Coined by renowned cyberpunk author Neal Stephenson in his seminal 1992 novel Snow Crash, avatars interact with each other in a shared space he dubbed the metaverse. The 2018 film Ready Player One articulated, too, for many, the realisation of what the metaverse will become once we’re equipped with the technology to deliver these immersive experiences.

Virtual environments have existed since the inception of the web; forums and chat rooms are a form of virtual meeting place, for example. The early experiments of Jaron Lanier with virtual reality (VR) pushed the concept of the metaverse into a three-dimensional space, while Second Life defined how a three-dimensional virtual meeting space could work. Today, games such as Minecraft and Roblox are the latest iterations of the metaverse.

Recent incarnations of the metaverse manifest in popular games like Minecraft

Enter Facebook and its ambitions to create what founder Mark Zuckerberg calls “the successor to the mobile internet”. In this space, “we’ll be able to feel present – like we’re right there with people no matter how far apart we actually are”. Using the company’s Oculus VR headsets, combined with advanced augmented reality (AR), a Ready Player One-like environment is promised. Not to be outdone, other companies have also detailed similar plans, most notably Microsoft with ambitions to adapt Teams to offer a more metaverse-like experience, in the form of Mesh. Despite the hype, are these new spaces actually primed for businesses to reach new heights?

Always online

“Welcome to Mesh for Teams,” announced Microsoft technical fellow Alex Kipman in November, who insisted this vision of mixed reality, 12 years in the making, is something customers are clamouring for. Accenture, indeed, has recently created a digital twin of its headquarters using Mesh with the capacity to reside 10,000 employees within this virtual space.

The idea is to use existing devices to connect individuals in prebuilt spaces represented by their avatars. They hope this new space isn’t just Microsoft Office on virtual steroids, but a new way of not just meeting but collaborating. For some, though, Facebook’s reimagining of the metaverse is nothing short of a disaster. Roger McNamee, an early Facebook investor, for example, told BBC News: “It’s a bad idea and the fact we are all sitting and looking at this like it’s normal should be alarming everyone. Facebook should not be allowed to create a dystopian metaverse,” he added. 

Accenture recently used Mesh to build a digital twin of its HQ, with a capacity for 10,000 participants

VR is in every business’ future, though, according to CEO of Mesmerise, Andrew Hawke. “What we’ve seen Zuckerberg do with the metaverse is show that one of the most prominent tech companies in history just bet the farm on VR,” he tells IT Pro. “I can’t think of a more bullish signal that business will be conducted in VR than that. Hearing Zuckerberg’s words, I don’t believe it will be long before large businesses have teams dedicated to exploiting this medium.”

Zuckerberg’s dream still needs technologies to catch up with the hype, however, Niklas Bakos, chief strategy officer and founder of Adverty, points out. “Mostly, the hype cycle around the metaverse involves products and infrastructure that don’t quite exist yet,” he cautions. “To render genuinely compelling environments, we need quantum computing, mature blockchain technology, stable cryptocurrencies and protocols around non-fungible Tokens (NFTs). The goggles, headsets, haptic interfaces, and digital skins we will presumably use haven’t been made yet. Red Dead Redemption 2 was eight years in development. Building an entire, decentralised virtual world, one with its own economic systems, takes time.” 

Open for business 

Are we going to see a land grab as the metaverse takes shape? Nextech AR, for example, acquired ARWAY, a firm specialising in AR and AI mapping applications, in August, priming it to exploit the metaverse. Businesses reluctant to pursue strategies involving any migration to a shared virtual space could be left behind, though, with more agile companies beating them to the punch on exploring this potentially highly lucrative space. Startups may also challenge the incumbents across various sectors with metaverse-focused services.

“The metaverse is not a new concept, frankly, but with Facebook attempting to put its stamp on it, there will be a lot of business sectors eager to take advantage of Meta’s offering,” explains Rob Nash, founder and MD at the intelligent self-service agency, 4 Roads. “Nike has already appointed a ‘head of metaverse.’ This isn’t surprising, given the fashion industries previous forays into AR-enabled experiences. Consumer industries like travel and banking – even health – are also obvious ones to benefit. In the B2B sector, too, it has the potential to revolutionise training and remote working practises.”

For businesses, the metaverse could become a highly lucrative space for digital products. For example, within virtual gaming, the purchase of virtual tools and other artefacts is commonplace. The metaverse could, therefore, become a commercial marketplace with much further reach. A business, for example, could create a store in the metaverse and sell unique virtual items to collectors. Gucci has already experimented with this on Roblox. Indeed members of Gen Z, says vice president for brand partnerships at Roblox, sometimes see virtual products as more valuable than physical ones. The traceability of virtual goods makes counterfeiting difficult, too, unlike real-world designer goods. 

Immersive futures

How the metaverse actually manifests for businesses and their customers remains to be seen. Parodies such as Icelandverse, an “entirely immersive open-world experience” and continued advances in AR, will temper the enthusiasm for a fully immersive space that virtualises the web’s capabilities.

The business opportunities could be vast, however, Garry Williams, business director, UNIT9, tells IT Pro. “The biggest overarching benefit is that owning a virtual brand world allows all their activities to be brought together in one place. Gone are the days of separate apps for each new campaign, temporary microsites for limited edition products, and online events for different time zones,” he explains. “With a virtual brand world, all of this can live together in one easily accessible location for audiences around the world to tap into and enjoy around the clock.”

Nash also points out that we haven’t even considered the security and privacy implications: “When it comes to the metaverse more generally, there are numerous challenges around regulation, privacy, sovereign boundaries and more to consider. Regarding Mark Zuckerberg’s vision – I’d urge caution.

In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes, whose teachings inspired the post-WW2 recovery, made a prediction. In his essay, titled Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, he claimed there was a new disease at the time, called technological unemployment. He defined this as unemployment caused by humanity’s discovery of the means of economising the use of labour, outrunning the pace at which we can find uses for labour. 

Keynes called this a temporary phase of maladjustment, as, in the long run, it meant that mankind was solving its “economic problem”. In one hundred years, he added, the standard of life in progressive countries would be four-to-eight times as high as it was at the time.

Keynes imagined the biggest problem, in the future, would be how people used their freedom from economic anxieties, arguing we would perhaps need to do some kind of work simply to remain content. “Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while,” he wrote. “For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam [evil or reckless side of human nature] in most of us!” 

The work of Keynes has inspired calls for a shorter working week

So, whatever happened to this dream? While UK labour productivity per worker has nearly tripled between 1959 and 2008 (before falling following the financial crash), the average working week has remained constant, with employees working roughly 37 hours per week since 1992. Much has been made, meanwhile, of stagnant wages in the last few decades, with pay barely keeping pace with inflation. . 

Against this backdrop, new technologies have emerged. When businesses first adopted computers, workers had to quickly learn how to type and navigate a mysterious operating system, otherwise they would be at risk of falling behind. Now, though, we’re expected to learn how to use collaboration platforms at the drop of a hat while contending with fears that AI-powered software could be tracking our every click to placate our paranoid managers.

Here’s a simple proposition: let’s work a three-day week beginning next year. The rise of technology has boosted workers’ productivity and allowed businesses to grow at extraordinary rates, while funnelling profits into the pockets of an ever-growing number of people. Taking this into account, why shouldn’t workers spend less time at their desks, and more time actually enjoying their lives?

Just imagine a world without the pandemic, for instance. Every single one of who now enjoys the benefits of remote or hybrid working would still be shacked to our desks at company offices five days a week. That’s right, we would still be commuting for hours every day, with the reward of one day working from home, as a treat, depending on how kind your business felt. And – let me be clear – we would certainly have the technology to be able to implement remote working, but wouldn’t do so. Who knows how long it would have been, if ever, before we would formally adopt hybrid working patterns? Let’s put to one side the clear business benefits such arrangements bring.

Even now, in the last two years, we’ve seen the government ushering us back into the office as fast as possible. It may have something to do with appeasing property developers instead of employee wellbeing, but, nevertheless, it’s taking us backwards when so many of us know, and have demonstrated, we can do our jobs perfectly well from home.

This systemic change of permanently reducing our working hours isn’t likely to come as a result of a future pandemic. This needs to be driven by workers, and businesses. Why not, therefore, kickstart this in the IT sector, and show the world that we can lead the way and spearhead the future of work? All the available evidence, too, suggests reducing working hours doesn’t lead to productivity losses. This is why, as with any kind of negotiation, we should be asking to work for three days a week, as, in the end, it’ll mean we’re likely to be offered four – which is certainly better than the status quo.

LastPass has announced a new integration with Google Workspace in a bid to provide a seamless login process for business users.

Employers can now automatically provide employees with a LastPass account through Google’s directory integration, allowing them to store all their passwords for seamless logins without compromising on security.

The integration allows users to access LastPass using their corporate Google Workspace credentials without any additional passwords, minimising password reset frustrations and time spent on logging into accounts.

The Google active directory also allows for employers to easily add and remove users, simplifying management and ensuring the security of the organisation.

Dan DeMichele, VP of Product Management at LogMeIn, said: “Between this new integration with Google Workspace, and the combination of zero-knowledge infrastructure and multi-key approach, this security model that is unique to LastPass offers a level of security uncommon with such a simple login experience.” 

According to DeMichele, “this ensures the keys used to unlock a user’s vault only reunite locally on the end user’s device”.

“LastPass is the leading password manager on the market, providing this level of security authentication for federated login integrations with identity providers,” he added.

The integration with Google Workspace comes months after LogMeIn, LastPass’ parent company, announced that users on the service’s free tier would no longer have unlimited access to their stored passwords on both desktop and mobile devices. Since 16 March 2021, users are only able to view and manage passwords on either desktop or mobile, being forced to choose which platform they want to use to access their password vaults and being locked out of the other. 

LastPass’s Premium and Family subscriptions start at £2.60 and £3.40 per month, respectively, and include additional features such as expanded multifactor authentication support, dark web monitoring and improved password sharing. 

LastPass’s business offerings start with Teams, priced at £40.80 per user, per year, and intended for SMEs or workgroups with up to 50 users, although this is a recommendation rather than a hard limit. This provides each user with an industry-standard password storage vault with optional two-factor authentication, shared folders for your team, and a dashboard to administrate everything.

The next tier up, Enterprise, has no recommended ceiling on user numbers and adds Single Sign-On support, personal customer support, API and app integrations and customisable security policies. 

Content providers hoping to compete in today’s ferocious online media market need a server infrastructure that can handle enormous volumes of data on an hourly basis, while also being able to scale as demand grows.

To truly understand what online media companies are up against, let’s take Twitch as an example. The live streaming platform, popular among gamers and vloggers, has generated around 1,400 billion minutes of video content in 2021*, serving around 2.76 million average concurrent users. Given an average 720p HD video will use up around 900 megabytes per hour on a server, we can say that Twitch’s servers handled roughly 46.5 million gigabytes every day throughout the year.

Of course, any content provider hoping to overtake a platform like Twitch needs to match, and even exceed the company’s server capabilities. However, the market is now full of media giants all dealing with similar volumes of data each day, and just staying relevant can be a challenge. Even the smallest degradation in performance can, in the minds of customers, render your platform inferior to rival services.

Bare metal servers are by far the most efficient and most reliable solution for dealing with this extraordinary demand, whether on their own or as a node in a wider infrastructure strategy. The single tenancy approach means you never have to worry about fluctuations in bandwidth, even when your demand scales.

What are bare metal servers?

A bare metal server is a highly customisable physical server that is utilised by a single tenant, i.e. only one customer at a time.

The ‘bare metal’ moniker refers to the idea that the customer benefits from direct access to the hardware, including the storage and memory, without having to deal with pre-installed operating systems or hypervisors. The fact that bare metal servers operate with only one tenant means customers get sole ownership of the server’s resources, avoiding the problem of performance fluctuations during high demand from other users.

You may be thinking that bare metal servers sound an awful lot like dedicated servers, and you’d be right. The two share a number of similarities, including sole tenancy and complete access to hardware. However, bare metal might be best thought of as the next generation of server deployment, and is usually paired with the latest in processor, storage, and memory technology.

Another subtle deviation from dedicated servers is that bare metal is typically far more flexible when it comes to payment options. Hosting companies will usually provide dedicated servers on yearly, or monthly contracts – with bare metal servers it’s a case of monthly or hourly, although cost will vary depending on the package you take. This makes bare metal incredibly useful for those customers that deal with fluctuations in demand, whether that’s a retail site offering Black Friday sales, or a box office app selling tickets for a popular show.

When it comes to deployment, bare metal servers can shine as either a sole hosting option, or when placed in a supporting role. A company may utilise multiple types of hosting, with bare metal acting as a highly configurable overflow, or rely solely on bare metal. Given that bare metal supports multiple types of operating systems, including hypervisors, that usually comes with a bunch of tools to help link with other parts of a network, and that it’s simple to provision with automated deployment, it’s no surprise that it’s becoming the go-to option for myriad situations.

G-Core Labs is one such provider that’s leading the way when it comes to simplified provisioning. Its bare metal as a service platform is built around the principle of automation, allowing customers to provision equipment, configure hardware and spin up new dedicated servers all through APIs. Simply put, this offers scaling potential that’s difficult to challenge.

Why is bare metal so useful to online media platforms?

Protecting one of the most-targeted industries

Security is one of the most challenging aspects of operating a business online, and no matter what industry you operate in, or the size of your company, you’re almost guaranteed to experience a cyber attack in one form or another.

Those in the media industry need to be on higher alert than most businesses, with IBM ranking it the 8th most-targeted industry in 2020**.

Bare metal is one of the most secure forms of server infrastructure available. Given that bare metal operates as a single-tenant environment, resources are allocated to, and controlled by, one customer, isolating them from any system vulnerabilities that may otherwise be present through ‘neighbouring’ users. That control also allows customers to pick and choose what operating systems and tools are deployed, adding and removing software as vulnerabilities are discovered.

Service providers will also offer additional protections on top of the secure foundations of bare metal. Enhanced protections against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks is one of a number of safeguards offered by G-Core Labs, which automatically redirects any suspicious traffic to a threat mitigation system (TMS). This TMS is capable of detecting DDoS attacks while also filtering legitimate traffic to the server, based on policies configured by the customer, meaning the server can stay up and running while the attack is being mitigated.

Server performance

The biggest advantage of any kind of dedicated server is that they can handle the sort of resource-intensive tasks that would otherwise be difficult to support using virtual machines shared with other users. Bare metal, as you might imagine, is considered the best option in this regard.

In fact, side by side comparisons show that performance can be as much as 17% lower on virtual machines compared to bare metal, according to a benchmark report released in January in the Applied Sciences journal†.

The main reason for this is that bare metal offers pure hardware, with none of the software that comes preinstalled on virtual machines. It’s up to the user what is installed and how it’s all configured, meaning you can create a bespoke system that’s suited perfectly to your needs as a business, free of any unnecessary layers that may otherwise be a drain on resources. You get precisely what you pay for and you know you’ll get every last drop of performance from the hardware configuration you choose.

What hardware is available is dependent on the service provider, however. G-Core Labs is one such provider that has started integrating high-performance hardware to support its customers, including NVM disks and Intel Xeon Scalable Ice Lake processors.

Opportunities to cut costs

Keeping control of resources is a challenge for most businesses, and this is especially true for those running online media platforms requiring 100% uptime and 24/7 availability. Dedicated servers provide a sure-fire way to optimise costs, although bare metal servers only improve your options further.

Bare metal gives you the opportunity to create a bespoke server that fits your needs exactly and, most importantly, you only pay for what you need. You can then monitor the performance of your platform and expand or shrink your server footprint as and when you require. Simply put, you will never feel like you’re paying more than you need at any given time. This degree of flexibility is incredibly important for media companies that will naturally experience fluctuations in daily traffic, and enormous spikes in activity around the release of popular content.

Depending on the packages offered by the service provider, it’s also possible to configure traffic and bandwidth on top of raw server performance. Changing to a new tariff can usually be done without additional cost to the customer. 

For example, G-Core Labs’ dedicated server tariff allows customers to customise their deployments, including the option to  install RAID or change its type, increase storage volumes and the number of deployed disks, increase memory (RAM) size, opt for solid disk drives (SSDs) or hard drives (HDDs) based on need, and install 10 Gbits/sec network cards. This level of customisation means you never have to pay for something you don’t need.

Even when compared to traditional dedicated servers, the benefits of bare metal are clear. With price plans on a per-hourly basis, it’s a level of flexibility and predictability that’s difficult to replicate.

Learn more about G-Core Labs’ services

*https://twitchtracker.com/statistics

**https://securityintelligence.com/posts/threat-actors-targeted-industries-2020-finance-manufacturing-energy/

†https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348701677_Benchmarking_and_Performance_Evaluations_on_Various_Configurations_of_Virtual_Machine_and_Containers_for_Cloud-Based_Scientific_Workloads

Bad news can’t be delivered over Zoom; that appears to be the feeling behind a thousand angry tweets directed at Vishal Garg, the CEO of US mortgage startup Better.com, after a video showing him sacking 900 employees in one savage swoop went viral.

“Thank you for joining,” Garg begins. “Erm… I come to you with not great news. If you are on this call, you are part of the unlucky group being laid off. Your employment here is being terminated, effective immediately.”

By his own testimony, this was Garg’s decision, and he wanted those 900 poor souls to hear it straight from the source. As mass sackings go, it’s fairly heartfelt; he let everyone know this wasn’t his first Zoom cull and he even admitted to crying after the previous one. 

Now, those 900 people reportedly make up just 9% of Better.com’s workforce, which is said to be an organisation worth around $7 billion (roughly £5.3 billion). Could it have kept them on till after Christmas, at least? You betcha. But this is, sadly, very common at larger organisations due to ‘market changes’ or whatever corporate jargon suits. 

Garg has received flak for sacking 900 workers over Zoom, but is the alternative really any better?

Last year, IBM announced 10,000 job cuts across Europe as part of the separation of its cloud and infrastructure businesses. Its HR team probably dealt with it a bit more traditionally, likely sending out formal emails or letters, but, it’s also worth noting that no video conferencing service accommodates 10,000 participants. 

Unfortunately, we are creatures of convenience; you can get lattes delivered by underpaid gig economy workers on bikes, so you don’t have to endure a five-minute walk to the coffee shop. It doesn’t seem extra baristas are hired for this, either, they just have to increase their output, essentially. 

This type of convenience is also apparent in the government’s use of WhatsApp for official business, while simultaneously calling for WhatsApp to compromise the integrity of the end-to-end encryption that makes the service what it is. It’s tempting to think the worst; that the Tories are a shady bunch using destructible messages to conveniently hide any evidence of alleged misgivings. 

This is, however, also a government with a terrible track record on technology, and one that probably doesn’t fully understand WhatsApp. That ministers, too, supposedly began using WhatsApp messaging to avoid their communications being caught out by the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (mistakenly, it turns out) only adds to the confusion.

The problem here is that the convenience of technology is too often confused for insidiousness, and, to be fair, it’s quite tempting to judge Garg harshly because people’s livelihoods are on the line – at Christmas time, no less.

The UK’s largest property market website, Rightmove, has announced that it is migrating a number of its systems to Google Cloud.

The move will see Rightmove’s more than 1,000 containers being managed by Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), as well as the creation of a more centralised alternative to its BigQuery data warehouse.

Rightmove’s head of technology operations Andrew Tate said that one of the main reasons why the property website selected Google Cloud as a partner was because of the tech giant’s commitment to run solely on carbon-free energy by 2030.

The goal, which was first announced by CEO Sundar Pichai in September 2020, aligns with Rightmove’s “own commitments to reduce (…) carbon emissions, and will ensure that our platform is consuming the minimum amount of power that is needed to support the maximum number of users each minute of the day”, said Tate.

Google Cloud will also assist Rightmove in simplifying its technology platform, while also “building and delivering new products even more quickly”, which was described as a “key focus area” by Tate.

“We are continuously striving to provide a better experience for consumers on the Rightmove website and better products for our customers. We release over 2,000 updates a year to our applications, so a key focus area for us is reducing time to production and, in turn, time to market,” he added.

By using GKE, Rightmove will be able to streamline the delivery of new services, automate upgrades, as well as scale in line with traffic peaks – which, in the UK, is at 8:48 pm on Wednesdays. 

The pandemic has had a significant impact on the UK’s property market, with many city-dwellers choosing to relocate to more rural areas of the country as offices closed and remote working became the norm. This had resulted in an uptick of traffic to property websites, with Rightmove alone recording more than 100 of its busiest ever days for visits in the last 12 months.

Commenting on the news, Google Cloud UKI director Adrian Poole described Rightmove as “no stranger to innovation” that “has already developed a smart platform that is the go-to for property”. 

“Having recognised the need to take its platform to the next level to stay agile and continue innovating, it is now going to be able to iterate and accelerate time to production. We’re delighted to support Rightmove in their mission to make home moving easier,” he added.

Over half of UK workers (51%) who currently have the choice to mix remote and office working would consider quitting their job if this hybrid option was removed.

The pandemic has changed hybrid working from “nice to have” to a “must-have”, according to new research from Microsoft and YouGov.

The findings are based on online surveys of 2,046 employees and 504 HR decision-makers (HRDMs) in the UK that was carried out between 7 and 15 October 2021. 59% of HRDMs surveyed agree hybrid working has had a positive effect on the mental wellbeing of their workforce too.

Microsoft pointed to data from the Office for National Statistics which revealed resignations and job-to-job moves in the UK are at their highest level in two decades, which is what some experts are calling “the great resignation”.

Onboarding at a new business during the pandemic has been challenging, with 36% of UK workers who started a new job since the start of the pandemic experiencing their entire onboarding process without ever setting foot in the workplace.

These workers have struggled with forming working relationships (42%), not having a manager or team in the room to ask for information or guidance (33%), learning to use new software and applications (24%), earning the confidence of colleagues (23%), and soaking up company culture (21%).

The challenges of remote onboarding has also been recognised by HRDMs, with 36% feeling that remote onboarding makes it hard to provide effective training for starters and 35% voiced concerns about ensuring employees have easy access to the information they need. 28% were also worried about upholding their organisation’s culture and reputation.

Despite this, HRDMS and employees believe the long-term benefits of hybrid working outweigh these potential problems. The report found that the most pressing concerns identified by HRDMs in not having a hybrid working model were an inability to retain new talent (38%), a negative impact on productivity (25%), a negative impact on wellbeing (24%), employee burnout (23%), and keeping pace with competitors (23%).

37% of HRDMS who have onboarded new staff remotely said that although the process was challenging, it is resolvable with the right technology solutions.

“The pandemic has proven that organisations can trust their people to be productive wherever they are,” said Nick Hedderman, director of Modern Work Business Group at Microsoft UK.

“They now have an opportunity to reshape work around individual roles, preferences and even personal lives. This is achievable through tech-enabled hybrid working models, which supports the creation of a rich digital culture to benefit everyone, helping to attract and retain top talent.”

This comes after UK leaders are urging people to work from home following the rise of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Nicola Sturgeon is asking for people in Scotland to work from home until the middle of January, while Boris Johnson asked people to work from home where possible.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched its second Top Secret region: AWS Top Secret-West. 

The new region, licensed to operate workloads classified as Top Secret under US security classification, adds several availability zones that are geographically separate from AWS Top Secret-East.

Together, the two Top Secret regions enable the defence, intelligence, and national security communities of the US to deploy multi-region architectures that assure maximum availability and resilience to national security missions.

Through availability zones, customers can run their applications and databases at ultra-low latency much more reliably than with a single data centre. AWS also supports replicating data synchronously to a different Availability Zone within the same Region, or asynchronously to a different Region.

Commenting on security, AWS said its latest Top Secret region adheres to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Intelligence Community Directive (ICD 503), and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-53 Revision 4.

The firm is the first commercial cloud provider accredited to handle government workloads across the full spectrum of US government data, including Unclassified, Sensitive, Secret, and Top Secret.

“In 2011, we launched AWS GovCloud (US-West), making AWS the first cloud provider to build cloud infrastructure designed to meet US government security and compliance needs,” said AWS in a blog post.

“In 2014, we launched our first Top Secret region, AWS Top Secret-East, which was the first air-gapped commercial cloud accredited to support classified workloads. In 2017, we launched the AWS Secret Region.

“Today, with the launch of AWS Top Secret-West, we continue our support for mission workloads that span the full range of US government classifications.”

Nicola Sturgeon has asked for people in Scotland to work from home until the middle of January to prevent the “potentially rapid rise” of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. 

A similar announcement is expected to be made by the UK’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, with wide reports of “Plan B” restrictions to be implemented on Thursday, according to Reuters.  

Cases of the Omicron variant have increased in Scotland, shooting up from 28 to 99 in a matter of days, according to the leader of the Scottish National Party. There is also a belief that around 4% of COVID-19 cases north of the border are likely to be the new strain of the virus. 

“If you had staff working from home at the start of the pandemic, please now do so again,” said Sturgeon according to the Independent. “We’re asking you to do this from now until the middle of January when we will review this advice.”

“I know how difficult this is, but I cannot stress enough how much difference we think this could make in helping step transmission and avoiding the need for even more onerous measures.”

The UK government had previously ruled out working from home, suggesting it wasn’t necessary, but the greater transmissibility of Omicron might have forced another U-turn. Sage professor Neil Ferguson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the new variant appears to be doubling every two to three days.

“It’s likely to overtake Delta before Christmas at this rate, precisely when is hard to say,” Ferguson said. “We’ll start seeing an impact on overall case numbers – it’s still probably only 2%, 3% of all cases so it’s kind of swamped, but within a week or two we’ll start seeing overall case numbers accelerate quite markedly as well.”

The decision to go back to remote working comes as the government faces intense scrutiny over a Christmas party held at Number 10 during last year’s lockdown. Some Tory MPs are reportedly concerned that the public may be unwilling to follow new restrictions after a video emerged of Downing Street aides laughing about a social gathering in the weeks leading up to Christmas. 

Microsoft has expanded its Secured-core PC initiative to its server products in a bid to combat ransomware attacks on infrastructure.

Secured-core will now be expanded to reach Windows Server, Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, and Azure-certified IoT devices.

Businesses can search for Secured-core servers in the Azure Stack HCI and Windows Server online catalogues. There are currently four all-HPE products that run Azure Stack HCI and 42 options from a variety of vendors that meet the Windows Server spec.

All servers come “fully equipped with industry-leading security mitigations built into the hardware, firmware, and the operating system to help thwart some of the most advanced attack vectors,” Microsoft said.

Secured-core servers are built around three distinct security pillars:

1. To protect the server infrastructure with a hardware-based root of trust
2. To defend sensitive workloads against firmware-level attacks
3. To prevent access and the execution of unverified code on the systems

“Partnering with leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and silicon vendors, Secured-core servers use industry-standard hardware-based root of trust coupled with security capabilities built into today’s modern central processing units (CPUs),” said Microsoft in a blog post. 

“Secured-core servers use the Trusted Platform Module 2.0 and Secure boot to ensure that only trusted components load in the boot path.”

It’s thought the new hardware will help tackle specific parts of ransomware attacks and help detect intrusions earlier, with the hope that attacks can be mitigated before any real damage is done.

Microsoft used a typical REvil ransomware kill chain as an example. REvil was one of the most prolific ransomware gangs of 2021 before it shuttered following a string of arrests of alleged REvil associates. 

Using the kill chain used by REvil on Kaseya earlier this year, Microsoft explained that certain features in Secured-core servers like Hypervisor-protected Code Integrity (HVCI) can block drivers that tamper with the kernel, like with Mimikatz, via a code integrity security policy.

By preventing credential theft, an early stage of the ransomware kill chain, Microsoft said Secured-core server can make it very difficult for attackers to move laterally around a potential victim’s network.

“Continuing to raise the security bar for critical infrastructure against attackers makes it easier for organisations to meet that higher bar, which is an important priority for both customers and Microsoft,” said Microsoft. 

“Successfully protecting systems requires a holistic approach that builds security from the chip to the cloud across hardware, firmware, and the operating system.”

Microsoft debuted the Secured-core initiative in 2019 on Windows PCs which saw computers ship with enhanced security measures at the hardware level. 

The machines were designed for business use, with the financial services and healthcare industries targeted specifically, as well as anyone working in a high-value-data role such as in government.