Chicken tries to cross road - taken into police custody!

New Delhi, Jan 17: E-commerce major Amazon on Friday said it plans to create one million new jobs in India over the next five years through investments in technology, infrastructure and its logistics network.

These jobs are in addition to the seven lakh jobs Amazon's investments have enabled over the last six years in the country.

"Amazon plans to create one million new jobs in India by 2025," the company said in a statement, adding that the jobs - created both directly and indirectly - will be across industries, including information technology, skill development, content creation, retail, logistics, and manufacturing.

Amazon.com Inc chief Jeff Bezos had on Wednesday announced USD 1 billion (over Rs 7,000 crore) investment in India to help bring small and medium businesses online and committed to exporting USD 10 billion worth of India-made goods by 2025.

"We are investing to create a million new jobs here in India over the next five years," Bezos said.

"We’ve seen huge contributions from our employees, extraordinary creativity from the small businesses we've partnered with, and great enthusiasm from the customers who shop with us—and we’re excited about what lies ahead," Bezos added.

India has prioritised job creation and skilling initiatives – including the training of more than 400 million people by 2022 – in rural and urban areas.

"Amazon’s job creation commitment and investment in traders and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) complement this social inclusion and social mobility efforts by creating more opportunities for people in India to find employment, build skills, and expand entrepreneurship opportunities," the statement said.

The new investments will help to hire talent to fill roles across Amazon in India, including software development engineering, cloud computing, content creation, and customer support.

Since 2014, Amazon has grown its employee base more than four times, and last year inaugurated its new campus building in Hyderabad – Amazon’s first fully-owned campus outside the United States and the largest building globally in terms of employees (15,000) and space (9.5 acres).

The investments will also help in expanding growth opportunities for the more than 5,50,000 traders and micro, small, and medium-sized businesses – including local shops – through programs like Saheli, Karigar, and “I Have Space”.

Indian enterprises were flooded with a whopping 14.6 crore malware threats in 2019 - a growth of 48 per cent (year-on-year) compared to 2018, a new report said on Friday.

Manufacturing, BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), education, healthcare, IT/ITES, and the government were the most at-risk industries in the country, said the report from Seqrite, the enterprise arm of Pune-based IT security firm Quick Heal Technologies.

Interestingly, almost a quarter (23 per cent) of the threats were identified through 'Signatureless behaviour-based' detection by Seqrite, indicating how a growing number of cybercriminals were deploying new or previously unknown threat vectors to compromise enterprise security.

"With the latest Seqrite annual threat report, we want to empower CIOs, CISOs, business leaders and all key public stakeholders with the insights they need to combat the growing complexity of the threat landscape," said Sanjay Katkar, Joint Managing Director and CTO, Quick Heal Technologies.

The most prominent trend was the drastic increase in the volume, intensity, and sophistication of cyber-attack campaigns targeting Indian enterprises in 2019.

The rapid integration of IoT devices, BYOD (bring your own device), and third-party APIs into enterprise networks has created newer security vulnerabilities that might go unnoticed until a major breach occurs.

Threat researchers at Seqrite observed several large-scale advanced persistent threats (APT) attacks deployed against organisations in the government sector.

"The entry of nation-states and organised cybercrime cells into the fray is expected to add more complication to this situation and will require Indian government bodies and corporate enterprises to shore up their cyber defence strategies in 2020 and beyond," the report noted.

More alarming, however, was the continued lack of security awareness amongst enterprises and government organisations.

"Unsecured Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and Server Message Block (SMB) protocols continued to be targeted through brute-force attacks," said the report.

Spear phishing attack campaigns leveraging Office exploits and infected macros were also used extensively by cybercriminals to gain access to enterprise networks and steal critical data.

"India's digital journey depends on ensuring robust cybersecurity for all stakeholders within the enterprise ecosystem," said Katkar.

The sharp spike should be a cause of concern for CIOs and CISOs in the country, especially given the growing digital penetration within their enterprise networks.

"With network vulnerabilities and potential entry points increasing at a rapid pace, threat actors are expected to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to power their malware campaigns in the future to capitalise on newer attack vectors," the report added.

Washington D.C., Jan 20: An American bride asked for money from her invitees so that they can be on the 'exclusive guest list'.

Weddings can be surely expensive. But is it feasible for one to charge the guests to make up for the expenses?

According to Fox News, that is exactly what happened in a recent American wedding. A 19-year-old shared on Reddit that her cousin was getting married on Sunday and announced that she would charge 50 dollars to those who wanted to attend her wedding.

"She said that they can Venmo her money so there won't be no [sic] problems and everyone who paid will be added onto the 'exclusive guest list' which basically means you won't have to wait in line while other guests pay," wrote the user named DaintySheep.

While she refused to pay for entry into her cousin's wedding the bride-to-be contacted the elders in the family which ended up in an embarrassing situation.

"She wanted to get the money she spent on her special day back. I told her I wouldn't be able to come because this was outrageous and that I wish her well on her special day. She contacted my aunt and my aunt called me cheap and rude. My parents offered to pay for my entry, but I refused," continued the disheartened girl.

While in almost every nook and cranny of the world gifting the bride-groom with money is a tradition, asking for money from friends and family to replenish the money spent on a wedding is can be said to be a rare scenario.