Advancements in 5G connectivity and accelerated digital transformation of business operations creates heightened risk and expanded attack surfaces for security teams to harden and protect. Now, efforts by several internet industry groups are focused on new measures to fix inherent security weaknesses with the rapidly expanded use of IoT devices for enterprises and consumers.

The 2021 edition of Proofpoint's Voice of the CISO report -- based on a survey of more than 1,400 CISOs in 14 countries -- found 66 percent of the executives acknowledged their organizations were unprepared to handle a targeted cyberattack this year. In addition, more than half the CISOs admitted they are more concerned about the repercussions from a cyberattack this year than they were in 2020.

Last week at Dell Technologies World, the most significant announcement was a massive as-a-service offering called Dell Technologies Apex. This promises to return the IT market to its long lost but fondly remembered IBM past. Let's talk about Apex this week. We'll then close with the product of the week, an impressive new WiFi 6E wireless mesh solution from Linksys.

Last month's ruling by the Supreme Court in Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc. ended 10 years of tortuous litigation. While the Court definitively addressed the dispute between the two high tech giants, it put aside answering one critical infringement factor. Still, the ruling appeared to reduce the legal leverage available to software developers who seek copyright protection.

The software industry fueled jobs and GDP growth in the United States in 2020, according to a report by Software.org: the BSA Foundation. The software industry supported more than 15.8 million jobs in 2020. While the largest concentrations of software jobs remain in traditional tech hubs, such as Washington and California, other states have experienced greater job growth.

A recent study by Kaspersky revealed that nearly one quarter of PCs still run Microsoft Windows 7, which stopped receiving mainstream support in January 2020. Using an end-of-life operating system that no longer receives security updates is akin to driving a car with a brake light on, suggested Oliver Tavakoli, CTO at Vectra AI.

An ecosystem is being created where cars and robots are autonomous and connected so they will be able to connect to other devices, sensors, and data repositories available to them. Let's explore some safety risks associated with this future connectivity on our roadways. We'll then close with the product of the week: a new tablet that is Amazon's first real effort to build a Surface-like laptop.

Red Hat concluded its April two-day Summit 2021 Virtual Experience with a hefty list of announcements and presentations by the company's innovative customers driving the latest open-source technologies and trends. One of the event's most significant announcements was Red Hat's plan to deliver the first functionally safe, continuously certified Linux platform for vehicles.

Some 400 million patients worldwide are affected by more than 7,000 rare diseases; yet treatments for rare genetic diseases remain an underserved area. The father of a boy born with a rare disease created the RareCamp project, and the OpenTreatments Foundation, to enable patients to create gene therapies for rare genetic diseases; then work with their doctors and nonprofits to develop drugs.

Jonathan Cran, founder and CEO of Intrigue, a cybersecurity startup based in Austin, Texas, used his company's network security tools to compile a list of Fortune 500 companies still exposed to last month's Microsoft Exchange breach. Potentially, many of those companies may not know their networks are compromised.

Startup information security firm Intrigue has announced a US$2 million seed round led by LiveOak Venture Partners for a new attack service management platform that helps secure enterprise networks. The Intrigue tools scan all public, exposed attack surfaces inside and outside a company. The seed funding will also support the security and developer communities contributing to Intrigue Core.

Google is now paying developers more money to work on securing their Linux kernels this year. The gesture may well be the start of the company's bid to enforce a tighter grip on open source. Google's action comes on the heels of rising threats to Linux that unfolded in the last year, as hackers pivot to new strategies like writing malware strains in the Go programming language.

Engaging in disaster recovery requires a company to think about many things, but despite the long checklists that are created to accomplish DR, there are some areas that frequently get overlooked in business continuity and disaster recovery planning. With this in mind, it is imperative to address all areas of concern before a disaster strikes, not during or after the event.

MakuluLinux is an unusually creative operating system that developer Jacque Montague Raymer is constantly changing with each major upgrade. Some of these changes are radical and innovative. Trust me on this point. I have had my hands on so many Linux varieties that the really good ones are in a league of their own. MakuluLinux is at the top of that list.

Pat Gelsinger's Intel is looking like the very different company it needs to be. It is more collaborative than combative, more strategic than tactical, with a far more effective plan than it has had since Andy Grove left the firm. Let's talk about how Gelsinger presents Intel as an execution and partnering powerhouse, and we'll close with the product of the week, a new set of headphones from Lenovo.

Cloud cybersecurity -- or a lack of it -- is feeding a frenzy of companies out of the public cloud. A similar concern about managing compliance obligations is keeping organizations from moving to the cloud in general. However, much of the growing concerns over cloud cybersecurity result from experiences with public and private cloud platforms. A trend toward hybrid cloud computing could be an approach to better ensure data security.

Sourcegraph has launched an automated internal coding tool that allows enterprises to automate and track large-scale code changes across all repositories and code hosts. The new tool, called Batch Changes, also provides developers and enterprises ways to manage the resulting change sets through checks and code reviews so they can be confident each change is merged. For software developers, this is game changing.

A cadre of tech giants have created the Rust Foundation. This is neither the first nor largest contribution to an open-source project by private tech vendors. Still, the creation of this new body marks another noteworthy instance in which proprietary software companies took the initiative to found and steward a nonprofit project. It's not groundbreaking, but it doesn't happen every day.

Those familiar with open source know that it works and comes with many benefits. A testament to the rising adoption of open source is the recent moves by software giants such as Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle into the open-source community. This corporate migration to open source is continuing as many organizations, both large and small, turn to open source in tough economic times.

Malicious online actors used email as their prime vehicle for delivering malware to their victims in the last quarter of 2020. The HP-Bromium Threat Insights Report found that 88 percent of malware was delivered by email into its targets' inboxes, many times evading measures at email gateways to filter out the infected correspondence.

For multichannel video programming distributors to stay competitive, they need to offer multichannel video programming solutions that are not only innovative but user friendly. Smart TV manufacturers need to reduce time to market and provide flexible services. Each can bridge the gap by leveraging RDK-V, as it enables various technology platform choices while still allowing an easily customizable UI with a host of tangible benefits.

In a recent Linux Foundation blog post titled "Preventing Supply Chain Attacks like SolarWinds," the foundation's Director of Open Source Supply Chain Security, David A. Wheeler, adamantly pushed the need for software developers to embrace the LF's security recommendations. Given the magnitude of the SolarWinds hack, LinuxInsider asked Wheeler to dive deeper into how supply chain security standards might benefit from the LF's latest advice.

Cybersecurity experts predict that in 2021 there will be a cyberattack incident every 11 seconds. This is nearly twice what it was in 2019, and four times the rate five years ago in 2016. The rapidly growing increase in cyberattacks worldwide comes at a hefty cost for businesses in order to better protect their computer networks from intrusions. Cyberattacks not only are increasing in frequency, but they are costing victims larger financial losses.

I participated in a group analyst event several weeks ago about companies converting their offices into collections of meeting rooms. We couldn't picture people who have been meeting remotely for so many months suddenly concluding that the long commute to and from the office was worth meeting in person; given they are now okay with using solutions like Webex or Microsoft Teams.

Cyberattacks are increasing in frequency, ramping up the data privacy threats they pose to government agencies and businesses alike. Governments both domestic and foreign need to step up efforts to pass legislation that bolsters technological defenses this year, warn privacy groups. Stiffer privacy laws are gradually being reviewed and signed into the U.S. market. But that process is mostly taking place at the state level.

The incoming presidential administration has proposed an extraordinary increase in support of federal investments in high technology. As part of the administration's plan to deal with the economic impact of COVID-19, the proposal includes $10 billion for various federal information technology programs.

In the early part of 2020, the pandemic forced companies around the world to rethink their practices and determine how to accelerate the adoption of technologies that would enable remote work. After closing out on a tumultuous year, many business leaders admit where they may have gone wrong. Here are some ways they would approach a shift to remote work, if faced with the crisis all over again.

Maintaining and increasing research and development spending in the COVID-19 era is critical for high technology vendors to deliver new solutions and services, continue to innovate, and position their businesses to rebound from the negative effects of the global pandemic. Analysts, financial advisors, and investors concur that, wherever possible, vendors should continue to aggressively invest in R&D.

The PC market ended 2020 with a big bang, as shipments during the final quarter rose 25 percent over the same period in 2019, according to a report by research firm Canalys. Much of the market growth during the year was driven by notebooks and mobile workstation shipments, which increased 44 percent over 2019, reaching 235.1 million.

More than 80 percent of 650 cybersecurity and IT professionals surveyed by Check Point Software Technologies in July said their traditional security solutions either do not work at all, or only provide limited functions in the cloud. This indicates that organizations' cloud migrations and deployments are racing ahead of their security teams' abilities to defend against attacks and breaches.