​Amazon has filed a lawsuit against former Amazon Web Services (AWS) VP of product marketing Brian Hall, alleging that his new role at Google Cloud fails to comply with the terms of his confidentiality agreement.

Hall signed the contract with Amazon in June 2018, but his lawyers argued that executives at the company, including former AWS VP of worldwide marketing Ariel Kelman, led him to believe the company would not enforce its non-compete provisions. 

According to court filings, Hall slams the clause as “overbroad, unreasonable, and unenforceable”, adding that his new role at Google Cloud “will not require him to use or disclose any Amazon confidential information”.

“To Hall, that was understandable: as drafted, the clause sweeps far more broadly than necessary to protect Amazon’s legitimate business interests,” the court filings state. 

“Kelman also told Hall that he had never seen Amazon attempt to enforce the clause against a marketing employee, even though several such employees had previously departed for similar positions at Amazon’s rivals. Hall accepted his position with Amazon in reliance on those representations.”

Amazon believes that Hall’s position at Google Cloud, one of AWS’ biggest rivals, could sabotage the confidentiality of Amazon’s competitive information.

The company is planning to enforce the non-compete provisions of Hall’s contract, banning him from working in cloud product marketing for Google, or any other AWS competitor, for 18 months.

According to Amazon, which filed the lawsuit on 18 May, Hall “helped develop and knows the entire confidential Amazon cloud product roadmap for 2020-21”.

“Virtually every day, Hall worked with Amazon’s most senior cloud executives to create and execute those plans. As a result, he was entrusted with an unusually broad view into Amazon’s cloud product plans; its priorities; and its competitive strategy”, the filing reads.

The case could set a precedent for the treatment of similar non-compete provisions which, until now, most often concerned employees in the engineering sector, and not marketing leaders.

The news of the lawsuit comes days after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk blasted Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, on Twitter, telling the company that “monopolies are wrong”

Dell Technologies has announced the launch of two new high-performance computing (HPC) solutions to help businesses run powerful artificial intelligence (AI) workloads in VMware environments and speed up digital transformation projects.

The new Dell EMC Ready Solutions are based on VMware Cloud Foundation and aim to help companies gain AI insights using the combination of Dell EMC systems and new features of VMware vSphere 7, including Bitfusion.

Tom Burns, senior VP of Integrated Products & Solutions at Dell Technologies, called AI a “game-changer” but added that the company’s customers are “lagging behind in adoption because they’re dealing with skills and infrastructure gaps”.

“We’re bringing together the power of Dell Technologies to help customers simplify the process of running AI workloads at scale in their familiar VMware environments,” he said.

The first Dell EMC Ready Solution is a GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) designed to free up accelerator access by creating virtual graphics processing unit (GPU) pools. The system uses the latest VMware Cloud Foundation with VMware vSphere 7 support for Kubernetes and containerised applications in order to run AI workloads anywhere. The containers facilitate bringing cloud-native applications into production with the ability to move workloads as needed.

The second solution, for Virtualized HPC (vHPC), assists and economises the use of VMware environments for demanding HPC and AI applications in fields such as computational chemistry, bioinformatics and computer-aided engineering.

According to a recent study conducted by Forrester Consulting, Dell EMC Ready Solutions for vHPC is capable of delivering up to 18 times faster AI model development. It also delivers up to 20% faster hardware configuration and integration than self-installation and will provide an estimated return on investment of up to 111%.

Arthur Lewis, president of Server & Infrastructure Systems at Dell Technologies, explained in a blog post that “the Dell EMC Ready Solutions for AI: GPU-as-a-Service were designed for those who are just starting their AI journey or who already run smaller AI operations”, while “the Dell EMC Ready Solutions for vHPC were designed for those who want to advance their AI journey by virtualizing their high-performance computing workloads easily using the latest version of vSphere”.

The Dell EMC Ready Solutions for AI: GPUaaS and Dell EMC Ready Solutions for vHPC are available globally now, while the factory installation of VMware vSphere with BitFusion will only become available worldwide on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers next month.

Zoom is planning to roll out stronger encryption for businesses and institutions that pay for its service.

Zoom’s security consultant Alex Stamos, who was poached by the company in early April, has confirmed the news but added that the plan was subject to change.

According to Reuters, Stamos has not yet decided whether stronger security measures could also potentially be rolled out for non-profit organisations or users in need of an extra layer of protection, such as political dissidents.

“At the same time that Zoom is trying to improve security, they are also significantly upgrading their trust and safety,” Stamos told The New York Times in an interview published yesterday.

“The CEO is looking at different arguments. The current plan is paid customers plus enterprise accounts where the company knows who they are.”

He added that providing full encryption for every meeting would leave Zoom’s trust and safety team unable to add itself as a participant in gatherings to tackle abuse in real-time.

Zoom hired former Facebook security chief Stamos following numerous security incidents which threatened the immense popularity of the video conferencing platform, such as ‘Zoom-bombing’, which led to numerous companies and institutions banning the use of the platform.

Zoom attracted millions of users and became the most popular video conferencing platform globally. With the majority of its audience using the free version of the platform, Zoom might be trying to increase the number of its paid users and regain the trust of businesses by promising a higher level of security for its paid subscription models.

However, a similar announcement from Facebook, which plans to implement end-to-end encryption across all of its messaging systems, has garnered criticism from its shareholders.

Zoom had been previously criticised for not using end-to-end encryption despite specifically stating that it does on its website. The company finally implemented the 256-bit AES-GCM encryption standard in late April.

​Google has announced the launch of a new default anti-notification spam system which will aim to protect Chrome users from abusive notifications.

The system, known as the ‘quieter notifications UI’, has been an opt-in feature since February but will be rolled out as a default setting in July.

In a post on the Chromium blog, Google explained that the update “will only affect new notification permission requests from abusive sites”. However, the company added that it is also considering rolling out “protections for users who have already accepted notification permissions from abusive sites”.

Explaining the reasoning behind the decision, the tech giant said that abusive notification prompts are among the most frequently reported user complaints when it comes to Chrome.

“A large percentage of notification requests and notifications come from a small number of abusive sites. Protecting users from these sites improves user safety & privacy on the web, and makes for a better browsing experience,” the blog post read.

“Only a small fraction of websites will be affected by this change but we expect the impact on notification volumes will be significant for some users.”

According to Google, these notifications are often used to mislead users, but also have the potential to “phish for private information or promote malware”.

Site owners that have their domain registered with Google’s Search Console will be able to check if their site has been blocked in July, using the Search Console dashboard in the new Abusive Notifications Report section.

Google’s decision might be able to significantly improve the experience of Chrome users who struggle to focus on work. It might also lead to fewer security incidents, including cases of phishing and malware.

The announcement comes days after Google released a major update for its browser, introducing revamped security and privacy controls. The arrival of Chrome 83 came two months after Google announced that it had cancelled development of version 82 in order to “maintain stability” during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Google has announced that it will cover working from home costs for 114,000 employees who will likely continue to do so for the rest of the year.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, confirmed in a message on the company’s blog that every Google employee will receive an allowance of $1,000 (around £811) to cover the costs of “necessary equipment and office furniture”.

A spokesperson for the company confirmed to IT Pro that the Pichai’s announcement also applies to UK employees.

Pichai also announced that Google will begin to reopen offices on 6 July, “assuming external conditions allow”.

Staff returning to these buildings will do so on a rotating basis, with employees set to go into the office “one day every couple of weeks” to ensure occupancy remains at around 10%. Pichai assured that offices will “have rigorous health and safety measures in place to ensure social distancing and sanitization guidelines are followed”.

Pichai also revealed that Google will increase the target office capacity to 30% in September if conditions permit. However, he added that “there are a limited number of Googlers whose roles are needed back in office this calendar year”.

“If this applies to you, your manager will let you know by June 10. For everyone else, returning to the office will be voluntary through the end of the year, and we encourage you to continue to work from home if you can,” he said, following through on the company’s promise to continue allowing employees to work from home for the rest of the year.

At the same time, Facebook also announced that it would encourage employees to continue working from home until the end of 2020.

Pichai’s announcement comes weeks after an internal document revealed that Google is struggling to provide laptops and other essential equipment for its remote workers and new employees. A memo from leadership at the tech giant informed employees that hardware such as laptops and phones were in “limited supply”.

​Nvidia has forecast its 2021 second-quarter revenue above analysts’ estimates, powered by a surge in demand for data centre components amid the mass shift to remote working.

The company expects its Q2 revenue to be $3.65bn (£3bn), “plus or minus 2 percent”. According to IBES from financial market data provider Refinitiv, analysts were estimating this to be around $3.29bn (£2.70bn), as reported by Reuters.

Nvidia’s Q2 outlook takes into account the company’s $6.9bn acquisition of high-performance networking firm Mellanox, which was finalised last month. Weeks later, it was reported that Nvidia is also set to acquire networking software firm and former Mellanox collaborator Cumulus Networks, in a bid to further enhance its data centre credentials.

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said that the company has “had an excellent quarter”.

“The acquisition of Mellanox expands our cloud and data centre opportunity. We raised the bar for AI computing with the launch and shipment of our Ampere GPU,” he said. “And our digital GTC conference attracted a record number of developers, highlighting the accelerating adoption of NVIDIA GPU computing.”

Huang also added that Nvidia’s data centre “achieved a record and its first $1 billion quarter”, an 80% increase from the year before.

“NVIDIA is well-positioned to advance the most powerful technology forces of our time – cloud computing and AI,” he said.

Last month, the company announced that it would join the digital fight against coronavirus by providing the COVID-19 High-Performance Computing Consortium with its expertise in AI and large-scale computing optimisations.

During the course of the coronavirus pandemic, the unprecedented demand for chips, especially the ones used in data centres, has proven to make or break a tech company’s revenues.

In March, HPE reported that its year-on-year revenues for the previous quarter have declined by 8% due to difficulties in its compute business, led primarily by the continued shortage of Intel processors.

​Facebook has announced the launch of a range of new features which aim to help businesses work more effectively from home during the coronavirus lockdown.

The new features include updates to Facebook’s enterprise connectivity platform Workplace as well as the new Oculus for Business unit, which was up until now in closed beta testing.

The tech giant also announced that their Facebook Work Groups, which help coworkers connect for more lightweight tasks, have reached 20 million active monthly users across 170,000 active Work Groups.

One of the newly-launched features is Workplace Rooms, which allows users to host both planned and spontaneous video calls from their desktop, mobile or the Workplace app on Facebook’s video calling device Portal. Just like the recently launched Messenger Rooms, Workplace Rooms allows users to hold video conferences with up to 50 people at a time, regardless of whether they have the Workplace app installed or not.

The launch might mark another attempt by the company to capitalise on the demand for video conferencing as well as take on video call giant Zoom.

Workplace VP Julien Codorniou emphasised that Workplace Rooms users will not face situations similar to ‘Zoom-bombing’. Speaking to IT Pro, he said that in order to share the screen with the rest of the video conference attendees, a user needs to “have the permission of the admin” of the call.

Codorniou also said that in the case of Zoom, “a B2C usage of the product was made with a B2B product”.

“Workplace has all the security and privacy certifications that you would expect from a system of SOC2, SOC3, ISO27, or 108, Privacy Shield, and all of that. Again, we are a B2B business even if Facebook is a B2C company,” he said.

Workplace has also experienced a surge in users during the lockdown: “Two years and a half after the launch of Workplace, we now have five million paid users (…) from three million six months ago,” said Codorniou.

Facebook also issued updates to Workplace’s Live Video feature, adding a live Q&A feature as well as live captions which will translate from six languages – English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and German – in real-time.

The tech giant also announced the general availability of Oculus for Business, an enterprise platform solution which aims to support large scale virtual reality (VR) deployments in corporate workplace environments. Oculus is currently used for employee-training purposes by Johnson&Johnson and for collaboration by Nestlé Purina.

Earlier this week, Facebook announced the launch of Shops, which allows users to browse and purchase products directly from a business’ Facebook or Instagram profile.

​Google has announced that it has secured a contract with the United States Department of Defense in order to aid in the detection and countering of cyber threats.

The Google Cloud Console is to manage the applications run by the Defense Innovation Unit across platforms such as Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure.

Although no specific sum has been disclosed, the contract is valued at “seven figures”, according to Axios.

“Multi-cloud is the future,” Google Cloud VP of public sector Mike Daniels told the publication. “This is now coming to the federal government as well.”

The “seven figure” deal is significantly less than the $10bn JEDI contract which involves almost 80% of the Department of Defence’s IT systems being migrated to the cloud that could last 10 years. The deal had garnered headlines for the past two years, with multiple cloud vendors, including AWS, Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft, battling to be chosen by the US government. 

In December 2018, Google announced that it would “not be bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn’t be assured that it would align with our AI Principles, and second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications”.

However, the announcement of the new deal with the US Department of Defense might signify that Google has since earned those certifications.

The news comes a month after an internal investigation by the Department of Defence (DoD) found that the October 2019 decision to award the JEDI contract to Microsoft was administered fairly, despite widespread reports of political interference.

The JEDI project was halted in February in order to determine whether Department of Defence improperly evaluated a Microsoft storage price scenario. Prior to that, AWS filed an appeal claiming that “political influence” led the Pentagon to award the $10bn contract to Microsoft. Although it was believed at the time that AWS was “likely to succeed” in the court challenge, that was not the case.

​A prolific form of Android spying malware was left undetected in the Google Play store for four years and is likely to have affected hundreds of thousands of users, according to the team of researchers who discovered it.

The team from cyber security firm Bitdefender discovered the “highly sophisticated Android espionage platform” earlier this year, although they believe it had been active since 2016, first targeting Android users in Australia and then users in the Americas and Europe, including the UK.

The malware has been further defined as a strain of spyware, which allowed its authors to snoop on any user that downloaded infected apps and access personal data, such as device preferences, the contents of their address books and messages, as well as device usage data and inactivity times.

Researchers have named the spyware ‘Mandrake’, as the criminals behind it were found to be using names of toxic plants for their development branches.

The team also found that Mandrake conducted phishing attacks on applications including Amazon, Gmail, PayPal, Google Chrome, as well as popular cryptocurrency wallet apps such as Lunoor, Coinbase and numerous banking apps from around the world. UK banks were not listed by Bitdefender among the victims.

The creators of the malware attempted to gain a strong presence on the app market and circumvent Google Play security by publishing their own malicious apps, such as OfficeScanner and CoinCast, and generated fake comments and downloads in order to ensure that their application made it to the trending section of Google Play.

The malware developers went to great lengths to ensure their apps came across as legitimate software, including by engaging with negative reviews and comments, and delivering fixes to the apps.

The marketing behind the malicious apps was so extensive that CoinCast not only had an official website, but also a strong social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube.

Hackers even tried to evoke trust among its potential victims by listing an address for its  OfficeScanner app on its Facebook page, namely the Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Building in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Alongside CoinCast and OfficeScanner, Bitdefender also listed Abfix, SnapTune Vid, Currency XE Converter, Horoskope, and Car News as other malicious applications developed by Mandrake operators.

The Bitdefender team estimates “the number of victims in the tens of thousands for the current wave, and probably hundreds of thousands throughout the full 4-year period”.

“We can also extrapolate that every victim of Mandrake has most probably been exposed to some form of data theft,” they said.

The discovery made by Bitdefender comes weeks after a group of cyber security experts from Cybereason Nocturnus found that a mobile-based trojan was capable of compromising Android’s accessibility features in order to steal user data from banking applications and read user’s SMS messages, allowing the malware to bypass two-factor authentication.

Twitter has told employees that they can choose to work from home forever if they wish as the coronavirus lockdown continues to shape the new normal in working culture.

The San Francisco-based company has also announced that they will not be reopening their offices before September, “with very few exceptions”. Even when offices do reopen, the staff will be able to choose whether they want to return to them.

In a blog post detailing the decision, Twitter’s People VP Jennifer Christie said that although Twitter “was one of the first companies to go to a work from home model in the face of COVID-19”, the company does “not anticipate being one of the first to return to offices”.

“Opening offices will be our decision, when and if our employees come back, will be theirs,” she said.

The decision was made after Twitter has found that their 4,600 employees can work from home in a successful manner. Nevertheless, Christie emphasised that staff who prefer working from the offices will be able to do so: “Our offices will be their warm and welcoming selves, with some additional precautions, when we feel it’s safe to return.”

The company also announced a ban on business travel before September, as well in-person company events for the rest of the year. Events scheduled for 2021 are to be assessed by the end of 2020.

Commenting on Twitter’s announcement, Saka Nuru, head of product marketing for Fintech Eco Systems and Payments at Intuit Quickbooks, said that “we will no doubt see more [companies] follow in Twitter’s footsteps in the months to come”.

“The fact that Twitter can commit to this promise, is an indication of how adept our technology solutions have been at facilitating remote working. Cloud-enabled Software-as-a-Service solutions as well as video conferencing service have evidently been a huge success when transitioning to a largely at-home environment, even for larger companies,” he said.

Twitter’s unprecedented announcement comes days after Facebook and Google confirmed that they will continue to allow employees to work from home for the rest of the year. Apple, on the other hand, is reportedly planning to allow some employees back into its global offices soon, including its Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, California. ​