Opinion

Opinion

Social media technology

• ICO cookie consent: How will the plan affect businesses?

  A data privacy and compliance expert considers what the ICO’s proposals for an overhaul of cookie consent procedures could mean for businesses  Continue Reading

• Why identity is the central problem for the future of the internet

  As debate rages over who has the right to control user identities online, is the concept of decentralised identity about to have its day?  Continue Reading

• Online Safety Bill: an opportunity for tech to get it right

  Long-awaited proposals for regulating internet companies still leave much to be defined – and the tech sector must take the lead in finalising a plan that works for society and government  Continue Reading

• Why we need to reset the debate on end-to-end encryption to protect children

  Private messaging is the front line of abuse, yet E2EE in its current form risks engineering away the ability of firms to detect and disrupt it where it is most prevalent  Continue Reading

• What does Brexit mean for the future of UK digital policy? A view from Europe

  Any decisions by the UK government to diverge from EU policies and values over digital policy and regulation could cause real economic problems for UK businesses  Continue Reading

• It’s time to accept that disinformation is a cyber security issue

  Tackling the manipulation of truth and facts is no easy task, and it’s time for the cyber security sector to take up the challenge  Continue Reading

• Why our online harms laws will be good for tech

  The UK's minister for digital infrastructure explains the government's thinking behind its proposals to regulate internet companies such as Facebook, Google and others  Continue Reading

• The Google antitrust case is more about politics than economics

  It’s not entirely clear what economic reasons led the US government to try to tackle Google’s search monopoly, which suggests it is mostly about politics  Continue Reading

• The harsh reality for newspapers in the fight against Facebook, is that people won’t pay for news

  The Australian media is the latest to try to get Facebook and Google to pay for using their news stories. That only exposes the fact that not enough readers want to do so  Continue Reading

• 11 obscure questions, Facebook, Max Schrems and the European Court of Justice

  Eleven obscure questions will be the first step towards explaining why we in the UK and Europe have experienced 13 years of what has been described as ‘mass and indiscriminate surveillance’ by the US  Continue Reading

• Coronavirus: What does the ‘new normal’ mean for how we work?

  Examining the long-term impact of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic on the world of work, security, privacy and networks  Continue Reading

• Coronavirus and privacy – finding the middle ground

  Data collection has a role to play in fighting the deadly Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak, but governments need to be accountable for how it is used  Continue Reading

• Our data is making us ‘richer’ – even if it’s the tech companies getting rich

  How much do we value our personal data, and how does that compare to the value we think we get from companies like Facebook and Google exploiting that data?  Continue Reading

• Is the EU better equipped than the US to supervise the use of facial recognition?

  Clearview AI can be an indispensable tool to reinforce national security, but there are many risks associated with the use of facial recognition technology that the EU might be better equipped to deal with than the US  Continue Reading

• Could regulation kill Facebook completely?

  Social media companies are under financial pressure, as costs increase faster than revenues due to growing concerns about the price of regulatory intervention  Continue Reading

• Why the banking industry needs an IT makeover

  UK banks face huge challenges keeping their service availability levels at 99.99%  Continue Reading

• How can we tell if regulating Google and Facebook is the right thing to do?

  There are different economic approaches to dealing with monopolies and market dominance, but the nature of Google and Facebook defies easy answers  Continue Reading

• Can Europe legally share data with the US? A court far away is about to decide

  The European Court of Justice will deliver an opinion on whether Europe can legally continue to send private data about European citizens to the US  Continue Reading

• We can’t allow fake news and disinformation to upend our democracy

  Fake news, misinformation and cyber attacks are part of our political process – now is the time to act  Continue Reading

• AI vs AI: How can we win the fake news battle?

  Many internet browsers and social media companies have been forced to take on a new responsibility to combat the dissemination of false information, but can they succeed?  Continue Reading

• Regulators globally are shaping up to rein in Facebook

  We need to move fast and fix Facebook, before it breaks us  Continue Reading

• Why Facebook’s Libra digital currency could run rings round the regulators

  Facebook’s cryptocurrency isn’t really a cryptocurrency, nor is it really a money transfer network, but it’s been formulated in such a way that regulators might not be able to do anything to stop it  Continue Reading

• What are the options for regulating internet companies?

  The UK – and other countries – are likely to introduce new regulations for internet and tech companies like Facebook and Google. We consider what sort of rules they might introduce  Continue Reading

• Facebook’s high-stakes privacy gamble goes to Dublin court

  A high-wire gamble with billions in compensation at stake for European internet users – part of a complex case between Facebook and the Irish information commissioner – hides challenge to the unlawfulness of US state internet surveillance  Continue Reading

• Capitalism too short-termist? The tech sector suggests otherwise

  Many observers criticise businesses and stock markets for being too short-termist – but if that was the case, how did Amazon, Uber and their ilk ever come into existence?  Continue Reading

• Smart cities face challenges and opportunities

  IHS Markit analysts Noman Akhtar and Kevin Hasley assess the way forward for smart city technology projects around the world  Continue Reading

• Ethics and tech – a double-edged sword

  Just because a business activity is legal doesn’t mean it will be acceptable to customers, as the ethical debates in tech are proving  Continue Reading

• Hacking the internet of things just got easier – it’s time to look at your security

  Are you taking security for internet-connected devices seriously enough?  Continue Reading

• If we're measuring GDP wrong in a digital world, what does that say about the economy?

  Conventional measures of economic success such as GDP fail to account for the nature of free digital services. How different would the UK economy appear if that changed?  Continue Reading

• Who do you trust to censor social media?

  Calls to censor Facebook and its rivals are growing – but society needs to consider carefully the motivations of those making such demands  Continue Reading

• Taxing tech giants on revenue only ends up with us customers paying more

  EU proposals to tax internet companies based on sales in each country fail to apply the tax burden on the right people  Continue Reading

• Safer Internet Day: Building online safety practices with young people

  Many organisations around the UK are contributing to the important work on making the internet a safer place for everyone  Continue Reading

• How to boost your personal brand as an IT professional

  Seven steps to help you build a personal brand in the workplace, articulate the value you provide and build your professional reputation  Continue Reading

• Security Think Tank: Ensure incident response in the face of inevitable messaging leaks

  What criteria should organisations use to assess the security of smartphone messaging apps and how can they ensure only approved apps are used by employees?  Continue Reading

• There are no economic reasons to regulate the US tech giants

  The likes of Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft may dominate their markets, but the economic argument to regulate them is weak  Continue Reading

• Max Schrems’s mass surveillance complaint knocked back another year or two by Irish judge

  Irish data protection commissioner Helen Dixon has neatly avoided having to deal with the US surveillance of Facebook users in Europe by referring a complaint by Austrian lawyer Max Schrems to the European Court of Justice  Continue Reading

• Legal hurdles cloud Max Schrems complaint over US spying

  The Irish High Court in Dublin has embarked on a long hearing into the legality of standard contractual clauses. It is a sideshow from the real issue – the legality of US surveillance in the UK and Ireland  Continue Reading

• Criminal law: Are Twitter threats taken seriously?

  As threats of violence become increasingly common online, law enforcement is taking stronger action against the perpetrators  Continue Reading

• Roam like at Home will prompt European telco consolidation

  Mobile users are understandably looking forward to an era of low phone costs now they can roam freely around the European Union, but it is very possible that they will be disappointed  Continue Reading

• Nurturing a tech-literate generation

  The UK tech sector is leading the way in protecting children online, and helping to promote Safer Internet Day  Continue Reading

• The digital opportunity for CIOs

  CIOs have a unique opportunity to lead the digital strategy in their organisations, but they have to move quickly to make sure they have the right skills and infrastructure in place  Continue Reading

• Scotland, the perfect home for digital nomads?

  Scotland needs public and private sector support for entrepreneurs, and ubiquitous superfast broadband if its digital economy is to thrive, says MSP Jamie Greene  Continue Reading

• Prism and the law: The state of play in August 2016

  Computer Weekly assesses the history, legal aspects and latest developments in the story of the mass surveillance programme launched by the US National Security Agency  Continue Reading

• How can telcos respond to the strategic questions they face?

  Traditional telcos are under tremendous pressure to reinvent themselves to remain competitive and relevant. BDO’s Christian Goetz looks at the options  Continue Reading

• Was that it? Business as usual for fintechs after Brexit vote

  Following the Brexit vote, Fintech Times editor Bird Lovegod describes how financial services IT startups are getting on with business as usual  Continue Reading

• Fear, uncertainty and data doubt hold back public Wi-Fi

  Venue owners’ uncertainty and befuddlement over what they can actually do with their Wi-Fi infrastructure and the data carried over it is hindering their ability to realise the full potential of public Wi-Fi  Continue Reading

• Turn consumer technology into practical business innovation

  Many organisations are missing out on the opportunities for innovating presented by everyday consumer technology  Continue Reading

• Investigatory Powers Bill: What it means for UK tech startups

  The proposed Investigatory Powers Bill could prove damaging for innovative high-tech companies, writes Tirath Bansal, founder and CEO of internet startup myorb.com  Continue Reading

• Why we’re measuring the digital economy in the wrong way

  Conventional measures of productivity and growth, such as GDP, fail to capture the true effect of the digital revolution – but we're getting richer nonetheless  Continue Reading

• Driving digital productivity in the UK

  There is a need for British businesses to improve their adoption of digital technologies  Continue Reading

• Making sense of the internet of things

  Welcome to Thingalytics, the use of real-time analytics and algorithms to guide you through the maze of fast big data  Continue Reading

• Disrupted everything: How Google will change our world

  While Apple could be the first company to hit a $1tn valuation, Google could be first to hit a $2tn market cap. But how will it get there?  Continue Reading

• US technology companies facing growing UK pressure over internet spying

  Tension is growing between the UK and US over Prism spying  Continue Reading

• Simplicity as a digital differentiator

  This autumn, it seems that mobile payments are finally taking off  Continue Reading

• The five trends shaping the future of work

  If there’s one thing that we can all agree on it’s that the world of work is changing…quickly.  Continue Reading

• A phisher’s paradise

  Email is one of the earliest services created on the internet and, arguably, remains the most important  Continue Reading

• What businesses can learn from Buzzfeed’s success

  Buzzfeed has raised $50 million and is planning to use it to offer more content, expand its video production unit and open more offices  Continue Reading

• Why Twitter is the top tool for IT professionals

  As an IT professional you can be forgiven for thinking that LinkedIn is the only space to profile raise online. But consider Twitter  Continue Reading

• The business benefits of the third platform

  Ron Tolido explains the benefits of the Open Group Open Platform 3.0  Continue Reading

• Purchasers get social, marketers play catch-up?

  Social media theorist Erik Qualman once suggested that news, products and services are now pushed to us by friends and colleagues  Continue Reading

• PSN makes changes to reduce risk

  Director and head of compliance, PSNGB, Adele Parker, talks about how PSN will transport the bulk of government information  Continue Reading

• Migrating the Department for Education to GOV.UK

  Department for Education's Digital Solutions Manager discusses the challenges the department faced in moving its services online  Continue Reading

• Why businesses need brilliant social media

  Social media is tturning out to be arguably the biggest disruptive challenge business has to face  Continue Reading

• Social media and why businesses need to embrace it

  Why are businesses using email for everything? Jack Vile gives the younger generation's perspective  Continue Reading

• Navigating the digital torrent

  CIOs need to look at their own performance, ways of working, skills and experience to ensure they are equipped to deal with the digital torrent  Continue Reading

• The digital CIO: The CIO is dead. Long live the CIO

  There is a new breed of CIOs who are defining what it means to be a digital leader  Continue Reading

• Opinion: 2014 – The year of Digital Connectome

  We are living through an unprecedented period in human history, one in which the internet has enabled near-instantaneous connections between people and machines at a scale never seen before  Continue Reading

• Living with Google Glass – not quite useful enough to overcome the dork-factor

  Businesses will use Google Glass first, says Simon Dring after spending a few days living with the technology.  Continue Reading

• Not in Kansas any more

  PA Consulting's Alastair McAulay looks at the commercial potential of smart watches, Google Glass and the latest smartphones  Continue Reading

• UKGovCamp 2014 - discussions on delivering digital government

  UKGovCamp is an event with growing importance to the public sector digital scene - this year's event took place last week in London  Continue Reading

• No apologies – digital government is political

  Shadow Cabinet Office minister, Chi Onwurah, answers criticisms over Labour's digtial strategy  Continue Reading

• Who owns your LinkedIn account?

  It is common for employees to use personal social networking accounts for work, but who actually owns those accounts?  Continue Reading

• Forrester: Modern app development requires a modern set of metrics

  IT executives responsible for application development have a great opportunity to develop apps that improve customer experience or help businesses sell more  Continue Reading

• How wearable gadgets will impact the IT department

  The Chancellor George Osborne was spotted recently wearing a bio-monitoring wristband, suggesting wearable tech really has gone mainstream. Despite it being a useful and efficient product, it is limited when compared to the capabilities that such ...  Continue Reading

• Google, privacy and data protection: One step beyond (the law)?

  A hearing in the High Court has seen Google challenge the applicability of English Law to its operations in the UK, which run off servers based in California  Continue Reading

• How to lead when change is the new normal

  Business leaders need to think about the impact of ubiquitous technology on their future employees and the vastly different expectations they will have  Continue Reading

• Giving UK SMEs the digital tools they need

  It is vital that organisations use the digital tools at their disposal to ensure they are able to take advantage of growth opportunities.  Continue Reading

• Forrester: The secrets of digital disruption

  Companies can exploit digital disruption to unleash the next wave of innovation, says Forrester Research  Continue Reading

• How to create business value from social intelligence

  Social media gives access to huge amounts of data about markets, customers and competitors. The challenge is to turn this into intelligence  Continue Reading

• Turning retail space into a digital environment

  Robin Young, COO of Mitchells and Butlers, on turning its pubs and restaurants into digital environments to attract new customers  Continue Reading

• Technology is helping the fight against corruption

  All over the world citizens are using new technology to shine a light on fraud and bribery, and to blow the whistle on corrupt practices  Continue Reading

• Why Atos is eliminating email

  At best, email is a distraction – while at worst it can lead to a drop in performance and employee disengagement, writes Lee Timmins  Continue Reading

• A new age of sentimental data

  Sentiment-analysis is nothing new - we just have new ways of capturing multiple digital sources and making better sense of the data  Continue Reading

• Moving on from a culture of collaboration by email

  The time has come to think seriously about enterprise social networking (ESN) and consider its role within wider enterprise collaboration strategy.  Continue Reading

• How to make effective use of social media in your job search

  Useful advice on using various social media platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn to land your next IT job  Continue Reading

• BYOD V.2 and spotting the next big trend

  An analytical look into how the BYOD trend began may help IT leaders to be more prepared to spot the next big trend  Continue Reading

• Has going public lost its appeal?

  Charlie Mayes, managing director of DAV Management, discusses how the public is starting to lose interest in company IPOs.  Continue Reading

• To be open or not to be – that is the question

  We are heading to a world where being open, or exploiting open, isn't optional, and for many it will become a question of “to be open or not to be”.  Continue Reading

• Delivering social change through crowdsourcing

  Free and open source tools now mean that anyone can quickly create an online map to visualise the issue they most care about and use it to build a compelling case for action.  Continue Reading

• Cookie consent: Preparing for the compliance crunch

  Data privacy specialist Phil Lee from law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse answers some commonly asked questions about the new cookie rules  Continue Reading

• How tech geeks in Africa are transforming IT education

  Zambia, like the UK, is awash with unemployed graduates. But tech geeks in Africa are helping each other to fill the gap left by deficient education.  Continue Reading

• Security Zone: LinkedIn or left out?

  LinkedIn is a great tool to market yourself and it claims 150 million members in 200 countries and territories; but who vouches for the integrity of LinkedIn?  Continue Reading

• Social media: the tiger the senior Civil Servant must ride

  The exclusive thoughts of Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom, permanent Secretary at Large and Her Majesty’s Government’s Data Sharing Czar.  Continue Reading

• A place for cloud-based office productivity tools

  Recent research by Freeform Dynamics suggests that a cloud-only approach to office productivity is worth considering.  Continue Reading

• Social media and IT support - which side is your bread buttered?

  While IT underpins the social media revolution, IT managers are only scratching the surface when it comes to using these tools to improve IT service and support.  Continue Reading

• Why consumer habits are changing retail IT strategies

  Graham Benson, CIO of online clothing business M&M direct, discusses the reason why consumer habits must change retail IT strategies.  Continue Reading

• Opinion: Cloud, mobility, social among top infosec challeges for 2012, says ISACA

  What is the most important nut for infosec to crack in the coming year and why? Global IT security association ISACA gives its views.  Continue Reading