News & Analysis

Which One is Right for Your Business?

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For many contact centers and businesses, IVAs (Interactive Virtual Assistants) offer a better way to keep up with customer expectations and demands compared to IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems. This is mostly due to the fact that IVA tends to offer superior benefits and incorporate more of the latest technologies — including AI-enhanced features, customer relationship management (CRM) integrations, and real-time voice responses with a focus on dynamic call routing and self-service.

Nevertheless, traditional IVR still serves a purpose for the contact centers of many businesses and organizations despite how it can be considered outdated.

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Australian IT Pros Urged to Guard Against Chinese Cybersecurity Threats

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The Australian Signals Directorate and the Australian Cyber Security Centre have joined cybersecurity institutions from the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand in warning local technology professionals to beware of threat actors affiliated with China, including Salt Typhoon, infiltrating their critical communications infrastructure.

The news comes weeks after the Australian Signals Directorate’s Annual Cyber Threat Report 2023-2024, where the agency warned that state-sponsored cyber actors had been persistently targeting Australian governments, critical infrastructure, and businesses using evolving tradecraft over the most recent reporting period.

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Microsoft AI Program to Upskill ANZ Bridging Skill Gap, Boost Economy

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Microsoft has announced an ambitious new initiative intended to equip 1 million people across Australia and New Zealand with essential AI skills by 2026.

The AI Skills Initiative is designed to support local workforces facing a rapidly changing digital economy. It will target everyone from individuals building AI systems to those applying AI in everyday roles. The initiative supports Microsoft’s commitment to training 300,000 Australians with digital skills within two years — a target the firm said would be hit by early 2025.

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5 Best Self-Hosted Photo-Video Gallery Options

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Are you tired of storing your photos in the cloud only to have the cloud provider change the deal and ask you to pray they don’t alter it further? Have you looked at all the photos on your hard drive or phone and thought, “Well, I have them. I just want easier ways to share and store them?” Self-hosting is for you.

Here are five self-hosted photo storage options for you to consider.

SEE: The definition of open source can be controversial, with some commercial models claiming the title.

NextCloud

This open-source project offers a mobile app and auto-upload feature.

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For December’s Patch Tuesday, 74 updates and a zero-day fix for Windows – Computerworld

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Windows Remote Desktop and related routing servers
Windows Kernel and Kernel Mode Drivers
Printing
Microsoft Hyper-V
Microsoft LDAP and LSASS
Windows Error Reporting

Unfortunately, there is a zero-day (CVE-2024-49138) that has been reported as publicly disclosed and exploited in the wild that affects how Windows creates error log files. Add these Windows updates your Patch Now cycle.

Microsoft Office

Microsoft released nine patches to Office, all rated important. In addition, the company offered some additional security measures and mitigations to the platform with the release of the advisory ADV240002, which covers the following areas:

Perimeter Defense
Network Security
Endpoint Protection
Application Security

This month’s update affects Microsoft Excel, SharePoint and core Microsoft Office libraries.

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How To Run a VoIP Quality Test and Improve Your MOS

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A VoIP quality test measures the performance of your network connection. The test simulates a set number of calls on your network and uses key metrics to determine how calls would sound in different situations.

It can help you understand whether your connection is strong enough before implementing a VoIP system and alert you to potential post deployment issues as well.

Mean opinion score (MOS) is an industry standard metric for VoIP call quality — it’s a simple 1-5 rating system with 1 being the worst and 5 being the best.

Anything above a 4 is sufficient and scores below 3.5 should be considered unacceptable.

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The Macy’s accounting disaster: CIOs, this could happen to you.

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The Macy’s accounting nightmare is only getting worse, with the $24 billion retailer telling the SEC on Wednesday that both its annual report from last year and its auditor report “should no longer be relied on.”

Although the amount “hidden” was only $151 million — at the high end of Macy’s original estimate of “$132 million to $154 million” — the retailer said it exposed a massive weakness in its checks and balances procedures.

Macy’s did not get specific about the nature of the flaws, but the problem seems to be that the software charged with monitoring financial transactions was never designed to catch accountants doing what they do best: categorizing numbers in ways designed to make the company’s performance look better than it is.

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Google Makes Changes to Search Features to Appease EU Regulators

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Dec. 13 update: Google has since stopped its test of a simplified search results format for hotels in Germany, Belgium, and Estonia after finding that users were “measurably less satisfied.” Traffic to hotels and intermediary sites also decreased overall.

Google has announced several changes to its Search features to comply with the E.U.’s Digital Markets Act. These changes are intended to level the playing field between the tech giant and third-party comparison sites.

The Alphabet-owned company will introduce search result layouts that give equal prominence to results from comparison sites and direct supplier websites, such as airlines, hotels, or retailers.

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Why would Apple make a Bluetooth chip? – Computerworld

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Really, and truly, Apple has gone from zero to hero in processor design since it first invested in PA Semi. These investments mean the company now competes at the top of the silicon design industry and has the processors it needs to design and manufacture devices that just weren’t possible with other chips, opening doors for new types of hardware, wearables, and various forms of home/enterprise computing.

But while it isn’t clear how Apple can make a version of Wi-FI and Bluetooth that makes an inherent difference to its customers, the opportunities the project brings to product design seem a little clearer.

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NotebookLM Plus is now available to Google Workspace customers – Computerworld

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“From the start, we wanted NotebookLM to be a tool that would let you move effortlessly from asking questions to reading your sources to capturing your own ideas,” Steven Johnson, editorial director forGoogle Labs, said in a blog post. “Today, we’re rolling out a new design that makes it easier than ever to switch between those different activities in a single, unified interface.”

The interface is organized into three components: a “sources” panel that manages information related to a user’s project; a “chat” panel, where you can query the NotebookLM chatbot about the contents of uploaded documents; and the “studio” panel, where new documents such as study guides, briefing docs and audio overviews, can be created with one click,Google said.

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