Tag: Microsoft

Microsoft releases sign language functionality
Microsoft has announced the addition of a sign language view option to the Microsoft Teams platform. The feature improves accessibility on Teams by allowing users to prioritize up to two other participants’ videos, so they stay visible and in a consistent location.

People who are deaf or hard of hearing can keep interpreters and others who use sign language at the center of their Teams meetings.

According to Microsoft’s Accessibility Architect for Teams Calling, Chris Sano: “As a Deaf person who uses Teams for many meetings a day, I am all too aware of the issues that virtual meetings offer to Deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) users.

Just over a year ago, I accepted a position as an accessibility architect for Microsoft Teams calling, meetings, and devices. One of my primary responsibilities in this role has been to outline a strategy for providing the D/HH community with the best possible experience within Microsoft Teams.

The most important part of that work has been focusing our efforts in this area on the needs of the community as a whole.

As opposed to us telling you how to use the product, “inclusive design” begins with the community informing us how they want to be able to utilize the product.

“Sign language view will let you put up to two additional participants’ films at the front and center of your screen,” the description reads.

Read also: Microsoft Unveils New Features For Windows 11

Why the Microsoft sign language functionality?

According to Microsoft, the sign language view function is the company’s first move in responding to various requests from the D/HH community.

This included ensuring that interpreters’ and other signers’ video feeds are sized appropriately for sign language visibility, giving participants the ability to see up to two other signers, and reducing tedious meeting setup tasks like pinning interpreters and turning on captions at the beginning of each meeting.

When the feature is enabled, the prioritized video streams will automatically appear at the proper aspect ratio and in the highest quality.

Each user’s sign language display may be customized to meet their individual requirements better.

Microsoft stated that when a conference participant provides material, such as their screen, the priority signer video would alter position but remain high quality and bigger than other participants in the room.

Users may use the new accessibility pane in Teams settings to enable sign language for all meetings. In Teams settings, you may also pre-identify preferred signers, such as frequent interpreters.

Microsoft’s sign language view functionality comes weeks after Zoom’s. Zoom is developing functionality for remote education.

Zoom Meeting and Webinar hosts may arrange a sign language interpreter in advance, allowing attendees to pick their favourite language.

Microsoft Unveils Outlook Lite For Andriod

How the sign language view work
- You may activate Sign Language View during a meeting or as a default for all meetings. To activate Sign Language, open Teams and click Settings and more > Settings > Accessibility.
- The functionality requires the specified signer’s video. When Sign Language View is enabled, other participants’ screens remain unaffected.
- When a meeting participant provides material, the designated video stream switches but remains bigger, more visible, and of greater quality.
- If you deal with the same sign language interpreters from your organization every day, put them in the ‘Accessibility’ tab, so they always appear in the feature’s signer list. Meetings may include an outside interpreter.
- Users may appoint translators and signers before or during a meeting.
November 27, 2022
A Global Slowdown Forces Microsoft And Meta To Begin Layoffs

Microsoft, Meta and Twitter have been reported to begin silent layoff of employees. Microsoft is set to begin the layoff of about one thousand (1,000) employees in its different divisions, including the Xbox and the Edge Teams.

Meta is reportedly conducting `quiet layoffs` at its Facebook arm that may lead to thousands of job cuts, at least 12,000 or about 15 per cent of its workforce. This is in a bid to slow down its workforce as macroeconomics headwinds and falling ad spending continues to impact the tech industry.

Earlier in July, tech giant Microsoft had said that a small number of roles had been eliminated and that it would increase its employee count down the line. In a released statement, Microsoft said, “Today we had a small number of role eliminations. Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities regularly and make structural adjustments accordingly.”

This also applied to Meta, which announced a pause in its hiring process as the fear of a global recession continues to loom. Now, the silicon valley tech giant is set to lay off 12,000 of its 80,000 employees in a bid to cut the budget and reduce headcount.

Meta had previously laid off 60 contract workers in mid-August.

Read also: Microsoft Unveils Outlook Lite For Andriod

Job Seekers On The Rise

As much as 15% of Meta’s workforce could be cut within the next few weeks. This means that some 12,000 employees could be out of jobs soon. The layoffs by Microsoft affected less than 1 per cent of Microsoft’s last reported workforce of around 221,000.

A Series of technology companies have been cutting jobs or slowing hiring amid a global economic slowdown. Asides from Microsoft and Meta, several tech companies, including Twitter Inc and Snap Inc, have cut jobs and stopped hiring in recent months due to global economic slowdown, rising inflation, etc. On August 31, 2022, Snap announced its plan to reduce its headcount by approximately 20 per cent of its full-time global employees.

In a mail to the employees accessed by the media, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said it had become clear that the company must reduce the cost structure to avoid incurring significant ongoing losses.

“As a result, we have made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team by approximately 20%. The scale of these changes vary from team to team, depending upon the level of prioritization and investment needed to execute against our strategic priorities”, Spiegel’s mail read.

The likes of Wipro and Infosys have also announced layoffs this year. Besides attrition, many companies like Apple, Oracle, Google and others have also announced a hiring freeze for the coming months. According to the media, more than 32,000 workers in the US tech sector have been laid off in mass job cuts as of late July.

This number includes both startups and publicly traded tech companies, as well as companies with sizable teams.

Long before Microsoft and Meta got hit by the global slowdown and began quiet layoffs, many other organizations have been reported to do so in which some had to shut down their businesses. Other organizations like Sendy, 54gene, Sky.Garden, and Notify.

Business Difficulties Force 54gene to lay off Employees

Global Macroeconomics Crisis

The global outlook has deteriorated markedly throughout 2022 amid high inflation, aggressive monetary tightening, and uncertainties from both the war in Ukraine and the lingering pandemic. Soaring food and energy prices are eroding real incomes, triggering a global cost-of-living crisis, particularly for the most vulnerable groups.

Growth in the world’s three largest economies, the United States, China, and the European Union, is weakening, with significant spillovers to other countries. At the same time, rising government borrowing costs and large capital outflows are exacerbating fiscal and balance of payments pressures in many developing countries.

The catalysts for the GFC were falling house prices and a rising number of borrowers unable to repay their loans. Rising borrowing prices, inflation, and debt all fuel concerns of an economic collapse, with analysis showing that Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Russia, Suriname, and Zambia are already in debt default, Belarus is on the verge of default, and at least another dozen countries are in danger of default.

Inflation is skyrocketing (currently 388 per cent), debt relief could be suspended, and humanitarian response is underfunded (36 per cent). Climate change is exacerbating flooding and drought, locust plagues present a constant threat, and food insecurity could affect up to 6 million people.

Against this backdrop, the global economy is now projected to grow between 2.5 and 2.8 per cent in 2022. The deterioration in business confidence is particularly alarming for many developing countries that are yet to recover from the pandemic fully. International food and energy prices have fallen from recent peaks but continue to be at very high levels.

Global trade remains largely subdued as global supply chain disruptions and bottlenecks in international freight movements persist.

October 23, 2022
Microsoft Strengthens its Partnership with the African Development Bank

Microsoft, an American multinational technology company, is working more closely with the African Development Bank’s Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Banks (YEIB) Initiative to help young entrepreneurs in Africa.

Through its African Transformation Office (ATO), the company will work with the bank to create ecosystems for young entrepreneurs, jobs, and a much bigger impact in Africa through digital inclusion. By 2050, the continent’s youthful population is projected to double, reaching 830 million people. Although 10 to 12 million young people enter the labour field annually across the continent, only slightly more than 3 million jobs are generated, leaving many individuals without employment. Youth entrepreneurship will help a lot with the job problem, but there are still a lot of problems to solve, like a lack of investment, cheap access to capital, and bad company development services.

Wael Elkabbany, general manager of Microsoft Africa Regional Cluster, says that by working with the African Development Bank, “much can be done to help foster youth entrepreneurship, driving greater economic inclusion for this key segment of the population, and ultimately building a more prosperous society.”

“We’ve already seen significant success working together on programs like Coding for Employment, which sets out to generate over 9 million jobs and reach 32 million adolescents and women throughout Africa in only 10 years,” the speaker continues.

Solomon Quaynor, vice president of the African Development Bank for the private sector, infrastructure, and industrialization, says, “Strengthening our partnership with Microsoft on the Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Banks (YEIB) is an important step on our way to harnessing Africa’s demographic dividend and helping to create millions of jobs for young Africans by 2025.”

This initiative emphasizes that young people are starting businesses, which is essential to meeting our ambitious employment goals. Using a public-private partnership model, the partnership aims to help build national institutions that will give young entrepreneurs more technical and financial support and help them improve their skills.

Read also: Microsoft Unveils Outlook Lite For Andriod

AFDB creates YEIB to help young entrepreneurs

The African Development Bank created the Youth Entrepreneurial Investment Bank as a unique value proposition that combines and anchors work to create African entrepreneurship ecosystems. Through this project, the bank will bring together the necessary financial and non-financial parties and partners so that they can do what they need to do to help young entrepreneurs through mentoring, coaching, sharing of knowledge and experience, and other means.

The Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank will establish a funding scheme, a credit guarantee scheme, and technical assistance programs to strengthen providers of services to entrepreneurs. In terms of policy support, it will try to get governments to make the changes to the business-friendly environment needed to encourage young people to start their own businesses. Microsoft will use its partner ecosystem, which includes 54 African countries, to make important technological improvements in four important areas. These include endpoint devices, networking, small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), digitalization, and skilling.

Skilling:

The collaboration will give young people learning materials and career paths to help them get jobs and learn skills that will help them find jobs. This involves using already-established e-learning tools like Coding for Employment. Through the development of trainers, the project also intends to strengthen the ability of enterprise services organizations to assist young people.

Connectivity:

Using popular ways to connect, like Microsoft Airband, the alliance will create efficient infrastructure models that will help close the digital gap. It will also help other cutting-edge products on the market through direct or indirect investments.

Digitization of Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMEs):

By providing access to selected learning materials, certifications, business solutions, business skills, and specialized digital skills, the alliance also seeks to increase SME digital literacy and business capabilities. This will be promoted through skill-building initiatives like MS Learn and the Cloud Academy and a relationship with LinkedIn. Microsoft agreements will also make financing easier for SMEs with digital capabilities.

Endpoint gadgets:

Microsoft and its partners will develop SME access to packaged endpoint solutions. Additionally, Microsoft technology will be more affordable for SMEs. The relationship plays a significant role in Microsoft ATO’s aim to empower 10 million SMEs with access to skills programs and investments and build the infrastructure necessary to expand and educate 30 million Africans in digital skills.

Read also: Microsoft and Tizeti have partnered to expand high-speed internet access in Nigeria through the Airband program

Microsoft ATO express gratitude for Microsoft services in Africa

Angela Kyerematen-Jimoh, Strategic Partnerships Lead, Microsoft ATO, says, “We’re excited about the potential of this collaboration to magnify the work Microsoft is doing around digital inclusion in Africa.” The digital economy is an important part of creating new, innovative businesses that can give young Africans jobs that will last. The more we can ensure budding young entrepreneurs are given every opportunity to participate in the digital economy, the closer we get to building a more prosperous future for everyone. “

September 27, 2022
Microsoft Unveils Outlook Lite For Andriod

Microsoft, the world’s leading software company has released a stripped-down version of its Outlook application named Outlook Lite for smart devices with less powerful processors.

Following a number of user complaints that the application did not perform as expected on certain mobile devices, this solution was developed. Microsoft revealed in a blog post that

“We are thrilled to announce the availability of Outlook Lite in select markets to empower more individuals, schools, universities, and small businesses with a solution for their lightweight mobile devices. Outlook Lite brings the main features of Microsoft Outlook in a smaller-sized app with fast performance for lightweight devices on any network.”

The company is known to have been working tirelessly over the years and not quite long that it unveiled a series of new features for Windows 11 that are intended to meet the needs of people who work in a hybrid environment.

Does Outlook have a phone app?

While this will be a good time for android users as this app’s download size is just 5.2 megabytes, and once it’s installed, it won’t take up any space on the smartphone at all.

Furthermore, the app can be downloaded on Google Play Store in any of the regions available.

Because it is developed with optimization to offer users the experience of using the primary features of Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Lite enables users to use it on any network, including 2G and 3G networks. So this will alleviate the question; Why is my Outlook email not working on my Android?

Because it only makes use of primary resources, it will also function with a minimal amount of battery utilization, which means that the battery will be retained.

The Outlook Lite software is only compatible with email services provided by Microsoft. These services include Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live, MSN, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Exchange Online accounts. Because it does not allow third-party email accounts like Gmail, users will need to utilize the complete Outlook client in order to make use of that capability.

Read: Microsoft Unveils New Features For Windows 11

More Details On Outlook Lite

This lightweight Outlook app was developed with the goal of having a smaller app size, faster performance, and lower battery usage. This is done with the intention that any low-end device will be able to support it and experience it.

“Outlook is used by millions of people daily for their email and calendaring needs across the world. Yet, there are a wide range of devices that do not have all the capabilities required to get the best Outlook experience on their smartphone.” Said Microsoft in a blog post

Microsoft also explained that this lightweight version is well optimized to run quickly on all Android devices, even if you are using it on devices with only 1GB RAM. This statement was made in reference to the fact that you can use it on devices with more than 1GB RAM.

“Fast – Optimized to run fast on all Android devices including devices with 1GB RAM”

Microsoft Outlook Lite Availability

The outlook lite app is currently accessible in the following countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Mexico, Peru, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Venezuela. However, Microsoft said that in the future, it will review and add more markets.

Update On Outlook For Window

A new version of Outlook for Windows has also been unveiled, which brings the desktop email client closer to its web-based version.

In addition to a new style, Outlook has received a few additional functions, according to Microsoft. To begin with, it will be integrated with Loop, Microsoft’s mechanism for working on items such as surveys, task lists, and more across Office applications. Attaching files is now much easier due to the new system. Using the “@” sign followed by a filename will bring up a list of web files that may be included in an email.

A few calendar and to-do functions have also been introduced by Microsoft. To keep emails in one face until users deal with them, users may pin them to the top of their inbox. Drag emails into a panel and set them as tasks or calendar events in order to schedule a time to respond, and then look at the new calendar view that shows one’s task lists, notes, and various other customizable pieces of information along with a real calendar. This is a big improvement over the previous version.

August 13, 2022
Samsung Unveils Foldables Galaxy Series

At the latest Galaxy Unpacked event held on Wednesday, Samsung announced its newest foldable smartphones, the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4, and debuted other new wearables.

For the first time, Samsung has modified the Fold and Flip, with the device taking the top spot in today’s exclusive presentation. The clamshell is being subtly acknowledged as coming closer to the widespread acceptability they are looking forward to meeting. With this, the company may accomplish this earlier than people had imagined.

TM Roh, head of the mobile communication section, recently said: “Worldwide shipments of foldable smartphones were close to 10 million last year.” Compared to 2020, the industry has grown by over 300%, and I believe this tremendous expansion will continue. It’s noteworthy that the Flip was, by far, the main contributor to those statistics. The company reports that 70% of customers strongly preferred this form factor over the Fold.

Foldable smartphones are now in the last stages of smartphone development for over four generations. The initial products focused on getting things right and fixing some, shall we say, early device problems. Now that the products are in significantly more hands worldwide, the firm is reacting to user feedback and giving a similar feature upgrade cycle as other flagship smartphones.

Read: Slot Partners with Samsung and Access Bank on Galaxy S22 Series device financing

Conversely, it must be acknowledged that, in terms of complexity, Samsung is now the only player in the market. At the same time, a reminder that the most evolved gadgets available on the market don’t match Samsung’s supremacy serves as a sobering contrast to how Huawei’s promising achievements were thwarted when the business found itself at the heart of a trade battle of superpowers. If any chance of competition will alter how Galaxy devices are approached, one or two other businesses must launch successfully.

Features of the Foldable Galaxy smartphones

It is dubbed the most durable foldable ever made. Flip4 and Fold4—feature protective aluminium frames and hinge covers, as well as exclusive Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ on the cover screen and back glass.

The Flip4 device is powered by the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset and supports 5G. It has a longer-lasting battery with super-fast charging that claims to take the battery power up to 50 per cent in around 30 minutes.

The smartphone retains its predecessor’s 6.7-inch, 2640 x 1080, 120 Hz refresh rate display. The camera has seen an upgrade to dual 12MP wide and ultrawide cameras with OIS and VDIS; the third one features a 16MP front-facing selfie camera and a 10MP telephoto lens with a 3x zoom. The upgrade is possible because of various provider-made chipset advancements and increased sensor brightness. Through a partnership with Meta, Samsung has given applications like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram access to additional functionality. The majority of the additional modifications to the device are made to the software.

At the event, the Galaxy Z Fold 4 took the spotlight. In terms of hardware, the device also comes with a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor.

The Z Fold 4 is the first gadget to arrive with Android 12L, a new fork of the mobile operating system developed in partnership with Samsung. Improved multitasking with the option to switch between split-screen and pop-up mode is one of the new software improvements. The user interfaces for Microsoft Office, Chrome, and Gmail have been enhanced, bringing functionality closer to that of a tablet. For Samsung:

Samsung’s collaborations with Microsoft and Google advanced multitasking and allowed CEOs and company owners more room to see and do. Users can swiftly copy and paste links, photographs, and other content from one Google app to another with the drag-and-drop functionality in Chrome, Gmail, and other Google applications. With Google Meet, users can now communicate with numerous individuals while participating in virtual co-activities like co-watching YouTube movies or playing games over a video call.

Microsoft’s entire Office suite and Outlook are available to utilize the large cover screen that unfolds to give a tablet-like experience. The foldable display gives users more information on the screen, so they may examine documents side by side to multitask effectively and make it simple to work on a spreadsheet or presentation. Thanks to Microsoft integration, access to crucial files is available to everyone.

Both of Samsung’s new foldable smartphones support the company’s S Pen stylus for productivity apps like Office.

The Galaxy Z Flip4 is available in Graphite, Pink Gold, Bora Purple, and Blue finishes, while the Galaxy Z Fold4 is in Phantom Black, Beige, Gray-green, and Burgundy colours.

Preorders are now available for the two foldable smartphones and will be on sale starting on August 26. The Z Flip begins at $1,000 for 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The latter may be upgraded to 512GB. The Z Fold starts at a much higher price, at $1,800 for 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage (upgradable to 1TB).

Other Wearables Unveiled at the Event

Samsung also revealed three new smartwatches: the Galaxy Watch 5, the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, and Galaxy Buds 2 Pro.

As per Samsung, the expanded surface area has improved the accuracy of the health measures on the Galaxy Watch 5, making it more specific than those on its predecessor. The Watch 5 also has a new body temperature sensor for more accurate health data. The Watch 5’s battery life and charging efficiency have increased, partly because of a 13% bigger battery. It now charges 30% quicker than the Galaxy Watch 4 and can track your sleep for eight hours after just eight minutes of charging.

Samsung claims the Watch 5 Pro is intended for people who “enjoy the great outdoors.” Compared to the Watch 4 battery, it is 60% bigger. The Watch 5 Pro runs for 80 hours on a single full charge. Users who participate in more strenuous activities will find its design more durable. It arrived as Apple was preparing to introduce three new Apple Watch models: a new entry-level SE model, a regular Series 8, and a rugged variant geared toward extreme activities, according to Bloomberg.

By August 26, the watches will also be open for sale.

Samsung also unveiled the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, a new generation of earphones with an improved ANC system and a more comfortable and ergonomic design. The Buds feature Hi-Fi 24-bit audio, 40% adaptive solid noise cancellation (ANC), Voice Detect, customized beamforming, and a forthcoming LE codec. It has 8 hours of battery life. The casing and the earbuds have a combined battery life of 29 hours.

August 12, 2022
You may now translate to and from isiZulu across the whole Microsoft ecosystem.

Microsoft has added isiZulu to its Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services Translator, which allows text and documents to be translated to and from South Africa’s most commonly spoken official language. This means that text and documents can be translated across the Microsoft ecosystem of products and services.

The Goal Behind Microsoft New Push

As part of Microsoft’s goal to make its products and services easier to use and more accessible to people around the world, isiZulu has become the second African language to be supported. In the future, more of the continent’s most popular languages will be added.
Microsoft’s Ecosystem Now Supports isiZulu Translation.

Microsoft 365 for translating text and documents, the Microsoft Edge browser and Bing search engine for translating entire webpages, SwiftKey for translating messages, LinkedIn for translating user-submitted content, and the Translator app for having multilingual conversations on the go are just a few examples.

Read Also : Hacking group Anonymous releases 28GB of data stolen from the Russian central bank

With this support—which has been enabled for over 100 languages and dialects worldwide—more people will be able to connect, and language will become a seamless feature of utilizing technology,” says Siya Madyibi, ED: Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs at Microsoft South Africa.

The Translator’s mission is to bridge the language gap between people and cultures all around the world. To do this, we have regularly added languages and dialects to this service while ensuring the translation quality of the available languages by utilizing the most recent neural machine translation (NMT) algorithms, “Madyibi said.

The company developed machine translation systems more than a decade ago through its Microsoft Research unit – and has consistently built on and improved these systems and techniques, adopting NMT technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) as it evolved and migrating all machine translation systems to neural models to improve translation fluency and accuracy.

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Working with partners in language communities who can assist in data collection for specific languages and have access to human-translated texts also aids in overcoming the difficulty of acquiring enough bilingual data to train and develop a machine translation model. This group of collaborators helps with the collection of bilingual data, consultation with community members, and the evaluation of the quality of the machine translation models they make.

Microsoft thinks that these ever-improving capabilities enable organizations to increase their worldwide reach by allowing them to connect with customers and partners in several languages and localize content and apps quickly, consistently, and economically. It also helps to remove barriers to internal communication between people from different countries.

As the benefits and value of translation support become more apparent, particularly for African languages, Madyibi says, “we will see capabilities being rolled out for more of the continent’s languages, ultimately helping to break down language barriers and helping more people connect with each other and technology in a way that empowers them to do and achieve more.”

April 4, 2022
Lapsus$ Group Attacks Microsoft and Okta in Cyber Hack

The Lapsus$ group struck again. Lapsus is known for breaking into business networks and then extorting them. Sometimes they steal data and hold it hostage.

The ransomware group this week launched an attack on Microsoft and Okta.

Previously, the group has breached the Cybersecurity of many tech giants including Nvidia and Samsung in which nearly 200 Gigabytes of Samsung Source Code were leaked.

Microsoft stated that the hacker group Lapsus gained “limited access” to its networks, after a claim by the group that it stole source code for the Bing search engine and Cortana voice assistant.

While Okta, the San Francisco-based company that manages user authentication services for thousands of corporate clients, stated that the impact of the breach is 366 (approximately 2.5% of) customers whose Okta tenant was accessed by Sitel.

About Lapsus$ Group Attack

Some time ago, the group advertised that they wanted to buy credentials of their target company through employees or contractors that are willing to take part in its operation. For a fee, the willing accomplice must provide their credentials and approve the MFA prompt or have the user install AnyDesk or other remote management software on a corporate workstation allowing the actor to take control of an authenticated system.

Lapsus$ is known for claiming on social media to infiltrate a number of large tech companies. Its Telegram channel was the first to report this week’s Microsoft and Okta breaches.

Read Also : Anonymous Hacker Group Communicate With Russians Through Printer Attacks

According to the report, Microsoft may have been hacked, with 37 GB of Bing, Bing Maps, and Cortana source code stolen, while the group claimed to have gotten around 45 percent of the code for Bing and Cortana, and around 90 percent of the code for Bing Maps.

But Microsoft stated, “Our investigation has found a single account had been compromised, granting limited access. Our cybersecurity response teams quickly engaged to remediate the compromised account and prevent further activity.”

Moreover, Okto said LAPSUS$ remotely hacked a computer belonging to a customer support engineer contracted via Sitel, a third-party outsourcing agency.

“Our investigation determined that the screenshots, which were not contained in the Sitel summary report, were taken from a Sitel support engineer’s computer upon which an attacker had obtained remote access using RDP. This device was owned and managed by Sitel.”

What is Microsoft Saying?

Microsoft has identified LAPSUS$ activity and linked it to a threat group known as DEV-0537, which is known for using a pure extortion and destruction model without deploying ransomware payloads. The group began targeting organizations in the government, technology, telecom, media, retail, and healthcare sectors before expanding to global targets.

Microsoft affirmed “Unlike most activity groups that stay under the radar, DEV-0537 doesn’t seem to cover its tracks. They go as far as announcing their attacks on social media or advertising their intent to buy credentials from employees of target organizations.”

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Furthermore, Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) assesses that the objective of DEV-0537 is to gain elevated access through stolen credentials that enable data theft and destructive attacks against a targeted organization, often resulting in extortion. Tactics and objectives indicate this is a cybercriminal actor motivated by theft and destruction.

In some cases, DEV-0537 even called the organization’s help desk and attempted to convince the support personnel to reset a privileged account’s credentials

Report from Okto

Okta, based in San Francisco, helps employees of more than 15,000 companies securely access their networks and applications, a security breach at the company could have far-reaching implications across the Internet.

David Bradbury explained the situation in a blog post, Our investigation determined that the screenshots, which were not contained in the Sitel summary report, were taken from a Sitel support engineer’s computer upon which an attacker had obtained remote access using RDP. This device was owned and managed by Sitel. He explained further “The scenario here is analogous to walking away from your computer at a coffee shop, whereby a stranger has (virtually in this case) sat down at your machine and is using the mouse and keyboard. So while the attacker never gained access to the Okta service via account takeover, a machine that was logged into Okta was compromised and they were able to obtain screenshots and control the machine through the RDP session.”

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According to the forensic firm’s investigating the breach, the report indicated that the threat actor had access to the Sitel environment for five days between January 16 and 21, 2022, which was confirmed with analysis.

Bradbury added the threat actor would not have gotten “god-like access” since the application is built with the least privilege in mind to ensure that support engineers are granted only the specific access they require to perform their roles. They are unable to create or delete users. They cannot download customer databases. They cannot access our source code repositories.

March 30, 2022
Microsoft and Tizeti have partnered to expand high-speed internet access in Nigeria through the Airband program.

Tizeti, West Africa’s pioneer solar-based internet service provider, has partnered with Microsoft Corp to roll out high-speed Airband internet infrastructure in Oyo State as part of its commitment to empowering more Nigerians, stimulating economic activities, and broadening the broadband envelope in Africa with affordable broadband connectivity.

Broadband Internet Penetration in Nigeria

With 40% broadband penetration in December 2021, millions of Nigerians will still be left out of the global digital economy. Tizeti and Microsoft will use their low-cost wireless technologies as part of the Microsoft Airband Initiative to make it easier and less expensive for individuals, particularly those in underserved communities, to connect to the internet and the digital economy. The Airband effort contributes to Microsoft and Tizeti’s common goal of connecting more people to the internet at a low cost, beginning with Oyo State.

What Tizeti Has To Say About The Partnership

Tizeti’s Chief Executive Officer, Kendall Ananyi, commented on the partnership, saying that the Microsoft Airband collaboration will complement Tizeti’s existing initiative in Oyo State and lay the groundwork for a robust and thriving digital ecosystem for Oyo State’s large population of vibrant, young people. “We are excited to collaborate with Microsoft on the Airband Initiative because it expands our aim of offering inexpensive and dependable internet to more Nigerians beyond the digital envelope,” Ananyi added.

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Tizeti recently launched its fixed wireless network in Oyo State, South-West Nigeria, to provide significant opportunities for cities in Oyo State that lack adequate broadband infrastructure, as well as to improve the state’s competitiveness with high-speed, unlimited, yet affordable broadband internet from Tizeti.

“In our increasingly digital world, communities require dependable, inexpensive internet connection,” said Microsoft Airband General Manager Vickie Robinson. “That is why Microsoft is collaborating with providers such as Tizeti to connect the unconnected, boost opportunity, and bridge the global digital divide.”

About Microsoft Airband Initiative

Microsoft’s Airband Initiative aims to advance digital equity—access to affordable internet, devices, and digital skills—as a platform for empowerment and digital transformation around the world.

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There is still a significant digital divide in many African countries. This distinction between connected and unconnected has evident implications for employment, education, family and social life, and information access. Partnerships like this one play an important role in addressing emerging nations’ digital infrastructure shortfalls by utilizing innovative technology and expertise to improve development outcomes for millions of people.

March 25, 2022