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☆ China's economy is growing again. So why are investors dumping stocks?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Laura He | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Investors trimmed their exposure to China amid economic uncertainty in the country, rising geopolitical tensions and Beijing’s crackdown on international consulting firms. The Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index has lost more than 5% since April 18. Another concern for global investors is the country’s “fundamental investability,” he said, referring to geopolitical and Chinese policy risks. Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, one of the world’s largest pension funds, has closed its Hong Kong-based China equity investment team. “The more cracks appear in Western economies,” the more global investors will need to put money into Chinese assets, he added.

☆ US-based Forrester Research to close China office
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

May 18 (Reuters) - U.S. tech research and advisory firm Forrester Research (FORR.O) has decided to close its office in mainland China after the country's government increased scrutiny on western consultancies. The crackdowns "send a worrying signal and heighten the uncertainty felt by foreign companies operating in China", the EU's Chamber of Commerce in China said earlier this month. Forrester Research has begun to let go of employees and plans to lay off most of its analysts in the country, the South China Morning Post reported earlier on Thursday, citing a person with knowledge on the matter. The Financial Times has also reported, citing sources, on the firm's plans to lay off the majority of its China analysts due to Beijing's intensified scrutiny of western consultancies in the country. Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini GanguliOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ TV and film writers are fighting to save their jobs from AI. They won’t be the last
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

A powerful new crop of AI tools, trained on vast troves of data online, can now generate essays, song lyrics and other written work in response to user prompts. While there are clearly limits for how well AI tools can produce compelling creative stories, these tools are only getting more advanced, putting writers like August on guard. But as part of their demands, the WGA is also fighting to protect their livelihoods from AI. Stephanie Elam/CNNWhile film and TV writers in Hollywood may currently be leading the charge, professionals in other industries will almost certainly be paying attention. “Watch this #WGA strike carefully,” Justine Bateman, a writer, director and former actress, wrote in a tweet shortly after the strike kicked off.

☆ How to protect yourself from iPhone thieves locking you out of your own device
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-23 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —A complex but concerning method of gaining control over a user’s iPhone and permanently locking them out the device appears to be on the rise. Some victims also told the publication their bank accounts were drained after the thieves gained access to their financial apps. It requires a criminal essentially watching an iPhone user enter the device’s passcode – for example, by looking over their shoulder at a bar or sporting event – or manipulating the device’s owner so they’ll share their passcode. By enabling this, a thief would be prompted for that secondary password before changing an Apple ID password. Back up phone regularlyFinally, users can protect themselves by regularly backing up an iPhone – via iCloud or iTunes – so data can be recovered in the case an iPhone is stolen.

☆ Technology Chiefs Seek Help Wrangling Cloud Costs
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Belle Lin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

Some chief information officers have turned to cloud management tools and established internal teams to oversee their cloud spending. Mr. Nimboorkar said the company has since built a dedicated team to manage its Amazon Web Services spending and invested in a third-party cloud spending management tool. Executives from all three cloud giants have said customers are optimizing or reining in their cloud spending, citing economic factors. Many of the best practices in cloud spending management have been codified by the nonprofit FinOps Foundation, which promotes cloud financial literacy and accountability, she said. That model allows Mr. Kanchi to wholly manage cloud spending, he said, but was only possible after UST figured out how to tag cloud usage by its various business units.

☆ How cybersecurity executives make the case for continued tech investments in a tough economy
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Bob Violino | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Cybersecurity executives have enjoyed a nice run of receiving the financial resources they need to keep their organizations protected against attacks. But given the current economic uncertainty, many will likely need to rethink their approach to investments in tools and services. "Cybersecurity is not immune to economic pressures and uncertainty," said Daniel Soo, risk and financial advisory principal in cyber and strategic risk at Deloitte. When prioritizing security investments, security leaders should continue to invest in security controls and solutions that protect the organization's customer-facing and revenue-generating workloads, Maxim said. They should continue to defend any investments that support the organization's modernization efforts with cloud and its evolution to zero trust security, he said.

☆ TripActions Rebrands as Navan, Adds ChatGPT to Expense Reports
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( Angus Loten | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

TripActions, a business-travel software startup, plans to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT capabilities across its online platform, an effort aimed at seizing market share by making expense reports easier to use. That way, the expense report is generated during the trip as expenses are incurred, Mr. Cohen said. “Generally, software in the business-to-business space is designed to serve the company,” rather than the employees, Mr. Cohen said. “Using AI helps you create the kind of software that I’m talking about,” Mr. Cohen said. PREVIEWSAP Concur has also begun using AI in its travel and expense software, which can “tap decades of expense data and experience tracking to identify hard-to-detect spend issues and anomalies,” said Charlie Sultan, president of Concur Travel.

☆ IT Job Market Shrinks for First Time in Over Two Years
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Belle Lin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +4 min

The job market for information-technology professionals shrank in January for the first time in over two years, a sign that IT staffers are facing the same scrutiny as workers in other positions and sectors as companies slow spending. Newsletter Sign-up WSJ | CIO Journal The Morning Download delivers daily insights and news on business technology from the CIO Journal team. The McLean, Va.-based bank said those roles would be absorbed by its existing engineering teams and product managers. Still, employment in the overall technology sector hasn’t wavered, according to IT trade group CompTIA. “Not only do we need to provide capabilities to propel the business forward, but we need the best engineering tools, modern architectures and people in the right roles to respond to changing market conditions,” Ms. Caldas said.

☆ Bandwidth Challenges Limit Grocery Chains’ Technology Initiatives
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Isabelle Bousquette | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +5 min

Grocery chains looking to deploy new technologies are running into internet bandwidth limitations because of aging hardware and remote locations. “The more you put in the store, the more bandwidth it requires,” said Mr. Kosla. Further investment, however, might be required if the company decides to tap more cutting-edge, bandwidth-heavy tech in the future, Mr. Kosla said. There are a couple reasons grocery stores might struggle with bandwidth, one of the biggest being their locations. In other instances, Mr. Watkins said he might work with technology providers to find ways for processing data with less bandwidth.

OAKLAND, Calif/BANGALORE, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Microprocessor giant Intel Corp (INTC.O) has stumbled badly at a time when smaller rival AMD and others are picking up speed. Intel still dominates the markets for PC and server processing chips, with a market share greater than 70%, tech research firm IDC calculated. "I don't think Intel is in a position yet to start recovering share" in the market, he said. Customers of processors cannot launch products if new chip designs are late, and Intel has stumbled on delivering its latest data-center chip, code named Sapphire Rapids. Worse for Intel, the benchmarks published by the two companies show that AMD's latest server chip outperforms Sapphire Rapids on "general purpose workloads", according to Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon.

REUTERS/Andrew KellyOAKLAND, Calif/BANGALORE, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Microprocessor giant Intel Corp (INTC.O) says it will regain its footing against AMD and other chip rivals which are gobbling up market share, but Wall Street is skeptical. That's a headwind for Intel and AMD, both of which are rolling out new chips, but Intel is facing a larger inventory correction. Intel still dominates the markets for PC and server processing chips, with a market share greater than 70%, tech research firm IDC calculated. Chipmaker shares were hammered across the board on Friday, but Intel led the decline, slumping by 10% while AMD lost 1.8%. AMD set to overtake Intel in market cap, again AMD set to overtake Intel in market cap, againReporting By Jane Lanhee Lee and Chavi Mehta; Editing by David Gaffen, Peter Henderson, Kirsten Donovan and Jonathan OatisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Companies Tap Tech Behind ChatGPT to Make Customer-Service Chatbots Smarter
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Katie Deighton | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

Businesses hope the artificial-intelligence technology behind ChatGPT can turn ordinary chatbots into impressive fonts of information, potentially transforming customer service. But customer-experience executives said overreliance on such AI models could lead to companies dishing out incorrect information to customers online without knowing they are doing so. Some executives hope the technology that drives ChatGPT might also improve customer-service chatbots. But companies should exercise care when dealing with the new AI, Mr. Truog said. Nice is also working on building OpenAI’s language models into chatbots, Mr. Willcutts said, adding that the company plans to run more tests and fine-tune more models before selling its own take on ChatGPT to clients.

☆ Guitar Center Details Cloud Move
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Belle Lin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +4 min

Guitar Center Chief Technology Officer Ravi Balwada Photo: Guitar Center Inc. Such downtimes can result in losses of more than $5 million for retailers like Guitar Center, Mr. Balwada said. Guitar Center had filed for bankruptcy in November 2020, citing Covid-19-related store closures and looming debt maturity, and emerged from bankruptcy in December of that year. Guitar Center has also reduced its cost per transaction by about 1.5% and increased its online shopping conversion rates by an estimated 1.6%, Mr. Balwada said. PREVIEWMr. Balwada said he aims to more fully integrate Guitar Center’s offerings so that customers are interacting with a single, common platform that is built on Oracle’s cloud.

☆ Cloudflare Takes Aim at a Top Security Threat: Your Inbox
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Belle Lin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +5 min

Cloud-infrastructure company Cloudflare Inc. announced Wednesday new email security capabilities aimed at helping businesses defend against phishing, malware and other cyberattacks commonly targeting corporate email accounts. It provides web performance, cybersecurity and other services to millions of customers, of which more than 156,000 pay for its services. Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare Photo: Cloudflare Inc.Chief Executive Matthew Prince said the new security functions are also in response to an increase in ransomware and other sophisticated cyberattacks, some of which are perpetrated by relatively unsophisticated hackers. Prince said, referring to the growth of so-called “ransomware-as-a-service,” where ransomware operators provide malware programs to affiliates to launch attacks. Prince said Cloudflare, which was itself a customer of Area 1 before pursuing an acquisition, has more closely integrated its existing cybersecurity services with Area 1’s email security platform.

☆ Phishing attacks are increasing and getting more sophisticated. Here's how to avoid them
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-07 | by ( Bob Violino | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

That's a 61% increase in the rate of phishing attacks compared with 2021. Criminals using phishing attacks based on tax season, shopping dealsOne of the iterations of phishing that people need to be aware of is spearphishing, a more targeted form of phishing that often uses topical lures. Phishing themes can also be generic, such as an email that appears to be from a technology vendor about resetting an account, McNamara said. What people should do to ward off phishing attemptsIndividuals can take steps to better defend themselves against phishing attacks. Another good practice is to use anti-phishing software and other cyber security tools as protection against potential attacks and to keep personal and work data safe.

☆ Salesforce Customers Not Swayed by Slack, Analysts Say
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-06 | by ( Angus Loten | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

Salesforce reported about $402 million in Slack subscription and support revenue in the fiscal third quarter ending Oct. 31. Meanwhile, on Wednesday Salesforce said it would lay off 10% of its workforce as customers take a more cautious approach to spending. “The Slack acquisition by Salesforce has not changed the trajectory of Salesforce up or down,” said Tim Crawford, CIO strategic adviser at Los Angeles-based enterprise IT advisory firm AVOA. “That’s really the struggle for customers, to maintain the pace with a company like Salesforce,” he said. Forrester’s Ms. Herbert said the recent departures of Mr. Taylor and the Slack executives might signal that Salesforce is shifting the focus back to its core products.

☆ ESG will be a heavy focus for tech leaders in 2023
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-04 | by ( Bob Violino | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Reducing the carbon footprint of IT operationsThere are a number of drivers moving ESG forward. One area of focus will be the need for reporting on ESG progress, as required by regulations. Nearly half of the respondents said their organization could not accurately report its carbon footprint. Efforts appear to be underway to enhance ESG reporting strategies. By 2024, IDC said, 75% of large enterprises will implement ESG data management and reporting software as a response to emerging legislation and increased stakeholder expectations.

☆ Data privacy rules are sweeping across the globe, and getting stricter
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Bob Violino | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Businesses, especially those in highly regulated sectors such as financial services, health care and government — and those that operate in multiple countries — are faced with a growing number of data privacy regulations. "Our research counts about 100 countries around the world that have some form of data privacy or security rules in place," Iannopollo said. The most prominent regulation now, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, has the attention of most of the privacy world but is looking less likely to pass Congress, O'Leary said. "Organizations must identify the data that falls within the scope of the rules," Iannopollo said. Along with the focus on data minimization, organizations should enhance their abilities in data discovery and mapping, O'Leary said.

☆ Cybersecurity Firms Cut Staff as Fears About Economy, Funding Mount
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Belle Lin | James Rundle | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +5 min

Cybersecurity companies have laid off hundreds of workers in recent months, as concerns mount that an economic downturn will delay funding rounds, and squeeze the amounts investors are willing to commit. But cybersecurity companies often run through cash at high rates, analysts say. Newsletter Sign-up WSJ Pro Cybersecurity Cybersecurity news, analysis and insights from WSJ's global team of reporters and editors. In August, email security firm Malwarebytes Inc. laid off around 125 people, or roughly 14% of its global workforce, a spokesperson confirmed. SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS How would a layoff at one of your cybersecurity providers affect your security strategy?

☆ Tech Spending Pressures Fuel Demand for Specialized Industry Clouds
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Angus Loten | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

Newsletter Sign-up WSJ | CIO Journal The Morning Download delivers daily insights and news on business technology from the CIO Journal team. PREVIEWMost industry clouds began to hit the market early last year, in part sparked by demand for better healthcare data systems during the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020. Though Oracle doesn’t break out revenue from industry cloud sales, its industry cloud offerings are a “multibillion-dollar business,” Mr. Sicilia said. Microsoft last year rolled out industry clouds for retail, financial services, manufacturing, sustainability and nonprofit businesses, according to Kees Hertogh, Microsoft’s general manager for global industry product marketing. A Microsoft-developed industry cloud helped Tarrytown, N.Y.-based MVP Health Care implement a system to streamline its healthcare data, according to CIO Michael Della Villa.

☆ This New App Wants to Pay You to Share Your Data For Advertising
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Megan Graham | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

The amount of compensation will be determined by a “data score” reflecting factors such as whether consumers answer demographic survey questions and which apps and services’ data consumers are sharing. Caden’s app, which will let consumers share their data in exchange for cash. SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS Would you share your data with an app like Caden? She said if consumers’ data is used in ways they don’t expect, they could be turned off and abandon such platforms. Some other players that offer compensation for data have required consumers share their entire profile with all brands.

☆ Edgy Campaigns Are Out, TikTok Won’t Stop and Other 2023 Predictions for Marketers
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Patrick Coffee | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +11 min

Newsletter Sign-up WSJ | CMO Today CMO Today delivers the most important news of the day for media and marketing professionals. Most campaigns will focus on discounts to customers or showcase the usefulness of a company’s products, he said. Under this form of marketing, ad firms generally get paid upon completion of a desired end, such as a sale or download. In short, consumers should expect less “vacuous virtue-signaling” from marketers in the coming months, according to Mr. Proulx. But these platforms’ very struggles could result in ad bargains for marketers, said Mr. Solomon of Therabody.

☆ Amazon’s Security Chief Keeps Focus on Recruiting and Retaining Talent
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( Belle Lin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +5 min

The cybersecurity talent gap grew by 26.2% over the past year to around 3.4 million unfilled jobs worldwide, according to professional group (ISC)2. Amazon recently announced a companywide hiring pause and expects to lay off up to 10,000 workers, but Mr. Schmidt said he plans to boost Amazon’s security team. He oversees information security, personnel security and physical security, and was previously chief information security officer of Amazon’s cloud unit Amazon Web Services. Amazon’s customer-service department serves as a “great feeder” for cybersecurity talent, Mr. Schmidt said, because those individuals have an existing focus on solving customer needs. He declined to name the size of Amazon’s security team, but estimated 25% of its staff are internal hires it has trained.

It’s a seemingly simple calculation, but supply-chain experts caution that shipping from stores can be more challenging than filling orders at fulfillment centers that are set up for the job. It now packages orders at 116 of its approximately 1,350 stores, said Amiee Bayer-Thomas, the company’s chief supply chain officer. The chain said it has converted areas in 35 stores to serve as semi-automated miniature distribution centers. That is one reason department store Nordstrom is pulling back on shipping orders from stores for its discount brand Nordstrom Rack. The company will continue using Nordstrom stores to fulfill online orders for that brand.

☆ New CIO Wants Cisco to Be a Model for Hybrid Work
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-23 | by ( Belle Lin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +4 min

Fletcher Previn, Cisco Systems Inc.’s new chief information officer, said he is working to help position the networking-equipment maker as a leader in hybrid work. Mr. Previn joined Cisco in 2021 as chief digital officer from International Business Machines Corp., where he was CIO. Newsletter Sign-up WSJ | CIO Journal The Morning Download delivers daily insights and news on business technology from the CIO Journal team. Cisco CIO Fletcher Previn Photo: Cisco Systems Inc.An IBM veteran of more than a decade, Mr. Previn was named that company’s CIO in 2017. Enabling hybrid work should be a priority for CIOs because it can cut office costs while improving employee productivity, said Bobby Cameron, a principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc.“Priorities for the hybrid work environment continue to be digital tools for meetings and active collaboration,” Mr. Cameron said.

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