Daily Tech Briefing: June 2, 2014

Samsung’s Galaxy S5 is a dust- and waterproof smartphone that the company launched this past April. Now, AT&T is exclusively selling a new GS5 Active. What makes the GS5 Active different from the original Galaxy S5 is its reinforced case, which can be submerged for 30 minutes in 3 feet of water.

It also conforms to military specifications so it can hold up against shock, humidity, rain, temperature extremes and high altitudes. The phone costs $199 with a two-year agreement, but it can also be purchased on an AT&T Next 12 plan or Next 18 plan.

Microsoft and Salesforce.com have announced a partnership aimed at connecting Windows and Office to the popular customer relationship management cloud ecosystem. The goal is to allow Microsoft users to have a more seamless, productivity-enhancing Salesforce experience.

The companies are working on creating a Salesforce1 app for Windows and Windows Phone, and users of Microsoft’s cloud-enabled Office 365 productivity suite will be able to directly tap into Salesforce data. The financial terms of this partnership have not been disclosed.

A new report from IT research firm Gartner states that by 2017, 75 percent of mobile security breaches will be due to mobile application misconfiguration. Gartner recommended that people keep their mobile devices fixed in a safe configuration through the use of a mobile device management policy, supplemented by app shielding and containers that protect important data.

The research firm added that jailbreaking or rooting phones can also make devices more prone to brute force attacks on passcodes.

Finally, a recent report from Accenture shows that consumers with chronic conditions such as asthma, arthritis, cancer, depression, diabetes and others feel as though the ability to access electronic medical records is more important than any privacy concerns they may have surrounding EMRs.

What’s more, 69 percent of individuals surveyed believe access to health data is a right, and want access to all of their health records.