Week Commencing 23rd January 2017.
This BizTech Brief summarises some of the tech industries top news and reports from the past week.
Microsoft to teach more than 560,000 people digital skills
Microsoft have announced the launch of a programme for developing digital literacy, skills and cloud skills across the UK.
The programme aims to reach more than 560,00 people by 2020 through the development of digital apprenticeships, literacy programmes and training to develop cloud tech experts.
Employees in technology roles and companies are not the only people in need of digital skills as more roles become dependent on the use of technology, and many adults in the UK still lack the basic skills needed to function in the modern world.
As part of Microsoft’s digital skills programme, the firm plans to offer free online digital literacy training to the entire UK population, as well as train 30,000 UK public servants in how to deliver digital services to citizens.
The firm has exceeded its original 2012 target of training 4,000 digital apprentices and has worked with 25,000 partners across the UK to train 11,000 digital apprentices.
GDPR- Are you prepared?
GDPR is a regulation which seeks to strengthen and unify data protection within businesses. The new legislation comes into practice in May 2018, and although companies think that they are doing alot (enough even) to keep there data safe, there is still some uncertainty about how to plan for the new legislation.
The most prominent GDPR soundbite relates to the financial implications of not being fully compliant by 25th May 2018. For the uninitiated among us, organisations that fail to properly protect customer data can be fined up to a maximum of €20m or 4% of their total worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher.
The major concerns that businesses need to take into consideration in order to prepare for GDPR is their data in the cloud. You need to be aware where your data is ending up and how your platform provider is managing and maintaining the platform that your data is on.
Learn more about GDPR Preparation
ComputerWorld nominated for their first award of 2017
After an extremely successful year in 2016, winning two industry awards and being listed as one of the top 1000 companies to Inspire Britain by the London Stock Exchange, ComputerWorld has started 2017 with a bang by being shortlisted for the PCR Awards, which seek to celebrate excellence within the PC and tech industry.
ComputerWorld have been shortlisted for the Corporate Value Added Reseller award, against four other finalists. PCR delivers priceless trade information for both the home and business computing sector. With their highly regarded industry publication and trade specific website being considered by many as authorities on the subject.
National Crime survey figures show growing cyber crime
There were 3.6 million fraud and 2 million computer misuse offences in the 12 months to September 2016.
This is the first time statistics for the full year were included in the report, but the figures are in line with the estimates of 3.8 million fraud and 2 million computer misuse offences included in a report covering the 12 months to March 2016. The inclusion of these offences yields a new headline estimate of 11.8 million incidents of crime covered by the survey, but it will be another year before a year-on-year comparison can be made.
“In the past, burglary and theft of vehicles were the high-volume crimes driving trends, but their numbers have fallen substantially since then and todays figures demostrate how crime has changes” saif John Flatley, ONS statistician.
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