also reported to have noted that although security threats are taken seriously, research tests of this kind have proven impractical for fraudsters to use in the real world, and Visa’s multi-layered security approach has kept rates at less than one-tenth of one per cent.

Contactless Fraud

Despite Visa’s views on this research, contactless fraud levels appear to be rising with (UK Finance figures) fraud on contactless cards and devices reported to have increased from £6.7 million in 2016 to £14 million in 2017, and with nearly £8.5 million was lost to contactless fraud in the first half of last year.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Even though this vulnerability was exploited by researchers who had developed a device and system that fraudsters are not known to be using, it still highlights the fact that it is possible to get around contactless card security and that Visa doesn’t appear to be asking issuers and acquirers to have any checks in place that could block payments without presenting the minimum verification.  Also, any of the random checks that terminals do carry out currently have to be set by the merchant. If fraudsters could get their hands on a similar device, banks and their customers could face damaging losses.

Some security commentators believe that bearing in mind the apparent rise in contactless fraud, issuing banks should also take more responsibility for security by adding their own security measures rather than simply relying on Visa’s protocol.

Commercial Release of BlueKeep Malware Causes Concern

Posted on by Andy Miller

Tech and security commentators have expressed their fears that a version of the BlueKeep malware (that’s been included in a commercial penetration testing toolkit) could prove to be dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands.

What Is BlueKeep?

BlueKeep is a kind of malware that can be deployed to exploit a vulnerability in older versions of the Windows operating system.  The malware, which was discovered in May, is estimated to have already affected one million systems globally, and is, therefore, thought to have the potential to become a bigger threat than WannaCry (the ransomware from 2017 that affected 300,000 computers in 150 countries worldwide).

The vulnerability that BlueKeep uses is the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and can affect Windows Vista, 7, XP, Server 2003 and Server 2008 operating systems. BlueKeep will not affect Windows 10.

BlueKeep is self-replicating, without the need for user interaction, and once an attacker has sent malware packets to an unpatched system where RDP is enabled the attacker is then able to perform several actions including adding user accounts, installing more malicious programs and changing data.

A patch was issued by Microsoft back in May for all supported Windows operating systems, Windows XP and Server 2003.

Version Commercially Available

Bearing in mind the threat to businesses and individual users posed by BlueKeep some tech and security commentators have expressed concern that a working version of BlueKeep has been released commercially by Immunity as part of its CANVAS penetration testing toolkit.  Even though the price of the toolkit may deter purchases by potential attackers just to get their hand on BlueKeep, the fear still exists that this commercial release may be dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands.

Healthcare and Telecoms Systems Risk

Some security commentators have noted that older healthcare computer systems and the kind of end-customer systems that can’t be upgraded themselves that are used by telecoms companies may be at risk of being infected.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

BlueKeep is a real threat for those businesses still using the older versions of the Windows operating system (Vista, 7, XP, Server 2003 and Server 2008).  Although a patch has been issued, patching some business systems can be complicated and time-consuming, but businesses are advised to do so as soon as possible bearing in mind how quickly and easily BlueKeep has spread to date.

In addition to making sure Windows systems are patched and up to date, business IT administrators can also take precautions like disabling any unused and unneeded RDP services, blocking TCP Port 3389 and enabling network-level authentication in RDP services so that would-be attackers can be prevented from performing remote code execution without valid credentials.

UKCIS Offers Online Safety For All

Posted on by Andy Miller

The government has announced that the UK Council for Internet Safety (UKCIS), which is the successor to the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS), has had its scope expanded to improve online safety for all in the UK.

Part of Government Commitment

The introduction of The UK Council for Internet Safety (UKCIS) is part of the government’s commitment to making the UK the safest place in the world to be online, and it will feed into the development of the forthcoming Online Harms White Paper.  The whitepaper, which sets out the government’s plans for a package of online safety measures that also supports innovation and a thriving digital economy, comprises the legislative and non-legislative measures that will make companies more responsible for their users’ safety online, especially children and other vulnerable groups.

Executive Board From Many Organisations

One of the key ways in which UKCIS is expanding its scope and expertise is by including Executive Board members from a wide a range of organisations in the technology industry, civil society and the public sector. The hope and intention are that these diverse organisations will be able to collaborate effectively and coordinate a UK-wide approach to online safety.

The Executive Board member organisations include Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, GCHQ, Internet Service Providers, BBC, Childnet, the National Crime Agency and National Police Chiefs’ Council, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Executive, and the ICO.

This Executive Board will be jointly chaired by ministers at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Department for Education and the Home Office, and representatives from the administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  The Board’s membership will be regularly reviewed to ensure maximum relevance to the evolving challenges that the UK faces in the broad prevention of online harm.

Priority

The government says that the priority of focus for the work of UKCIS will not only include well known online harms experienced by children e.g. cyberbullying and sexual exploitation but will also include risks such as radicalisation and extremism, violence against women and girls, hate crimes and hate speech, and any discrimination against any groups protected under the Equality Act e.g. on the basis of disability or race.

Criticism

The government’s approach with the new UKCIS has, however, been met with criticism from tech commentators who have expressed concern that it may be too vague and that the UKCIS may not be able to act effectively if some difficult problems and trade-offs are ignored.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The online economy and the digital society that it serves needs effective protection in order to improve safety for all and to benefit the growth and prosperity of the UK economy.  This new approach of widening the scope of expertise in a collaborative way and bringing more sections of UK society under the umbrella of protection appears to be a very positive step in making the UK a safer place to be online.  This can only benefit businesses, many of which now rely heavily on digital communications and trading platforms.  A safer online environment at home may mean that UK businesses can use more of their resources on making themselves more competitive in the global marketplace.

5G At No Extra Cost Says Three

Posted on by Andy Miller

Mobile operator Three has announced that new and existing customers with compatible handsets will be able to get 5G at no extra cost(s) when its 5G service is launched later this year.

5G Offer

Three says that when its 5G service goes live later this year, starting with 25 UK towns and cities, it will be able to offer unlimited data with no limit on speed for the same price it currently charges for its 4G tariffs (£22 per month). As well as offering 5G to existing customers at no extra costs Three will offer will include 5G as standard for new contracts.

Price War

In what looks likely to be an initial price war, Three’s price and unlimited data speed appears to stand up quite well against competition from Vodafone’s Sim-only tariff (£23 a month with a 2 Mbps limit, and £30 a month full-speed 5G), and EE’s sim-only 5G at £32 a month with a 20GB data download cap.

Criticised By Ofcom

Three has, however, recently been criticised by the regulator Ofcom over its practice of not automatically cutting its customers’ monthly charge at the end of their contract’s lock-in period.  According to Ofcom, this means that subscribers will effectively be overpaying rather than getting a great new deal unless they proactively change to another deal.

Three’s Advantage

Three has an advantage over its 3 big UK operator competitors because Three holds more “blocks” of 5G spectrum (3.4 to 3.8GHz band) than each of them, thereby getting potential speed, capacity, and performance benefits.  This apparently uneven split of the major blocks of the available 5G spectrum among the big operators is one of the issues that has been criticised recently by Telefónica UK boss Mark Evans.

Consultation

Mr Evans has called for a more balanced approach by Ofcom in order to help the sector to invest and meet the UK’s digital connectivity demands. In addition to criticising the uneven split of 5G spectrum, Mr Evans has also pointed out that other countries have already acted to reduce spectrum defragmentation whereas operators in the UK are still awaiting the results of the consultation.

Health Concerns

One other challenge that mobile operators face in the introduction of 5G is concern over possible health risks. 5G uses higher frequency (electromagnetic radiation) radio waves than earlier mobile networks so that more devices can access the internet at the same time with faster speeds. Part of the permitted 5G spectrum actually falls within the microwave band. These higher frequency waves (mmWave high-frequency spectrum), however, travel relatively short distances.  This means that, in order to achieve the right levels of speed and connectivity in urban areas, more transmitter masts closer to the ground will be needed.  This has led to concerns that 5G frequencies may have the potential to damage DNA and increase the risk of cancer.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

5G represents a great opportunity for business.  Its increased speed and lower latency allow the downloading of films and games in seconds and watching them without any buffering, and this kind of speed will allow all kinds of new opportunities for presentation media e.g. in advertising, on social media and on websites.

Many different types of businesses could benefit from improved connectivity with remote workers or with salespeople in remote areas.

Also, the news from an O2 forecast is that 5G could deliver time savings that could bring £6 billion a year in productivity savings in the UK and that 5G-enabled tools and smart items could save UK householders £450 a year in food, council and fuel bills.

Safety, however, is a major concern for all businesses, but even though 5G will use a higher frequency, there is no compelling evidence to date to show that it would pose new health risks to users.  In the UK, it will be some time before 5G networks are up and running to any significant level, and this means that there should be time for research to be conducted in areas where 5G use is at a more advanced stage.

For UK industry mobile operators, there is also an issue still to sort out over the fragmentation of spectrum blocks and how this will affect the market, competitors, customers, and 5G connectivity across the country.  The results of the consultation may provide some guidance and help.

Tech Tip – Note-Taking Apps

Posted on by Andy Miller

There are often situations in business where it helps to take notes and keep them in a handy, tidy and easy to access place.  Google Keep and Apple Notes provide users with easy note-taking on the go.

Google Keep is a Web-based note-taking app for your computer or Android and iOS phone. It has a variety of tools for note-taking including texts, list, images, and reminders. Everything you add to Keep syncs across your devices (your phone, tablet and computer) so you’ve always got your important information to hand.  Google Keep – Notes and Lists are available from the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.

Apple Notes for iOS and macOS operating systems also offers helpful note-taking tools including text, video, images, scanning, note search and information from other apps.  Your (latest version) iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch should have Notes, and to use its latest features, make sure that you set up Notes with iCloud or have notes saved on your device.

Brain Implants That Link Humans To Computers

Posted on by Andy Miller

Head of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk, has announced that human brain implants that can link directly to devices could be a reality within a year.

Neuralink

The implanted brain-computer interface (BCI) that Mr Musk talked about recently to the California Academy of Sciences audience in San Francisco will be known as a ‘Neuralink’.  Mr Musk believes that the operation to insert such an implant could be low risk and as affordable and non-invasive as laser eye surgery and would only require a short visit to a doctor rather than a hospital stay.

Why?

The main reason why Mr Musk has developed the Neuralink implant is as a possible way to counter the threat of Artificial Intelligence (AI) becoming so far ahead of human thinking that it could pose a real threat to the existence of the human species.

Mr Musk believes that although humans now have access to large amounts of information via our devices, limitations such as the speed at which we can type could see us fall behind AI.  The ability to have a near-instantaneous, wireless communication between brain and computer via an implant would, therefore, give humans the chance to keep up with AI and, eventually, merge with AI to create access to superhuman intelligence and allowing a symbiotic relationship with AI.  The implant would, therefore, be a kind of ‘upgrade’ to enable our brains to compete with AI.

Another practical reason for the Neuralink implant and its ability to interface with computers could be to help tackle diseases.  For example, the version one Neuralink is capable of around 10,000 electrodes, which is 1,000 times more than the current FDA-approved systems for helping patients with Parkinson’s Disease.

AI Already Trusted

People are now getting more used to the benefits of AI which has led to increased trust in the technology in recent years.  For example, back in September 2017, research from US CRM and strategic applications company Pegasystems found that 60% of UK people would use more AI if it saved them time and money and that 68% of UK consumers would use software robots for banking services. Many consumers in the survey found that the ‘artificial’ aspect was, in fact, a positive because it meant that there was impartiality.

Chip Implants

The idea of implants to humans with technology is not new.  For example, back in 2018 the UK firm BioTeq revealed that it had already fitted 150 implants to people in the UK (between their thumb and forefinger) to enable them to quickly carry out tasks such as open doors, access offices or start cars with a wave of their hand, and also to store important medical data.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

AI brings many time and money-saving benefits to businesses, which is one of the reasons why, for example, Microsoft is investing $1bn in San Francisco-based company OpenAI (of which Elon Musk was an investor) for its work on artificial general intelligence (AGI). However, the threat of AI becoming too intelligent to the point of endangering its creators is, in fact, a real one.

For the time being, however, there are other concerns for businesses and individuals related to the possible threat of AI.  For example, the threat of how to effectively counter AI cyber-attacks should be a concern to businesses. Also, this month, the SB 1001 bot law comes into effect in California which means that it is now unlawful for a person or entity to use a bot to communicate or interact online with a person in California in order to incentivise a sale or transaction of goods or services or, indeed, as a way to influence votes in an election without disclosing that the communication is via a bot.

AI is, therefore, an evolving area with many possible opportunities and threats, the largest and perhaps most obvious of which has been highlighted by Elon Musk and others who would like to ensure that AI becomes our harmless problem-solving servant rather than our unstoppable master and enemy.

London Underground To Get 4G Next Year

Posted on by Andy Miller

Transport for London (TfL) has announced that from March 2020, 4G rollout will begin across the London Underground network, thereby allowing customers, for the first time, to check emails and travel information, use social media, and stream music and video uninterrupted.

First Section

The first section of the network to get a trial of full mobile connectivity within station platforms, tunnels, ticket halls and corridors from March 2020 will be the eastern half of the Jubilee line (between Westminster and Canning Town).  This will help to remove one of the most high-profile mobile ‘not-spots’ in the UK, and to fulfil an important ambition of Mayor Khan to improve digital connectivity in public spaces, stations and right across London’s transport network.

Although free Wi-Fi is already offered by TfL within more than 260 Wi-Fi-enabled London Underground stations and on TfL Rail services, the trialling of 2G, 3G and 4G mobile services along this first section will mark the beginning of a push to boost digital connectivity across London and to tackle the city’s main areas of poor connectivity.  TfL also hopes that the trial work on connecting this first section of the Underground will also give TfL and mobile operators valuable experience of delivering mobile connectivity there ahead of awarding a concession to deliver mobile coverage across the whole underground network, starting from summer 2020.

What’s Been The Problem?

One of the main reasons why mobile connectivity in the London Underground network has been challenging is because of the many old and narrow tunnels, which weren’t built to allow space to install mobile connectivity equipment, and have twists that can make it more difficult for signals to pass through them. The fact that there are now 24-hour tube services may also prove to be a challenge to any engineering staff who need access to the tunnels.

Benefits

The benefits of having mobile (4G) connectivity across the London Underground will include potentially boosting the capital’s productivity and improving the experience of those living and working in and visiting London.

Work

It is estimated that the work to provide connections across the London Underground network could involve the use of over 1,200 miles of cabling. It has been reported that the engineers working on the project will work weeknight shifts in order to minimise any disruption to passengers.

What Will This Mean For Your Business?

The London Underground handles an estimated 5 million passenger journeys per day, and the fact that the network has suffered from a lack of connectivity may have come at a huge cost to businesses over the years as workers can’t receive travel updates and suffer frequent delays, and working people have been simply unavailable and essentially cut-off while travelling through one of the world’s leading modern capital cities. The connectivity work, beginning in key areas from March 2020 should improve the productivity of London and of businesses based there, as well as improving the experience of those living and working in London.

For mobile networks, this represents a significant business opportunity as, once the equipment installed, they will be able to pay the private operator for access to that network. TfL will also benefit from adding connectivity infrastructure by receiving a cut of the profits.