The FTC cleared the way for ​Symantec's $2.3 billion acquisition of identity protection provider LifeLock, said an early termination notice issued by the commission this week. Symantec, which announced the acquisition last month, said it expected to close the deal Q1 after antitrust and shareholder approvals (see 1611210014).

The National Institute of Standards and Technology released a guidebook Thursday aimed at helping organizations develop a game plan to quickly end and recover from a cyberattack. The NIST guide includes tactical and strategic guidance for developing, testing and improving a recovery plan. The document also includes information for planning for specific cyber incidents, including data breaches and ransomware. The book can be used in conjunction with NIST's Cybersecurity Framework, the agency said. NIST said it developed the handbook in response to the overall rise in cyber incidents and the Office of Management and Budget's 2015 Cybersecurity Strategy and Information Plan, which called on federal agencies to improve their cybersecurity response capabilities. “To be successful, each organization needs to develop its own plan and playbooks in advance,” said NIST computer scientist Murugiah Souppaya, one of the guide's authors, in a news release. “Then they should run the plays with tabletop exercises, work within their team to understand its level of preparation and repeat.”

Florida-based Inbound Call Experts, which the FTC and the state of Florida said engaged in a tech support scheme, will pay $10 million to consumers to settle a complaint and its business will be monitored for two years, said the commission in a Thursday news release. Commissioners voted 3-0 to accept the stipulated final order, which was filed in the District Court for the Southern District of Florida and entered Monday by a judge, the FTC said. The firm, which also did business as Advanced Tech Support, and other defendants used "high-pressure sales pitches to telemarket tech support products and services falsely claiming to find viruses and malware on consumers' computers," the release said. Under the final order, which bars them from misrepresenting such services, a judge will appoint a monitor to oversee the defendant's business for two years. To fund the $10 million, the company will transfer $5.75 million to the FTC within seven days after the judge signs the order and another $2.25 million within 30 days. Plus, a court-appointed receiver "will promptly transfer" another $2 million to the agency. The company didn't comment.

Beware of fake mobile phone retail apps that impersonate well-known brands to steal your personal information, said FTC Consumer Education Specialist Ari Lazarus in a Thursday blog post about how fraudulent apps can pilfer an individual's credit card and bank data, install malware or demand ransom to unlock a device. He said consumers should hop onto a retailer's website to see if it's promoting an app and where they can download it. Consumers can also search a brand name and type "fake app" to see if there are reports of the brand being spoofed, he said. Users also should read reviews of an app before downloading because if there are none then the app was likely newly created and might be a fake, whereas established retailer apps typically have thousands of reviews, said Lazarus. Plus, he said people should be careful of misspellings in an app's description, which may indicate the app was created quickly. He recommended consumers, if using an app to shop, save a product description and price, online shopping receipts and any communication with sellers, and monitor credit card statements for dubious charges.

The global home audio market outperformed the overall CE category and is on track to finish the year at 102 million shipments valued at close to $11 billion, said a Futuresource report Wednesday. It cited Amazon’s Echo and Google Home speakers in a category led by sound bars and Bluetooth speakers. Growth of music streaming services and music playback on smartphones is creating demand for a wide range of wireless audio products, said Futuresource. The voice-enabled personal assistant speaker category will expand with Microsoft teaming with Harman on a Cortana-powered product and a possible Siri-enabled speaker from Apple, said analyst Simon Bryant. Bluetooth speakers are 80 percent of the wireless speaker market, and sound bars had 15 percent growth in 2016, said the research firm.

Artificial intelligence and virtual reality will be among seven of "the most significant and impactful trends in technology" next year, said an IHS Markit Technology paper Wednesday. "Liberated from the hallowed realms of science fiction and now incarnated as a helpful -- if somewhat impersonal -- aide," such as Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa, AI will have far-reaching implications when humans cede control to the technology such as semi- or fully autonomous cars or robots, the paper said. It acknowledged AI will also have consequences for the work force, which are issues outlined in a Tuesday White House report (see 1612200056). VR and augmented reality are poised to "advance significantly" as companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft leverage their technologies to "corner" this space, IHS Markit said. There will be a range of commercial, industrial and professional applications for the technology such as in retail and healthcare, it added. Another trend is expansion of IoT through low-power wide area network (LPWAN) technologies, which will open up opportunities for telecom operators and drive numerous applications such as smart metering, smart buildings, precision agriculture and environmental monitoring sensors, said IHS Markit. It expects LPWAN shipments to grow from 46.4 million units in 2017 to about 383 million units in 2021.

FedEx this week is “closing out what has been another busy peak season” for the company, “largely driven by the continued rapid growth of e-commerce,” said FedEx Services co-CEO Mike Glenn on a Tuesday earnings call. “As e-commerce grows, so does the challenge of peak, with multiple days of volume levels approaching or surpassing double our average daily volume,” Glenn said. “This surge in demand is driven primarily by a relatively small number of customers.” Fewer than 50 “large retail and e-tail customers” account for most of the peak demand, “so it’s extremely important that we understand their forecasts well in advance to allow us to plan resources properly,” he said. Though a few FedEx e-commerce customers this year “have experienced demand below their forecasts,” demand at most clients is “meeting expectations,” he said.

ICANN updated a draft version of its gTLD marketplace health index to include statistics from the first half of 2016. ICANN said it plans to release an update to the index biannually “to track progress against its goal of supporting the evolution of the domain name marketplace to be robust, stable and trusted.” An advisory panel is refining the index's metrics before the rollout of a formal "version 1.0," the nonprofit said. Domain name registrars and others urged the organization in September to further revise its gTLD marketplace health metrics (see 1609120060). The index now measures marketplace health based on geographic diversity, overall changes in the number of registered gTLDs, changes in the number of registrars, accuracy of WHOIS records and dispute resolutions.

A White House report on artificial intelligence "rightly" extols the technology's potential, but also gives "undue credence" to speculation that AI will "exacerbate inequality" and eliminate jobs before acknowledging creation of new ones, said Center for Data Innovation (CDI) Director Daniel Castro in a statement. Tuesday's report (see 1612200056) said the technology could hurt less-educated, lower-skilled workers and recommended several policy changes including more R&D, worker training and education, and a modernized social safety net. "The White House is wrong to suggest that AI will power a productivity explosion so great that it destroys jobs faster than the economy can keep up," said Castro. "That idea vastly overestimates the ways in which AI will be able to replace people -- and it underestimates the extent to which productivity gains create new job opportunities by putting more money into the economy." He said policymakers including the incoming Trump administration should keep the claims in perspective. But Castro said he supports the strategies the White House put forth and said the report correctly says the bulk of new jobs created won't be high-skilled technical jobs like computer scientists but in other sectors where companies benefit from AI. In October, CDI released an AI report and held a discussion on how government regulators and policymakers could help foster the technology (see 1610190027).

Global government requests to Facebook for user account data rose to 59,229 for the first half of 2016, up 27 percent from the second half of last year, said Deputy General Counsel Chris Sonderby in a Wednesday news release. U.S. law enforcement made 23,854 requests, but most of those requests contained a nondisclosure order that prevented the website from notifying users, he said. "As for content restriction requests, the number of items restricted for violating local law decreased by 83% from 55,827 to 9,663," he said. "Last cycle’s figures had been elevated primarily by French content restrictions of a single image from the November 13, 2015 terrorist attacks" (see 1604280039). The report also includes, for the first time, information on requests from governments to preserve data, he said. These are records that won't be disclosed until Facebook gets a formal and valid legal process, wrote Sonderby, adding that the company received 38,675 preservation requests for 67,129 accounts. The social media service expanded reporting of emergency requests to include countries outside the U.S -- 3,016 requests for 4,192 accounts. It also said the U.S. government lifted a gag order for one national security letter received in the second half of 2015 due to transparency changes introduced this year by the USA Freedom Act.