Techstrong News Recap – May 1, 2023

Hi again, everyone here the headlines from a first first up Portland. General Electric has announced plans to build the second largest battery storage system in the United States, which will be capable of generating 400 megawatts of power in providing electricity to about 260,000 homes for four hours at full capacity. The project will be located in North Portland and Troutdale with construction set to begin later this year.

The project was made possible by the inflation reduction act which provides tax credits for battery storage projects. The decreasing costs for batteries in their increasing availability makes them a preferred solution to the energy storage problem for its potential to reduce the need for power plants that rely on fossil fuels and contribute to climate change. Next the European Union has moved closer to enacting the world's first set of comprehensive laws governing artificial intelligence after a committee of EU lawmakers reached a preliminary agreement on the artificial intelligence Act.

The Draft rules which were proposed by the European commission two years ago aims to protect citizens from the dangers of the technology. Under the proposals AI tools will be classified according to the risk level and companies deploying generative. AI tools will have to disclose whether copyright material was used to develop their systems.

The next stage is the trilog where EU lawmakers and member states will finalize the details of the bill. In other news the governor of Montana is seeking to broaden the state's proposed tiktok ban to include other social media platforms that share specific data with foreign adversaries. The recently passed bill which would make Montana the first state in the US to completely ban tiktok would impose a daily fine of $10,000 on entities that allow access to the app.

However, experts believe that enforcing the band will be challenging and there will be concerns about the potential violation of First Amendment rights and bills of attained or laws. To address these issues the governor's office has proposed an amendment that expands privacy protections Against All Foreign adversaries. This being said lawmakers must approve the amendment before the legislative season ends in early May.

Next up Microsoft has launched a new cloud service region in central Poland consisting of three physical locations around Warsaw as part of its 1 billion dollar it transformation plan for the country. According to Microsoft the cloud region will offer fast and reliable access to cloud services which will accelerate the digitization of the economy and strengthen resilience and data security. The new service will comply with Poland's restricted regulations on data storage which each location housing at least one data storage in processing center.

This development is also expected to enhance Poland cybersecurity space according to the Polish prime minister. com we've an article that looks at how mesmo added a free trial and community plan to its mesmo Telemetry pipeline service to make it easier for teams to store huge amounts of telemetry data that they are collecting. This free version will allow organizations to begin to apply the capabilities of telemetry without any upfront costs.

com. On digital cxl. com finally on Security Boulevard.

We have an article that looks at a report that shows how lockout continues to be the most prolific threat group in ransomware attacks. According to the guide point research in intelligence teams quarter 1 2023 report ransomware activity Rose by 25% compared to the fourth quarter of last year and that lockbit continued to be the most active ransomware threat actor. To learn more about the report go to Security Boulevard calm.

And that's today's Tech strong news recap.