(This post originally appeared on Forbes)
Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them?
1 — The Samsung Galaxy S10 chip “kills it” in early Snapdragon 855 benchmarking tests.
Samsung launched its next flagship phone—the Galaxy S10—this week, and CNET’s test of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset it uses showed the phone to perform 45 percent faster than the Galaxy S9. Qualcomm typically lets a few journalists run a number of common benchmarking tests on a ‘reference device’ phone—a working prototype Qualcomm uses to test the latest Snapdragon chip with the camera, apps, 5G network trials, etc. (Source: CNET)
Why this is important for your business:
While the reference device isn’t a finished phone destined to sell under a brand name, it’s very useful for seeing how a phone running on the Snapdragon 855 might act. To me and other business users of a smartphone it’s all about speed, speed, speed. Hey Verizon: when can I exchange my S8?
2 — Severe vulnerabilities are uncovered in popular password managers.
A new study published this week by Independent Security Evaluators (ISE), which investigated the true security posture of password storage services, reveals several vulnerabilities that can result in valuable user credentials being stolen. (Source: ZDNet)
Why this is important for your business:
ISE, which documented the results of tests in software on Windows 10 devices involving popular password managers 1Password, Dashlane, KeePass, and LastPass, says, however, this doesn’t mean people have to abandon their favorite password managers yet. It says a password manager is still a better alternative than always using the same simple, easy-to-crack passwords. Your takeaway should be that although password managers help, they’re not a100% reliable security solution.
3 — Goldman Sachs backs U.S. construction finance tech startup Rabbet.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc just announced that it is backing U.S. startup company Rabbet, which develops software to help make construction finance more efficient. Rabbet, previously known as Contract Simply, says it will use the funds to further develop its platform and grow its software engineering and sales team. (Source: Reuters)
Why this is important for your business:
Rabbet’s platform helps companies involved in construction finance—such as banks, developers, and contractors—to digitize and view documents relevant to a deal. Currently, this process is paper based and involves a lot of manual labor, making it time consuming and prone to errors. If you’re in this industry it’s an interesting technology to investigate.
4 — eMarketer predicts digital ads will overtake traditional spending in 2019.
According to the latest forecast from research firm eMarketer, this will be the first year that the amount spent on digital advertising will be greater than that spent on traditional ads. It predicts that U.S. digital ad spend will increase 19.1 percent in 2019, to $129.3 billion, while traditional advertising will decrease 19 percent, to $109.5 billion. As a result, digital will account for 54.2 percent of the total and traditional 45.8 percent—with most of the digital ad money going to Google and Facebook. (Source: Tech Crunch)
Why this is important for your business:
If more than fifty percent of ad money is predicted to go digital this year, does that correlate to your advertising budget? You don’t have to be selling things online to benefit from the increased traffic to your website and leads generated by advertising there. Both Google and Facebook have pretty affordable options for small businesses. Yes, there are limitations depending on your industry and the products you sell. But you need to have an online marketing strategy.
5— Microsoft study shows poor employee habits threaten cybersecurity.
Early this week, Microsoft Ireland released the results of a study showing that poor cybersecurity habits within large public and private sector organizations in the country increase the risk of data breaches and intellectual property loss. An investigation of how employees of large Irish companies—with staffs of 100 or more—access and use sensitive data in and out of the office revealed that only 54 percent of respondents reported receiving annual cybersecurity training, only 16 percent have updated their passwords in the past year, 40 percent recycle their work passwords, and 44 percent recycle their personal passwords. (Source: Silicon Republic)
Why this is important for your business:
OK, it’s Ireland so it’s probably that some of the respondents to this survey had a few too many Guinness’s. Who can blame them? Seriously, this issue isn’t restricted to Ireland. It’s a worldwide problem and I bet a problem in your business. Most breaches happen because of employee error. Get training!
