Category: SecurityProNews

SecurityProNews

Inbox By Gmail ‘Smart Reply’ Feature Hits Web

Back in November, Google announced the launch of a new feature for Inbox by Gmail called Smart Reply, which uses machine learning to auto-suggest email responses. At the time, it was only available for mobile.

Today, Google announced the launch of the feature on the web version of Inbox by Gmail.

“Just like in the Inbox mobile app, Smart Reply saves you precious time by suggesting up to three responses based on the emails you get. Selecting an option starts a reply, ready for you to either edit or send,” says software engineer Taylor Kourim.

“10% of all your replies on mobile already use Smart Reply, so we’re excited to bring this same convenience to the web,” Kourim adds. “It’s particularly helpful when you’re jamming through lots of emails on your laptop.”

A few weeks ago, Google improved snooze functionality for Inbox. More on that here.

Images via Google

March 15, 2016
Google Adds Google Apps Identity Support for Office 365, Slack, Facebook at Work and Others

Last year, Google announced support for SAML 2.0 with Google as the identity provider, and now they’re adding pre-configured support for Microsoft Office 365, Facebook at Work, Panorama9, New Relic, Concur, Coupa, Box, Slac, and others.

As the company notes, this adds to hundreds of apps it already supports through the Google Apps Marketplace and OpenID Connect.

“Millions of businesses rely on Google to protect employee logins to Google Apps services like Drive and Gmail,” says Google Apps for Work Product Manager Shashank Gupta. “And we continue to make it easier to extend that ease and security to more applications with Google Identity, providing organizations a single place to manage identity and security for all of their SaaS/IT applications.”

“Google’s identity services provide even more security on mobile when combined with Google Apps enterprise mobile management controls like password strength, lock screen requirements and app management,” Gupta adds. “These can work in tandem with the increasing number of mobile security options, from hardware such as fingerprint readers, to software such as Google’s Smart Lock. Our Google Smart Lock features are available to all Google Accounts, including those used at work, and we provide identity services and enterprise mobility management (EMM) as part of Google Apps for Work at no additional cost.”

Google has an identity whitepaper about how you can use its identity services available here.

Image via Google

March 14, 2016
Microsoft Announces SharePoint 2016 RTM

Microsoft announced the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) of SharePoint Server 2016, which features new capabilities for end-users as well as IT. It also includes what the company refers to as “the next generation of hybrid capabilities”.

A spokesperson for the company tells us, “SharePoint is continuing and growing its role in enabling content collaboration for organizations and today’s RTM is just one more step towards making SharePoint more simple, mobile, intelligent and secure.”

“As work teams become more dynamic and digital content growth continues to skyrocket, SharePoint will play an ever increasing role in enabling content collaboration for the new way of working,” says Seth Patton, general manager for the SharePoint and OneDrive Product Management team. “As a part of Microsoft’s broader ambition to reinvent productivity, we are on a mission to make SharePoint more simple, mobile, intelligent and secure to help customers unlock the value of having it as an integrated part of Office 365. This year, we will release significant new innovations spanning user experiences, document collaboration, mobile enhancements and platform improvements that will redefine modern content collaboration.”

The company also announced the RTM of Project Server 2016, which is distributed as part of SharePoint Server 2016. You can look at release notes for that here.

On May 4, Microsoft will hold a virtual launch event for SharePoint Server 2016, where it will roll out the new SharePoint and OneDrive for Business roadmap.

Image via Microsoft

March 14, 2016
Skype For Web Gets Big Improvements

Skype launched Skype for Web last summer enabling users to use the service from their browser without downloading an app. This was good news for Chromebook users.

On Monday, Microsoft announced several new features for Skype for Web including the ability to call mobile phones and landlines directly from Skype (with low rates), YouTube video viewing without leaving Skype, adding new people to a conversation (even if they’re not on Skype), and notifications.

“We’ve updated Skype for Web so you can now save money on your phone calls to mobile phones and landlines,” the company says. “All you need is a little Skype credit or a subscription to start making affordable international calls from Skype. Once you’ve signed in to Skype for Web, simply click on the call phones tab, select your destination, dial the number you’d like to call and then hit the call button.”

“We’ve recently improved the way URLs show up in Skype for Web that now include an image from the webpage,” it adds. “Additionally, if someone posts a YouTube video link in Skype for Web, you’ll be able to watch it directly in Skype. You get all the same volume and full-screen controls you have in YouTube, but you won’t have to open a new browser window to watch the video—it’ll instantly play directly in Skype.”

The new way to add people to a Skype chat was launched for Skype for Windows recently, and is now part of Skype for Web. Add people by pressing +New and “Share Conversation”. This will give you a unique conversation URL that you can share how you like. Anyone that clicks the RUL can join the chat.

Finally, you can get notifications for IMs, calls, or pictures sent to you if you’re signed in, regardless of if you’re in the same browser tab.

While these four improvements alone are a big deal for this version of Skype, the company is promising additional features in the weeks and months ahead.

Images via Skype

March 14, 2016
Google Cloud Platform Gains Application Default Credentials Feature

Google just announced the Application Default Credentials feature for Google Cloud Platform.

“When you write applications that run on Google Compute Engine instances, you might want to connect them to Google Cloud Storage, Google BigQuery, and other Google Cloud Platform services,” writes Vijay Subramani, Technical Program Manager, Google Cloud Platform in a blog post. “Those services use OAuth2, the global standard for authorization, to help ensure that only the right callers can make the right calls. Unfortunately, OAuth2 has traditionally been hard to use. It often requires specialized knowledge and a lot of boilerplate auth setup code just to make an initial API call.”

The ADC feature is supposed to make things easier. Google says you’ll only need one line of auth code in your app in many cases (Credential credential = GoogleCredential.getApplicationDefault();).

Subramani writes:

ADC takes all that complexity and packages it behind a single API call. Under the hood, it makes use of:

– 2-legged vs. 3-legged OAuth (2LO vs. 3LO) — OAuth2 includes support for user-owned data, where the user, the API provider, and the application developer all need to participate in the authorization dance. Most Cloud APIs don’t deal with user-owned data, and therefore can use much simpler two-party flows between the API provider and the application developer.

– gcloud CLI — while you’re developing and debugging your app, you probably already use the gcloud command-line tool to explore and manage Cloud Platform resources. ADC lets your application piggyback on the auth flows in gcloud, so you only have to set up your credentials once.

– service accounts — if your application runs on Google App Engine or Google Compute Engine, it automatically has access to the built-in “service account”, that helps the API provider to trust that the API calls are coming from a trusted source. ADC lets your application benefit from that trust.

The new features is available for Java, Python, Node.js, Ruby, and Go. Google says libraries for PHP and .NET are in development.

Image via Google

July 20, 2015