Today’s Tech Sightings:
FILE: Workers are pictured beneath clocks displaying time zones in various parts of the world at an outsourcing center in Bangalore, India.
Facing Visa Issues, Indian Outsourcers Have Strength in Numbers
The U.S. travel ban and impending changes to the immigration visa program are sounding alarm bells in India, which provides U.S. tech companies with skilled, low-cost talent. India’s booming outsourcing firms serve customers around the world and sometimes send representatives overseas to work onsite. Now, these companies are worried about contract delays and revenue declines as a result of the new restrictions. The travel ban affects seven predominantly Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia, but travel restrictions associated with immigrant visas have already affected employees of some U.S. tech companies, such as Google and Apple.
In the U.S., a confrontation is brewing between Silicon Valley and the administration of President Donald Trump over the travel ban and immigration visas. As leading tech companies consider legal action to challenge the constitutionality of the president’s action, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the ban goes against “the heart and values that define the best of our nation,” and is particularly “unforgiving of women.”
Security Flaws in Pentagon Computer Systems ‘Easily’ Exploited by Hackers
A cybersecurity expert warns that several servers run by the U.S. Department of Defense are “misconfigured.” The expert, Dan Tentler, founder of Phobos Group, said the vulnerabilities could give hackers or foreign actors easy access to government systems. The Pentagon was alerted to the vulnerabilities more than eight months ago but has not yet fixed them.
More:
- Reached Via Brain-computer Interface, Paralyzed Patients Say They Want to Live
- Misconfigured Firewall Blamed for Hospital Ransomware Infection
- Don’t Fall for This Sophisticated New PayPal Phishing Scam
- 5 Tech Battles Facing Trump
- Apple Mulls Legal Action on Travel Ban
- Immigrants Have Built America’s Tech Industry
- The Myth of the Robot Writer
- Use of Ad-blocking Software Rises by 30 Percent Worldwide
