Evan Schuman
Contributing Columnist
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Opinions expressed by ICN authors are their own.
Evan Schuman has covered IT issues for a lot longer than he'll ever admit. The founding editor of retail technology site StorefrontBacktalk, he's been a columnist for CBSNews.com, RetailWeek, Computerworld and eWeek and his byline has appeared in titles ranging from BusinessWeek, VentureBeat and Fortune to The New York Times, USA Today, Reuters, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun, The Detroit News and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Evan can be reached at eschuman@thecontentfirm.com and he can be followed at twitter.com/eschuman. Look for his blog twice a week.
The opinions expressed in this blog are those of Evan Schuman and do not necessarily represent those of IDG Communications, Inc., its parent, subsidiary or affiliated companies.
Do the productivity gains from generative AI outweigh the security risks?
Using generative AI to code is dangerous for a variety of reasons, but its efficiencies will tempt corporate leaders — especially CIOs and business execs — to use it anyway. A senior AWS executive at Amazon argues the decision doesn’t...
IT’s lovefest with GPT-3 needs to meet reality now
As we’ve seen with other highly-hyped technologies — such as the Web back in ‘95 and blockchain more recently — companies can get ahead of themselves when they jump into investments based on things other than strategic goals.
A compliance fight in Germany could hurt Microsoft customers
A compliance fight between Microsoft and German regulatory authorities has gotten white hot, though it looks as though any penalties might bypass the company and take aim at its customers.
Biometrics are even less accurate than we thought
Biometrics are supposed to be a fundamental pillar of modern authentication. Unfortunately, for a wide range of reasons and in a variety of ways, many biometric implementations are wildly inaccurate.
This would be a good time to test your cloud ROI
As the COVID-19 pandemic slowly fades — and the rush to cloud solutions it hastened now seems less critical to business success — a question arises: Has anyone on your team recently run an ROI analysis to see whether the cloud truly...
Sadly, IT can no longer trust geolocation for much of anything
This goes beyond simply not trusting location data for cybersecurity authentication. Geolocation is now used for a wide range of business reasons — but it shouldn’t be.
Planned ‘fixes’ for credit-card interchange fees will actually make fraud easier
The US Federal Reserve and the US Senate are both looking to lessen restrictions on retailers — ostensibly to rein in card fees. What they actually are doing is inviting more fraud.
Will new EU crypto rules change how ransomware is played?
The European Union is cracking down on cryptocurrencies. That could have massive implications for enterprise IT.
Microsoft backs off facial recognition analysis, but big questions remain
Microsoft is backing off its support for some AI-driven features, including facial recognition. Although it's good Microsoft is acknowledging discrimination and accuracy issues, it had years to fix the problems and didn’t.
Are banks quietly refusing reimbursements to fraud victims?
There are disturbing reports that some major financial institutions are no longer crediting back all fraudulent transactions, even when the victim has filed a police report. This move by these financial institutions will soon come...
Worried about burnout? Few enterprises are set up to fight the real causes
C-level execs argue a fine game about caring about their employees — but those platitudes somehow never make it into the HR meetings about bonus benchmarks.
Let’s put smartphone mics to better use
What if smartphone sound-recognition could be tweaked to do core IT and operational chores? This would be an option to customize the phone to listen for sounds specific to your company.
How to master the diversity hiring challenge
It’s not often that you see two cybersecurity vendor CEOs agree on an issue — and yet get into a very public insult-fest with each other. Then again, this did start at RSA, so anything is possible.
Amazon to pass Walmart as No. 1 retailer by '24; the latter's store-based tack is to blame
A June report from an analytics firm has Amazon knocking Walmart out of its No. 1 retailer slot by 2024. Walmart bet on a store-based approach years ago, but consumers changed their habits and Walmart is soon to pay the price.
Google’s open-source security move may be pointless. In a perfect world, it should be.
Given that one of the uglier threats to enterprise cybersecurity involves re-purposed third-party code and open-source code, you might think that Google addressing the issue would be a big help. Think again.
DOJ reverses itself, says good-faith security researchers should be left alone
The US Department of Justice last week reversed its own policy, telling prosecutors not to prosecute anyone who has engaged in “good-faith security research.”
Apple’s self-repair program is bad for consumers, but might work well for IT
Apple has changed its self-repair program and has gone out of its way to make the program a horrible option for its intended audience: consumers. But it might make a lot of sense for enterprise IT wanting to do iOS device repairs.
Apple is the latest example of how the remote work fight has gone lunatic
The recent corporate pushback against working from remote locations (referred to, unfortunately, as work from home) is both self-destructive and bizarre.
Expect to see more online data scraping, thanks to a misinterpreted court ruling
In a case involving LinkedIn, a US appellate court has come to an obvious conclusion: scraping publicly-visible online data and content doesn't violate The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. What does it mean? That's where things get...