Trend Micro to Invest
$100m in Emerging Tech
Trend Micro has created a $100 mil-
lion global venture fund targeting startups
in emerging technology sectors, such
as IoT. In addition to capital, portfolio
startups will gain access to Trend Micro’s
technology and its channel of more than
28,000 partners.
Trend Micro said that working with start-
ups will allow it to unearth insights into new
business models, market gaps and skill
shortages. “These learnings will influence
Trend Micro’s cybersecurity solution plan-
ning across the company,” the firm said in
an announcement.
Establishing a separate venture capital
unit also provides Trend Micro “additional
freedom” to explore new areas of technol-
ogy “without disrupting core business re-
sources,” the company said.
Will AI be ‘Weaponized’?
A full 62% of security experts
believe that artificial intelligence
(AI) will be weaponized and
used for cyberattacks within the
next 12 months, according to
a survey by Cylance of infosec
experts at the recent Black Hat
USA conference.
“While AI may be the best
hope for slowing the tide of
cyberattacks and breaches,
it may also create more ad-
vanced attacker tactics in the
short-term,” said a Cylance
blog post on the survey.
While the majority of those
surveyed said that they felt there was a high possibility that AI
would be used offensively, 32% said that there wasn’t a possibil-
ity of that happening, and 6% said they didn’t know. It was not-
ed, however, that the potential use of AI as an offensive weapon
wouldn’t slow the use of AI as a defensive tool.
EMERGENT
The futuristic dream of the univer-
sal, invisible and always-on Internet
of Things (IoT) is one step closer,
says MetTel, which recently an-
nounced the first SIM that intelligently
roams to identify and automatically
and securely connect to the strongest
signal globally. MetTel says its IoT
Single SIM ensures the best
possible connectivity no matter
the device or location, chang-
ing the game for supply chain
complexity, retail issues, home
health care and other industry
challenges.
Leveraging the coverage of
four major U.S. and 650 world-
wide carriers, MetTel’s Single
SIM offers real-time data on-
session activity that provides a
current view of product status
and location on anything from a mo-
bile phone to a jet engine. It also ar-
chives the past 48 hours of sessions
for reference and analysis. Geo-fenc-
ing gives the MetTel IoT Single SIM
the ability to proactively self-report
when it has entered special zones or
reached its destination, so businesses
are making informed decisions with
always-on mobile tracking, engineer-
ing and analytics.
“The Single SIM is but one key part
of the holistic approach MetTel takes
to IoT,” said Max Silber, vice president
of mobility and IoT, MetTel. “With al-
ways-on connectivity that isn’t dictated
by device, carrier or location, this solu-
tion can effectively decrease mobility
costs for major organizations, increase
supply chain automation capabilities,
and bring telehealth connectivity and
deployment into rapid adoption.”
While IoT Single SIM currently
resides on a hardware chip, it utilizes
an eSIM-ready infrastructure. eSIM-
based technology changes the way
SIM profiles are managed, says Met-
Tel. Conceptually, an eSIM can host
multiple profiles and work
with all form factors, morph-
ing from one type of carrier
SIM to another, thereby mak-
ing it universal. Although the
eSIM has not yet arrived on
the market, similar capa-
bilities can be realized today
with the MetTel IoT Single
SIM, says the company. The
difference is that the eSIM’s
self-contained IMSI identity
marker allows it to autono-
mously shift forms while MetTel’s
version boasts unlimited IMSI in the
cloud, providing MetTel and its cli-
ents with greater control over the IoT
Single SIM’s transformations from
one carrier network to another.
MetTel Launches Auto-Connecting ‘IoT Single SIM’
Channel
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