While ransomware has long been epidemic, the latest figures are positively chilling, with 61% of businesses surveyed last year saying they had been hit by ransomware, according to a study by CyberEdge Group (www.cyber-edge.com/cdr).
While any sort of website identity theft is alarming, the version that results in a hacker taking command and control of your website—and ultimately of your business dealings—is especially brutal. Under that scenario, hackers find a way to break into your website and then take over all of the interfaces your business uses to operate that website.
While chatbots—computer programs that conduct conversations via audio or text—have captured the imaginations of businesses hungry to automate conversations on the web, it will still be a while before any “digital friend” inside your computer can truly mimic human conversation. Even so, businesses which ignore chatbots do so at their peril, given that there is a great deal of money betting chatbots will emerge, sooner or later, as conversational charmers.
Toyota will grant royalty-free use of approximately 5,680 hydrogen fuel-cell-related patents held globally, including critical technologies developed for the new Toyota Mirai.
The SEMA Data Co-op (SDC) launched its live production system, and the 300 participating companies are now preparing to migrate into the newly developed Product Information Management System (PIMS). Since the co-op began its beta test phase in April 2012, 170 suppliers and 130 receivers have joined the program.
New Products introduced by:
- Eddie Motorsports
- Backbone Industries
- UnderCover
- Spectre Performance
- Edge Products
...and other SEMA member manufacturers.
As the co-founder and current chairman of SEMA’s Business Technology Committee (BTC), Bob Moore is also a tireless advocate for the use of standardized data and building a shared data system. He has been working in the automotive aftermarket since 1976 and is a partner with Jerry McCabe in J&B Service, a consulting company that specializes in the automotive specialty-equipment market.
Moore is a member of the SEMA Board of Directors, serves on its executive committee and serves as a volunteer for a variety of industry organizations. He spent some time with SEMA News recently to discuss progress the association is making with respect to business technology.
Business technology is in a constant state of evolution, and it can be a maddening chore to try to keep up. It seems that every innovation begets an even newer version only a few weeks later. In some cases, the latest gizmo is only a marginal improvement on what went before, but there are significant trends and tools that simply cannot be ignored. In some very tangible instances, a company can be left behind while its competitors employ technological tools to expand and improve.
Remember the Sci-Fi television programs of the ‘50s and ‘60s in which engineers of the future could stand in front of a computer device, order up practically any space sprocket or gizmo and watch it materialize in seconds, ready for use? Believe it or not, that future is here—and has been for some time.
While not as instantaneous as their fictional counterparts, there are computerized machines that can replicate solid, intricate 3-D objects in a process now being dubbed “3-D printing.”
Despite intense competition from social media heavyweights, such as Facebook and Twitter, e-mail remains a formidable marketing stalwart, according to a new study released in May by Market Tools. The researchers found that e-mail use was actually up among 45% of the 1,268 professionals and students over 18 who were interviewed for the study. And only a few—4%—said that their use of e-mail had decreased over the 12-month period included in the study.
“We see evidence every day that e-mail is still a key means of communication,” said Takeshi Numoto, a vice president at Microsoft, which commissioned the Market Tools report.
