Security firm Optiv files for IPO, seeks to raise $100 million

Cybersecurity company Optiv Security, majority owned by Blackstone Group, filed with U.S. regulators for an initial public offering of its common stock on Friday.
The company set a nominal fundraising target of $100 million in its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The filing showed that both Optiv and its shareholders were offering shares in the IPO, but did not disclose the number of shares being sold or their expected price.
Optiv was created when cyber security companies Accuvant and FishNet Security merged in 2015. Blackstone made a majority investment in Accuvant in 2014.
On a pro forma basis, the company posted a loss of $5.7 million on revenue of $643.8 million in the nine

Automobile technicians decry multiple taxations, embark on warning strike in Niger

The Niger State chapter of the Nigeria Automobile Technicians Association, on Friday embarked on a two-day warning strike in protest against alleged multiple taxation on its members by the state government.
According to its Chairman, Ayuba A-Oluobor, the taxes imposed on the technicians “have become simply unbearable”.
A-Oluobor told the News Agency of Nigeria on Friday in Minna that the levies were “so many and heavy”, making it impossible for members to break even.
“We pay for business premises, development levy, Local Government levy, sanitation levy and now registration and certification levy,” he fumed.
He explained that the association was not against the payment of taxes, but that members were paying more than the money accruing to them from their trade.
The association’s chairman said that the levy in contention, registration and certification of business, was recently imposed on the association by the Vehicle Inspection Office of the Ministry of Works.

ICT contributes 12.6% to GDP in second quarter – Shittu

As at the end of the second quarter, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector increased its contribution to the country’s nominal GDP by 0.37 per cent, moving from 12.25 per cent in first quarter to 12.62 per cent.
The Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, who disclosed at the ISACA Abuja’s eighth yearly international conference, said the Federal Government was redoubling efforts to increase ICT’s contribution to the country’s GDP, “as we consider it to be a veritable alternative to the oil sector whose contributions have dwindled over the past year.”
At the conference, which discussed cyber security, technology optimisation and national development, Shittu said without any equivocation, virtually all developmental moves in the world involve the application of ICT, but added that the challenge remains the security implications.
According to the minister, in his keynote address, the traditional banking was essentially

Samsung to recall 2.8 million washing machines in US

Samsung is recalling 2.8 million washing machines with a potential for a dangerous detachment of its top lid, the South Korean company and US safety officials announced Friday.
The recall delivers a new blow to the electronics giant, which has scrapped production of its flagship Galaxy Note 7 smartphones due to risks of overheating batteries that can catch fire.
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission said in a statement the Samsung washing machine top “can unexpectedly detach from the washing machine chassis during use, posing a risk of injury from impact.”
Samsung received 733 reports of problems with the machines. Nine of those incidents involved injury, including a broken jaw and injured shoulder.
Samsung said in a statement the recall affects models manufactured since 2011 due to “reports highlighting the risk that the drums in these washers may lose balance, triggering excessive vibrations, resulting in the top separating from the washer.”
John Herrington, senior vice president of Samsung Electronics America, said, “We are moving

Microsoft says Russia-linked hackers exploiting Windows flaw

Microsoft said on Tuesday that a hacking group previously linked to the Russian government and U.S. political hacks is behind recent cyber attacks that exploit a newly discovered flaw in its Windows operating system.
Microsoft said that a patch to defend Windows users against this sort of attack will be released on Nov. 8.
The software maker said in an advisory on its website there had been a small number of attacks using “spear phishing” emails from a hacking group known Strontium, which is more widely known as “Fancy Bear” or APT 28.
Microsoft did not identify any victims of the attacks.
A U.S. intelligence expert on Russian cyber activity said that Fancy Bear primarily works for or on behalf of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, which U.S. intelligence officials have

Salesforce’s Marc Benioff addresses failed efforts to buy Twitter and LinkedIn

Marc Benioff is chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. He founded the company in 1999 with a vision to create an on-demand information management service that would replace traditional enterprise software technology. Benioff is regarded as the leader of what he has termed "The End of Software," the now-proven belief that multi-tenant, cloud computing applications democratize information by delivering immediate benefits at reduced risks and costs.

Salesforce.com Inc Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff spoke on Wednesday about a pair of key acquisitions that got away, suggesting his vision for LinkedIn Corp (was different from Microsoft Corp’s and that he would have pursued Twitter Inc if shareholders had not learned of his plans.
Speaking at a technology conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal in Laguna Beach, California, Benioff declined to elaborate on what he had hoped to do with micro-blogging site Twitter.
Twitter hired bankers earlier in October to explore selling itself. Technology and media companies including Salesforce.com, Walt Disney Co and Alphabet Inc’s Google looked at the company but passed on buying it.
Some regarded Twitter as an unlikely fit for Salesforce.com, whose platform is popular among sales teams. Benioff said he was forced to drop the deal when investors began voicing concerns.

Zuckerberg, Ambode and the emerging IT revolution in Lagos

Both are young, articulate, dynamic and share a similar passion for quality education delivery. Both are also driven by futuristic ideas with a global vision. Incidentally too, both are information-savvy philanthropists and providers of veritable platforms for the youths to freely express their views. But while one is a Jewish-American, the other is Omo Naija gon-goni, as we describe true-born Nigerians in Pidgin English parlance. Yet, there is still more to their point of convergence than people may readily admit. But who really are we talking about here?
The first of course, is Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook .
His name certainly rings a loud and crisp-clear note in the vast firmament of our knowledge- economy that drives several global thoughts and processes, virtually on daily basis. He, along with his friends, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin, by their sheer creative ingenuity came up with the site which allows users to create their own profiles, upload photos and communicate with other users. That was in 2004. By the end of that year it had reached 1 million users. But it has since grown to more than 250 million people, over the past 12 years, making Zuckerberg a billionaire.

Hackers cripple US internet in wide-scale cyber attack

Several of the world’s best-known websites were inaccessible across parts of the United States on Friday after hackers unleashed a series of attacks on a company that acts as a switchboard for the internet.
The attacks affected access to Twitter, Paypal, Spotify and other customers of the infrastructure company in New Hampshire called Dyn, which processes large volumes of internet traffic.
“The attacks came in waves,” Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds, reporting from Los Angeles, said. “First targeting the East Coast of the United States, spreading then to the other parts of the country and even to Western Europe.”
“The websites that were disrupted were some of the top names in the internet: CNN and the New York Times, AirBnB, Reddit, HBO… a whole variety of sites were attacked.”
“Dyn is kind of a middle man that directs users to different websites and routes traffic from server to server in a complex way,” said Reynolds.