​The BBC has opened the testing phase for its AI-powered voice assistant exclusively with those who routinely test updates to the Windows operating system.

UK members of the Windows Insider Programme can download the virtual assistant by grabbing the ‘Beeb BETA’ app from the Microsoft Store, where they can experiment with features and put the voice assistant through its paces.

These users will need to have installed the Windows 10 May 2020 update, however, which, Microsoft has incidentally warned its users against doing unless it’s shipped to their devices specifically. This is due to the developer identifying a string of issues that could lead to significant errors due to hardware compatibility issues.

The Beeb AI assistant aims to help users in the UK by navigating BBC services and access BBC content. There are no plans to build a device to rival Amazon Echo or Google Home, although Beeb will be built into the BBC website, iPlayer and all smart TVs.

The BBC’s voice team has previously collaborated with Microsoft to build the infrastructure behind Beeb with Azure AI services, as well as working with the industry giant on a number of other projects in the past.

“We’ve built Beeb because we know there is growing demand from people to access programmes and services with their voice – around one in five adults have a smart speaker in their home, and millions more have voice-activated devices in their pockets,” said BBC Design and Engineering’s chief operating officer Grace Boswood. 

“Much like the BBC did with iPlayer, we want to make sure everyone can benefit from this new technology, and bring people exciting new content, programmes and services in a trusted, easy-to-use way.”

The first version of Beeb will allow users to speak to access live TV and radio broadcast as well as programmes on-demand. Developers will add further features in the coming weeks and months, with feedback from Windows Insiders critical to the development path.

Not everything will be working as it should, the BBC added, with developers hoping feedback can shape what this early, stripped-down version will look like in the future when additions are made and compatibility with systems is expanded.

This beta-testing process will precede the rollout of Beeb in beta version to the general public for further testing and experimentation.

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.

A vulnerability in VMware’s Cloud Director platform, used by a host of cloud providers to manage cloud infrastructure, could allow attackers to gain access to sensitive data and seize control of infrastructure.

Rated CVSSV3 8.8, and assigned CVE-2020-3956, the code-injection vulnerability in the cloud service-delivery platform could allow an attacker to gain access to sensitive data and take over the control of private clouds within an enterprise.

Hackers could also exploit the vulnerability to gain control over all customers within the cloud. It also grants access to modify the login section of the entire infrastructure to capture the username and password of another customer, according to Citadelo, an ethical hacking company which discovered the vulnerability.

“In general, cloud infrastructure is considered relatively safe because different security layers are being implemented within its core, such as encryption, isolating of network traffic, or customer segmentations,” said Citadelo CEO Tomas Zatko.

“However, security vulnerabilities can be found in any type of application, including the Cloud providers themself.”

Citadelo was hired this year by a fortune 500 enterprise customer to perform a security audit and investigate their VMware Cloud Director-based cloud infrastructure. 

Using the code injection flaw, researchers with the company were able to view the content of the internal system database, including password hashes of any customers allocated to the information system.

From there, they were able to modify the system database to steal foreign virtual machines (VMs) assigned to different organisations within Cloud Director. The flaw also allowed them to escalate privileges from that of a customer account to a system administrator, with access to all cloud accounts.

Finally, they could read all sensitive data related to customers, like full names, email addresses or IP addresses.

The vulnerability was initially reported to VMware on 1 April, with patches released following towards the end of the month, and during May. Organisations that haven’t yet applied the fixes are still vulnerable.

Those affected include public cloud providers using VMware vCloud Director, private cloud providers using VMware vCloud Director, enterprises using VMware vCloud Director technology, and any government identities using VMware Cloud Director.

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.

​Microsoft is reportedly planning to replace contracted journalists that work on the homepages of MSN and its Edge browser with artificial intelligence. 

The tech giant won’t renew contracts for roughly 50 US employees at the end of the month, according to The Seattle Times, while The Guardian reports that around 27 journalists are being let go in the UK. 

The contracted employees, hired through staffing agencies, were reportedly notified last week that their services would not be needed beyond 30 June. The 27 UK employees affected, who were employed by PA Media, were told on Thursday that their jobs would be terminated as Microsoft is shifting away from humans in favour of automated news updates. 

A spokesperson for PA Media told The Guardian: “We are in the process of winding down the Microsoft team working at PA, and we are doing everything we can to support the individuals concerned. We are proud of the work we have done with Microsoft and know we delivered a high-quality service.”

Many publications have had to let journalists go due to the impact of COVID-19 and the outbreak has also accelerated a number of cloud-based technologies. According to some of those whose contracts are not being renewed, the curation of news on MSN is already partly automated. 

“It’s been semi-automated for a few months but now it’s full speed ahead,” one of the terminated contractors told The Seattle Times. “It’s demoralising to think machines can replace us but there you go.”

Microsoft is retaining full-time news producers, according to the reports, but the functions of the contracted employees will be taken up by automation. This includes using algorithms to sources trending news stories and optimising the content by rewriting the headline or adding different images or slide shows.

The contracted journalists also created news pieces, maintained editorial calendars of partner news sites and even assigned content to them but it isn’t clear if this will also be taken on by the software.  

“Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis,” a company spokesman said in a statement. “This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time to time, re-deployment in others. These decisions are not the result of the current pandemic.”

Welcome to the fifth issue of IT Pro 20/20, our sister title’s digital magazine that brings all of the previous month’s most important tech issues into clear view.

Each month, we will shine a spotlight on the content that we feel every IT professional should be aware of, only in a condensed version that can be read on the go, at a time that suits you.

To coincide with the second birthday of the General Data Protection Regulation, this month we take a look at the role of regulation in innovation. Rather than focus on GDPR principles and the importance of compliance, we thought it would be far more valuable to show how new rules are working to promote, and in some cases moderate, new technology and ways of thinking.

Our lead feature looks at the nature of corporate travel and how future regulations, as well as societal changes introduced as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, are likely to redefine what it means to travel for business. We also look at how authorities are attempting to rein in the development of cutting edge technology and whether it’s even possible to police something like an algorithm.

For those businesses confused about data laws in a post-Brexit UK, we’ve also put some of the most common issues to a panel of data protection lawyers to assess what the regulatory landscape might look like after the end of the transition period in January 2021.

As ever, you’ll also find a roundup of the four biggest stories of the month that are likely to reverberate throughout 2020.

DOWNLOAD THE MAY ISSUE OF IT PRO 20/20 HERE

The next IT Pro 20/20 will be available on Tuesday 30 June. Previous issues can be found here.

We hope you enjoy reading this month’s issue. If you would like to receive each issue in your inbox as they release, you can subscribe to our mailing list here.

​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.

​Microsoft has asked Windows 10 users to avoid manually updating to its May 2020 feature update while it investigates ten major issues, despite having only just released it.

The major update to Microsoft’s flagship operating system has finally started to roll out after a two-week delay earlier this month, but Microsoft has identified ten issues severe enough to recommend that users hold off.

The slew of issues includes Windows 10 devices with Realtek drivers being unable to connect to more than one Bluetooth device, and no mouse input with apps and games using GameInput Redistributable.

Some devices using more than one Always On, Always Connected capable network adaptor may encounter errors or unexpected restarts, while enabling variable refresh rate on devices with intel iGPU may not work as expected.

Users may also encounter the infamous blue screen of death (BSOD), meanwhile, on three of the issues. Devices, for example, with certain Conexant or Synaptics audio drivers may encounter such errors during or after these drivers are updated. Errors may also occur when devices using external Thunderbolt docks are plugged in or unplugged. 

Finally, on the BSOD front, there are incompatibility issues with Windows 10 and certain versions of Nvidia display adapter drivers. The fatal error screen may arise if devices are using drivers older than version 358.00.

To safeguard the update experience, Microsoft has held back the May 2020 Update from any devices with hardware or drivers known to suffer from compatibility issues with Windows 10.

More widely, Microsoft recommends users do not attempt to manually update using the ‘update now’ button until the issues have been resolved.

The widely touted May 2020 Update, also known as Windows 10 version 2004, began rolling out automatically, in a phased manner, to users from yesterday. Users, however, are still able to receive the upgrade if they manually check for updates.

Among the new features expected in the biannual upgrade are a faster and easier Bluetooth pairing process with external devices, as well as a mechanism to much more quickly enable a fully-passwordless experience.

When the update is finally deemed ready, users should also except a refined Coronata chatbot experience and smoother synchronicity between smartphones and Windows machines, among other additions.

That Microsoft has encountered several major issues on the release of its latest operating system upgrade should be of little surprise to long-term users who will be familiar with faulty feature upgrades of the past.

The May 2020 Update itself was delayed by two weeks earlier this month after Microsoft discovered a set of bugs that needed to be addressed urgently. This included a zero-day vulnerability relating to the deployment image servicing and management (DISM) tool, used to repair corruption on Windows systems.

The April and October 2018 feature upgrades were so badly received by the community that Microsoft was forced to change the way it delivers its updates, with users now generally waiting longer in light of a new phased approach.

Conventionally, Microsoft would initiate updates automatically once data suggested users would enjoy a safe and frictionless experience. Starting with Windows 10 version 1903, released last year, users are now, instead, simply notified when it’s available to download and install.

​Now into its third year, Voip Exchange is purpose-built as a complete cloud-hosted SMB service that can be rolled out with a minimum of training.

Deployment is a breeze too: a project engineer was assigned to discuss our requirements, and then set up an account with preconfigured phone numbers and a base set of users as per our instructions. 

Voip Unlimited also supplies handsets, offering a choice of Snom and Yealink models. We opted for Yealink T48S and T23G sets, and these came preconfigured for each user, so we had only to connect them to the lab’s PoE switch and they were instantly provisioned. Don’t worry if you’re switching from a different VoIP provider: any IP phones you already own will, where possible, be reprovisioned for Voip Exchange.

As usual, management is carried out from a web portal, and this is very easy to navigate. Our account had a single top-level site, but businesses with offices in multiple locations can create subsites for each one, which can all be centrally managed.

Creating new users is a cinch, thanks to a wizard that takes you through each step. We were prompted to provide names, email addresses and mobile numbers, then to indicate which site and department each user was a member of; a DDI (direct dial in) number was then doled out for their preassigned handset.

Once you’ve created your users, you can additionally assign them to huntgroups, so that incoming calls to one person’s number will cause all phones in their group to ring at once – or you can choose round robin mode, to call each phone in order. If no one picks up after a timeout period of up to two minutes, you can specify whether the call should be forwarded to a different user or group, to another huntgroup, to an external number or to an interactive voice assistant. 

This last feature is particularly versatile. Callers can be played a custom message, and presented with a menu of up to 12 options – each of which supports the same actions as available for huntgroups, making it almost impossible for an incoming call to be missed.

There are also several settings that users can configure for themselves, either at the point of enrolment or later on. You can set a personal greeting message by uploading a WAV file to your portal, and configure either call forwarding or call twinning, which causes a second number (such as a mobile) to ring simultaneously for incoming calls. The portal also lets you check your voicemail and access the webphone app; install the Voip Exchange Chrome extension and you can initiate calls directly from web pages too.

Almost all of these features are included in the basic pay-as-you-go Voip Exchange package, which costs £8.50 per user per month – the only thing that’s missing is voice recording, which adds an extra £1 per month. Call packages start at £3.50 per user per month, which provides 3,000 minutes per user for calls to landlines and mobiles.

Although web calling is included, you also have to pay a little extra for mobile support: the Android and iOS apps (which are in fact customised versions of the Zoiper softphone app) cost £2 per user each month. We tried the iOS version and found it superbly easy to use, taking mere seconds to register by scanning the unique QR code presented in the user portal.

In all, Voip Exchange is a classy service that SMBs will love: it’s exceptionally easy to deploy and has a strong set of features included in the price. 

​Given an explosion of remote working, with video conferencing thrust in the spotlight, we may have once expected Skype to seize the moment. After all, this is a platform that was eponymous with the concept of video communication not too long ago. 

This titan of video conferencing has enjoyed something of a comeback in recent weeks, but it’s been overshadowed by the emergence of Zoom and Google’s own services.

Times have indeed changed, and the platform has languished in the shadow of these competitors as well as Microsoft’s enterprise-centric Teams service. There’s no better symbol for this decline than Microsoft’s decision to phase out Skype for Business.

Regardless, the free version of Skype still plays a vital role for many small businesses. The platform has undergone a 70% surge in activity during the coronavirus pandemic, in addition to a 220% explosion in Skype-to-Skype calls. In a market now saturated with rivals, does the legacy service have the legs to keep itself relevant?

Skype review: Design and UI

Skype’s user interface (UI) has undergone several overhauls through the years and, today, remains in keeping with Microsoft’s bold ‘fluent design’ aesthetic. 

While the platform adheres to these design principles well, its minimalist aspirations don’t match up with how cluttered the interface is. On desktop, users are immediately met with a well-sized primary chat window to the right, beside a pale-toned sidebar into which most of the app’s functions are squashed. By default, the oversized pane shows a welcome screen.

Using this smaller panel you can cycle between recent chats, recent calls, contacts, and recent notifications. The interface also includes a ‘new call’ and new chat’ button as well as the recently launched ‘meet now’ feature. Double-clicking on any contact will beam your chat history to the right-hand panel. This mess of icons means it can prove fiddly to actually get to the function you need, so could have benefited from icons being spaced out more across the interface.

Despite this clash, navigating to the ‘Appearance’ tab in the Settings menu gives users a decent array of cosmetic options, including a fabulous dark mode, a choice between several accent tones, and two high-contrast settings.

Where the UI does excel is while dialled into a meeting. Only a handful of buttons remain on show, allowing participants to fill the remainder of the display. Advanced functions, instead of lining a portion of the screen, are hidden away in a ‘more options’ menu.

Skype review: Features and functionality

Skype offers a full array of basic features as well as a handful of more advanced features that have found their way into Skype from other services over the years. These include screen sharing and a neat real-time transcription toggle.

‘Meet now’, which allows users to send non-users a meeting link without them having to download the software, is an example of a feature that’s only made its way into the service following the meteoric rise of Zoom on the coattails of a similar feature. Putting aside the speculation as to why Skype’s only just rolled out a similar feature, it’s a welcome addition and boosts the user experience considerably.

The ‘blur background’ toggle, meanwhile, singles you out as the video subject effectively, while you can also add custom background images. Zoom goes one step further with a handful of preloaded images, and support for video, although lacks the blur background toggle – which is perhaps of more interest to business users than zany effects.

Although Skype includes several advanced features, one can’t help but feel limited by the way they’ve been implemented.  While meetings can be recorded, the files are hidden away in your chat ‘gallery’ and are only available for 30 days. Sure, they can be subsequently saved onto your hard drive, but what if you just wanted these files beamed straight into your PC? Other applications include functionality for that. Finally, while you can share your screen at the touch of a button, other video conferencing services allow participants to share a portion of the screen, an individual app or even a ‘digital whiteboard’.

To its detriment, we did encounter a few glitches here and there. These manifested primarily as features taking a long time to work properly, and excessive menu loading-time. One fundamentally disruptive bug we encountered involved the live transcription feature in a meeting started using ‘Meet now’. When activated, the application crashed only a few seconds later, after several attempts. This was odd because on several separate occasions, however, it worked flawlessly.

Skype review: Video and meeting experience

Alongside the lesser-known Lifesize, Skype is the only leading conferencing platform to offer 1080p video quality on its free tier, with Zoom and Hangouts limited to 720p. The maximum number of participants is also a strong 50, bested only by Zoom’s limit of 100. The latter, however, is limited in the way that meetings disconnect after 40 minutes, whereas Skype offers unlimited free video conferencing.

The main advantage Skype holds over its rivals is a clean UI while in meetings, to the extent it feels like a different app than that of the cluttered home screen. Meeting participants can be organised in several ways, but can only occupy a maximum of four large quadrants at any one time. Skype offers a neat way to work around this, with excess participants occupying small bubbles along the top which can be dragged into any quadrant to replace participants at any time. 

Most functions beyond the most basic are tucked away in an expandable folder in the bottom-right-hand corner of the interface. From here, users can record meetings, toggle subtitles, and perform other functions. The live transcription feature is neat too, with real-time dialogue generated in small text without obscuring anybody’s face. 

Skype review: Security provisions

All Skype-to-Skype calls, messages and file transfers are encrypted, according to the developers, through 256-bit advanced encryption standard (AES) protection. Should users wish to make calls to landlines, these conversations will take place over the standard public switched telephone network (PSTN) so won’t enjoy the same level of protection.

Instant messaging, meanwhile, is protected using transport-level security (TLS) which guards messages between the Skype client and the chat service in the platform’s cloud, as well as AES when communications are sent between two Skype clients. 

Voice messages are encrypted on delivery, however once they have been listened to, the files are transferred from Skype servers to users’ local machines, where they are stored in an unencrypted format.

Beyond that, there are a set of standard protections built-into the platform to protect user privacy including automatically screening calls or messages from individuals who aren’t contacts. Users can also determine how long message history, chat titles, and videos will last before these are deleted. Files and voice messages as well as call recordings will be removed from the cloud after 30 days, although users can save them to their machines.

Skype review: Verdict

While there’s no doubting how far Skype has fallen in popularity from its peak around a decade ago, the most basic version of the legacy video conferencing suite still has plenty to offer new and existing users. 

A host of basic features, strong security provisions and advanced tools like real-time transcription and the capacity to record meetings may indeed be enough to entice you away from increasingly popular alternatives. This is in addition to 1080p support, a healthy maximum participant cap, and no meeting time limit, if you’re willing to stomach a couple of minor glitches here and there.

Although a couple of these advanced features might fall short in places, there’s plenty to shout about. The eleventh-hour addition of a ‘meet now’ feature, too, means the classic version of Skype has been sufficiently retrofitted for the modern age.