Amazon has plans to establish a constellation of 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit to patch up areas with poor or no internet connectivity.

Amazon's planned push into satellite-delivered broadband is taking shape under Project Kuiper, details of which appear in three documents filed with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) last month. Kuiper Systems LLC filed the reports.  

The documents reveal Amazon plans to put 3,236 satellites at three different altitudes. There would be 784 satellites orbiting at an altitude of 367 miles; 1,296 satellites at 379 miles; and 1,156 satellites at 391miles.  
An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the existence of Amazon's satellite broadband ambitions, noting that it was a "long-term project that envisions serving tens of millions of people who lack basic access to broadband internet.”

The company is also planning to partner with other companies to bring the project to reality.  

That could make companies in the space-broadband race, like SpaceX and OneWeb, potential rivals or partners. The FCC in November authorized SpaceX to deploy and operate 7,000 satellites in very low Earth orbit to deliver broadband. 

OneWeb, which has $2 billion in backing from the likes of Airbus, Coca Cola, Softbank, and Virgin, in February, launched six satellites with the same ambition. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space venture already has a contract to launch satellites for OneWeb and TeleSat. 

Meanwhile, Facebook, Boeing, and LeoSat have revealed plans to beam the internet from space. Alongside SpaceX's FCC authorization, the regulator also authorized spectrum in the US for both TeleSat's and LeoSat's space broadband systems.   

Should Amazon's plans come to fruition, its satellites would provide about 95% of the world's population with coverage between latitudes 56ºN to 56ºS. The two parallels circle the Earth at about the latitude of Sweden and below Australia.  

Amazon will still need to get approval from the FCC and other regulators around the world to move forward with Project Kuiper. 

Satellite internet today is typically costly. However, there is hope that satellites in low Earth orbit will be cheaper and offer lower latency.
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Amazon said it would "of course look at all options" when asked whether Bezos' Blue Origin would have the edge over others for launching the Kuiper constellation.

Networks today are subject to many threats including ransomware, cryptocurrency-miner threats, or state-sponsored hackers.

In line with other security industry pros, Microsoft has confirmed in its 24th annual security intelligence report that ransomware has taken a backseat to pesky cryptocurrency miners. 

But the company also warns that supply-chain attacks are on the rise. These are where an attacker uses a supplier or business partner to spread an infection. 

Past examples include the NotPetya not-ransomware outbreakthat caused over a billion dollars in losses for global firms and the Dofoil BitTorrent attacks. 
    
"Supply-chain attacks are insidious because they take advantage of the trust that users and IT departments place in the software they use," Microsoft warns in the report. 

"The compromised software is often signed and certified by the vendor, and may give no indication that anything is wrong, which makes it significantly more difficult to detect the infection. They can damage the relationship between supply chains and their customers, whether the latter are corporate or home users.

"By poisoning software and undermining delivery or update infrastructures, supply-chain attacks can affect the integrity and security of goods and services that organizations provide."

While attacks are changing and Windows 10 built-in security is improving, the company's advice to customers remains the same. However, there are conflicting data about the best approach to staying secure.  
Microsoft recommends only using software from trusted sources, though this 'security hygiene' measure could be undermined in a supply-chain attack. 

The company also recommends "rapidly applying the latest updates to your operating systems and applications, and immediately deploying critical security updates for OS, browsers, and email."

Deploying patches quickly is generally a good idea. However, Microsoft recently revealed that vulnerabilities in its software are most likely to be exploited as a zero-daybefore the company has even had a chance to release a patch. 

However, its other tips don't present obvious security conflicts.  

"Deploy a secure email gateway that has advanced threat protection capabilities for defending against modern phishing variants," Microsoft warns, adding that businesses should "Enable host anti-malware and network defenses to get near real-time blocking responses from the cloud (if available in your solution)." 

The other important measures organizations should take include implementing access controls, and teaching employees to be suspect of messages that ask them to divulge sensitive information. 

Microsoft also recommends keeping "destruction-resistant backups of your critical systems and data" and using cloud storage services for online backups. 
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"For data that is on premises, regularly back up important data using the 3-2-1 rule. Keep three backups of your data, on two different storage types, and at least one backup offsite," says Microsoft.

For years, IBM has offered corporate customers its Watson data-crunching technology – but only if they used it on IBM’s cloud computing service. Now, to expand Watson’s reach, IBM is also making it available on competing cloud services.

IBM said recently that it would allow businesses to use some of IBM’s Watson-related software with underlying data that is stored in rival cloud data centers like Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon Web Services. Customers will also be able to use Watson with data stored in their own data centers.

“It is enabling a level of openness that hasn’t been available to date,” said Rob Thomas, IBM general manager of data and AI.

The move marks a departure for IBM, which, until now, hasn’t seemed anything but open with its cloud computing service and Watson technologies. In 2016, for example, then-IBM CFO and current IBM senior vice president of global markets Martin Schroeter told analysts during an earnings call, “Watson runs on our cloud, and our technology will run on IBM’s cloud.”

But IBM is now shaking up its strategy to broaden Watson’s appeal. The change of heart comes as IBM’s public cloud languishes in third place, at best, in terms of market share behind AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Dan Kirsch, a research analyst at Hurwitz & Associates, called IBM’s new service “really significant” because businesses are increasingly seeking technology that’s not dependent on a single vendor.

Nick Patience, a founder and research vice president for 451 Research, said the move is “an acknowledgment by IBM that it’s a hybrid cloud world,” referring to firms wanting to use more than one cloud computing vendor as well as keeping some software running in their internal data centers.

 “We are confident in the IBM cloud that if clients try our products anywhere, they will eventually be drawn to IBM cloud and the uniqueness it provides,” said Thomas.

Although companies are concerned about being locked into a specific company’s cloud infrastructure when it comes to particular software and IT products, Patience said they are currently in the early stages of using AI and are still willing to upload their corporate data to cloud services like AWS and rely on them for machine learning software. Being locked into a particular vendor when it comes to machine learning projects isn’t yet much of a concern, but IBM is betting that will change.

He continued: “You could say IBM is trying to take back the initiative in machine learning here. The Watson brand has lost a little bit of luster over the years as others have come along. They are trying to take it back.”

You may have recently gotten a message from your bank that, yes, you should read and act upon.
The message being sent by many banks involves a small, but crucial change affecting check deposits made using bank mobile apps on smartphones and other devices.

Depositors must now include the phrase “For Mobile Deposit Only” underneath their signature on all checks deposited using mobile apps. Some banks are also suggesting you add "For Mobile Deposit Only at (Bank Name)" or "For (BANK NAME) Mobile Deposit Only."

This new endorsement requirement, instituted by the Federal Reserve, officially went into effect July 1. It applies to all mobile deposits at all financial institutions, such as PNC Bank, Capital Oneand Legend Bankin Texas.

Without the inclusion of the new phrase, banks say the check may be returned with the notification that your “deposit was rejected due to restrictive endorsement."

The change is meant to protect banks from fraud, which can occur when a check is accidentally, or intentionally, presented at a bank after it already has been deposited via mobile. 

"It’s not like there was rampant fraud, but it was just an area they wanted to tighten up," said Michael Diamond, senior vice president of payments at Mitek Systems, which has digital transaction technology used by more than 6,100 banks.

"This is the banks taking care of themselves," Diamond said. "The channel is very, very, very safe, and the growth is great. More and more people are using it." 
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Case in point: Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said last month that during the April to June period, more customers deposited checks using the bank’s mobile app than in person at bank branches. Overall, 76% of all deposits come through ATMs and mobile deposits, he said.

Sometime in early 2019, the self-driving e.GO Mover bus will hit the streets in Germany. The electrically powered vehicle can transport up to ten people, with a battery that lasts for ten hours or so.

And, it's powered by the cloud – the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, to be exact.

While autonomous vehicles powered by the cloud are not new, e.GO Mover highlights how artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and edge computing projects are increasingly coming together to power smart cities. Amazon Web Services (AWS), for example, boasts customers including DriveAI, nuTonomy, TuSimple, and Mapillary—all of which work on autonomous vehicle systems.

Google Cloud Platform also lists best practicesfor building a connected vehicle solution for autonomous driving and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication on its platform as well.

The growth of such a trend is enabled by the availability of powerful AI tools on these cloud platforms. Machine learning tools are crucial to the development of such autonomous systems, and public cloud giants make them much more accessible. This helps the growth of IoT projects in smart cities as well.

Of course, the cloud on its own will not be able to drive the digital transformation of smart cities fully. Improved latency through next-generation 5G connectivity will also play a role, as autonomous vehicles and IoT devices will be able to send and receive critical data while operating more readily.

But, what happens when connectivity is spotty? That's when edge computing comes into play. Edge computing occurs when data is processed at the same location where it is collected. This means that autonomous vehicles or IoT devices will need some compute power on-board to be able to analyze the data they're receiving, without having to send it over a network to be processed and sent back.

Edge computing is especially crucial in autonomous vehicles, as the potential danger posed by poor operations is immense.
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As more and more cities begin to embrace digital transformation, these three technologies will play an integral role in their future. And, as city officials start to rely more and more on these tools, we may see network operators, public cloud vendors, and IoT providers operating similarly to the way our utility providers operate today.

No doorman? No problem. Amazon introduced a new delivery solution for apartment complexes that promises to deliver both convenience and safety (alongside your actual package, of course). Meet Hub by Amazon, a container that allows for the storage of packages so that they’re not just strewn about a lobby, or worse yet, potentially stolen. The Hubs look just like traditional Amazon lockers, but instead of being installed in public spaces and businesses, they’re instead located in apartment and condominium complexes.

Best of all, the Hub isn’t just for Amazon deliveries – instead, if your mother wants to FedEx a care package to you while you live your big city dreams, the package can reside safely in Hub until you have finished with your 12-hour workday. Neither senders nor recipients have to make any specifications when it comes to getting their packages delivered – you still input your regular shipping address, and the Hub merely serves as a temporary stopover until you return home. When you’re ready to pick up, use a personalized pickup code to open the corresponding door and access your delivery.

“We’re always striving to make things easier for our customers. Building on Amazon’s expertise in locker solutions, the Hub addresses frustrations from property owners, carriers, and residents concerning package delivery,” Patrick Supanc, director, Amazon Worldwide Lockers and Pickup, said in a statement. “Now half a million residents in some of the premier properties in the country have access to the Hub, Amazon’s latest delivery solution. The Hub simplifies delivery for residents, offering quick and secure access to packages, day or night. For delivery providers, it offers a single, convenient location for package drop-off and gives property managers time and resources back to focus on other priorities.”

This could serve as a huge help to folks who live in buildings with tricky delivery schedules. You will no longer have to worry about staying home to wait on a package to arrive, nor will you have to remember to ask your building staff about that delivery that was supposed to come last week. Building managers will likely also appreciate the convenience offered by Hub – rather than requiring property staff to declutter a lobby or send packages to the proper apartment unit; everything can be centralized in Hub.
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Already, Amazon says that several of the largest residential property owners in the U.S. have signed up for Hub and that more than 500,000 apartment dwellers already have access to the amenity. If you’re interested in petitioning your building to include one of these handy lockers, you can request Hub by Amazon at the newly dedicated homepage.

Forget stumbling through a customer-support page – the future of commerce won't be found by surfing the World Wide Web. 

Soon many of the tasks we now do via websites and brand-specific apps will be handled through messaging and voice platforms like iMessage, WhatsApp, and Amazon's Alexa, according to Alex Spinelli, the chief technology officer at LivePerson.

Today, companies like Home Depot, T-Mobile, and Discover manage customer-service chats with LivePerson. Though chat technology is seeing a resurgence thanks to the proliferation of smartphones, LivePerson was founded in 1995 as a web-chat alternative to 1-800 numbers and call centers. 

LivePerson's new vision means no more awkward drop-down menus, no more shopping carts, and definitely no more URLs. 

"Our thesis is that conversation is a more natural way of interacting with brand services," Spinelli said. "It will become the dominant way that people interact in their digital lives."

It may seem like a big leap from the present day, but Spinelli envisions a world five years from now in which there are no websites and very few apps. 

"The whole app catastrophe that lives on your phone is overwhelming," Spinelli said. "On my iPhone, I have 127 apps that need updating. You can't keep up." 

Meanwhile, people will continue to interact with screens. In Spinelli's vision, the e-commerce shopping experience of the future starts when a carousel of items pops up at the bottom of the screen. The shopper browses the carousel, clicks the item they want, and instantly pays through a system like Apple Pay. All of that happens within a chat window. 

And that vision isn't too far off from what's already on the market today. 

Apple and Google are prepared for this future.  Earlier this month, LivePerson announced a new offering called LiveEngage for Voice Assistants, which lets customers start interacting with a brand through a voice assistant like Alexa while hanging out at home and then move that conversation over to chat on a mobile device when they leave the house. 

The big idea behind LiveEngage is that customers can have one continuous conversation across multiple modes of communication – something that dovetails with the bigger vision of LivePerson. 

Spinelli joined LivePerson in March after five years at Amazon — first as director of Amazon Search, and later as global head of Alexa OS, the operating system behind Amazon's famed voice assistant. 

When he learned that both Apple and Google added conversational commerce products directly into their smartphone operating systems, he decided to make the move to LivePerson, where he could embrace the trend head-on. 

Apple Business Chatlaunched in beta mode with select brands last year. It's designed to let customers find brands on iMessage and interact with them using dynamic features that manage everything from scheduling an appointment to making a purchase. 
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Google's Android has a similar option with its business-focused Rich Communication Services, currently in beta.

Office workers want their workplace to be flexible, adaptable and free from processes and systems that slow down productivity. But what do they expect for the future of the workplace?

In 2017, enterprise work and project management company Workfront surveyed of over 2000 workers across US companies to determine what the US office will look like in five years’ time.

It wanted to capture how workers felt about the challenges of today and the potential challenges of the future workplace.

Legacy Systems. Antiquated systems such as email get heavily criticized in the report. Over the past few years, poorly used meetings and email topped the list of things that prevent productivity amongst knowledge workers.

US workers say they have an average of 199 unopened emails in their inboxes at any given time. Of the 68 emails received per day by the average knowledge worker, 21 are junk mails, and only 27 demand some answer or action.

Email, although useful, seems to create issues. It is accused of stealing workers' time and preventing them from finding critical project information. For the majority of knowledge workers, the inability to convey or find essential information in email is a significant problem according to the report.

These tools and practices are supposed to improve worker productivity and collaboration. Unfortunately, wasteful meetings and excessive emails top the list of productivity killers, with 15% of the working day spent dealing with email.

20% of respondents answered that email would no longer be used as a primary collaboration tool in the future and 31% believe that collaboration software will eliminate most conference calls. A further 28% think that printers will become obsolete because everything will be available digitally.

The Casual Workplace. Workers are convinced that the way we work will change dramatically over the next five years. Almost half of the respondents (49%) believe that dress codes will become more relaxed and over a quarter (28%) feel certain that fixed desk space will become a thing of the past.

The New World of Work. So, what will the office of the next few years look like? Although 42% of workers do not have the opportunity to work from home, the average worker works from home one day per week.

Almost two-thirds of respondents (61%) said that video conference calls would enable remote working and half think that mobile phones will become the mobile office.

One in ten will not adopt flexible working due to negative perceptions. Almost a third (31%) believe that social media will become a significant work tool.
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Although knowledge workers are optimistic about the future, they felt that technology will release employees to work wherever and whenever they want to. The challenge for enterprises is to find the systems and technology to make this a cost-effective reality.

The case that could transform privacy law in the digital era began with the armed robbery of a Radio Shack store in Detroit, a couple of weeks before Christmas in 2010. In the next three months, eight more stores in Michigan and Ohio were robbed at gunpoint.

The robbers took bags filled with smartphones. Their phones would help send them to prison.
This past week, the Supreme Court considered whether prosecutors violated the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches, by collecting vast amounts of data from cellphone companies showing the movements of the man they say organized most of the robberies.

Experts in privacy law state the case, Carpenter v. United States, No. 16-402, is a potential blockbuster.

The court’s decision, expected by June, will apply the Fourth Amendment, drafted in the 18th century, to a world in which people’s movements are continuously recorded by devices in their cars, pockets, and purses, by toll plazas and by transit systems. The court’s reasoning may also apply to email and text messages, internet searches, and bank and credit card records.

The case concerns Timothy Ivory Carpenter, who witnesses said had planned the robberies, supplied guns and served as a lookout, typically waiting in a stolen car across the street. “At his signal, the robbers entered the store, brandished their guns, herded customers and employees to the back, and ordered the employees to fill the robbers’ bags with new smartphones,” a court decision said, summarizing the evidence against him.

In addition to presenting testimony, prosecutors relied on months of records obtained from cellphone companies to prove their case. The documents showed that Mr. Carpenter’s phone had been nearby when several of the robberies happened. He was convicted and sentenced to 116 years in prison.
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“If the court squarely recognizes what it’s been suggesting in recent cases, namely that we do have an expectation of privacy in our digital data and public movements and that the Fourth Amendment prohibits the government from tracking us door to door for weeks in public, that would be an occasion for dancing in the streets,” he said. “If the court holds that we don’t have an expectation of privacy in public except when there is some sort of physical trespass involved, that could be a huge setback for privacy.”

Deloitte just announced the availability of audit technology for smaller accounting firms through a new venture it recently formed.

Deloitte created Auvenir as an in-house startup and tasked it with developing its own auditing technology that could be offered to small firms. Next week, Deloitte plans to announce the North American launch of the technology, known as the Auvenir Audit Smarter platform, which leverages artificial intelligence to help auditors with their work.

Auvenir doesn’t use Deloitte’s own proprietary auditing technology, but it was developed with input from Deloitte’s audit team. The Auvenir team also interviewed a number of small to midsized audit firms and their clients across North America to identify the issues they encounter with audits. It has been beta testing the Audit Smarter technology with several auditing firms in Canada.

Deloitte global audit and assurance innovation leader Chris Thatcher said he was tasked by his boss with coming up with the kind of technology that a startup might develop in competition with Deloitte. “One of the things he was quite concerned about, that kept him up at nights, was a couple of guys in a garage thinking about how you could do audit completely differently to how we would have done it traditionally in the past,” he said. “My boss basically challenged me to think about defending ourselves from disruption.”

 “From our perspective at Auvenir, we spoke to hundreds of auditors and clients, primarily in that part of the market, the smaller auditing firms and smaller clients, and what we found is that a lot of the technology that’s available to them is not the right size technology for the size of engagements they’re dealing with,” Auvenir CEO Pete Myers said. “We want to open this up for any accounting firm. We’re not restricting who uses it. It’s available to any firm out there.”

The platform uses cloud-based storage, machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve workflow and collaboration between auditors and their clients.

The machine learning component helps auditors judge whether there is a low or high risk from the trends they are seeing. “It would be like saying nine out of 10 auditors when they were looking at this industry thought this was a high risk, but giving those insights in a real way,” said Myers. “It’s really providing those insights and tips, as someone who is working through the engagement or going through their decision-making to just have somewhat more confidence in the decisions they’re making. One thing that’s very clear, as a platform we’re not taking on the audit itself. We’re just a tool to be used by auditors, and we’re not making any of the decisions that need to be made in coming to an opinion.”

Deloitte admitted last month to a data breach in which hackers were able to access client data from its internal email system (see Deloitte email platform and client data hit by cyberattack). However, Auvenir is using separate servers and is emphasizing security.

“We host the data, and it’s completely separate from where Deloitte hosts their data,” said Myers. “Data security is one of our most important governing principles. In conversations with auditors and clients, it’s top of mind that the data is secure. Basically all of our customer and application data is encrypted whenever it’s being transmitted between our servers or with a customer device. It’s also encrypted anytime it’s stored on our servers. The data is never stored or transferred to a customer without strong encryption and then our encryption algorithms are all compliant or exceed ISO and NISD standards. And in addition to that, we’re making sure we’re going through an independent SOC 2 certification to make sure we’re complying with the SOC 2 and ISO 27001 security standards.”
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Deloitte sees the technology as an innovation for the audit profession. “We believe this is quite radical innovation,” said Thatcher. “This is radically different innovation from what we’ve seen traditionally from ourselves and from others in the market. This is the very first venture we have done as a global audit business and certainly we hope it is not our last.”