The Wi-Fi Alliance has announced the release of the new WPA3 Wi-Fi security standard that will be made available soon in various connected devices. WPA3 will retain interoperability with WPA2 devices and is available as WPA3-Personal or WPA3-Enterprise.
Wi-Fi Easy Connect will also be released and it will make it even easier to connect devices to Wi-Fi networks.
A free version of Microsoft Teams, an online meetings and chat platform, is now available at products.office.com/en-US/microsoft-teams/free. The free version allows up to 300 users and has additional restrictions when compared to the paid versions.
Teachers and students can also use Teams for free with a valid educational email address.
Competitors to Microsoft Teams include Slack and Google Hangouts Enterprise.
Google announced the release of its Titan Security Key, a physical device used as an additional authentication method on devices. The Titan Security Key is built according to FIDO Alliance specifications and will be available soon at the Google Store.
Google released more technical details on how the new security key works at https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/08/Titan-in-depth-security-in-plaintext.html.
Update: the Titan Security Key is now available at https://store.google.com/product/titan_security_key_kit.
Setup for Google account two factor authentication can be done at https://www.google.com/landing/2step/.
Some of the world’s largest technology companies are working together on the Data Transfer Project (DTP). The purpose of this project is to build an open source common framework that can allow users to easily transfer data between any two data platforms.
Most of the major technology companies are represented, including:
More information is available at https://datatransferproject.dev and at the project’s GitHub page https://github.com/google/data-transfer-project.
ZDNet is reporting that Shrug ransomware is spreading through fake gaming and other software apps starting in July 2018. The installer program runs as C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Temp\shrug.exe and creates “Shrug” entries in the Windows registry.
Instructions on how to disable and remove this ransomware can be found at https://www.zdnet.com/article/shrug-ransomware-victim-heres-how-to-retrieve-your-locked-files-for-free/.
SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 will no longer be supported by Microsoft as of July 9, 2019. Support for Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 will end on January 14, 2020. Later support dates are available for customers under the Extended Security Update (ESU) program. One way to do this is to upgrade to Azure.
Microsoft released a full list of products that will no longer be supported in 2019 at support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4316957/products-reaching-end-of-support-for-2019.
Malwarebytes has released a new malware protection app for iPhones and other iOS devices. Free and paid download versions of Malwarebytes are also available for Windows, Mac, and Android.
Malwarebytes for iOS may be downloaded from iTunes and the Android version is available at Google Play.
AdwCleaner is another free download from Malwarebytes that removes adware, spyware, and browser hijackers on Windows PCs.
PostgreSQL is a free open source object-relational database system that is widely used. It is available as a free download for Windows, MacOS, Linux and other operating systems.
More information is available at:
Ring, the video doorbell and security camera maker that was recently acquired by Amazon, announced a new Ring Neighbors app that is intended to act as a neighborhood watch social network. The app is free and available for iPhone and Android smartphones. More details are available at https://ring.com/neighbors.
WinSCP is an open source FTP and SFTP client for Windows PCs. It can be downloaded for free directly from the WinSCP website, and it is also available as a paid download from the Microsoft Store. WinSCP can also be set up to use automated scripting commands. Additional WinSCP documentation may be found here.