TOP STORIES #93

News about what we will see at CES 2025 is already starting to leak, notably from NVIDIA and Intel (there are no big surprises yet). Of course, you cannot miss the guide to the hottest keynotes and parties at CES!

If you would like colleagues to join this maillist, they can click here.

The previous week's TOP STORIES #92 is here.

Hardware

Panther Lake on track for 2025

With volume shipments of Lunar Lake CoPilot+-enabled computers just starting to arrive, Intel has announced the first working engineering samples of Panther Lake. This probably means we will only have production volume in 2026, but we now know for sure that Panther Lake on the 18A node is coming! You can read more about this here.

Dell Arrow Lake High-Performance Workstation Laptops Announced

After a brief experiment with onboard RAM with Lunar Lake, the next generation of CPUs will return to offboard RAM. Dell will launch high-performance workstations with up to 256 GB of RAM, 16TB of Storage, and TB5 ports! We will learn more about these beasts at CES, but you can read here for some preliminary news

NVIDIA GEFORCE 50 Series at CES 2025

It's going to happen! The new RTX 50 series GPUs will launch at CES 2025. It looks like everything will be revealed on January 6th. You can read more about what to expect here. Take a look at The Witcher IV trailer, apparently rendered on a RTX 5090! In another leak, it seems the BlackWell 5090 will require 600W alone! Yikes!

10K, the final Next frontier - HDMI Standard gets upgraded to 2.2

It seems that HDMI may release the next cable interconnect standard for displays at CES which will support 10K monitors (HDMI 2.2), just when we were getting used to 8K! Imagine a 10K resolution monitor from SAMSUNG to beat the 57" 8K Neo G9? I wonder what that beast will look like?

Microsoft

NTLM removed from WIn11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025

This is actually a good thing, as this is a legacy authentication system that is quite vulnerable to attack, so removing it is actually a good thing. You can read more here.

If you have NTLM in your environment, please contact your First Technology account manager. They will connect you with our security specialists, who can help you finally abandon this legacy system.

Installing Win11 24H2 on unsupported CPUs - DON'T!

There is quite a lot of "noise" going around on the Internet and YouTube that Microsoft is "OK" with installing Win11 on "unsupported hardware". Unless you are doing this at home, PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS for the computers in your company. It is very important that you follow the official Microsoft guidelines.

It appears that Win11 will install on machines with TPM 2.0 but with older CPUs than those on the approved list. You can read how that works here and more here, which links you to new Microsoft support pages.

Linus Tech Tips also has a video explaining where this story may have started.

Also, installing Windows 11 on a really old computer with 8 GB of RAM will probably be a terrible experience, so please consider carefully before doing this.

If you are serious about doing it, try upgrading the RAM to 16 GB and replacing the HDD with an SSD.

It is becoming more important than ever to start migrating to Win11 (and it should be 24H2). Please contact your First Technology account manager to connect you with our hardware and Operating System experts to assist with upgrading older machines to run Windows 11 for the best possible experience and then to plan your hardware refresh roadmap for the next few years, given Windows 10 is coming to the end of its life October 2025.

Security

Prometheus Leaking Like a Sieve

Thousands of servers hosting the Prometheus monitoring and alerting toolkit are probably leaking information and are open to remote code execution attacks. Though this is mainly used on Linux environments, it can also run on Windows Server.

If you are running Prometheus, you must pay attention to this major vulnerability, which you can read more about here.

Shipping companies most popular for Phishing

Almost half a billion emails sent in 2024 were malicious! DHL and Fedex top the list for being most impersonated for phishing attacks. This is only going to get worse. It is more important than ever to ensure that your users are trained and refreshed on what to look out for. Attacks are evolving, and so must users. You can read more here.

Please contact your First Technology account manager to review your Training schedule for your users to keep them up to date and looking out for ever-increasing clever Phishing attacks.

Microsoft confirms Password Deletion for 1 Billion users

Microsoft is now blocking 7,000 password attacks per second, making it clear that passwords are no longer secure. Accelerating the adoption of better security such as passkeys is more important than ever. You can read more about this here.

Please contact your First Technology account manager to connect you with our security specialists to start the URGENT migration from being password-centric to newer systems such as passkeys. Even 2FA using SMS is still very vulnerable and best avoided going forward.

Cloud & AI

OpenAI Launches Sora

This was first teased 10 months ago. but now it has been released. What I find so amazing about what it can do now, is to imagine what we will see in 5 years time!

With the release of Sora, the $200 a month ChatGPT subscription is now making more sense.

What's up at FTG

Pure Storage event - Special Guest speaker - PSG Wealth

This is a special in-person event to start the new year that introduces the Pure Storage and First Technology partnership and takes you under the hood of the technology and how you can benefit from it and what the future looks like with Containers and Kubernetes.

When: 23 Jan 2025 at 8:00am

Where: Pencil Club, 1 Ncondo Pl, Umhlanga Ridge, Durban, 4320

There are limited seats, so please register ASAP

Microsoft AI Tour in Johannesburg

First Technology Group will have a major presence at the Microsoft AI Tour in Johannesburg. You will be able to meet our experts in all fields of AI. These experts from First Technology, BUI, CRM Team and First Digital will be there to introduce, explore and demonstrate business centric AI-powered solutions to boost creativity and productivity. These include out of the box solutions as well as custom designs developed by First Technology Group companies.

When: 23 Jan 2025 7:00am to 1:45pm

Where: Sandton Convention Centre

CoPilot Security Demo

BUI, FTG's security division, can present CoPilot for Security information-sharing sessions, workshops and demos.

In light of ongoing attacks that will only get sneakier, it is essential to contact your First Tech Group account manager to arrange to attend a session. You can also request a session here.

What does a World Class SoC look like, and how does it work?

You are invited to book a tour of one of our SoC (Security Operations Center) nodes (and there are still parts we can't show you). You can book for the tour here.

BUI blog - 3rd Video Available

FTG's Azure and security division, BUI, has launched a blog focused on Security—what's new, what changed, and what you need to do to maintain a sound security posture. This one, however, is about a game that Dirk learnt about while attending Black Hat in Vegas.

All BUI videos have been moved to one YouTube channel, which you can find here.

The Security Blog Video #003 is now available to view here.

Movies

School holidays from 6 December to January 25! 50 Days!

Now Playing: Kraven The Hunter

Now Playing: Weekend In Taipei

20 December: Mufasa: The Lion King

20 December: Canary Black