科技新闻

政府已于2017年9月15日推出「创科创投基金」。该计划现正接受风险投资基金申请成为共同投资伙伴(截止日期:2018年1月15日)。简介会将于2017年10月3日于香港科学园举行，欢迎风险投资基金出席。

Global Cloud Xchange (GCX), a subsidiary of Reliance Communications Limited (RCOM), and Broadcast Media Communications (BMC UK) have teamed up on the delivery of end-to-end connectivity for the ‘live’ broadcast of the FIFA World Cup 2018 to audiences around the world. The tounament kicked off in Russia on 14 June.This event will be carried across GCX’s network, via BMC, from Frankfurt to the London Broadcasting House of British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and used exclusively by BBC Sport to broadcast the matches to British audiences.GCX’s end-to-end network solution will provide fast, dedicated and reliable connectivity, enabling BMC to deliver live video contributions into BBC’s coverage of the FIFA World Cup, as well as active monitoring of the transmission over GCX’s Global Network, ensuring consistent broadcast quality for global audiences.FIFA World Cup matches are amongst the most watched and followed sporting events in the world, especially important for soccer fans across Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. It is, therefore, critical for us to provide these fans with smooth, uninterrupted access to the game,” said Lee Russell, operations director at BMC UK. “With GCX’s expansive Global Network and its proven media capabilities, we are confident that we will once again deliver an unrivaled viewing experience to our viewers.”“We are delighted to partner with BMC UK again to provide high-quality connectivity, enabling live broadcasts of the FIFA World Cup to global viewers who can enjoy this highly anticipated event,” said Mark Russell, managing director, GCX International. “The broadcast from Frankfurt to BBC London Broadcasting House is being facilitated through the integration of GCX’s privately-owned Global Network with BMC’s resilient Media Quality Network, tailored to meet the high-quality connectivity standards of sports, news and special broadcast events.”GCX’s privately-owned Global Network offers geographic coverage and the ability to provide both subsea and terrestrial connectivity across the globe, linking up established markets in Europe and North America to the emerging markets in the Middle East and Asia, and optimized for the high-performance delivery and distribution of content, typically required by media and broadcasting companies.-The FIFA World Cup concludes with the Finals being held at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium on 15 July 2018.

Sophos, a provider of network and endpoint security, is reminding football fans how cybercriminals have used people’s interest in the sport to launch cyber-attacks.Football has been targeted before by those who want to turn international community events into attacks. It’s a sad fact, but cyber-attacks often go hand-in-hand with major sporting events, including the World Cup, as they give cybercriminals easy access to a frequent stream of online activities from less-than-cautious soccer fans.For instance, just as recently as 23 May this year, the Security Service of Ukraine issued a cyber-attack warning that the VPNFilter malware infecting Internet routers and other devices was a preparation of a cyber-attack aimed at impacting the Champions League final held that weekend on 26 May in Kiev, Ukraine.A brief history of World Cup cyber-threatsDuring France 1998, the ZMK-J virus asked you to gamble on who would win. If you got the answer wrong, the malware triggered an exploit which was capable of wiping all the data off your hard drive.In South Korea 2002, Chick-F spread via email and instant messages, posing as a web utility which would bring up-to-the-minute results from Korea and Japan.In Germany 2006, German malware Zasran-D infected users with a backdoor (remote access) virus under the pretense of free tickets, while South Africa 2010 saw a Frankfurt man successfully blackmail three online betting sites (and attempting to extort money from three others) by threatening them with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks which could have blasted them off the internet.In Brazil 2014, we saw websites associated with the World Cup struck by a DDoS attack ahead of the tournament's opening match.This year, public awareness levels are generally higher and that is a good sign. The same holds true for the participating teams. For example, the English Football Association has already warned England players to not use public or hotel Wi-Fi in Russia over fears of hacking.With World Cup 2018 in Russia well underway, it is important that organizations and individuals stay vigilant, at all times. This year’s World Cup is set to be the most-streamed football event in history and, with that, we should be more cautious about potential cyberthreats.Took you less than 5 minutes to read this? Here's a little more: World's shortest guide to 2018 FIFA World Cup security 

Social media management platform Hootsuite has announced the launch of a new feature that it says will allow customers to identify and promote top performing Facebook content to reach new audiences.Boost for FacebookCalled Boost, the feature is built directly into the Hootsuite platform and can automatically identify the best performing organic Facebook content according to a set of pre-set criteria. Users can then increase the reach of these posts by advertising spend; for a single and integrated workflow across paid and organic social strategies.Hootsuite says users can save time by managing organic and paid activity all in one place, quickly promoting organic content that has already been approved and published. Users can also set rules based on the metrics that matter most, to automatically promote top performing content, saving time and optimizing performance.Succeed with social“For brands, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to reach customers through organic content, yet organic content is proven to build long-term brand awareness,” said Penny Wilson, CMO of Hootsuite.“Boost creates a solution which will help extend the reach – and return – of high performing organic posts by promoting content created and published in Hootsuite to a broader audience. Hootsuite’s innovative new Boost feature helps our customers further succeed with social,” she said.Hootsuite has been steadily increasing its capabilities. Just last month, Hootsuite announced a global partnership with Pinterest to natively integrate the social networking platform into its platform, allowing customers to directly schedule and publish visual content. Aside from Facebook and Pinterest, customers can post content and engage with customers on services such as Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+ and WordPress.Further reading:Hootsuite announces integration with PinterestImpact of social media a business concern in APACAsian social media behaviors diverge significantly Caption: Image credit: iStockphoto by Getty Images

At CeBIT this week, intelligent spaces firm Purple and Huawei jointly announced a new marketing solution designed to bridge the online-to-offline (O2O) gap by bringing Google Analytics-like insights to physical venues and retail outlets.Bringing Google Analytics to venuesThe solution sees Purple integrate its business applications with Huawei's CloudCampus infrastructure, the latter being a Wi-Fi and IoT network architecture with a cloud-based management platform.According to Purple, its solution delivers rich Wi-Fi analytics to help businesses to better understand their customers and how they interact with a menu to build detailed customer profiles. This can then be leveraged to develop better customer loyalty and reap more revenue to maximize business value.Importantly, businesses can then take meaningful action based on the data collected. Purple says this can be achieved through social engagement, location and presence analytics, and a broad range of connectable data sources for an accurate, customer-centric solution.“We are honored to ink a global partnership with Huawei. Huawei is committed to building a fully connected, intelligent world,” said Eric Law, the global chief revenue officer at Purple. “Purple is willing to work with Huawei to unleash the full potential of Wi-Fi networks. Doing so will be creating ever-lasting value for customers and enabling more enterprise users to [proactively] embrace new opportunities.”Making it work“50 million people are connected and logged on with their personal credentials to Wi-Fi. This is a technology when integrated will allow Huawei to offer a business-centric solution, and directly integrate their technology with a business process,” said Law, who was on stage at the joint announcement.Law also offered examples how marketers can leverage the technology for retail shops or venues: “[Three quarters] of the people who walk into your store never come back; if you apply and offer Wi-Fi, it increases the return rate by nine percent and a 24 percent increase with digital engagement.”“By knowing who is in your venue, and by knowing what they do in your venue, you can start to marketing to them in a very precise way. Think about the bottom-line to retailers and hotels,” he said.The firm’s technology was also successfully deployed at a sports stadium and amusement parks. “They use our solution to provide an e-shop to those fans to upsell them a premium experience, such as visiting the locker room in the stadium,” said Law.“At one of top three amusement part in the world, if someone stays in a queue for more than 45 minutes – based on their location, additional offers can be sent to them. [Such implementations] can give retailers a competitive advantage back in their physical spaces.”Further reading:Location data helps marketers to better understand consumersLocation and the link to visitor engagementFinding meaning from location data Caption: Image credit: iStockphoto by Getty Images

At the recent Forcepoint Asia Pacific Channel Partner Conference, IT security resellers to take on a more consultative role to help enterprises work out a holistic approach to cyber risk mitigation

Huawei has launched a new tailored data center integration solution for SAP HANA that uses the vendor's high performance flash storage platforms

DBS Bank has announced the launch and planned rollout to Hong Kong of a virtual bank recruiter designed to automate the applicant pre-screening task

New features in Docker Enterprise Edition and Docker Desktop support federated cross-cloud management and building containers with GUI-driven templates

Openstack itself has reached maturity to a degree that the Foundation is moving towards the wider goal of delivering open source infrastructure

DroneShield Ltd (“DroneShield" or the “Company”) has announced that it has received an order for 70 units of its DroneGun tactical jammer product for use by the Ministry of Defence (the “MOD”) of a major Middle Eastern country allied with the Western governments. This approximately $3,200,000 order was placed for the MOD with the Company by the Company’s distributor Zariba Security.   This is the largest known order for tactical drone mitigation equipment of this kind globally in the history of the industry. This is also the first order for multiple DroneGun units, the largest order in the Company’s history, and the Company’s first multi-million dollar order. This is significant since the drone detection and mitigation industry is only several years old, and allocations of substantial governmental funding for anti-drone equipment purchases have only commenced in size in the recent 12 months. This order comes against the backdrop of significantly intensified nefarious drone activity in the Middle East. By way of example, among the dozens of reported drone attacks reported in the region since the beginning of the year were the following:Israel was reported to have intercepted an Iranian drone. UAE was reported to have intercepted an Iranian drone. Yemen’s Houthi rebels were reported to have attacked a Saudi Aramco facility. Saudi Arabia was reported to have shot down (using conventional small arms) a drone in the vicinity of a royal palace. An attempt to attack a Saudi Arabian airport with a terrorist drone was reported.The Company’s ability to fulfil the order is subject to approval by a U.S. regulator overseeing defense exports. For clarity, only some of the Company’s potential orders require such approval since sales of some of the Company’s products to a number of countries allied with the United States do not require U.S. regulatory approval. The Company expects to receive such approval, if it is granted, in the next two months, using the U.S. defense product sale approval process. There are, of course, no guarantees that the approval for this particular order will be granted.   Caption:  President of France Emmanuel Macron and military heads review DroneGun Tactical at French Army Camp Mourmelon

Retail and consumer companies are losing out on US$345 billion dollars a year due to their lack of agility, according to new data from a survey of 270 C-suite executives of some of the world’s leading global consumer goods companies.The report “Consumer Centric: From Idle to Agile” was shared at the Consumer Goods Forum 2018 in Singapore by global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney. It analyzes how retail and consumer companies are adapting to the changing consumer world.A.T. Kearney interviewed thousands of consumers and 270 of the leading CEOs/CFO/COOs in the industry, all from companies with over US$2 billion in revenue. Collectively the companies earn US$1.5 trillion in annual revenue, representing over a third of the world’s retail and consumer industry.The global summit at the Consumer Goods Forum brought together the CEOs of 400 of the world’s most successful companies to discuss future business trends, discuss industry challenges and how they can drive positive change across the value chain of the consumer goods industry.Insights from the A.T. Kearney survey reveal that the main barrier to agility cited by respondents was culture, with 37% of the CEOs/CFO/COOs declaring it as the largest hindrance to adapting to the new consumer. Despite this, over 50% of the industry leaders said that by 2026 cultural fit would be the main priority in the recruitment of top talent. Greg Portell, lead partner, consumer industries and retail practice, A.T. Kearney, said: “Our report showed that the retail and consumer industry needs to adapt to the preferences of Gen Z and Millennials consumers, who will dominate consumer spend in coming decades. The relationship with consumers is becoming more relationship based than transaction based, and Gen Z and Millennials require personal tailored marketing as opposed to the mass traditional model. “The industry leaders surveyed acknowledge that their companies need to become more agile and adapt to the consumer world, one that is changing from one defined by affluence to one shaped by influence. Despite this, companies are struggling to adapt.In fact, 79% of those surveyed said their companies rely on discounts, loyalty programs and gift cards to motivate consumers to share their personal data. However, A.T. Kearney’s research showed that these are stale methods and Gen Z and Millennials require a more creative approach. For companies to adapt and capture the Gen Z and Millennial consumer, loyalty programmes need to be less about paying customers for their data and require a refocus on demonstrating a company’s loyalty to their customers.“Our global survey turned up little evidence of major innovation. That is why we suggest that the industry overall seems to be “stuck in idle” - especially when contrasted to the pace of change in the consumer marketplace. We believe the relative scarcity of truly bold action contributes to the industry’s persistently flat revenue and earnings. If companies want to significantly elevate their financial performance, they need to get more agile in how they attract and engage with consumers. Agile means a company being able and willing to nimbly shift priorities in sync with what today’s consumers really want and need,”  Portell added.The whitepaper offered four steps that retail and consumer companies can take in order to become more agile and unlock the potential US$345 billion:Move away from traditional practices of data collecting and prioritize action and engagement with consumers. Shift focus from broadcasting to consumers to listening to consumers. Push power and accountability closer to the consumer. Adopt a creative approach that moves beyond following trends; companies need to shape trends with offers that can create new kinds of consumer demand.Abby Klanecky, Chief Marketing Officer at A.T. Kearney, commented: “In our ongoing research consisting of hundreds of focus groups, we saw that millennial and Gen Z consumers expect to be treated as individuals and to be served individually. Furthermore, technology has removed nearly all the barriers that once kept people’s beliefs and perspectives separated. Digitally connected consumer communities and even persuasive individuals can now change the fate of brands with relative ease - regardless of their financial means or where they may live. We are living in an age of influence.” 

Most Hong Kong employees are worried their jobs are at risk in the digital economy and feel that employers should be upskilling them in response

Alibaba Cloud will use its newly-renamed Cloud Data Center for Beijing 2022 and other infrastructure to help empower a clean, open Winter Olympics

Apple has created new rules for app developers that ban the creation of cryptocurrency mining services on mobile devices

Dell EMC claimed 21.5% global market share in server revenue and 18.2% in shipments for Q1