CHANGES TO CORTANA
Cortana’s fate has been uncertain for the past several months, especially since its current developer, Javier Soltero announced his resignation from Microsoft. Cortana is Microsoft’s personal digital assistant and has been falling behind in competition with Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. Each of these digital assistants answer users questions and can perform tasks for the user such as smart home control, playing music, purchasing products, and much more.
GLAS Smart Thermostat by Johnson Controls will no longer feature Cortana. The Microsoft digital assistant is going through changes to take it out of competition with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, and instead make Cortana accessible through these personal digital assistants for users who prefer the Microsoft assistant. Read more about the future of Microsoft’s digital assistant and the changes that may affect your smart home and digital devices on itnews.com.
INCREASE IN DESTRUCTIVE MALWARE ATTACKS
IBM, an international information technology company, released an alarming cyber security report compiled by their IT intelligence and response team (IRIS). The report showed that hacker attacks in 2019 have increased tremendously from the previous report on the last half of 2018. The IBM security team noticed that hackers have especially targeted major companies.
The hackers would acquire access to a company’s system/server/network and install destructive software and a function to completely erase company data, called a disk wiper and demand a ransom. This double attack (malware and a disk wiper) has caused millions of dollars in damage and hundreds of hours for companies to recover their data and protect their servers/networks from future attacks. For more information, visit scmagazine.com.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
If you and your home are assisted by Cortana, prepare for the coming changes as the virtual assistant is in a state of transition. Get your smart home set up with either Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa before the GLAS Thermostat update and stay informed on what other changes may be coming for digital assistants soon.
Whether you own a business, large company, or simply own a computer, talk with your local IT technician and protect your data from destructive cyber attacks, before it is too late.