Working from home during the pandemic has caused an «epidemic of hidden overtime», the Autonomy thinktank has warned. 

The organisation’s latest report proposes drafting legislation that would create a «right to disconnect«, which stipulates employees do not have to take calls or respond to emails related to work during their time off. 

Autonomy is calling for amendments to be made to the Employment Rights Act 1996 to ensure workers have the right to fully switch off from all work communications beyond their scheduled hours and to bring employment tribunals for any breach of that stipulation. 

«Modern workplaces and homes are digital spaces,» the report states. «The fact that we are able to send and receive messages, emails, and online content twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week means that it is increasingly hard to disconnect, enjoy our leisure time and develop a healthy work-life balance. 

«This has created an epidemic of ‘hidden overtime’, where workers never quite ‘switch off’ and continue to do bits of work throughout the evening and weekend. Being ‘switched back on’ by an employer after the working day has finished differs from standard overtime, whereby a worker is usually required to ‘stay on’. Instead, a call from an employer – and the response it requires – expands the working day fragment by fragment, meaning the worker is never quite ‘off’.»

The report suggests that this has been a growing problem for a number of years but it has been «exacerbated» by the pandemic and the mass switch to remote working.

It highlights another study by the National Bureau for Economic Research that claims the number of meetings per person has increased by 12.9% over the last 18-months. The length of those meetings had actually gone down, on average, but overall the working day had consistently been extended by an average of 49 minutes, largely attributed to a greater number of emails being sent after standard business hours. 

The enormous rise in overtime has come with the additional burden of poor mental health; by the end of 2020, the prevalence of mental distress among workers was 49% higher compared to 2017-19 and had increased across all major sectors, the report states.

The issue is particularly concerning for women, who are far more likely to shoulder the additional burden of childcare, housework and care for elderly family members, according to the report. 

Only 15% of workers in central London have returned to the office, according to new figures from the Centre for Cities think tank. 

The figures for the last week of July show that London had the lowest number of workers returning to the office out of all the towns and cities in the UK. 

The research is based on footfall traffic in the week after ‘Freedom Day’ (19 July) when the government lifted all remaining COVID restrictions. It doesn’t specifically state numbers for those returning to offices, but it suggests a rise or fall based on daytime footfall to shops and restaurants in city centres. 

Across the UK, less than one in five (18%) people have returned to their place of work, with day time footfall traffic falling 1% in the last week of July, compared to stats compiled before Freedom Day. People in Brighton were the most likely to have returned, according to the report, but worker footfall there was at 49% of pre-COVID levels and still far from normal.

Just two places have recovered to their pre-pandemic levels of footfall: Blackpool and Bournemouth. However, their popularity with tourists means that visitor numbers are likely to fall once summer ends and offers no indication of appetite to return to the office.  

«It’s a mixed picture as the country takes its next steps back to normality – both for different types of businesses, and for different places,» said Paul Swinney, Centre for Cities director of policy.

«People’s eagerness, particularly in cities in the North and Midlands, to go out and socialise has been a lifeline for many businesses in the night-time economy. But a reluctance to head back to the office in our largest and most economically important cities means that people in the so-called ‘sandwich economy’ that caters to city centre office workers are facing an uncertain future as we get ever closer to the end of the furlough scheme in September.»

The low numbers for London could be perceived as a blow to chancellor Rishi Sunak and his plans to boost the economy by encouraging more people back into the workplace. Sunak recently suggested that platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom were no help to people at the start of their careers. 

Microsoft has released a new ransomware detection feature for Azure that uses machine learning to spot potential attacks.

‘Fusion Detection for Ransomware’ will send an alert to customers when it observes actions that are «potentially associated with ransomware activities».

The alerts will inform users of what was detected, and on which device, with the system correlating data from other Azure services, such as Azure Defender, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender for Identity, Microsoft Cloud App Security, and Azure Sentinel scheduled analytics rules.

Once ransomware activities are detected and correlated by the Fusion’s machine learning model, a high severity incident with the label «Multiple alerts possibly related to Ransomware activity detected» will be triggered in the customer’s Azure Sentinel workspace (shown in the image below).

After an alert has been sent, Microsoft recommends users check the device/host in question to see if its behaviour is «unexpected». If so, the user should treat the machine as «potentially compromised» and take immediate actions, such as isolating the machine from the network, running full anti-virus scans, and investigating the rest of the network for similar signs.

Ransomware has become a lucrative occupation, according to a recent report from Unit 42, with average payouts almost doubling over the past year. Since 2020, payouts for successful ransomware attacks have increased 82% to a record $570,000 in the first half of 2021. The increase followed the previous year’s 171% jump to more than $312,000.

«Preventing such attacks in the first place would be the ideal solution but with the new trend of ‘ransomware as a service’ and human operated ransomware, the scope and the sophistication of attacks are increasing – attackers are using slow and stealth techniques to compromise network, which makes it harder to detect them in the first place,» Microsoft security researcher Sylvie Liu wrote in a blog post.

Apple, Google and Microsoft all broke quarterly profit records for Q2 2021 as the tech sector continues to grow amid the COVID pandemic.

Increased cloud adoption, internet usage and the success of the latest iPhone have helped to strengthen the stock performance of three of the world’s biggest companies – two of which have reached a market valuation of $2 trillion during the pandemic. 

Apple: iPhone 12 success

Apple, the first company to be valued at $2 trillion, posted revenues of $81.4 (£58.5 billion) billion for the quarter ending June 26, an increase of 36% year-on-year.

This is largely down to the success of the iPhone 12 range, with sales up 50% at $39 billion. There were some reports earlier in the year that the iPhone mini hadn’t done as well as expected, but the standard and Pro Max versions of the handset have proved extremely popular. 

However, there are some concerns that this hot streak will be curtailed by the ongoing chip shortage, which has beset other sectors, such as the automotive industry. Apple itself is wary of the issue, pointing out that it has already started to affect its ability to produce Macs and iPads and could eventually affect its iPhone production; the firm even forecasted slowing revenue growth for the rest of 2021. 

Google: YouTube, search and cloud growth

Google parent company Alphabet reported second-quarter earnings of $61.8 billion (£44.5 billion), a 62% increase year on year, with advertising revenues up 69%. The biggest increase, however, came from search which has shot up $14 billion since the same period last year at $35.8 billion. Many of its segments saw double-digit growth, like YouTube advertising, which brought in revenues near $7 billion, almost twice the $3.8 billion it generated last year. 

The only real negative for Google was its cloud division, which continues to operate at a loss with $591 million written off in Q2. However, Google Cloud is still the fastest-growing segment of Alphabet’s overall business with revenues of $4.6 billion, up from $3 billion last year. 

Microsoft: Saved by the cloud

Microsoft pulled in revenues of $46.2 billion (£33 billion), up 21% year on year, but it wasn’t all rosy for the Redmond tech giant. While the chip shortage is expected to hamper iPhone sales in the near future, it has already started to impact Microsoft’s Windows and hardware segments, such as Surface laptops. Windows OEM revenue declined by 3% in Q2 and Surface sales dropped 20%, both of which were attributed to «supply chain constraints». 

The company was still able to post record-breaking quarterly profits though, thanks to its commercial products and cloud services which increased 20%. This is the part of the business that includes its Azure cloud platform, but also Microsoft 365, which saw subscribers increase to 51.9 million – a 22% increase year on year. 

Box has launched a new e-signature function as a free addition to its platform that allows users to complete transactions entirely in the cloud.

The company said that ‘Box Sign’, which is available now, will also come with a robust set of application programming interfaces (APIs), which will allow businesses to modernise and manage all their agreements via the cloud.

With businesses transitioning into hybrid environments where employees are separated between the office and the home, Box hopes its new feature can help to streamline its customer experience by removing any need for physical documentation.

«Every day, more transactions are moving from paper-based manual workflows to the cloud, and we will only see this trend accelerate as companies shift to a hybrid work environment,» said Diego Dugatkin, chief product officer at Box.

«With the addition of natively embedded e-signatures, Box customers will be able to manage the entire content lifecycle in the cloud, realising the value of their content – at no additional cost. From the moment a file is created to when it’s shared, edited, published, approved, signed, classified, and retained, the entire content lifecycle can now happen in the Box Content Cloud.»

The ability to sign off documents in the cloud has come from Box’s $55 million acquisition of Dutch startup SignRequest, which was only announced in February of this year. The takeover was seen as a way for Box to muscle in on Dropbox’s territory, with Box Sign touted as the first use case at the time of the deal.

The cloud service has reportedly come under some investor pressure for middling stock performance during the pandemic and there were even suggestions that the company’s leadership were considering a sale and had held talks with potential buyers.

Box was thought to be well placed to grow during the pandemic and, while it has benefited from the shift to working from home over the last 12 months, its growth has been far lower than rival cloud businesses.

Amazon is aiming to re-energise its Alexa voice platform with the release of a trove of new developer tools, announced at its Alexa Live conference on Wednesday.

The company hopes the new tools will help create more variety on the platform and encourage Alexa device owners to discover and engage with more Alexa apps and services, referred to as ‘skills’.

​

However, the update has come after a significant drop in new skills being developed over the last three years. As of October 2020, total Alexa skills in the UK were 37,000, and 77,000 in the US, according to research from Voicebot.ai.

The findings suggest that in 2019, the rate of new Alexa skills introduced per day in the US was 58% lower than in 2018, with a further decline of 38% in 2020. The rate of new skills per day in the UK was 66% lower in the first three quarters of 2020 compared to the full year 2019.

Part of the problem is that finding new skills is hampered by its voice-only interface – with users being unable to easily see what’s available at a glance. Amazon has attempted to fix this by launching Alexa-enabled devices with smart screens, but with the launch of new tools that help developers better surface their skills to users, the firm clearly feels more could be done.

This includes a new feature that will see Alexa respond to common requests, such as «Alexa, tell me a story» or «Alexa, let’s play a game», with personalised skill suggestions based on customer use. And a new «contextual discovery» mechanism will allow customers to use natural language and phrases to accomplish tasks across skills.

For users with screen-based devices, the new tools include widgets and Featured Skill Cards for developers to promote their news apps – essentially as a way to make Alexa skills discoverable like apps on a mobile phone. 

Amazon is also improving the ways in which developers can monetise their applications with support for ‘Paid Skills’, and in-skill purchases.

​

Microsoft has announced the acquisition CloudKnox, a security startup that helps businesses manage their cloud access credentials.

The terms of the deal have not been disclosed but it is another addition to Microsoft’s burgeoning security portfolio.

CloudKnox, which was founded in California in 2015, uses automated software to spot and remove cases of unused permissions and virtual identities. It can also be used to show alerts for unusual activity or attempts to use in-active or compromised employee credentials. The firm’s software is already compatible with Microsoft’s Azure, as well as Google Cloud and AWS.

According to Microsoft’s corporate vice president, Joy Chik, recent high-profile breaches have demonstrated just how quickly bad actors can infiltrate systems by exploiting «misappropriated privileged credentials», a problem that has been exacerbated by a surge in demand for remote access over the past year.

«While organisations are reaping the benefits of cloud adoption, they still struggle to assess, prevent, enforce and govern privileged access across hybrid and multi-cloud environments,» Chik said in a blog post. «Even if they piece multiple siloed systems together, they still get an incomplete view of privileged access.

«Traditional Privileged Access Management and Identity Governance and Administration solutions are well suited for on-premises environments, however they fall short of providing the necessary end-to-end visibility for multi-cloud entitlements and permissions.»

The acquisition also highlights Microsoft’s current focus on securing its cloud services. Last week, the firm announced the takeover of RiskIQ, a startup that provides customers with cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) protection to detect phishing attacks, fraud attempts, and malware infections. Again, however, the terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The tech giant’s own security services have generated over $10 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, which is a 40% increase year-on-year, and one of its fastest-growing business segments.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is launching a risk assessment toolkit for businesses so they can check if their use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems breaches data protection laws.

The AI and Data Protection Risk Assessment Toolkit, available in beta, draws upon the regulator’s previously published guidance on AI, as well as other publications provided by the Alan Turing Institute. 

The toolkit contains risk statements that organisations can use while processing personal data to understand the implications this can have for the rights of individuals. It will also provide suggestions for best practices that companies can put in place to manage and mitigate risks and ensure they’re complying with data protection laws. 

It’s based on an auditing framework, according to the ICO, which was developed by its internal assurance and investigation teams following a call for help from industry leaders back in 2019. 

The framework provides a clear methodology to audit AI applications and ensures they process personal data in compliance with the law. The ICO said that if an organisation is using AI to process personal data, then by using its toolkit, it can have high assurance that it is complying with data protection legislation.

«We are presenting this toolkit as a beta version and it follows on from the successful launch of the alpha version in March 2021,» said Alister Pearson, the ICO’s Senior Policy Officer for Technology and Innovation Service. «We are grateful for the feedback we received on the alpha version. We are now looking to start the next stage of the development of this toolkit.

«We will continue to engage with stakeholders to help us achieve our goal of producing a product that delivers real-world value for people working in the AI space. We plan to release the final version of the toolkit in December 2021.»

The ICO has urged anyone interested in testing the toolkit on a live AI application to get in contact with the regulator via email (AI@ico.org.uk).

IBM beat analyst expectations after reporting that revenues increased by 3% year-on-year revenue growth in the second quarter of 2021 to $18.7 billion, its fastest increase for three years.

The tech giant also reiterated that its revenues will continue to grow across the full year.   

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna attributed the increase to «strong performance» in the company’s Global Business Services and software segments, but its revenues for cloud services and Red Hat also saw significant increases. 

«At the same time, we continued to help clients infuse our AI-based technology offerings into their core business workflows,» said Krishna. «We are pleased with our progress and we remain on track to deliver full-year revenue growth and meet our cash flow objective.»

The Cloud and Cognitive Software unit, which includes Red Hat, brought in $6.1 billion in revenue, a 6% increase compared to 2020, while revenues from IBM’s Global Business Services increased by 12%. System revenues, which includes hardware, contributed $1.71 billion, which was a 7% decline year-on-year.

The company is preparing to split its business in two with an infrastructure-focused unit called Kyndryl launching later in the year. This will include IBM’s Global Technology Services unit, which includes as outsourcing and support which brought in $6.34 billion in the second quarter.

«While our performance with existing clients remains strong, as we would expect, the sales cycles for new logo clients is elongating as they await further information related to Kyndryl,» said Jim Kavanaugh, IBM’s finance chief.

The second quarter also saw IBM spend $1.75 billion spent on acquisitions, the most in a single quarter since it splashed $34 billion on Red Hat in Q3 of 2019. It is currently working on a deal for process-mining software company myInvenio, application management firm Turbonomic and a Salesforce consulting spin-off called Waeg. 

This was in addition to the unveiling of its «breakthrough» 2-nanometer chip technology, which IBM claims will vastly improve energy efficiency and performance of various kinds of devices.

Zoom has announced that it is spending $14.7 billion to acquire a company called Five9, which provides cloud contact centre software.

The all-stock transaction is the first billion-dollar takeover for Zoom and the second-biggest tech deal of the year, following Microsoft’s $19.7 billion acquisition of Nuance Communications. 

Five9, much like Zoom, is another pandemic success story. The firm has seen rapid growth since early-2020 as demand increased for call centre technology that allowed people to do their jobs from home. The company’s business model is known as a ‘contact centre as a service’, or ‘CCaaS’, with the firm considered a pioneer in the field. It offers a «comprehensive» suite of easy-to-use applications that allow management and optimisation of customer interactions across different channels.

Zoom will combine the service with its communications platform and offer it as a way for businesses to connect with their customers as an engagement platform of the future. The video conferencing giant hopes the acquisition will enhance its presence with enterprise customers and allow it to accelerate its long-term growth by entering the contact centre market, which is thought to be worth around $24 billion. 

«We are continuously looking for ways to enhance our platform, and the addition of Five9 is a natural fit that will deliver even more happiness and value to our customers,» said Zoom CEO, Eric S. Yuan. «Zoom is built on a core belief that robust and reliable communications technology enables interactions that build greater empathy and trust, and we believe that holds particularly true for customer engagement. 

«Enterprises communicate with their customers primarily through the contact centre, and we believe this acquisition creates a leading customer engagement platform that will help redefine how companies of all sizes connect with their customers. We are thrilled to join forces with the Five9 team, and I look forward to welcoming them to the Zoom family.»

The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2022, the two firms said.