Acronis True Image 2021 Unites Award-Winning Backup With Advanced Antimalware, Creates Personal Cyber Protection Solution

Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection, has today announced the release of Acronis True Image 2021. The new release integrates advanced cybersecurity capabilities with unmatched personal backup to create the first complete personal cyber protection solution for home users, prosumers, and small businesses around the world.

Delivery comes as the COVID-19 pandemic exposes gaps in traditional solutions and strategies. Securing home machines has never been more important, yet a recent Acronis survey found nearly half (47%) of remote workers never received clear guidance on working from home.

Incorporating cybersecurity capabilities such as real-time antimalware protection, on-demand antivirus scans, web filtering, and videoconference protection into Acronis True Image ensures users have complete cyber protection. For individuals and small business users, unifying these vital capabilities in one solution makes their protection easier to manage and more affordable, while greatly improving the security.

“As more people work or attend classes from home, the FBI documents a 400% increase in cyberattacks because hackers know home systems are not usually as well-defended as an office,” said Serguei “SB” Beloussov, founder and CEO of Acronis. “Backup without cybersecurity is an incomplete option in that situation, as is cybersecurity without backup. Acronis True Image 2021 delivers the easy, efficient, and secure cyber protection needed today.”

Standalone backup and cybersecurity are obsolete

With the modern reliance on everyday devices like computers, smartphones, and tablets, the data they contain has an inherent value. Cybercriminals are constantly evolving their attacks to reach that data, which is why security research firms such as AV-Test report more than 350,000 new malware threats every day.

Since backup software and files are often the targets of these new attacks to prevent recovery, backup alone no longer provides suitable protection for users. Similarly, conventional cybersecurity solutions do not provide the data protection and recovery capabilities users need.

Relying on multiple products that were not designed to work together creates security gaps, is more complex to manage, and is more costly. With a single, integrated solution, Acronis True Image 2021 users can proactively stop any malware attack and then quickly restore affected files. The single, intuitive interface reduces the complexity of managing their security and backups.

Integration delivers superior cyber protection

For the last few years, Acronis True Image has been the only personal backup solution with a built-in antiransomware that stops attacks in real-time, while automatically restoring any affected files.

With the launch of Acronis True Image 2021, those capabilities are expanded with the addition of the company’s advanced antimalware technology, which is currently deployed in Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud. This next-gen, full-stack antimalware has been shown by independent security labs such as Virus Bulletin and AV-Test to return a 100% detection rate with zero false-positives.

As a result, home users gain advanced capabilities with Acronis True Image 2021, including:

* Real-time protection, driven by AI-enhanced behavioral heuristics, which stops all malware – including zero-day attacks by never-before-seen threats

* On-demand antivirus scans of the full system or quick scans of at-risk files, either of which can be scheduled in advance or run instantly

* Web filtering that automatically blocks Windows users from accessing malicious websites that harbor malware, disinformation, scams, and phishing attacks

* Videoconference protection prevent hackers and malware injection attacks from exploiting popular apps like Zoom, Cisco Webex, and Microsoft Teams

* Comprehensive detection, with both behavioral analysis and signature-based analysis engines

These advanced antimalware capabilities are included with Advanced and Premium licenses, and offered as a three-month trial with Standard and Essential licenses.

Acronis True Image 2021 gives individuals and small businesses access to the same protection technologies relied on by global companies and top teams in the world’s most high-pressure professional sports.

“Cyber protection is a top priority for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing,” explains Bobby Rahal, co-owner of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. “When our races were on pause, Acronis continued to provide protection for our team working remotely. Now, with Acronis True Image, everyone can safeguard their personal data against the worst-case scenario.”

Pricing and availability

Four versions of Acronis True Image are available: Standard, Essential, Advanced and Premium. One-computer licenses starting at $59.99 for Standard and $49.99 for Essential. Special launch prices for Advanced and Premium licenses (starting at $69.99 and $99.99, respectively) are available until November 2020, at which time the full MSRP will be in effect (starting at $89.99 and $124.99, respectively).

SmarterBiz Raises INR 8 Crores Pre-Series from StartupXseed and Prominent Angels

 • A post-COVID new norm start-up working on Customer Experience delivery with the most secure technology stack

• Aims to grow at 8X doing about 72 Crores in ARR by Mar 2021 

• Remote WFH solution to enable companies to traverse towards OPEX model 

• Solving Customer Experience (CX) for enterprises 

SmarterBiz, India's first end-to-end CX platform enabled with the gig workforce has raised INR 8 crore as a part of their Pre-Series A round. 

The contributors for this funding round were StartupXseed Ventures (Deep Technology – B2B – Early-stage fund); Mr. Bhaskar Pramanik, Former Chairman of Microsoft India; Mr. MJ Aravind, Former co-founder Daksh, Former Partner Artiman; Mr. Ravi Viswanath; Mr. Ramesh Radhakrishnan; Mr. Ranjan Biswas; and Mr. MJ Aniketh. 

Founded in 2014 by Rajesh Bernard, Vijay Krishna, and Prateek Mehta, the company was funded initially by Utthsihta Yekum Fund.

SmarterBiz is an AI-powered customer experience platform that enables remote management of customer journeys and agent life cycles. SmarterBiz has helped several enterprises, including unicorns build scalable, flexible, and hyper-local customer experience, cost-effectively. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged businesses to ensure business continuity and manage increased customer interactions through remote workforce and reduced costs. With the SmarterBiz CX platform, customers can now remotely enable and manage the complete life cycle of the CX process across both digital and human touchpoints. With a single integrated approach, SmarterBiz takes away the pain of running customer experience on multiple siloed systems and processes that do not talk to each other. SmarterBiz provides an end-to-end platform to CX teams to manage the entire lifecycle of their customer, technology backbone, process, and customer support agents on the cloud. 

SmarterBiz serves several enterprises, including five segment leaders in E-commerce, BFSI, Hospitality, and Telecom sectors. It manages more than 5000 agents as part of its gig workforce. 

Rajesh Bernard, CEO & Co-founder of SmarterBiz said, "SmarterBiz has built a CX platform for a gig-workforce ideally suited under these COVID 19 conditions. SmarterBiz is committed to offering an omnichannel experience that elevates the experience across all customer touchpoints. We provide a competitive advantage to our customers by offering a choice between automation and manual intervention at all these touchpoints. With the investment, we plan to grow by 8X ARR this year and create more gig opportunities in the market." 

"Companies like SmarterBiz can foresee the benefits technology can bring, to reinvent the businesses and add value to the system. It will surely be a game-changing category disruptor during and post-COVID 19. There will be an increasing need for companies to integrate customer journeys, tech, remote work, and Gig models into their business process. We believe that SmarterBiz will be one of the most sustainable global companies of the future, for the solution it brings in and the execution capabilities of the team," said Mr. BV Naidu, Managing Partner, StartupXseed Ventures.

"At last, a seasoned leadership team, a novel premise, immaculate conceptual skills, and meticulous execution. SmarterBiz is indeed a company to watch out for." Mr. M J Aravind, Ex co-founder Daksh. 

The key benefits of the solution for customer experiences are that it facilitates remote work opportunities across India, flexible working hours, earning potential in a WFH set up, and is a mobile light, simple, and efficient application. 

The unique CX platform—Uearn.ai— streamlines the customer journey across multiple touchpoints with an omnichannel CX tech platform, fluid workflow management, and gig workforce, replacing the CapEx model to an OpEx model. The competitive advantage of SmarterBiz is the scalability (4X) it offers at lower costs and faster time to serve as compared to traditional models. 

About SmarterBiz: SmarterBiz, founded in 2014, is India's first end to end CX platform enabled with gig-workforce. It allows companies to shift their CX centres to 100% OpEx model. SmarterBiz streamlines customer journeys across multiple touchpoints with its CX platform—Uearn.ai—lowering the cost to serve, time to serve, for CX centre. It delivers the customer experience through its platform and gig-workforce, bringing convergence of tech and people to run multi-layered operations for its clients. Its fluidity allows clients to scale 4X times faster than the traditional model supported by a talented workforce that can work from remote distributed locations. Uearn.ai facilitates remote work opportunities and has 5,000 trained gig workforces with customer experience profiles. Uearn is available as a remote gig workforce app in Google Play Store. 

SmarterBiz is transforming the CX delivery for some of the leading banks to tech unicorns. To know more, visit www.smarterbiz.ai

Trend Micro Brings DevOps Agility and Automation to Security Operations through Integration with AWS Solutions

Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), the leader in cloud security, enhances agility and automation in cloud security through integrations with Amazon Web Services (AWS). As a result, Trend Micro delivers flexible and scalable all-in-one security that helps DevOps engineers securely build and innovate as they migrate to and build in the cloud. 

Trend Micro has demonstrated the strength of its collaboration with AWS since 2012 with a deep understanding of customer use cases and by integrating with leading AWS security services at launch. Most recently, Trend Micro Cloud One™ offerings have been natively integrated with AWS Control Tower and AWS Systems Manager Distributor. These additions are designed to bring immediate benefit to security, cloud, and DevOps teams leveraging AWS by automating enforcement of security capabilities earlier in the account and resource provisioning process. 

"Trend Micro is an Advanced Technology Partner in the AWS Partner Network (APN) with  a long-standing history of providing security solutions to help customers address their portion of the shared responsibility model," said Siva Padisetty, General Manager, AWS Systems Manager, Amazon Web Services, Inc. "Trend Micro's continuing investment in integrations with native AWS capabilities, such as AWS Control Tower and AWS Systems Manager Distributor, reduces onboarding and management friction while adopting an enhanced security posture." 

According to a recent report from IDC, "Trend Micro is the dominant leader in Software-Defined Compute (SDC) workload protection," making up 29.5% of the worldwide hybrid cloud workload security market share, proving the company's hybrid cloud security expertise, capabilities and trust by customers. As the leading cloud security experts, Trend Micro engineers develop security solutions designed to meet the needs of cloud engineers. 

"We understand that security teams don't always have complete control or visibility into how cloud instances are being spun up, configured and used across the company," said Sanjay Mehta, senior vice president of business development and alliances for Trend Micro. "Listening to and understanding customer needs and feedback drives our innovations and collaboration with AWS. Having our solutions plug in natively with AWS offerings like AWS Control Tower and AWS Systems Manager Distributor adds visibility and automates security for our customers." 

Through this collaboration, Trend Micro Cloud One offers the broadest platform support and API integration to protect your AWS infrastructure whether building with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, AWS Lambda, AWS Fargate, containers, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), or Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) networking. 

Infogain Achieves Google Cloud Partner Specialization in Application Development

Infogain, ​a leading provider of technology solutions, today announced that it has achieved the “Application Development Partner Specialization” in the Google Cloud Partner Specialization Program. The program provides Google Cloud customers with qualified partners that have demonstrated their expertise and success in advanced application development using Google Cloud technology. Infogain’s​proven success in building and managing applications using the best of Google Cloud in both web, and mobile environments led to this specialization. 

Infogain helps enterprises, ISVs, and innovative start-ups build modern software products and applications on Google Cloud. Infogain was one of the first to deploy and integrate Automation Anywhere RPA platform to Google Cloud Platform (​Press Release​).​Infogain’s experience spans modern application development and deployment architectures, Google Cloud IaaS, and PaaS platform development and DevSecOps driven application delivery. 

Nishith Mathur, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, ​Infogain, said, “We are pleased that Infogain achieved the Google Cloud ​Application Development Partner Specialization​. The specialization from Google Cloud is a validation of our commitment to provide the most innovative and best solutions for our clients by leveraging Google Cloud environment​. This accreditation enables us to help our clients achieve agility and security, leading to better business outcomes, using advanced Google Cloud solutions.”

About Infogain

Infogain is a Silicon Valley headquartered company with digital platform and software engineering expertise in the travel, retail, insurance, healthcare, and high technology industries. We accelerate design-led transformation and delivery of digital customer engagement systems and platforms. Infogain engineers business outcomes for Fortune 500 companies and digital natives using technologies such as cloud, microservices, robotic process automation, IoT, and artificial intelligence.   A ChrysCapital portfolio company, Infogain has offices in California, Washington, Texas, London, Dubai, India, and Singapore, with delivery centers in Austin, Kraków, New Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, and Mumbai.

Trend Micro Cloud-Powered XDR Drives Monumental Business Value

Trend Micro Incorporated, the leader in cloud security, today shared the significant business value driven by cloud-powered XDR and Managed XDR offerings, which optimize threat detection and response across all critical vectors. In a recent survey commissioned by Trend Micro and conducted by ESG, organizations surveyed experience faster detection and less alert fatigue as a result of intelligently using data from all their security controls (including those covering endpoints, email, servers, cloud workloads and networks). 

According to the recent findings from ESG*, previewed here with a white paper to publish in August, 85% of organizations claim that threat detection and response is getting harder due to an exponentially more sophisticated threat landscape and a lack of highly skilled security experts over the last two years. 

Trend Micro's XDR solution is both a SaaS-based offering as well as a managed service with the "X" referring to the most extensive sets of data from more protection points, which is critical to find hidden threats. It was recently named by Forrester as a Leader in enterprise detection and response and achieved the highest initial detection in the MITRE ATT&CK® Framework. 

City of Tyler, Texas CIO and Trend Micro customer, Benny Yazdanpanahi said, "Our citizens and employees have a right to expect that their data and public services are secured from cyber-threats, but our small IT workforce can't do everything, so we turned to Managed XDR. Finding a strong, committed partner with knowledge and expertise we don't have was a game-changer for us. Our city motto is 'We are called to serve,' but the same could equally be said of Trend Micro. They care about their customers." 

Today's organizations are faced with sophisticated threats that may bypass even advanced protection. However, most current detection and response approaches are siloed, incomplete and overwhelm limited security teams with disconnected alerts that lack actionable information. Security practitioners currently report being able to find critical alerts but not necessarily having the clarity to resolve the issue due to lack of additional details.  

In fact, ESG found that only 30% of organizations are confident that their threat detection and response functions can perform at the speed needed to keep up with threats over the next 12-24 months. Additionally, on average, organizations and overtaxed IT teams ignore 32% of security alerts. 

Trend Micro XDR was the first solution to launch that offers correlated detection beyond the endpoint: collecting and analyzing data from email, endpoints, servers, cloud workloads, and networks to more effectively hunt, detect and contain threats. It amounts to greater context, greater understanding and faster, more accurate incident response. ESG found that organizations that employ automated data aggregation techniques, like those enabled by Trend Micro XDR, enjoy improved security outcomes. For example, they are generally able to restore in hours vs. days by a ratio of 83% vs. 66%. 

The solution is also available as a managed service (MDR), to further take the pressure off constrained in-house teams with 24/7 full-threat analysis, threat hunting, response plans and remediation recommendations. 

"There's no such thing as 100% prevention anymore, which puts the focus on effective threat detection and response. With XDR, we've broken the mould with correlated detection across traditional siloes to help stretched IT teams optimize their response to stealthy threats," said Steve Quane, executive vice president at Trend Micro. "I'm proud of the fantastic value our solution offers businesses and of once again delivering on our commitment to secure the connected world. It's a privilege to remain a trusted cybersecurity advisor for our global customers." 

*ESG Research Insights Report, Validating Trend Micro's Approach and Enhancing GTM Intelligence, 2020, to be published August 2020. 

Siemens and SAP Join Forces to Accelerate Industrial Transformation

End-to-End Software  

* Together, industry leaders Siemens and SAP will deliver integrated end-to-end software solutions across product lifecycle, supply chain and asset management.

* Partnership leverages expertise and technology of both companies to provide a true digital thread that helps enterprises eliminate process and information siloes, drives digitalization and delivers a comprehensive solution for the 4th industrial revolution (Industry 4.0).

* SAP will offer Siemens’ Teamcenter software as the core foundation for product lifecycle collaboration and product data management. Siemens will offer SAP® Intelligent Asset Management solutions and SAP Portfolio and Project Management applications to maximize business value for customers over the entire product and service lifecycle and enable new collaborative processes between manufacturers and operators.

Siemens and SAP SE has announced a new partnership that will leverage their industry expertise and bring together their complementary software solutions for product lifecycle, supply chain and asset management so their customers can deliver new innovation and collaborative business models that will accelerate industry transformation globally. Through this agreement, both SAP and Siemens will be able to complement and integrate their respective offerings in order to offer customers the first truly integrated and enhanced solutions for product lifecycle management (PLM), supply chain, service and asset management. This will enable customers to form a true digital thread integrating all virtual models and simulations of a product or asset with real-time business information, feedback and performance data over the entire lifecycle.

"Digital transformation will be critical for the manufacturing industries to increase productivity, flexibility and accelerate innovation, so companies must come together in new ways to enable the digital enterprise,” said Klaus Helmrich, Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO of Siemens Digital Industries. “This exciting collaboration between two industry leaders is about more than just interoperability and interfaces; it is about creating a truly integrated digital thread that unites product and asset lifecycle management with the business that enables customers to optimize production of products.”

Silos between engineering and business have existed in enterprises for decades. This new partnership will help customers to break down these siloes so manufacturers, product design teams and service managers have the information needed to quickly create and manage customer-centric product and service offerings.

“As manufacturers design and deliver smarter products and assets, access to real-time business information across networks is critical to bring new and improved innovations to market faster,” said Thomas Saueressig, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE and responsible for SAP Product Engineering. “Bringing together expertise from SAP and Siemens to offer Industry 4.0-enabled business processes allows enterprises to create a digital thread for the entire product and asset lifecycle. With this end-to-end solution, teams across the business network can efficiently work together to design and deliver innovative products productively, profitably and sustainably.”

Going forward, both SAP and Siemens will be able to offer new solutions that combine their technologies in order to help companies shorten time to market by leveraging Industry 4.0-enabled data using intelligent assets and products. This will also give organizations the benefit of incorporating customer insights into product development through a comprehensive solution, from product design to service and asset management. As a first step in the partnership, SAP will offer Siemens’ Teamcenter®  software as the core foundation for product lifecycle collaboration and data management and Siemens will offer SAP® Intelligent Asset Management and SAP Portfolio and Project Management software to maximize the business value for manufacturers and operators across networks. Both companies will collaborate to develop applications from an end-to-end lifecycle perspective to help customers achieve a seamless digital thread that improves overall business performance.

“Combining Siemens’ Teamcenter and SAP S/4HANA® software provides companies an end-to-end process capability from product design to decommission,” said Bob Parker, Senior VP of Industry Research at IDC. “The IT benefits of pre-integration of PLM, ERP, asset management and supply chain applications and the business benefits from having a more resilient response to changing market demand make this a compelling consideration for companies seeking a competitive advantage in the digital economy.”

Hyundai Salutes India’s Strong Spirit - Releases ‘Haq Hai Humara’ Corporate Brand Anthem

Hyundai Motor India Ltd. (HMIL), country’s first smart mobility solutions provider and largest exporter since inception, today released an anthem as a tribute to the ‘Indomitable Spirit of India’. The corporate brand anthem ‘Haq Hai Humara’ aims to bring together the people of India and salute their resolve to stand united and stay strong in this unprecedented adverse situation.

‘Haq Hai Humara’ features Hyundai Corporate Brand Ambassador Mr. Shah Rukh Khan and depicts gratitude to all frontline workers and the citizens of the country who have risen up to this challenge with their steadfast spirit and for their invaluable contribution in the fight against the COVID -19 pandemic. The anthem in association with Universal Music Group & Brands (UMGB) has been composed and sung by prolific music composer and singer Mr Vishal Mishra and written by acclaimed lyricist Mr. Manoj Muntashir.

Speaking at the release of the Anthem, Mr. SS Kim, MD & CEO, Hyundai Motor India Ltd. said, “Hyundai has become an integral part of India over the last two decades, our success is intertwined with that of our valued customers who strongly believe in the Spirit of Hyundai. Through these challenging times, we have stood by the citizens of this great nation and looking back, we must salute the standing strong spirit of India that is witnessed in the people’s fight to bring back Normalcy. Haq Hai Humara is our humble tribute to the country’s solidarity, relentless spirit and never give up attitude in these testing times. We truly believe Together We Can and Together We Will build a ‘New India’.

He further added, “As a responsible and caring brand and in-line with our Global Brand Vision ‘Progress for Humanity’, Hyundai has been at the forefront of providing relentless support to the Government of India in its fight against the pandemic. We will continue to play an active role in economic recovery and chart a path for growth.”

Despite all challenges, the team put this song together shooting from distant locations over virtual platforms. The anthem encourages and motivates each and every Individual to keep their spirit high, hoping for better times ahead.

Commenting on the spirit of this song, Mr. Shah Rukh Khan, Corporate Brand Ambassador, HMIL said, “I am proud to be a part of Hyundai’s ‘Haq Hai Humara’ anthem which is a salute to the spirit of humanity, the ceaseless commitment from the frontline heroes and the small acts of kindness all around us which are the pivots for rebuilding the nation. As we all look forward to the future, I’m sure this anthem will bring positivity and hope for a better tomorrow!”

Also commenting on the thought behind the lyrics of the Anthem, Mr Vishal Mishra, Music Composer & Singer and Mr Manoj Muntashir, Lyricist & Writer said, “Firstly we would like to congratulate Hyundai for conceptualising this song that will help bring about positivity and cheer amid this crisis. Haq Hai Humara is an expression of infinite gratitude that we all feel towards the COVID warriors. Through this song we wanted to convey that ‘Aazadiyaan, Manmarziyaan, Oonchaaiyaan,’ (freedom, free-will and the spirit to soar higher) is our right and no matter what the circumstances may be, it is our tough resolute that will get us back on our feet and help us to keep moving forward. The song is an articulation of the New India.”

Does US lead among spam nations?

The US leads the world in the sending of spam, according to a study.

The study by IT security solutions provider Sophos showed that spam originating in Russia has dropped significantly. It also claimed that some 16.5 per cent of all spam mails sent in the second quarter of this year came from the United States.

Russian spammers - previously a highly active bunch - were only responsible for 3.2 per cent of all spam sent, which puts them in ninth place on the list.

Second place went to Brazil (11.1 per cent), followed by Turkey (5.2) and India (5.0).

Agencies