January
The year began as it ended with equal concerns and excitement about automation and the rise of the robots and what it means for the economy and for employment.
Rise of the robots, or does the human workforce still matter in digital transformation?
January also saw reaction to the now familiar story of attacks and threats of cyber attacks on national critical infrastructure – this would become a recurring theme throughout 2016
What does the cyber attack on Ukraine’s power grid mean for the UK?
February
In the enterprise space the Dell EMC $67bn merger – the biggest in tech history – was granted approval by the US regulator the FTC.
There was a successful attack on the SWIFT international banking network which saw Bangladesh central bank get hit for $81m.
Microsoft decided to sink a data centre in the Pacific ocean to test if underwater data centres could be more efficient – or as a publicity stunt.
CBR listed the IOT technology standards that should be on everyone’s radar for 2017 and even 2018.
March
In the enterprise space March was all about Flash technology – lots of product announcements and strategy positioning from EMC, IBM and others.
April
Though a coup for the media outlets involved March and April saw the furore about the Panama Papers, the biggest leak of Raw Data of its kind. What was expected to be a storm of revelations about the efforts of governments and the rich and famous to hide their money from the tax man never really materialised.
Panama Papers: Cyber security failings among the many revelations of huge data leak
May
After a second attack on the SWIFT international banking network (the first in February neeted $81m for the criminals) the Bank of England ordered UK banks to increase their cyber security spending.
Bank of England orders UK banks to upgrade cyber security after second SWIFT attack
June
The small matter of BrexIT….
How did the UK tech industry react:
July
Massive DDoS cyber attack takes down Pokémon Go
A hacking group going by the name of PoodleCorp has claimed responsibility for a massive DDoS attack which brought down Pokémon Go servers impacting US and European users.
August
Data centre giant Rackspace goes private in $4.3bn deal
Global data centre operator Rackspace, which positions itself as number one managed cloud company, announced it will become a private company in a $4.3bn sale to fund management firm managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management for $32.00 per share in cash.
September
Dell completes the biggest merger in the history of the technology industry.
The new Dell EMC held a press Q&A:
Dell EMC merger Q+A, how Michael Dell and other execs answered the press
October
Twitter, Reddit and Spotify hit in massive Dyn DDoS attack
Major sites such as Twitter, Reddit and Spotify were disrupted today as the hosting provider Dyn was hit by a large-scale DDoS attack.
Dyn began to monitor and mitigate the attack, saying in a statement that “some customers may experience increased DNS query latency and delayed zone propagation during this time.”
November
Donald Trump wins US Presidential election 2016: What does it mean for the tech sector?
Donald Trump has won the race for the Presidency of the United States.
As the world wakes up and digests the news there will be numerous questions as to what this now means.
Donald Trump wins US Presidential election 2016: What does it mean for the tech sector?
December
‘One billion’ users hit by latest Yahoo hack
Yahoo has disclosed the details of another data breach dating in 2013.
The latest revelations to come out of the company show that more than one billion user accounts may have been affected.
