IBM announced it has signed a 10-year, multibillion-dollar services agreement with ABN AMRO to manage the IT infrastructure that supports the bank’s global operations.
The agreement also calls for the implementation of a private IBM cloud together with the standardization and simplification of the existing IT landscape, from mobile computing to mainframe infrastructure. ABN AMRO serves retail, private and corporate banking customers. This agreement extends the bank’s IT relationship with IBM and supports its strategic effort to become a leading digital bank.
According to a new report from FireEye, a group known as FIN4 is hacking Wall Street financial firms in an attempt to gain privileged financial information about non-public upcoming market announcements. The FIN4 campaign began in the middle of 2013.
Sixty-eight percent of the companies that have been targeted are publicly traded health care and pharmaceutical companies, while 20 percent have been identified as firms that advise public companies on securities, legal, and merger and acquisition matters.
Intel has acquired PasswordBox, a small ID management startup whose technology enables users to log into Websites without having to memorize their passwords to protect personal information online. There have been more than 14 million downloads of this startup’s technology, which lets users store their log-in information in a virtual lockbox. When a user wants to get into a Website or an app, he or she clicks on the site and the PasswordBox deals with the log-in process.
Microsoft recently announced it has acquired San Francisco-based mobile email startup Acompli. This is a free, business-focused email app for Apple iOS and Android devices. It’s based on the notion that one app should handle practically all email- and calendar-related functions with minimal typing.
To achieve this, the app provides what the company calls a “Focused Inbox,” which intelligently surfaces important emails across all email accounts and includes built-in predictive search.
