Gartner’s latest forecast reveals that worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is expected to grow 20.7 per cent to total US$591.8 billion in 2023, up from US$490.3 billion in 2022. This is higher than the 18.8 per cent growth forecast for 2022.

“Current inflationary pressures and macroeconomic conditions are having a push and pull effect on cloud spending,” said Sid Nag, vice president analyst at Gartner. “Cloud computing will continue to be a bastion of safety and innovation, supporting growth during uncertain times due to its agile, elastic and scalable nature.”

Nag added that while cloud spending is growing, organizations can only spend what they have. He said spending could even decrease if overall IT budgets shrink, since cloud is continuing to be the main portion of IT spend and proportionate budget growth. 

Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is forecast to experience the highest end-user spending growth in 2023 at 29.8 per

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The recent release of key recommendations from a group of cyber security experts will form the cornerstone of the Ontario government’s security policies and help in the creation of a four-year strategic plan, the province’s chief information security officer (CISO) Rhonda Bunn said today.

First formed in October 2020, the 10-member expert panel committed to providing the provincial government with a final report within two years that outlines the steps that broader public sector (BPS) organizations, which include school boards, municipalities, hospitals and other provincially funded agencies in Ontario, must take to remain secure.

During her keynote speech in Guelph at InfoSec 2022, organized by the Ontario division of the Municipal Information Systems Association (MISA), Bunn whose formal title is CISO of the province’s cyber security division, Government Information Technology Ontario (GovTechON) and the ministry of public and business service delivery, stressed the need for information-sharing.

When

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Life is what you make it, and nobody knows that better than Stacey McLennan-Waldal, a data scientist who currently works in PwC’s Calgary office in the firm’s advanced analytics practice.

The low point for her professionally occurred three years ago, at a time when the oil and gas sector was hit with a double whammy – the onset of COVID-19 and slumping oil prices. McLennan-Waldal, who worked for an exploration and production (E&P) company as a chemical engineer, received a layoff notice, not while on the job, but while on maternity leave with her second child.

After realizing it was time to look for another profession in another industry, the start of the high point came when she signed up for a three-month bootcamp with tech education firm Lighthouse Labs.

It was, said McLennan-Waldal, an easy decision to make. “One of the roles I had held was as a

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Welcome to Hashtag Trending, the Weekend Edition with your host Jim Love.

Earlier this year we did a series on the Metaverse for another podcast series I host with my colleague Doug Sparkes called  a “Deeper Dive.”  That series is still well worth listening to in its entirety, but over past weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about one particular episode we called a “map of the metaverse(s)”

We took the idea from the book Snowcrash, where the term metaverse was first used. In that book, there were multiple countries or city states each with their own rules. They had there own citizenship and rules. Many of them were run by corporations or eccentric rich people who were the “dictators” who ruled those worlds. Sound familiar?

You could travel between them but you did so at some risk. They were tribal and often treated immigrants and travellers with suspicion and

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Cybercrime is still the number one cyber threat to Canadians, according to the latest edition of the government’s national cyber threat report.

In addition, the state-sponsored cyber programs of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea continue to pose the greatest strategic cyber threat to the country, says the report. “Critical infrastructure is still a prime target for both cybercriminals and state-sponsored actors alike.”

Photo of the cover of the National Cyber Threat Assessment 2023-2024 report

It’s part of the updated National Cyber Threat Assessment released today by federal government’s Canadian Center for Cyber Security, part of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE).

The 40-page report covering 2023-2024 says:

      • Ransomware is a persistent threat to Canadian organizations. Cybercrime continues to be the cyber threat activity most likely to affect Canadians and Canadian organizations. Due to its impact on an organization’s ability to function, ransomware is almost certainly the most disruptive form of cybercrime facing Canadians. Cybercriminals deploying ransomware have evolved in a growing
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