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A Decade of Technology – 2015

Continuing our 10 year anniversary celebrations, this month we take a look at 2015.

It’s been a great year for tech and the gadget obsessed amongst you have been spoiled for choice. Wearables finally became cool, the usual plethora of app releases kept us focused on our smart devices.

Some other noteworthy events, products and services:

  • Ross Ulbricht, the man behind the website Silk Road, was convicted on February 4.
  • Taking to the skies: A drone from Flirtey made a medical delivery on July 17 and became the first government-approved drone delivery.
  • In March, Facebook released React Native, an open-source JavaScript framework for developing mobile apps on Android and iOS/
  • Google split into two companies on August 10. The new company known as Alphabet is now responsible for Google, Nest, Google Capital, Google Fiber, Calico, Google X, Sidewalk Labs, and Google Ventures.
  • Swift was open-sourced to encourage community-driven development of the language itself.
  • Google announced it discontinued Google Code on March 12. Thousands of the Google open-source products were moved to GitHub.
  • Google launched YouTube Gaming.
  • Apple introduced Apple Music, Apple Pencil, and Live Photo
  • Apple officially released the Apple Watch on April 24.
  • YouTube Music was released on November 12.
  • Microsoft released the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book on October 26.
  • The Internet browser Brave was released in 2015.
  • On July 18, eBay spun off PayPal as an independent company.
  • In May, Broadcom was purchased by Avago Technologies Ltd. for $37 billion. After the purchase, the company was renamed to Broadcom Limited.
  • Google made TensorFlow open-sourced for public use in November.
  • After seven years of development PHP 7.0.0 was released in December

Follow us next month to see what happened in 2016.

You and the Cybercrimes Act

The Cybercrimes Act

The Cybercrimes Act was signed into law in South Africa on the 26th May 2021 and comes into effect the beginning of July 2021.   Complying to this law applies to both individuals and companies and non-compliance has severe consequences ranging from hefty fines to imprisonment or both!

Although Cybercrime is on the increase and the aim of the Act is to keep people safe from criminal activity, most of the Act has a negative practical impact on all organizations and individuals.

What is the impact on you?

Private Organisations (including Insurance providers, Media Houses and Direct Marketers)

  • If you do not process any data as prescribed by any law, or without the authorization of one that can do it lawfully, you could be fined or face imprisonment for up to 5 years.
  • If you access personal information unlawfully, even if it is contrary to the conditions of the POPI Act, or alternatively possess personal information that someone else acquired unlawfully, you could be fined or imprisoned for 10 years.
  • If law enforcement finds you in possession of data, like personal information, that they think was acquired unlawfully by anyone, and you cannot explain it, you could be fined or imprisoned for 5 years.
  • If you do anything with software or hardware tools that could be used to commit a Cybercrime, you could be fined or imprisoned for 10 years.
  • You must help law enforcement to catch cyber criminals at your own cost or else you could be fined or imprisoned for 2 years.
  • A court can order you to preserve any evidence at your cost.

Financial Institutions (including Banks)

  • As for the Private Organisations as well as,
  • If you become aware that a crime has been committed, you must report the offense to the SAPS and preserve any evidence in the manner prescribed by the Minister of Police at your costs.  If you do not, you could be fined R50 000.

ICT Companies (Service Providers, ISP’s, Network Operators, Vendors)

  • All the above as well as,
  • If you sell a tool that could be used to commit a cybercrime, you are probably going to have to shut down the business, as selling such a tool is a cybercrime.
  • You are going to have to initiate an extensive compliance program to ensure you process data in accordance with the law because your customers are going to look to you if they get into trouble.

Individual users of computers

  • If you send a message, via e-mail, another messenger app or on social media, that is harmful (directly or indirectly) you could be fined or imprisoned for 3 years.
  • If you have a tool ( eg an app on your phone that bypasses WiFi passwords) that could be used to commit a cybercrime, you could be fined or imprisoned for 10 years.
  • If you share your password or access code, you could be fined or imprisoned for 10 years.
  • If law enforcement finds you in possession of a password that they think you are going to use to commit a cybercrime and you cannot explain why you have it, you could be fined or imprisoned for 5 years.
  • If you commit an offence with regards to the computer system of a financial institution or the state, you will be fined more or imprisoned longer.
  • Law enforcement has extensive powers to search, access and seize your data, computer, or phone.

Parents

  • If your child is cyberbullied, you will have a better chance of getting law enforcement to help you to stop the bully.  On the flip side, if your child is accused of cyber-bullying, the consequences could be severe.
  • If someone is distributing nude pictures of your child, you will have a better change of stopping them and could get an interim order preventing anyone else from sharing the pictures online.

 

Reference: The practical impact of the Cybercrimes Act on you – Michalsons

Anon IT
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