 Six months after Microsoft first released Windows 10 1809 to the mainstream, that Windows 10 feature update from last fall finally been deemed as ready for broad deployment. On March 28, Microsoft officials said they would be changing the Windows 10 release information page to note that it was ready for rollout by the vast majority of customers, including businesses. Microsoft finalized the code for Windows 10 1809, also known as the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, in September 2018 and started to roll it out to consumers on October 2, 2018. Shortly after mainstream rollout began, Microsoft had to pull Windows 10 1809 -- and its Server equivalent, Windows Server 2019/1809 -- because of a bug that caused some users to lose their data and encounter issues involving ZIP compressed files. In mid-November 2018, Microsoft re-released Windows 10 1809 and Windows Server 2019, taking a very cautious and slow approach to making them available to mainstream users. Microsoft restarted its support timeline clock, making November 13 as the revised start of servicing date for both the Semi-Annual Channel and Long-Term Servicing Channel for the products. Microsoft officials recently announced that, as of Windows 10 1903, they would be discontinuing the Semi-Annual Channel Targeted (SAC-T) designation which some businesses were using as part of the way they roll out feature updates to Windows 10. Microsoft officials publicly said they dropped SAC-T because they're trying to align the way they talk about Windows 10 and Office 365 servicing. Today in a very short blog post about the broad-deployment status for 1809, Microsoft officials did note that they'd "continue to communicate for future releases the transition from targeted to broad deployment status." Further details posted on OUR FORUM.  Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) systems are exposed to an increased risk of unauthorized access because of security weaknesses found in the U.S. Treasury Department's computing systems according to a management report issued by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). GAO used "an independent public accounting (IPA) firm, under contract, to assist with information system testing, including follow-up on the status of FRBs’ corrective actions to address control deficiencies contained in our prior years’ reports that were not remediated as of September 30, 2017." As part of its audit for the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2018, performed an extensive review of all computing system controls over key financial systems maintained and operated by FRBs connected to the Schedule of Federal Debt. During the fiscal year 2018 audit, GAO found "one new information system general control deficiency" affecting configuration management which is designed to block unauthorized or untested modifications to critical information on computing systems. GAO also discovered two not yet addressed deficiencies found in the prior year in information system controls over key financial systems, operated by FRBs and also relevant to the Schedule of Federal Debt. Fiscal Service's information system controls were also found to contain deficiencies which, when taken into account with previously unearthed unresolved control deficiencies, collectively classify as a significant flaw in internal control over Schedule of Federal Debt's financial reporting. Visit OUR FORUM to learn more.  An academic study that analyzed 82,501 apps that were pre-installed on 1,742 Android smartphones sold by 214 vendors concluded that users are woefully unaware of the huge security and privacy-related threats that come from pre-installed applications. Researchers found that many of these pre-installed apps have access to very intrusive permissions out of the box, collect and send data about users to advertisers, and have security flaws that often remain unpatched. On top of this, many pre-installed apps (also referred to as bloatware) can't be removed, and also use third-party libraries that secretly collect user data from within benign-looking and innocently-named applications. The study is, by far, one of the most complex endeavors of its kind, and included both an analysis of device firmware, app behavior, and the internet traffic the apps generated. One of the first things that researchers spotted was the incessant use of third-party libraries (or software development kits --SDKs) inside many pre-installed applications. While using an SDK to simplify the coding of basic tasks is commonplace in the web, desktop, and mobile development community, researchers noted that the most commonly encountered third-party libraries were all advertising and user tracking-related. Learn more in-depth details on OUR FORUM. |
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