“The first generation of Fortify Audit Assistant was well ahead of its time with its use of predictive analytics and machine learning,” said Prentiss Donohue, cybersecurity executive vice president at OpenText.

“Those pioneering efforts paved the way for us to derive 10 years of data from human experts and turn them into predictive models that are significantly more accurate compared to the previous generation’s models, improving efficacy in auditing by reducing false positives up to 90%. Enterprises can now leverage this depth of information—something no one else in the industry can provide—within their own software assurance programs”, he added.

With this technology, OpenText highlights the need for advanced application security tools and practices, addressing the pressure security teams face to ensure software integrity and reliability from the start.

Key updates to Fortify Audit Assistant include the ability to account for model shifts, the flexibility to learn from a company’s unique environment, expanded model expertise through language specification, and the ability to account for nuances of scan results.

The tool also aims to streamline developers’ work by allowing them to focus on addressing the most critical vulnerabilities.

According to OpenText, the advanced auditing process is a direct response to requirements for more efficient application security testing, which is too time-consuming and requires manual processing of static analysis results.

The new generation of Fortify Audit Assistant will integrate security considerations into the earliest stages of the software development lifecycle, starting right from code creation. This will help in building software systems that are not only robust and reliable, but also inherently secure.

The tool uses machine learning technology to automate the security audit process, learning from the experience of Fortify’s human auditors. This application of AI is being identified as a strategic move to address the shortage of expertise available for manual verification, which is resource intensive and impractical for many organizations.

Fortify Audit Assistant promises to significantly reduce the overhead associated with hiring teams of software engineering, computer science and cybersecurity experts, the company explains.

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Updates cover more than 600 new APIs, advanced app analytics, support for alternative browsers, and more options for processing app payments and distributing iOS apps.

According to an Apple blog post, the goal of these changes is to maintain the quality and security that EU consumers have come to expect from Apple while adapting to the new regulatory environment.

However, the introduction of new payment and app download methods in iOS raises concerns about increased risks of malware, fraud and other security and privacy threats.

For this reason, Apple is introducing new protections that include notarizing iOS apps, requiring authorization for marketplace developers, and disclosing information about alternative payment methods.

Apple warns that despite these protections, some risks will still remain for EU users.

Developers interested in these changes can access detailed information and support on the Apple Developer Support page. Additionally, they have the opportunity to start experimenting with these new capabilities through the iOS 17.4 beta version, which is already available. The roll-out of these new features and capabilities is scheduled to begin in March 2024 and will be accessible to users in all 27 EU countries.

“The changes we’re announcing today comply with the Digital Markets Act’s requirements in the European Union, while helping to protect EU users from the unavoidable increased privacy and security threats this regulation brings. Our priority remains creating the best, most secure possible experience for our users in the EU and around the world. Developers can now learn about the new tools and terms available for alternative app distribution and alternative payment processing, new capabilities for alternative browser engines and contactless payments, and more. Importantly, developers can choose to remain on the same business terms in place today if they prefer”, said Phil Schiller, Apple Fellow.

Apple is introducing frameworks and APIs that enable the creation of these alternative marketplaces, allowing marketplace developers to manage app installations and updates.

Apple is also expanding its capabilities for browser app development by introducing frameworks and APIs for alternative browser engines. This move permits developers to use different browser engines, rather than being restricted to WebKit, for browser apps and in-app browsing experiences. To enhance interoperability, Apple is also establishing an interoperability request form. This platform will enable developers to request additional compatibility with iPhone and iOS hardware and software features, promoting a more versatile and developer-friendly environment in the EU.

You can see the rest of the updates and improvements on Apple’s blog here.

What are the main areas where C++ is most preferred and indispensable?

Operating systems
Most operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, Symbian OS and even mobile operating systems such as iOS are developed using C++. In general, operating systems should be fast and efficient in handling system resources. The fact that C++ is a high-speed programming language with a wide range of system-level features makes it more than an ideal choice.

Did you know?
C++ was developed because of the need to analyze distributed applications on the UNIX operating system, which was the first operating system created using a programming language like C.

Games
C++ is one of the most widely used programming languages in game development. Games where graphics are an integral part of their structure use C++ and its high speed. Games require many resource-intensive functions to facilitate multiplayer sessions. C++ can make optimal use of resources, provide multiplayer networking, and is well suited to overcome the complexity of 3D games. That’s why it’s also among the top choices in gaming circles.

Did you know that?
C++ is used to create popular games like World of Warcraft, Counter-Strike, and engines like the Unreal Engine, as well as consoles like Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch.

Web browsers
It may sound strange, but your current web browser is probably programmed in C++. It powers the backend services that extract information from databases and translate the code into interactive web pages. Using C++, browsers can run at high speed and minimal latency so that it doesn’t take long for content to appear on our screens.

The most popular web browsers we use today that are developed with C++ are:

• Internet Explorer
• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox
• Safari
• Netscape Navigator
• Opera

GUI Based Applications
Did you know that many widely used graphical user interfaces (GUI) and desktop applications are developed with C++ due to its high speed. Some examples are applications on Adobe systems such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Microsoft’s Win Amp Media Player – all of which were developed using C++.

Database Management System
Here you will also find many popular database management tools that have been developed with C++ – MySQL, Oracle, Postgres and MongoDB are just a few of them. MySQL is the world’s most popular open source database, used by most organizations. These databases are an integral part of major applications created by giants like Google, Netflix, YouTube and Adobe. C++ is ideal for data management due to its features like file handling, high speed, reliability, functions, classes and objects.

Cloud Computing and Distributed Applications
C++ is becoming the automatic choice for cloud storage deployments. This is due to the fact that it is close to a hardware or machine level language and is quite compatible with machines.

This is why large companies that use cloud computing and distributed applications use C++, as it provides multithreading support with which concurrent applications can be built along with tolerance to hardware system load.

Libraries
And although libraries are the last in our class, they are far from the last in C++ usage. The standard C++ library has a wide variety of built-in features. Performance and speed become important for high-level mathematical computations. This is why most libraries use C++ as their primary programming language. C++ is an ideal candidate for a basic programming language that offers libraries of several new and popular high-level libraries, including machine language libraries.

It’s no secret that one of the favorite things about .NET and C# developers are flexible. They can be used for applications ranging from desktop to web and mobile development. They are also an ideal choice for creating cloud applications.

Facts about .NET

• NET is a software development framework created by Microsoft that provides a platform for developing and running applications across several operating systems, such as Windows, macOS, and Linux.
• .NET was first introduced in 2000 and has since evolved into a set of powerful tools and frameworks for building modern and reliable applications.
• .NET supports a rich set of programming languages, including C#, Visual Basic, F#, and others.
• .NET has a large library of prebuilt classes and functions, known as the .NET Framework Class Library, which improves efficiency in application development.
• The .NET runtime is known as the Common Language Runtime (CLR), which manages the execution of .NET applications and provides features such as memory management, security, and exception handling.
• .NET is open source and cross-platform

Why is .NET development with C# gaining popularity among developers?

Cross-platform development
With C# and .NET, you can create applications that have the capability to run on multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, and even on mobile with iOS and Android. You can reach a wide audience and build applications that can be used on different types of devices.

Integration with Microsoft products
Mastering C# and .NET makes it easier to develop and deploy applications on the Microsoft platform, which is ideal if you’re working for companies that rely heavily on technologies such as Azure and Visual Studio. These skills can also enable you to work on the future of AI models, such as Microsoft’s ChatGPT and Bing AI, which are increasingly gaining prominence in many industries today.

Scalability
C# and .NET are highly scalable technologies suitable for small and large applications, including desktop, web, game, and mobile apps, making them ideal for enterprise-level applications. This versatility also means that you can use these technologies to build any type of application to best suit your and your organization’s requirements.

High demand in the job market
C# and .NET developers are in high demand among startups and big tech companies alike. Employers are always seeking developers with expertise in .NET and C# since these technologies are now frequently used in enterprise-level applications. Given this demand, investing your time and effort in mastering these skills can set you apart and substantially increase your chances of securing employment, even in today’s uncertain economy.

Active community of developers
C# and .NET have a large and active developer community that provides a host of resources for learning and development, including online tutorials, forums, and documentation. So whether you’re a beginner or an experienced developer, you’ll be able to find ample support to help you learn and grow.

Easy to learn
C# is a relatively easy programming language to learn, especially if you are already familiar with other object-oriented programming languages such as Java or C++. Its simple syntax is designed to be both powerful and type-safe, so you can start creating applications quickly and efficiently without relying on a steep learning curve.

If you’re interested in a career with .NET, be sure to check out the opportunities here.

When selecting FinTech software, firms weigh a variety of factors including cost, scalability, potential for APIs, consistently high performance, compliance, security, and time to market. But the programming languages used most significantly influence these factors. Like anything else, programming languages have their advantages and disadvantages. Some of them improve performance, adaptability and security.

Today we’ve chosen to introduce you to key programming languages needed in the FinTech sector according to Analytics Insights.

Key Programming Languages in FinTech

Java
Being a well-known language with an extensive library of third-party components, Java is used in many Fintech systems because it facilitates the creation of complex Fintech software.

Python
Given that Python is among the most widely used programming languages, it is not surprising that it has had a dramatic impact on the Fintech sector. According to PyPI’s analysis of Google searches, Python is the most widely used programming language in the world.

Golang
Golang, commonly known as Go, is an open source programming language created by Google in 2009. It is quickly displacing other programming languages among fintech companies that need to launch soon and have a clear, scalable, and simple backend.

Ruby
Did you know that many startups in the digital finance sector use Ruby in combination with the Ruby on Rails framework for its productivity and ease of use? Some major reasons why developers prefer it are the security protections built into the framework and the simplicity of the language that saves time and money.

Scala
High-end distributed software systems used in financial products often process large amounts of data. Because it’s so productive and helps engineers shorten their source code, Scala is an excellent choice for processing them. There are at least two or three departures from Java. Additionally, the most popular Big Data frameworks that are vital to the FinTech sector have been developed using Scala.

“We are deeply troubled by TikTok’s recurring pattern of providing misleading, inaccurate or false information to Congress and its users in the US, including in response to us during oversight hearings and letters,”

the senators wrote.

The letter from Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn draws attention to how sensitive data about US users may be stored in China and how officials there may have access to it.

Recent reports by The New York Times and Forbes raise questions about statements made during testimony before Congress in March by Shaw Chu, TikTok’s CEO, and during an October 2021 hearing that included Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas. TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.

“We are reviewing the letter. We remain confident in the accuracy of our testimony and responses to Congress.”

said Alex Haurek, a spokesperson for TikTok.

The entertainment platform has been working for years to convince the U.S. government that it can separate its U.S. operations and ring-fence U.S. users’ data amid concerns that the company could provide that information to Chinese authorities.

Stay tuned for details.

MediaTek will integrate an Nvidia graphics processing chip and Nvidia software into the system-on-chips it supplies to automakers for infotainment displays.

The companies said MediaTek systems that use Nvidia’s software will be compatible with automated control systems based on Nvidia’s technology. Dashboard displays will show what’s going on around the car, and cameras will monitor the driver of the vehicle.

In-vehicle displays and entertainment systems are becoming more complex as automakers add features such as gaming, artificial intelligence for voice-activated features, driver monitoring systems and displays related to automated driving.

The partnership with MediaTek gives Nvidia wider access to the $12 billion market for infotainment system-on-chips, the companies said.

“There are a lot of segments they are addressing that Nvidia has not addressed,”

said Danny Shapiro, Nvidia’s vice president, automotive.

Nvidia has focused on premium automotive brands such as Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar Land Rover. MediaTek, which has its base in the Android smartphone chip sector, sells its Dimensity Auto technology to lower-priced, mass market vehicle lines, and has strengths in mobile connectivity and Android systems.

The companies did not identify future automotive customers.

Starknet is a ZK rollup that scales the underlying blockchain by aggregating transactions and processing them faster and cheaper on a separate blockchain. ZK rollups use some cryptographic methods known as zero-knowledge proofs to ensure that a transaction is valid by displaying only a small amount of information about it before publishing it back to the main blockchain.

“Alchemy makes it easy to build dapps, and Starknet provides the scale and features they need,”

said Gal Ron, product manager and blockchain researcher at StarkWare.

Starknet also features native account abstraction that enables users to access the blockchain through smart contract wallets, making it easier to work.

Alex Miao, who is a software engineer at Alchemy says in an email to CoinDesk that developers will be able to include custom account permissions, as well as embed security mechanisms that work at the wallet level, and create simple transaction flows. He said this will allow developers to create for a world where end users and enterprises are always represented by a wallet with smart contracts.

The integration of Starknet into Alchemy’s suite could be a sign of the demand from developers to create more with account abstraction.

And for this reason, we cannot underestimate the importance of social media strategies, which are crucial for any business that wants to secure a place in an AI-driven future. Any business that doesn’t have one will undoubtedly give way to the dominant competition.

AI can take over many of the time-consuming and monotonous tasks associated with social media, freeing teams to focus on other tasks. And even though the weekend is knocking on our door, a little update on what the best AI tools for social media are right now won’t go amiss. Today we’re going to introduce you to the top 5 best AI tools for social media presented by Unite.AI.

Top 5 Best AI Tools for Social Media

Flick
Flick is a tool that allows you to create social media content faster and at scale. Users can create highly personal and on-brand captions 10 times faster than before.

Flick’s AI Social Media Assistant is a marketing tool that helps you speed up the process of brainstorming, writing, and planning for social media. Instead of spending hours coming up with content ideas, the assistant can help you generate original and engaging content ideas based on the topics you enter within seconds.

The tools are bundled into a “Content Planner” – a dedicated place for your ideas, whether they’re fully fleshed out or just a working title. This can help you better organize your thoughts and create more coherent content.

Content Studio
Content Studio offers a simple yet powerful universal social media tool for agencies, brands and marketers. This tools allows you to prepare templates in advance to create quality content for tweets, Instagram captions, and more.

You can also increase the visibility of your post by having the AI suggest relevant and topical hashtags for your content. Some users may also appreciate the emoji feature, where the AI creates visually engaging posts by analyzing the tone of the text and adding relevant emojis.

Lately
One feature that most users will find useful is that you can instantly create amazing images for your social media posts by simply giving text descriptions to the AI bot.
This artificial intelligence tool allows you to recognize context from a larger collection of content, which can then be used to create social media posts that promote it.

Lately also offers a social media dashboard that can be used for tasks like scheduling and managing social media projects. Beyond these, you can use Lately to analyze social page metrics, helping you determine the best time to post to reach a wider and more engaged audience.

Socialbakers
Another leading AI-powered social media tool is Socialbakers, which is an AI-powered social media management platform that performs advanced audience insights, influencer marketing discovery, and an impressive tracking dashboard and content stream. With the single content feed, you can see all posts across all your platforms. You can also see an analytics dashboard and smart scheduling tools that offer optimal posting times.

Heyday
Heyday is an ideal choice for those who want to use AI to create content for their bots. This conversational AI tool for social media interacts with people in real time. It allows customer service agents to have the highest value interactions while improving the user experience. In addition to answering queries, Heyday also uses natural language processing (NLP) and natural language generation (NLG) to personalize product recommendations and make sales.

All workloads with time series and all performance
There are several enhancements and updates being made available to the global user base. Although InfluxDB has always excelled at processing metrics, the new engine can not only process them, but also handle events and track with dramatic improvements in performance and efficiency.

There are currently no other time series data stores available that are optimized to index, store and analyze metrics, event and tracking data together in one place.

InfluxDB Cloud, with its new high-performance time series engine, can ingest, store and analyze high-volume, high-speed data in real-time and extract metrics on the fly from events at high granularity. This expands the number and variety of use cases that InfluxDB can handle, such as observability and distributed tracking that rely on high-cardinality data.

Lower cost of ownership
InfluxDB Cloud now uses Apache Parquet as its persistence format. This not only contributes to dramatic improvements in compression, but also allows users to extend the value of their time series data by passing it to other systems and ecosystems that use Parquet.

Optimized for low latency queries
Ingesting and storing data in InfluxDB is only half the story. The ability to efficiently search and use all that data is just as important. We’ve optimized the new engine for performance thanks to several under-the-hood updates. While concepts like parallelism, pushdown, and in-memory caching are critical aspects determining the performance of low-latency queries, what really matters to users is that fast and reliable queries improve the user experience.

The new database engine is available in two AWS regions (Virginia (us-east-1) and Frankfurt (eu-central-1)), but new availability zones are planned as well as adding availability for Azure and Google Cloud.