Japanese electronics manufacturer Kyocera is reported to have introduced a new range of waterproof smartphones that can be washed in soap and water.

Second Time Around.

This is the second time that Kyocera have launched a range of waterproof smartphones. Back in December 2015, the company unveiled the “Digno Rafre” soap-proof smartphone which came in a range of “bubble bath-like” colours, including coral pink, cashmere white and marine navy. The Digno Rafre smartphones were hand-soap washable, waterproof, dustproof, allowed users to operate the touch-screen when their fingers were wet, and also had a “scratch-healing” finish to avoid damage from accidental scrapes and drops.

The New Version.

The new and improved water, and soap-washable smartphone from Kyocera is now simply called the Rafre. It can reportedly do all the things that its Digno Rafre predecessor could, plus it is resistant to foaming body soap (not just hand-soap), it is resistant to hot water, and it has a cooking app which means that it that can be operated with just hand gestures while a person is cooking.

Why?

Consumers now want to be able to use devices anywhere, and the features of the new Rafre mean that it can be used while doing the dishes, while cooking, or even while in the bath or shower, let alone while swimming on holiday or in wet weather. The total waterproofing, soap and hot water resistance also means that owners can actually wash their phone to remove any dirt or contamination.

‘No Holes’ Technology.

The key technology which enables the Rafre to be fully waterproof is the Smart Sonic Receiver which is able to use vibrations on the display of the device, transmitted to the user’s eardrums, rather than using holes in the earpiece and speaker.

Only Available in Japan.

At the moment, Kyocera are only releasing the Rafre to the Japanese market on the KDDI network. Although this is a Japanese-based, global telecoms operator with networks in over 190 countries, it may still make it difficult for UK customers to acquire the device.

Rugged Device History.

Kyocera is also known in the U.S. for introducing other ‘rugged’ mobile devices such as the DuraForce Pro shockproof device and the Verizon outdoor-equipped smartphone.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

There are potentially many businesses within  manufacturing or construction where a fully water-resistant and washable phone would be a useful and valuable tool for members of the workforce. A wider-scale adoption of such devices would also not only be good news for telecoms companies and phone retailers, but could also benefit marketers using calls and SMS messages to reach prospects and customers literally anywhere. The introduction of these devices could also have an effect on the mobile phone insurance market.

Tech giant Microsoft has announces that it will be offering a programme to improve digital literacy across the UK and this will include the offer of digital apprenticeships.

What’s The Problem In The UK?

The fast pace of technology has created several digital challenges in the UK such as:

The technology skills gap. Businesses in the UK have, for several years, identified a technology skills shortage to be a big barrier to growth and competitiveness. This skills gap is believed to be costing the economy approximately £63bn a year. A survey by TechUK in 2015 for example, found that 93% of technology firms believe the skills gap has a directly negative impact on their business. O2 research has also shown that the UK must fill 766,000 new digital jobs by 2020, which will require almost 2.3 million additional digital workers.

At the moment, it looks unlikely that the UK has enough people with the appropriate, diverse range of technology skills to fill those roles. The technology skills gap also appears to be particularly pronounced in the public sector, where Microsoft research has shown that only 35% of workers think they have a digitally literate leadership team. There are already initiatives operating in the UK to help bridge the skills gap, such as the not-for-profit #techmums campaign which has partnered with several large corporate firms with the aim of providing technology skills to one million mothers by 2020.

Cloud skills gap. Although there has been a rapid growth and adoption of the cloud and cloud technologies in the business world, and in the public sector, there are not enough people in the UK with the necessary cloud skills and knowledge. Amazon Web Services (AWS) for example, has recently launched a series of skills-boosting initiatives targeted at school children, young adults and ex-military personnel with the goal of expanding the UK’s supply of cloud talent.

What Is Microsoft Offering?

In order to bridge the technology skills gap, and specifically the cloud skills gap in the UK, Microsoft is offering:

1. Digital literacy programmes and training. This will be in the form of free online digital literacy training, open to the entire UK population, and training for 30,000 UK public servants in how to deliver digital services to citizens.
2. A Cloud Skills Initiative to train 500,000 people in the UK to be cloud technology experts.
3. An extra 30,000 digital apprenticeships on its existing apprenticeships programme, with the aim of increasing the number of people learning on-the-job digital skills. Microsoft is reported to have already exceeded its 2012 target of training 4,000 digital apprentices, and in doing so has worked with 25,000 partners across the UK to train 11,000 digital apprentices.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

In order for UK companies to stay competitive, particularly in uncharted post-Brexit waters, technology and especially the cloud skills gaps need to be filled. The training and apprenticeships from Microsoft is therefore good news for UK businesses as they will help to provide them with a UK supply of workers with the right level and diversity of technology skills to move businesses forward, and help UK businesses to reduce the cost of having to recruit workers from overseas.

Claims that U.S. voters may have been swayed by “fake news” stories in the recent U.S election campaign is the reason given by MPs for launching a new parliamentary inquiry into the phenomenon.

What Is Fake News?

As the name suggests, fake news refers to false news stories, propaganda and other kinds of disinformation that are disguised as real news, and deliberately distributed (mostly online first), often using social media to amplify the effect. The phenomenon became so large in 2016 that it was popularly dubbed “the year of the lie”.

Parliamentary Inquiry.

Claims that voters in the recent U.S elections may have been influenced to vote a certain way by believing fake news stories have spurred a group of UK MPs into action to make sure that fake news is not able to exert an influence on democracy here.

MPs from The Culture, Media and Sport Committee, headed by chairman Damian Collins, have decided to launch a parliamentary inquiry which will look at the dangers and sources of fake news, the motivation for, and the means of spreading fake news.

A Threat.

Mr Collins and the cross-party Commons committee who are conducting the parliamentary inquiry have stated that they believe that fake news is not harmless, indeed as well as being a threat to democracy, it is responsible for undermining public confidence in the media.

Responsibility.

As well as announcing the scope of the parliamentary inquiry, Mr Collins has also publicly stated that he believes that major tech companies have a social responsibility to tackle “piracy” online, and to address the issue of how the illegal sharing of content and fake news is able to take place on social media.

Help For Consumers.

As well a studying fake news and how it is circulated, the parliamentary inquiry also hopes to be able to provide consumers with tools to enable them to assess the origin of news stories that they find online.

Limited Impact?

The results of a recent U.S. Stanford University study of how fake news was spread in the recent presidential election show that fake news may actually have a more limited impact than Mr Collins and the cross-party Commons committee may think. The study results show that, even though fake news stories about President Trump were shared four times more than fake stories about Hilary Clinton, only half of people who actually saw the stories believed them, and the most widely shared fake stories were only actually seen by a very small number of voters.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

There is clearly a danger that many people cannot distinguish fake from real news stories online and don’t have the time, inclination, or the tools to check the origins of everything they read. Dangers for businesses could therefore include negative stories or reviews of dubious origin that are posted online, or the use of perhaps false / flawed data or information found on line as a basis for business decision making.

Establishing trust and providing evidence of claims is therefore essential in business communication channels, and businesses should be careful to check sources when using web-based information as part of decision making or communications with customers.

A luxury Austrian hotel had to pay a €1,500 ransom to hackers to allow guests back in to their locked rooms after the hackers disabled the hotel’s hi-tech room locking system.

What Happened?

Guests at the Brandstaetter hotel at the Romantik Seehotel Jaegerwirt resort in Austria found themselves locked out of their rooms and other areas of the hotel including the bar after the hotel was targeted by cyber criminals using a kind of malware known as ‘ransomware’. The ransomware specifically targeted the electronic key system, and although a safety feature in the system meant that guests could leave their rooms, they could no longer get back in while the system was down. At the time of the attack the hotel was fully booked with 180 guests.

Ransomware.

Ransomware is a form of malware that typically encrypts the important files on your computer and you are them given a ransom demand by the attackers, the payment of which should mean that your encrypted files can be released. In reality, some types of ransomware delete many important files anyway, and paying the ransom does not always guarantee that you will get access to your files back.

2016 saw a huge growth in ransomware attacks. For example, the ‘Trend Micro’ report showed that that the occurrence of ransomware was up by 172%, in the first half of 2016 compared with the whole of 2015. The report also identified 79 new ransomware families in the first six months of last year, with 58% of the attacks being launched via attachments in spam emails.

Paid The Ransom.

The Brandstaetter is reported to have paid the €1,500 in the digital bitcoin currency ransom demanded by the hackers. Bitcoin is often used for ransom demands because it does not go through central banks and therefore the cyber criminals have a greater chance of not being traced.

Paying the ransom in this case did mean that access was restored to some parts of the hotel and that guests were at least able to collect their coats from their rooms.

Third Time!

This was the third successful time that the Brandstaetter had been targeted by the hackers, but IT upgrades have reportedly now foiled a fourth attempt, and hopefully future attempts.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Hacking using malware and particularly ramsomware is now widespread, and all businesses using IT are potential targets. In order to provide maximum protection, businesses should now adopt multi-layered security solutions. Businesses should accept that there is a real likelihood that they will be targeted and therefore prepare for this by implementing the most up to date security solutions, virtual patching and education of employees in order to mitigate risks from as many angles as possible. It is also important to have Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans in place, should any attacks be successful.

According to recent reports, the Trump administration may be about to introduce an immigration policy that will require foreign travellers to the U.S. to divulge their social media profiles, contacts and browsing history.

Not A New Idea.

Back in July 2016, the Federal Register of the U.S. government published a proposed change to travel and entry forms which indicated that the studying of social media accounts of those travelling to the U.S. would be added to the vetting process for entry to the country. It was suggested that the proposed change would apply to the I-94 travel form, and to the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (ESTA) visa. The reason(s) given at the time was that the “social identifiers” would be:
“used for vetting purposes, as well as applicant contact information. Collecting social media data will enhance the existing investigative process and provide DHS greater clarity and visibility to possible nefarious activity and connections by providing an additional tool set which analysts and investigators may use to better analyze and investigate the case.”

There have been reports that U.S. border officials have actually been asking travellers to voluntarily surrender social media information since December 2016.

No Comply, No Entry.

The suggestion from the latest reports is that foreign visitors could now be denied entry if they refuse to comply. The reported possible upgrading of supplying personal social media profile information and web browsing histories for vetting purposes appears to be partly in response to the shootings in San Bernardino by Tashfeen Malik, who reportedly called for jihad.

Hot Topic.

Restrictions on eligibility for legally entering the U.S. have become a very hot topic since President Trump’s executive order barring citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. sparked international demonstrations and condemnation. The re-surfacing of “social identifiers” for vetting idea could therefore only add to U.S. and international concerns about the direction that President Trump’s administration is taking with immigration matters.

Excessive.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group has been quoted in the online media as describing the proposed checks of social media, contacts and web history as something that would be “excessive and insulting”.

Unclear When and How.

The timescale and how the policy of checking web browsing history as a possible U.S. entry requirement is, as yet, unclear.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The recent order barring citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries for example has already prompted tech leaders to say that it could harm businesses in Silicon Valley, as it would also be likely to cause harem to businesses in other U.S. areas and industries.

A further potential restriction based on the Web activities could therefore also harm businesses.

The prevalence of recent terrorist attacks in Europe and the direction of the UK government in terms of its public revival of the ‘special relationship’ with the Trump administration, and its adoption of the Communications Data Bill / so-called ‘Snoopers’ Charter’ could mean that such border checks could potentially be introduced here, and as such, could have a negative effect on businesses in the UK with international connections and sites.