Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the general availability of its new visual data preparation tool that lets users clean and normalise data without having to write code.

Built as part of its AWS Glue service, the new DataBrew tool aims to make visual data preparation more accessible for a greater number of users.

According to AWS, DataBrew facilitates data exploration and experimentation directly from AWS data lakes, data warehouses, and databases. Its users will be able to choose from over 250 built-in functions to combine, pivot, and transpose the data, with the tool also providing transformations that use advanced machine learning techniques such as natural language processing.

DataBrew is serverless and fully-managed, the claim being that users will never need to configure, provision, or manage any compute resources directly.

“AWS customers are using data for analytics and machine learning at an unprecedented pace”, commented Raju Gulabani, AWS vice president of Database and Analytics. “However, these customers regularly tell us that their teams spend too much time on the undifferentiated, repetitive, and mundane tasks associated with data preparation. Customers love the scalability and flexibility of code-based data preparation services like AWS Glue, but they could also benefit from allowing business users, data analysts, and data scientists to visually explore and experiment with data independently, without writing code.

“AWS Glue DataBrew features an easy-to-use visual interface that helps data analysts and data scientists of all technical levels understand, combine, clean, and transform data,” he added.

AWS Glue DataBrew is generally available starting today in Ireland and Frankfurt, Germany, as well as select parts of the United States, including Ohio and Oregon, and the Asia Pacific Region. AWS said that it will announce the availability in additional regions “soon” but has yet to confirm when the tool will arrive in the UK.

When it comes to pricing, AWS said that the DataBrew users will not be faced with any “upfront commitments or costs” to use the tool, but will be expected to pay for the ability to create and run transformations on datasets. AWS did not immediately respond to IT Pro’s query regarding specific pricing.

Approximately 7.5 million external attacks were recorded against cloud accounts during the second quarter, with over 200,000 of those against UK business, security firm McAfee has revealed.

The findings were based on the aggregated and anonymised cloud usage data from more than 30 million McAfee MVISION cloud users worldwide from all major industries, detailed in a new McAfee Labs Threats Report for 2020.

The UK has been ranked seventh on a top ten list showing the most cloud attacks by region, with just over 200,000. This is followed by Brazil and the Netherlands, at around 250,000, Russia and New Caledonia at just under 300,000, and India at 450,000. Thailand currently experiences the highest number of attacks against cloud accounts, with 625,000.

The report also found that Q2 saw a 605% increase in COVID-19-themed attack detections, following the trend of hackers exploiting the pandemic for criminal activities. Overall, during this past quarter, McAfee managed to observe an average of 419 new threats per minute.

Commenting on the findings, Nigel Hawthorn, data privacy expert for cloud security at McAfee, said that “the fact that there have been nearly 7.5 million attacks on users via cloud services in the second quarter of this year highlights how criminals have been quick to pivot attack methods to take advantage of the pandemic”.

“The move to widespread remote working has required many industries to adopt new cloud services to maintain staff productivity, communication and collaboration. When managed correctly, however, the cloud is the most secure place to do business and an incredible driver of business growth, innovation and resiliency. Incorporating cloud into strong data governance policies and regular staff training are the keys to making this a reality,” he added.

Hawthorn recommended that IT teams should be “able to quickly identify, prioritise and respond to these targeted attacks – across both device and cloud”.

“Technology can play a key role in helping security professionals understand whether their organisation is at risk, what specific threats they are susceptible to, and how they can pre-empt an attack,” he added. “This must go hand-in-hand with a shared responsibility security model. Everyone is accountable in some way and must play their part to protect data against cybercriminals.”

Microsoft Teams users will soon be able to hold interactive meetings with up to 1,000 participants.

The update, which was first announced in August, is now scheduled to become available in December 2020. It will allow users to add up to 1,000 participants in a meeting, allowing greater online collaboration across enterprises as numerous countries, including the UK, head for another lockdown.

Users will also be able to hold Teams meetings for 1,000 participants while also enabling up to 20,000 participants in a view-only meeting experience.

According to Microsoft’s 365 Roadmap, the feature is currently “In Development” and will be ready by the end of the year.

Users will be able to access the feature using the Advanced Communications add-on which was launched on 1 August 2020. The license costs $12 (£9.28) per user a month and is available as a free trial for 60 days.

With a 20,000-participant capacity, the plan made it possible for large enterprises to host meetings for the entirety of their staff, allowing Microsoft to take advantage of the heightened demand for video conferencing.

Microsoft Teams general manager Nicole Herskowitz said that the tech giant put emphasis on users’ meeting experience when developing the capability, “making sure that even as the meeting scales it is still easy to manage and listen to the speakers”

“Therefore, we limited the size of interactive meetings to 1,000 participants, with a seamless shift to a ‘view only’ mode after the limit is met,” she added.

Microsoft Teams has enjoyed an exceptional increase in popularity since the start of the pandemic, as many organisations moved to remote working environments due to lockdown restrictions.

On 28 October, Microsoft announced that the platform’s number of daily active users surpassed 115 million, a staggering increase of 95 million since the year prior.

Commenting on the announcement, corporate VP for Microsoft 365 Jared Spataro said that the growth “reflects the continued demand for Teams as the lifeline for remote and hybrid work and learning during the pandemic, helping people and organizations in every industry stay agile and resilient in this new era”. 

BT has rolled out Facebook Workplace to enable enterprise-wide internal communications for 80,000 employees, as businesses put emphasis on new ways of interaction due to lockdown restrictions.

The telecoms giant told IT Pro that it previously used various social networking platforms, including Microsoft’s Yammer, before deciding to unify and simplify its communications channels. It started the deployment of Workplace in July 2019.

Facebook Workplace, which was launched in 2016, now connects 80% of BT employees through chats, Groups, and video across all parts of the organisation in 54 countries.

The B2B communications platform is being used to connect BT employees, including external employees at Openreach and engineers, enabling them to stay informed while working in the field. 

BT’s director of Internal Communications Helen Willett said that “Workplace was a simple choice for BT”, describing it as “mobile-friendly, easy to use and intuitive”.

“But more than that, it’s culture-enhancing. Leaders can talk to their teams in a matter of seconds and the peer-to-peer benefits include enabling a sense of belonging, instant access to news and a way to solve problems collaboratively.

“Perhaps most importantly, having Workplace has made it so much easier for us to stick to our principle of ‘inside out’ – letting our colleagues know what’s happening, increasing trust and, in turn, advocacy. Sometimes we have a matter of minutes to reach our people – Workplace allows us to do that, and to do it well,” she added.

So far, BT has seen an avalanche of involvement from its employees, with three million reactions and a further 970,000 comments on Workplace.

BT CEO Philip Jansen said that the platform is allowing the company to aim for a “fast-paced, inclusive and empowering” future. 

“We’ve seen many benefits including being able to share news instantly, gather feedback on subjects that our people care about, and enabling more authentic leadership communications,” he said, adding that the platform has also “strengthened” the company’s communities across BT and Openreach.

“Through Workplace, colleagues connect with each other on the things that matter, sharing ideas and problem-solving together in real time. That is hugely beneficial to our colleagues and customers, and therefore to BT as a whole.”

​Zoom users will soon be able to enjoy in-meeting apps from the likes of Trello, Dropbox, Slack, and many other collaborative tools.

The video-conferencing platform has announced the launch of ‘Zapps’ – apps made just for Zoom which will power workflows during and in between meetings.

According to Zoom, Zapps was designed to provide developers with a fast and flexible web view canvas to create apps, viral distribution, as well as IT deployment and manageability.

So far, 36 platforms have announced demos of their ‘Zapps’, including popular collaborative tools such as Trello, Docket, and Slack, as well as Dropbox and Salesforce.

Zapps are to become generally available by the end of the year and will be open to developers soon after.

The announcement was made during Zoom’s virtual conference Zoomtopia 2020, where the company also revealed that it would be launching an online event platform for Zoom users to create and host free, paid, and charity events. Called OnZoom, the new platform will become available internationally from 2021. It is currently available as a public beta for US users.

Additionally, Zoom has added new enhancements to its SDKs, aiming to help developers and companies enrich their own custom video-based applications with Zoom’s platform. The feature is now available on Android, iOS, and web.

The company also developed new functionalities for its core unified communications platform, such as enhanced voice command options and a suite of whiteboarding enhancements.

Lastly, Zoom said that it will begin rolling out Phase 1 of 4 of its end-to-end encryption (E2EE) offering, almost four months after first committing to the technology, which will first be available as a technical preview from next week.

Zoom users, regardless of whether they pay for the platform or not, will be able to host up to 200 participants in an E2EE meeting on Zoom, providing increased privacy and security for your Zoom sessions.

Speaking at Zoomtopia 2020, CEO Eric S. Yuan said that the “one thing we’ve learned in this challenging time is that remote work does work”.

“The future will bring a hybrid of the best of in-person and virtual communications. The announcements we make today at Zoomtopia demonstrate that Zoom is built for this moment and beyond. We have the platform to support what the world needs – today, tomorrow, and well into the future,” he added.

Nokia has signed a five-year deal with Google which will see the Finnish telecom giant migrate its on-premise IT infrastructure to Google Cloud, 

Although the terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed, the migration, which includes data centres, servers, and various software applications, is already underway and is expected to take between 18 months and two years.

The decision is said to be driven by Nokia’s operational shift to a “cloud-first IT strategy”, which aims to “enhance collaboration and innovation” among its staff as well as accelerate the delivery of its services to customers.

According to the company, the deal with Google Cloud will see Nokia lower its energy consumption as well as new hardware costs.

Nokia’s VP of Global IT Infrastructure Ravi Parmasad said that the company is “on a digital transformation path that is about fundamentally changing how we operate and do business”. 

“This is crucial for how our employees collaborate so that we continue to raise the bar on meeting the needs of our customers. We are very pleased that Google Cloud, with its engineering and operational excellence, is joining our transformation work to help us deliver on the many goals we have set.

Given Nokia’s digital ambitions and plans, this is an ideal time for Nokia to be taking this step with Google Cloud to accelerate our efforts; and doing all of this in a secure and scalable way,” he added.

Meanwhile, Google Cloud’s president Rob Enslin said that it’s an honor to work with Nokia to help modernize its infrastructure on Google Cloud”. 

“We look forward to bringing our leading networking, data analytics, AI/ML, and other technologies to empower Nokia to deliver a cloud-first strategy and better serve its customers,” he said. 

“We are excited to help Nokia revamp its IT infrastructure with our backbone network and our approach to data security, using advanced software-defined networking. We look forward to providing the full menu of our capabilities to help Nokia deliver on its cloud-first strategy and reach its performance requirements.”

The announcement comes weeks after it was revealed that Nokia was chosen by BT to replace Huawei as its 5G radio access network (RAN) vendor, making the Finnish telecom its largest infrastructure partner and equipment provider. The partnership will also see Nokia replace Huawei in BT’s 2G and 4G networks.

IBM has announced updated capabilities for its Cloud Pak for Security platform, including an “industry-first” built-in data security hub.

Launched almost a year ago, Cloud Pak for Security focuses on delivering security solutions for multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

IBM has announced that the platform will soon receive a new built-in data security hub which aims to provide analysts with additional insight on the location of their sensitive data across hybrid cloud environments.

This “industry-first” tool will also show who has access to it, how it is used, and the best way to protect, and will facilitate data breach responses which, according to a new report by The Ponemon Institute and IBM Security, currently take over six months to identify and contain.

IBM also announced that Cloud Pak for Security will soon feature pre-built integrations for five additional threat intelligence feeds from third-party sources: AlienVault OTX, Cisco Threatgrid, MaxMind Geolocation, SANS Internet StormCenter, and Virustotal. This list is expected to be expanded further as early as 2021.

Additionally, IBM announced the launch of new dedicated security services that will aid organisations in updating their security operations using Cloud Pak for Security. This will include end-to-end threat management, managed security services, as well as strategy, consulting, and integration support.

All three features are expected to become available in the final quarter of 2020.

IBM Security VP Justin Youngblood said that the company “will be the first in the industry to bring together external threat intelligence and threat management alongside data security and identity, helping organizations to modernize their security operations and create the foundation for a zero-trust security strategy”.

“Complexity is the greatest challenge facing our industry, forcing resource-strapped security teams to manually connect the dots between disparate tools and sources of security data,” he said. “Cloud Pak for Security is built on open, cloud-native technologies from the ground up to connect any tool within the security ecosystem.”

The announcement comes days after IBM revealed plans to split its business in half by spinning off its infrastructure services unit into a separate public company.

IBM has announced updated capabilities for its Cloud Pak for Security platform, including an “industry-first” built-in data security hub.

Launched almost a year ago, Cloud Pak for Security focuses on delivering security solutions for multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

IBM has announced that the platform will soon receive a new built-in data security hub which aims to provide analysts with additional insight on the location of their sensitive data across hybrid cloud environments.

This “industry-first” tool will also show who has access to it, how it is used, and the best way to protect, and will facilitate data breach responses which, according to a new report by The Ponemon Institute and IBM Security, currently take over six months to identify and contain.

IBM also announced that Cloud Pak for Security will soon feature pre-built integrations for five additional threat intelligence feeds from third-party sources: AlienVault OTX, Cisco Threatgrid, MaxMind Geolocation, SANS Internet StormCenter, and Virustotal. This list is expected to be expanded further as early as 2021.

Additionally, IBM announced the launch of new dedicated security services that will aid organisations in updating their security operations using Cloud Pak for Security. This will include end-to-end threat management, managed security services, as well as strategy, consulting, and integration support.

All three features are expected to become available in the final quarter of 2020.

IBM Security VP Justin Youngblood said that the company “will be the first in the industry to bring together external threat intelligence and threat management alongside data security and identity, helping organizations to modernize their security operations and create the foundation for a zero-trust security strategy”.

“Complexity is the greatest challenge facing our industry, forcing resource-strapped security teams to manually connect the dots between disparate tools and sources of security data,” he said. “Cloud Pak for Security is built on open, cloud-native technologies from the ground up to connect any tool within the security ecosystem.”

The announcement comes days after IBM revealed plans to split its business in half by spinning off its infrastructure services unit into a separate public company.

Microsoft has become the latest company to give its employees the option to work from home on a permanent basis. 

The decision, announced in a blog post, sees Microsoft following in the footsteps of Twitter, which recently confirmed in a company-wide email that employees can work from home “forever”. Google and Facebook have also extended their remote working policies as part of the effort to curb the spread of the COVID-19 and to protect the health of employees and their families. 

Microsoft confirmed that its employees are being given the option to work from home indefinitely as long as they obtain managerial approval. Part-time remote working will be available without formal approval, and the guidance is applicable to employees based in the UK.

However, the option might not be available for all roles. Microsoft said that some staff will still be required to work from the office, including employees who require access to office-based hardware.

“Flexibility can mean different things to each of us, and we recognise there is no one-size-fits-all solution given the variety of roles, work requirements and business needs we have at Microsoft,” the company said. 

“To address this, we have provided guidance to employees to make informed decisions around scenarios that could include changes to their work site, work location, and/or work hours once offices are open without any COVID-19 restrictions.”

The announcement is in sharp contrast to a recent statement made by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Last week, he warned that businesses should consider the effects the switch to remote working has on collaboration, learning and our wellbeing. According to the CEO, “learning, reskilling, onboarding is going to become a huge issue”.

“We need to be able to incorporate the learning content into a workflow that is natural,” he told the Wall Street Journal in an interview.

Another problem Nedella raised is video call fatigue, which he said can start within 30 minutes of the first call of the day. What’s more, with all meetings taking place via video conferencing software, meaning you simply click from one to the other, he warned that people are not switching off between. He also suggested that commutes could serve as meaningful downtime.

However, given the company’s most recent announcement, many of Microsoft’s employees will now be exempt from the daily commute to the office.

​IBM has said it plans to split its business in half by spinning off its infrastructure services unit into a separate public company, bringing to an end a strategy that saw it attempt to shift towards cloud growth while maintaining a foothold in its legacy business.

The aim is to create two separate companies, each with its own strategic focus, in a tax-free deal expected to be completed by the end of 2021.

Announcing plans to create the yet-unnamed company, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said that “now is the right time to create two market-leading companies focused on what they do best”.

“NewCo will have greater agility to design, run and modernize the infrastructure of the world’s most important organizations. Both companies will be on an improved growth trajectory with greater ability to partner and capture new opportunities – creating value for clients and shareholders,” he added.

Commenting on the announcement, IBM executive chairman Ginni Rometty said that the company’s managed infrastructure services business “has established itself as the industry leader, with unrivaled expertise in complex and mission-critical infrastructure work”.

“As two independent companies, IBM and NewCo will capitalize on their respective strengths,” she said, adding that the NewCo “will accelerate clients’ infrastructure modernization efforts”.

Meanwhile, IBM is to focus entirely on its AI capabilities and the hybrid cloud, which Krishna described as a $1 trillion opportunity.

The company announced that it will accelerate its hybrid cloud growth strategy in order to streamline its clients’ digital transformation processes. 

Rometty said that IBM has been set “for the new era of hybrid cloud” and credited the company’ acceleration of its open hybrid cloud platform to its acquisition of Red Hat, which was snapped up for approximately $34 billion in 2018.

IBM’s open hybrid cloud platform architecture had been based on RedHat containerization software OpenShift.

Last month, Red Hat and IBM co-launched a one-stop-shop marketplace for customers seeking to run OpenShift enterprise applications on their hybrid cloud infrastructures. The marketplace aims to deliver an ecosystem of software from independent vendors so enterprise customers can easily deploy new tools on their hybrid cloud infrastructures. Red Hat Marketplace offers a broad catalogue of more than 50 open-source software, from vendors such as CognitiveScale, MongoDB and StorageOS.

IBM said it expected to hit revenues of $17.6 billion, in line with estimates, in a separate earnings statement issued on Thursday.