Tuesday, December 31, 2019

These excellent GoPro deals are sticking around for the January Sales

If you're looking to capture the best moments of 2020, these GoPro deals are offering a fantastic price cut on some of the cheaper GoPro models in the January Sales. You can save over £100 on the Hero 7 Silver (down to just £169) and the Hero 7 Black (£278), or if you want the cheapest version possible, the Hero 7 White is reduced to just £118.30 this week. 

With the Hero 8 model releasing just two months ago, we've been looking to the Go Pro Hero 7 Silver and Black models for some hefty discounts in the 2020 sales. 

These two models represent the mid-range and higher end of the Go Pro Hero 7 range, so you're getting an excellent action camera for your cash whichever version you pick up. Both offer the hardy outer shell on which GoPro has based its name, but the Silver is slimmed down version of the high-tech Black model with the price cut to match. While you can still shoot 4K 30fps footage with video stabilization and a wide lens on the Silver, there are a few features on the Black that may draw more professionally inclined customers. 

These GoPro deals are a great way to cash in on 2020's January sales, you're picking up a GoPro Hero 7 Silver for just a hair over the cheapest it's ever been and saving a good £100 on the Black model. 

Today's best GoPro deals in the January sales

You can find all the best January sales right here on TechRadar - we're collecting all the best savings to bring you amazing deals throughout the holiday period. Or, if you're just looking for the best GoPro price possible, we've got you covered as well. 



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The best free screen recorder 2020: record or stream from your screen

We've tested and ranked the best free screen recorders that make it easy to record everything that's happening on your PC, complete with commentary and annotations if you want.

It's important to choose the right free screen recorder depending on what you intend to do with the footage you capture. Different recorders offer a range of differing features, can save captures in varying formats, or capture footage from external sources such as a webcam – and some even give you the opportunity to upload to the internet directly from within the program. Some run nicely on average hardware, while others are more demanding. The point is that there is plenty of choice.

No matter what you're hoping to do with footage captured from your computer, you need the right tool for the job. And this is where our look at the best free screen recorders can help – take a look and see which one is best for you.

The best free screen recorders at a glance

  1. OBS Studio
  2. FlashBack Express
  3. Apowersoft Free Online Screen Recorder
  4. Debut Video Capture
  5. ShareX

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OBS Studio


If you’re a keen gamer, OBS Studio is easily the best screen recorder for you. Unlike the hugely popular FRAPS (which only lets you record for 30 seconds at a stretch unless you’ve bought a license, and applies a watermark to the resulting footage), OBS Studio is open source, and completely free to use without restrictions.

OBS Studio supports both streaming and recording in high definition, with no restrictions on the number or length of your creations. You can stream live to Twitch or YouTube gaming, save projects and come back to them later, or encode your footage in FLV format and save it locally.

Because OBS Studio can record directly from your graphics card, it’s able to capture games running in full-screen mode (many other screen recorders can only record if the game is windowed), with customizable hotkeys to control the recording. OBS Studio can also make full use of multi-core CPUs for improved performance, and can record at 60FPS (or even higher).

It might take a little while to set it up exactly how you want, but OBS Studio is by far the best and most powerful screen recorder for gamers.

Read our full review: OBS Studio

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Flashback Express


OBS Studio is our top choice for recording from a desktop or webcam, but Flashback Express comes an extremely close second. Despite being a free version of a paid program, FlashBack Express won't put ugly watermarks over your recordings or impose time limits, and it's packed with features and tools that rival many premium programs. Its interface is less intimidating than OBS Studio, so if you've never used a screen recorder before, it's an excellent choice.

You can record from your whole screen, a window, a selected area, or a webcam. Once you’ve finished, your recording will appear in a simple editor, where you can crop and trim it to suit your needs, then export it to YouTube, an FTP server, or your PC.

That’s all fairly standard fare for a free screen recorder, but take a minute to dive into Flashback’s advanced options and you’ll find a wealth of thoughtfully designed settings that will make your desktop recordings look truly professional. The recorder can automatically obscure passwords entered on screen, replace your silly wallpaper with a plain one, hide messy desktop icons, and highlight your mouse pointer to make it easier to follow. There's also a dedicated gaming mode that lets you define the number of frames recorded per second.

There’s no limit on the length of your recordings unless you choose to set one, which can be useful if there’s a chance you might accidentally leave the recorder running. You can also choose to break long recordings up into chunks – a brilliant touch that helps you avoid creating huge, unwieldy files. Your recordings won’t be watermarked, either.

Following a recent update, Flashback Express can export in WMV, AVI and MP4 formats, eliminating the need for a separate video converter, and it no longer requires a free license key for activation – just install the software and you're ready to start recording.

Developer Blueberry Software has also released a free screen recorder designed specifically for games – FBX. This recorder captures HD in-game footage, with hardware acceleration for AMD and Nvidia cards, and Intel CPUs.

If you're thinking about upgrading to FlashBack Pro, Blueberry software is offering TechRadar readers an exclusive 25% discount.

Read our full review: Flashback Express

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Apowersoft Free Online Screen Recorder


If you want to record a presentation, software demonstration or tutorial, give Apowersoft Free Online Screen Recorder a try. It's a browser-based tool, which means it's not suitable for games, but for any other tasks it's ideal.

The first time you use Apowersoft Free Online Screen Recorder, you'll be prompted to download a small launcher application. You'll then be provided with a control bar packed with more options than you'll find in most desktop screen recording software. You can capture footage from your desktop or a webcam, and record audio from your PC, microphone, both or neither.

You can record the whole screen, select an area manually or choose one of the preset resolutions – ideal if you’re recording a clip for YouTube, for example, and don’t want to use a separate video editor to resize it later.

Apowersoft Free Online Screen Recorder also offers customizable keyboard shortcuts for speed and convenience. You can choose whether or not to include the cursor in the recording and take your pick from a range of output formats including MP4, WMV, AVI, MOV and many more. You can even add annotations during the recording.

Once you’re done, you can save the recording as a video file or GIF, upload it directly to YouTube or Vimeo, or send it to Google Drive or Dropbox. You can also edit the clip. Selecting this option will download an additional component – Apowersoft Video Editor – which lets you make simple adjustments before exporting your video in your preferred format. A truly exceptional tool.

Note that the 'Download desktop version' button links to a program called Apowersoft Screen Recorder Pro. This is a trial version of a premium application, and is more limited than Online Screen Recorder.

Read our full review: Apowersoft Free Online Screen Recorder

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Debut Video Capture


Debut Video Capture is a new addition to our roundup of free screen recorders, and although its slightly dated design does it few favors, it's an extremely powerful program that can do much more than just capture what's happening on your PC monitor.

In addition to basic screen recording (with no time limits or watermarks), Debut Video Capture can also record footage from external devices, including webcams and security cameras. It can even record on a regular schedule, which means it can become the main hub of a home security system. Not too shabby for a program that's totally free for personal use.

There are no post-production editing tools, but you can apply filters and add your own captions and watermarks before you begin recording. There's no option for exporting videos directly to YouTube or Facebook, but they can be saved in all the main formats, including MP4, MOV and AVI (to name just three).

Debut Video Capture is currently in public beta, so we look forward to seeing the final release version with a lick of extra polish soon.

Read our full review: Debut Video Capture

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ShareX


ShareX is an open source app for capturing still screen grabs and recording videos. There are no watermarks or time limits to worry about, but the interface isn't the most intuitive in the world so you’ll be best off using keyboard shortcuts. For quick reference, you can start a recording by tapping Shift + Print Screen, and stop it again using Ctrl + Shift + Print Screen.

You can also use this free screen recorder to save your capture as a GIF rather than a video file, which can be extremely useful for sharing on forums and social media.

Not only is ShareX a brilliant free screen recorder, it can also capture an entire scrolling webpage, capture and identify text via OCR, and even capture your screen according to a schedule.

Another of its best features is the ability to send your captured grabs and videos straight to a file-sharing or social media site. There’s a vast array of options, which you can check out on the project’s site.

Unfortunately, ShareX doesn’t support taking screen grabs or recordings from games running in full-screen mode. Other than that, it’s a superb screen recorder that will serve you extremely well.

Watch our rundown of our favourite free video editors: 



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How to watch Doctor Who New Year Special online: stream for free from the UK or abroad

To think, we're about to wrap up another year and enter 2020. So what's the perfect way to celebrate? A big party? Celebrations with the entire family? Or maybe you just want to watch the Doctor Who New Years Special online - surely the best way to start a new year!

And considering Whovians have had to hold out an entire year since the last time they got to see a new dose of Doctor Who action, this will be at the top of most people's festive TV watching plans.

And some even better news - this episode is set to be one of the biggest and longest in the show's entire history, so big in fact that they've split it into two parts just to fit all of that action.

Of course, Doctor Who is normally somewhat of a Christmas tradition, moving from its Christmas Day slot into the New Year. So for those losing their favorite Christmas past-time, this double bill action will be just the news you were looking for.

We've done the research, tracked down times, locations and everything you need to know to watch Doctor Who New Year Special online and listed it all below. We've even got options for those out of the UK while the episode airs!

How to watch Doctor Who New Year special online for free in the UK:

Ready to catch Doctor Who in all of its glory once again? Tune into BBC One on New Year's Day at 6.55pm to see it all go down. And then lucky us! There's a follow up episode coming along on Sunday, January 5.

Rather watch the episode from your laptop, tablet, mobile or other device? Luckily, that's still possible. Simply head to either the BBC iPlayer app or the TVPlayer service. Both are completely free to use and will give full access to both New Year Doctor Who episodes.

Stream Doctor Who from anywhere else in the world for free:

Away on holiday for New Year's Day or currently living abroad? Sadly, this will mean the Doctor Who episodes are geo-blocked for you. Luckily there's an easy solution to remedy this.

All you have to do is appear like you're back in the UK thanks to the use of a VPN. A VPN is a tool that alters your IP address to make it look like you're somewhere else - perfect for trying to stream TV.

Our vote for the best VPN service goes to ExpressVPN but how do you install one and how can that be used to watch Doctor Who New Year Special online? Read on to answer all of these questions.

How to watch Doctor Who in the US

Watch old episodes of Doctor Who online

New to the Doctor Who franchise? There's a lot to catch up on but luckily, no matter where you are, it's easy to watch all of the Doctor Who episodes:

Watch all the series of 'new' Doctor Who from the UK

Doctor Who has a very long history and unfortunately there is no easy way to watch every episode ever. However, BBC has stepped on up in heroic fashion to offer you everything since the show returned in 2005. That means you can catch up a wealth of content over on BBC iPlayer.

The show was also free to watch on the Amazon Prime subscription for a while but will now cost you per episode if you look to go that way. Looking for a full session of binge-watching? Britbox will be the way to go, with all the classic Doctor Who dating from its first ever episodes in the 60s. However, Britbox will require a VPN to circumvent its USA and Canada geo-restriction – scroll up for all the info on that.

Watch previous Doctor Who seasons online in the US

Doctor Who fans Stateside can also revisit old episodes of the programme via the Britbox service mentioned above.



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What is Amazon Kinesis?

A constant flow of information in business is more like a firehose than any of us want to imagine. It’s a steady stream, often bursting at the seams, and it doesn’t let up. Tracking and managing that firehose of data can be a Herculean task because you’re always playing catch-up -- analyzing the data after it has been transmitted and generating reports at a later date. The problem, of course, is that “the later date” never comes and sometimes we process reams and reams of data, store it and archive it, without ever really analyzing it.

Amazon Kinesis is a real-time cloud analytics engine that collects, analyzes, and reports on data transmission in your company as it happens, using the power of cloud computing services. You can think of it as a pipe that connects two firehoses -- the data comes in, Amazon Kinesis can analyze it as it transmits, and then the data keeps flowing. Instead of using an analytics dashboard or generating that are only helpful later, you can make business decisions and respond to data flows in real-time.

As an example of this, think about a vast multiplayer gaming system where thousands or even millions of gamers participate online. Talk about a steady flow of data. There are thousands of data requests in terms of player movements, rewards they collect, and achievements in the game not to mention the transactional data -- what they purchase in the game and their records in terms of what they can access and how they pay for their membership.

For a company running a gaming network like that, it’s easy to see how complex the interactions are between gamers, the network, and the IT infrastructure management required to host the game. Amazon Kinesis tracks the interactions at every level as it happens. For example, if there’s a new high-score for a multiplayer battle -- say, completing a level in record time or defeating every opponent -- Amazon Kinesis can report on this information within seconds.

For other data throughput scenarios, real-time analysis and reporting are incredibly valuable. This can include scenarios such as connected smart home devices and Internet of Things devices, medical records for a large hospital chain, data collected from a car and analyzed for machine learning application such as autonomous driving, or even on a website to find out exactly which sections of an e-commerce website someone visits and where they click.

Benefits of Amazon Kinesis

One of the key benefits to Amazon Kinesis is that the business decision-makers, developers, analysts, and data scientists are all better informed and able to make better (and faster) decisions. The firehose of data is not so overwhelming. The rich analytics and business intelligence is all available right away, not just as part of a report or a dashboard that summarizes findings. There’s no need to wait until all of the data is collected and put under a microscope because the microscope is constantly looking at the data as it flows on the network.

There are quite a few practical benefits to this, starting with the ability to improve your service. In the case of the multiplayer gaming system, there are tradition benefits such as reporting back to the user on high-scores and achievements, but perhaps even more importantly it means companies can examine and problems on the system in real-time and deal with them as they occur, not after the problems have caused users to unsubscribe.

Another practical benefit has to do with the speed of decision making. Because the analytics are provided in real-time as they happen, companies can then make real-time decisions about that data. In the example of the autonomous car, an automaker might run a simulation in a crowded urban area to see how the robotic vehicle performs, and make decisions about the GPS fleet tracking, location data and the sensors that track how the car adjusts its speed.

In a traditional model, where data is summarized later, the automaker might run simulations and then analyze the data later. One reason this is sometimes true has to do with the scope of the needs for data discovery and reporting. Some companies just can’t manage and maintain the infrastructure required for real-time data analytics. That’s another major advantage to use Amazon Kinesis because the service can scale according to your real-time data analysis needs. There’s no need to build-out the infrastructure first or to scale p or down for each new project.

This also helps tremendously with the costs. Typically, real-time data analytics is complex, difficult to manage, and requires high-end servers, networks, and vast amounts of online storage but Amazon Kinesis can scale according to the project needs and scope. Yet the costs are related to the actual analytics you perform. With traditional batch processing for data analytics, one that is housed and analyzed in a traditional on-premise data center, that’s just not the case.



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WhatsApp will stop working on certain phones on January 1

If you own a Windows phone, you might want to look for a replacement in the January sales, because WhatsApp is ending support for Windows 10 Mobile imminently.

You won't just stop receiving updates and new features. According to Facebook (WhatsApp's parent company), after December 31 you will be unable to use the app on your device at all.

There's no need to panic, though. While it's not as convenient, you will still be able to log into WhatsApp by visiting the site in your phone's web browser. You could also use Telegram or Skype to wish your loved ones a happy 2020.

Bad news for older phones

As MSPowerUser reports, WhatsApp is also ending support for older iOS and Android devices, though owners of these phones have a little longer to upgrade. Handsets running iOS 7 or older, and Android 2.3.7 and older, will lose access to WhatsApp on February 1.

All these devices are relatively old. There have been no new Windows 10 Mobile handsets since 2015, and iOS 7 and Android 2.3.7 are from 2013 and 2010 respectively.

Windows 10 Mobile still has a base of dedicated users who have hung onto their handsets, and even petitioned Microsoft to build a Surface Phone so they would have an alternative to Apple and Google, but the platform's days are well and truly numbered. The forthcoming Microsoft Surface Duo (which Microsoft refuses to call a phone, even though it can make calls and fits neatly into one hand) will run Android instead, and the company seemingly has no plans to develop a new operating system for phones.



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Cybersecurity threats to watch out for

The internet can be a hostile environment. The threat of cyberattack is ever-present as new vulnerabilities are released and a commodity of tools are produced to exploit them. Therefore, the pressure on organisations (and their employees) to protect customer data and defend against attacks, is mounting.

But aside from using Firewalls and antivirus software, how can we expect businesses, especially smaller businesses with limited security budgets and skills, to keep on top of evolving threats? 

As our 2019 Nastiest Malware List highlights, cyberattacks are becoming more advanced and difficult to detect. From ransomware strains to cryptomining campaigns – that deliver the most attack payloads beyond phishing – cybercriminals are making better use of stolen, personal information available to craft more convincing and targeted attacks.

Ultimately, what this means is that doing nothing is no longer an option. It’s time that organisations step up, learning how to spot potential threats and the implications behind these attack tactics. This starts with understanding the ‘nastiest’ threats out there today that are leaving businesses at risk. 

Botnets: delivering mass disruption

Botnets have continued to dominate the infection attack chain in 2019. No other type of malware was responsible for delivering more ransomware and cryptomining payloads. 

Emotet, which was the most prevalent malware of 2018, held onto that notorious distinction into 2019. While it was briefly shut down in June, Emotet returned from the dead in September, and remains the largest botnet to date, delivering various malicious payloads.

Trickbot has been partnering with banking Trojan groups like IcedID and Ursif in 2019. Its modular infrastructure makes it a serious threat for any network it infects and, when combined with Ryuk ransomware, it's one of the more devastating targeted attacks of 2019.

Dridex was once one of the most prominent banking trojans. Now it acts as an implant in the infection chain with the Bitpaymer ransomware and is achieving alarming success.

The triple threat of Emotet, Trickbot and Ryuk

Ransomware has been around for nearly a decade and it should come as no surprise that it’s still a firm favourite amongst cybercriminals. Ransomware remains a top threat, adopting a more targeted model last year. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are easy prey and make up most of its victims. 

And one of the most menacing ransomware evolutions comes in the form of the ‘triple threat’ attack, involving Emotet, Trickbot and Ryuk. In terms of financial damage, this is probably the most successful chain of 2019. With more targeted, reconnaissance-based operations, they now assign a value to targeted networks post-infection will extort them accordingly after deploying ransomware.

As far as other ransomware strains are concerned, GandCrab is one of the most successful examples of ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) to date, with profits in excess of $2 billion. While Crysis (aka Dharma) makes its second consecutive appearance on our Nastiest Malware list. This ransomware was actively distributed in the first half of 2019, with almost all infections we observed distributed through RDP compromise.




Personalised phishing

Email-based malware campaigns grow in their complexity and believability dramatically this year. Phishing became increasingly more personalised and extortion emails have begun claiming to have captured lude behaviour using compromised passwords.

Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks also surged in 2019. Individuals who are responsible for sending payments or purchasing gift cards were targeted through spoof email accounts impersonating company executives or familiar parties. Victims are often tricked into giving up wire transfers, credentials, gift cards and more.

What many employees don’t realise is that often, the biggest security concern at the office is one of their co-workers, not a hacker in some remote location. A lack of best practices like poor domain administration, being reactive, not proactive, reuse and sharing of passwords, and lack of multi-factor authentication all mean bad actors may already be ‘phishing’ amongst them.

Cryptomining and Cryptojacking

Cryptojacking (also called malicious cryptomining) is an emerging online threat that hides on a computer or mobile device and uses the machine’s resources to “mine” forms of online money known as cryptocurrencies. It’s a menace that can take over web browsers and compromise all kinds of devices, from desktops and laptops, to smartphones and even network servers. And according to Webroot’s research, these attacks rise and fall with the relative market cap of cryptocurrency price. The largest campaign of cryptojacking this year is through the ‘Retadup’ attacks and the most innovative was ‘Hidden Bee’. 

Hidden Bee tactics have a complex and multi-layered internal structure that is unusual among cybercrime toolkits, making it an interesting addition to the threat landscape. It first emerged last year with IE exploits and has now evolved into payloads inside JPEG and PNG images through Steganography and WAV media formats flash exploits. The additional difficulty in the analysis is introduced by the fact that the URLs and encryption keys are never reused and work only for a single session.

Whereas Retadup, is a cryptomining worm, that first started last year and was removed in August by Cybercrime Fighting Center (C3N) of the French National Gendarmerie, after they took control of the malware’s command and control server. It stealthily uses a computer’s processor to mine cryptocurrency, which generates money for the operators. It’s also able to run other types of malware, such as ransomware, and is commonly spread via attachments, file-sharing networks and links to malicious websites. Peak infection counts had Retadup on over 800k machines simultaneously.

Closing critical security gaps

These nastiest threats highlight how a comprehensive approach to endpoint security is needed now more than ever, to keep up with these various and complex attack models. Attackers may be using the same strains of malware, but they are making better use of stolen personal information available for more personalised threats. As a result, organisations need to adopt a layered security approach and not underestimate the power of consistent security training as they work to improve their cyber resiliency and protection.

After all, a business that practices good risk management not only protects its reputation, intellectual property and data, but will also offer its customers a measure of assurance making them attractive to do business with.



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These Oculus Go deals make virtual reality even cheaper in January Sales

If you're curious about entering the world of virtual reality in 2020, you'll want to start with these excellent Oculus Go deals. The cheap VR headset is currently £50 less on Amazon, with the deal spanning both the 32GB and 64GB models, meaning you can pick up an Oculus Go deal for just £149 in the January Sales

You're getting access to an amazing world of virtual reality experiences, though you won't find the entire Oculus store available on the Go. This is a slimmed down experience with the price tag to match, so you'll still be playing fantastic games and have access to a wide range of virtual experiences and streaming but don't expect the full library of the Quest or Rift straight from the off. 

Instead, this headset is geared towards the curious or simply those who don't want to splash out on an expensive PC to run their virtual reality - which makes these cheap Oculus Go deals even better.

Today's best Oculus Go deals for January sales

It's not the first time we've seen these headsets at such low prices: the 32GB model reached £149.99 over Black Friday, and continues to hover around that price, though we expect it will shoot back up to its RRP before the year is out, if not very early in 2020.

The 64GB model is also only £199.99, down from £249.99 – we saw it drop briefly to £189.99 but it's still a decent saving on an entry-level VR headset, and less than half the price of the more premium Oculus Quest.

If you're not in the UK, you can see the cheapest Oculus Go prices in your region below:



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Digital identity: enabling the new economy

As our lives become increasingly dependent on the internet, establishing trust becomes vital to society. Yet, the old ways of documenting and verifying trust are no longer fit for purpose: documents get faked; static data gets hacked; and consumers continue to opt for convenience over security. Hackers and malware remain ever present threats and consumers still need to use antivirus software.

Close your eyes, and picture Britain in 1939. Bracing for a Second World War, the country introduces military conscription and the National Registration Bill, requiring every citizen to carry a national identity card at all times. One single document – one piece of information – to verify that you are who you say you are. 

Fast forward 80 years, past multiple technological breakthroughs: the industrialisation of fossil fuels; commercial aviation; smart grids and electricity storage; global telecommunications; and of course, the internet. The march of technology never stops, and we’re now propelling ourselves towards post-digital life, living in smart cities and connected homes; working in the automated age; moving and spending across borders. 

These global shifts have already radically re-shaped the way we live. Yet, the ways we establish trust and verify identity remain stuck in the past, primarily still linked to government databases such as the electoral roll, and private sector datasets like credit scores. 

You could say that the internet, which emerged to become the dominant technological platform of our time – was built without identity in mind.

A connected world

As the public and private sectors wake up to the power and potential of a connected world, more and more questions arise. How can credit card processing truly be verified, when the seller can’t see the buyer? How can an organisation know you are who you claim to be, when you sign up for a new service online? And as we build our lives around an increasingly complex Internet of Things (IoT), a sprawling platform that anonymises and connects together our digital breadcrumb trails, how do we create trust? 

Where does this leave us today? In a clear transition phase. The private sector now walks the tightrope of balancing experience with endpoint security, as the public sector tries to keep pace and create governance that protects without hindering innovation. Meanwhile, technology pioneers are stitching together a new layer in our connected world – a layer of trusted, global data that bring the concept of identity into this century and future-proof it for the next.

This evolution in identity management means it’ll take a step-change in the data points we use and the way we use them, to power trust in the digital economy. A wave of new approaches and data sources will be used to not only protect both sides of each online and offline interaction, but also provide context around an individual’s background and behaviour. As our digital identity comprises an increasingly rich set of contextual data points, organisations will be able to verify not only identity, but authenticity – bringing a new type of trust to online interactions and enabling them to infuse due diligence with data intelligence.

Proving who you are with your biological characteristics is another next step we are seeing, in this evolution of identity. As the era of smartphones and wearables makes technology more personal than ever, advances in the availability and reliability of biometric technologies – that measure unique physical characteristics such as an individual’s face, fingerprint or behavioural biometrics – will bring us a lot closer to the ability to verify the identity of almost anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time.

Beyond biometrics

Other emerging, horizontal technologies will also become increasingly prevalent. Microservices linked up through a platform approach will connect disparate data and services together; static verification will power ongoing, ‘ambient’ authentication; distributed ledgers could become an effective way to decentralise ownership and balance the demands of privacy and convenience; Machine Learning (ML) and augmented intelligence will help organisations make faster, more accurate decisions on how best to identify their customers.

That’s not to say there won’t be risks, too. The implementation of new verification technologies won’t be seamless, and communicating their value will be key. Pilots of facial recognition technology by law enforcement, for example, have triggered the kind of backlash we often see when disruptive technologies begin to establish a ‘new normal’ in business and daily life. In this case, as our digital identity trails fragment and tracking crime becomes more complex, it’s hard to imagine a future where these technologies are not used widely. The private sector already embraces new forms of identity verification for employee monitoring, and it benefits consumers every single day from checking their bank balance to ordering a food delivery – the services they use are vastly more flexible, convenient and secure for it.

Clearly, through all of this transformation we will see a consistent debate over data privacy and a constant battle for data security. It will truly take a combined effort to educate citizens on the fundamentals of data security, and stay one step ahead of cyber-criminals – ensuring that contextual, connected identity intelligence is a safe, secure layer in the new economy and our post-digital world.

  • Stay safe and anonymous online with the best VPN.


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Realme 5 Pro, Realme X Start Receiving Updates in India With December Android Security Update, Other Changes

https://ift.tt/2NZCRuZ has begun the rollout of stable software updates for the Realme 5 Pro and Realme X that bring the December Android security patch for users in India.

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Honor 9X, 8 Smart Products Including Honor Vision TV Coming to India Soon: Honor India President Charles Peng

https://ift.tt/2FcxsND is planning to launch new smartphones in India with its own software

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Vivo Patent Applications Reveal Quad Front Camera Phones With Hole-Punch Design: Report

https://ift.tt/2zvZJhE has been granted a patent for phones packing quad front cameras housed in a hole-punch cutout with different positioning options.

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