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After last week’s summit in Australia, the Five-Eyes Governments, which include the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, issued a statement calling on the technology industry to willingly provide access to encrypted information. While encryption is by far the safest way for private information to travel between the sender and receiver, the Five-Eyes group argue that it can also be “used by criminals, including child sex offenders, terrorists and organized crime groups to frustrate investigations and avoid detection and prosecution.”  Even though the debate of privacy versus security when it comes to data encryption is not a new one, many cybersecurity experts still claim that there is no safe way to provide authorities with a backdoor access to decoded information without introducing vulnerabilities that may be exploited by hackers. Despite this argument, the alliance is pushing technology providers to “create customized solutions, tailored to their individual…

Connecting to a public WiFi network at airports, hotels or even at a local coffee shop is not always as safe as one might think, as intercepting private information sent over a public network is quite easy even for inexperienced hackers. As a result, Verizon has decided to combat this security vulnerability by launching a VPN for their customers, Safe Wi-Fi. This new service protects personal data from prying eyes, and blocks advertisement trackers by using VPN encryption. Safe Wi-Fi is available on iOS and Android devices for a fee of $3.99 per month, and can cover up to 10 devices linked to a Verizon account. Considering how much the theft of personal information might cost a user, this is a small price to pay for keeping important data secure.

A worldwide partnership between CTG (China Telecom Global) and Global Switch was made official. It will allow the two companies to offer Data Centre Network solutions to customers globally. Global Switch already operates, develops and owns carrier and cloud-neutral data centres, that are located in Europe, and the Asia Pacific area. As a part of its services, it provides IEPL (international ethernet private lines), IPLC (international private leased circuits), VPN and IP transit. Deng Xiaofeng, CEO of CTG, expressed his satisfaction : “The collaboration will bring significant value-adds to our existing and future customers, fuelling their development and success with resilient and mission critical data centre network infrastructure.” John Corcoran, CEO of Global Switch, added: “This agreement with China Telecom Global is recognition of Global Switch’s continued commitment to providing customers with industry-leading facilities and solutions across our global portfolio. This initiative will further enhance access to our extensive connectivity…

French researchers are starting to work on the blockchain! Inria, Télécom ParisTech, Télécom SudParis and SystemX signed a framework agreement on Tuesday March 6th, to coordinate their research efforts in the blockchain area. Called “Bart” (Blockchain Advanced Research & Technologies), this initiative will last for six years and will mobilize thirty researchers. Its aim is to remove the technological barriers that slow down the deployment of blockchain-driven data storage, a technology which is currently attracting the interest of many industries. Three main challenges will be addressed: 1 – Scaling up In one second, six or seven transactions took place on the Bitcoin blockchain, versus several thousand for the Visa credit card system. This slowness limits the use of the blockchain on a larger scale. The problem is due to the validation technique required for transactions, with transactions being grouped into blocks that must be validated by a computer calculation process called mining. Typically, it takes about…