Your Monthly Biz Tech Roundup from Seeto
Welcome to the April edition of Take Ctrl. With Easter coming early this year, our newsletter may be shorter than usual, but it’s packed with all the news and views you need to know now.
Whether you’re a Mac user worried about your Apple Silicon chip, a developer who wants to learn more about secure development or an ops manager keeping abreast of what’s happening in the world of biz tech, you’re in the right place.
The 31st of March was World Backup Day. Celebrate by backing up your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace accounts today! Did you know your files aren’t protected against accidental or malicious deletion? Speak to Seeto about how your business can save on Redstor backup with our World Backup Day special prices.
Need To Know Now
Google Workspace
Drop it like it’s a preset
We like Google’s new dropdown chips; they’re colourful, they have data validation, and they make inputting repeatable information into spreadsheets simple. Do you know what would be simpler? Having preset options, such as Yes/No, priority and status options, automatically suggested to you when you go to add a dropdown. Google realised this too and soon you’ll be presented with a selection of options when you go to add a dropdown in Google Sheets. That’s less time making your spreadsheet functional and more time learning how to use Google’s advanced analysis functions.
Abrakadabra: background is gone
The Seeto team didn’t have Gemini AI-powered background-removing wizardry on our 2024 bingo card, but in a feature described by one of the team as “we didn’t actually ask anyone what they wanted or do any research, but we had to ship something to pad out the feature list,” Gemini can now make inconvenient backgrounds disappear. Whether this alone justifies the £20/month subscription fee, we’ll leave that up to you.
Drive in the dark
As the days get longer, Google Drive for the web finally gets a dark mode. Whether you prefer things dark and mysterious or just want to save yourself from eye strain, you can find the new option under Settings → General → Appearance. Alas, this change only applies to Google Drive; Sheets, Slides and Docs are still as light and bright as ever.
Information Security
Time to update vulnerable iPhones
Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in Apple’s iOS software, leaving iPhones and iPads vulnerable to attack. The advice, as ever, is to apply all updates, ensuring your phone/tablet is running the newest operating system and the latest version of it that your phone/tablet offers you.
Can you keep a secret? GitHub will
GitHub has recently turned on a new security feature by default, which stops developers from committing secrets such as passwords and API keys into public repositories. This has been an opt-in feature since last summer. Businesses need the GitHub Enterprise plan with the GitHub Advanced Security add-on to get the feature.
Close, but no cigar
Researchers at Apiiro, an application security platform company, have identified over 100,000 GitHub repositories infected with malicious code that resemble known and trusted software or libraries. Designed to be deliberately confusing, fortunately, GitHub quickly and automatically removes many of the forked repos; however, this process isn’t always instant. The linked article details how to determine whether a repository is malicious and what to do if your developers inadvertently include code from one of these repositories.
Baking security in
Google has released a new report that sets out how Google improves its own security by building it in from the design phase onwards. Building software is complex, and ensuring that software is secure is increasingly more important, given the increasing data and consumer protection legislation. As the responsibility for secure development has typically fallen to developers, seeing how a multinational company approaches building secure software, and makes it a team effort, is a valuable resource.
Maturing the Cloud Security Maturity Model
The Cloud Security Alliance has released version 2.0 of the Cloud Security Maturity Model. This is a collection of cloud security control objectives mapped to technical controls that organisations can assess. A collection of technical controls is already available for Amazon Web Services and will be expanded to cover Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
More speed, more vulnerabilities
It has been discovered that new Macs have a serious security vulnerability baked into their hardware. The issue affects all Macs with Apple Silicon chips and can allow bad actors to discover the security keys in your Mac. In their quest to make a faster CPU chip, Apple has introduced an issue in how its chips handle memory. As this is a hardware issue, Apple can’t simply release a MacOS update to fix it. It’s expected that the fix will impact performance if and when it does arrive.
Recent OS Updates
Last updated 5 August 2024
Windows
Microsoft currently supports Windows 10 and Windows 11.
- Windows 10 version 22H2 (10.0.19045)
- Windows 11 version 22H2 (10.0.22621) and version 23H2 (10.0.22631)
macOS
Apple officially supports the following Mac operating systems:
- macOS Sonoma 14.6
- macOS Ventura 13.6.8
- macOS Monterey 12.7.6
iOS and iPadOS
The supported iPhone and iPad operating systems are:
- iOS 17.6
- iPadOS 17.6
Android
Google supports the following Android operating systems:
- Android 14
- Android 13
- Android 12
Note that your device manufacturer may not support every version that Google produces security fixes for.
Learn how to check and update your Android version here.
