Former Infosys CFO demands discontinuance of certain board members

Former Infosys Chief Financial Officer V Balakrishnan today sought the discontinuance of certain board members in light of the company filing a settlement plea with SEBI on corporate governance lapses relating to severance payment to its former CFO Rajiv Bansal.

"I think the continuation of certain board members like the erstwhile co-chairman (Ravi Venkatesan) and the audit committee chairman (Roopa Kudva) looks highly untenable in light of the current development of the company filing consent agreement with SEBI over Bansal's severance payment case," Balakrishnan told PTI here.

In view of the current development it is all the more important to restructure the board and fill it with people of high integrity and stature, he added.

The scathing communication to the stock exchanges blaming Infosys Co-Founder N R Narayana Murthy for all of the board's lapses was 'unprecedented,' Balakrishnan, who is known supporter of Murthy, said.

He also said all along, the board had consistently denied any wrong-doing and in fact blamed Murthy terming his questioning as a "misguided campaign."

Earlier, Murthy had accused Infosys and its board of failing in disclosure and corporate governance norms.

The board of Infosys owes an apology to Murthy and should take steps to retract that statement, he said.

"Murthy always stood for high level of corporate governance and only acted in the interest of protecting a great institution like Infosys," Balakrishnan said.

On December 6, Infosys said it had approached SEBI with an application to settle the issues arising out of alleged disclosure lapses on the severance package paid to Bansal.

India's second-largest IT firm, in a regulatory filing to the BSE, had said the settlement application made to SEBI was neither admission of guilt nor a denial.

It, however, did not disclose what it had proposed in the settlement application.

Infosys, under new Chairman Nandan Nilekani, moved the application as part of its attempt to settle the issues that had cropped up during the tenure of former CEO Vishal Sikka

Murthy had first raised the issue of failure in corporate governance at Infosys soon after the company gave a huge severance pay to Bansal after the acquisition of Israeli technology firm Panaya.

The founder continued to put pressure on Infosys to come clean, including seeking the resignation of then Infosys Chairman Seshasayee.

Verizon Data Services India lets go of 14% of its employees

Pink slips and the IT Industry are pretty synonymous these days. In the first six months of this fiscal, six major IT firms, including Cognizant, Infosys and Wipro, reportedly reduced their headcount by over 4,000. But even so, news of 1,000-odd employees being let go does raise eyebrows. According to the Union of IT and ITES Employees (UNITE), Verizon Data Services India (VDSI) will be retrenching about 14% of its workforce across its Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore offices. VDSI is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the US-based Verizon Communications Inc.

"We have come to know that VDS India has targeted to retrench 993 of its employees in band 7 to band 3 through forced resignation," said Alagunambi Welkin, the union's convenor, to The Hindu. The union also claimed that some employees in the Chennai office, falling in the senior managers band, were escorted out of their cabins by security yesterday, without any prior notification.

"As Verizon consolidates its strategy so we can scale, compete and continue to be successful, Verizon's IT, including Verizon Data Services India, is transforming into an engineering-centric, technology organisation. The transformation entails rationalisation of roles which has an impact on headcount," the company said in a statement, but does not mention the exact number of employees affected. "We are doing role rationalisation not to meet a specific number but to match the talent with the requirements of the business for its future," it added.

The worst may be yet to come. An anonymous VDSI employee commented on thelayoff.com, a pretty popular website for discussing breaking news/rumours about layoffs that gets around 5 lakh visitors monthly: "Verizon India started the layoffs... and expecting 50% layoff - approx 3500 by Feb 2018. It's true and I am an employee here and still working."

In fact, the parent company, too, has seen a wave of layoffs this year, especially after Verizon merged Yahoo and AOL to form Oath earlier this year. Over 2,000 employees were handed pink slips in June 2017, a 15% reduction in the workforce, followed by another 500 jobs eliminated last month.

According to the Experis IT Employment Outlook Survey, released by Experis IT ManpowerGroup India in October, hiring intentions across the IT sector in India will further weaken till March 2018. "The collective number of layoffs that the IT giants are contemplating is way higher than what the Indian IT industry has ever witnessed and this trend is likely to continue for the next 6-12 months," the survey stated.

MOZILLA TO STOP ALL SUPPORT FOR FIREFOX ON WINDOWS XP AND VISTA

Mozilla plans to halt all Firefox security updates next year to personal computers powered by either Windows XP or Windows Vista, closing that chapter of its browser's history.

"Today we are announcing June 2018 as the final end-of-life date for Firefox support on Windows XP and Vista," Mozilla said in an unsigned post to a company blog.

Windows XP and Vista have both been retired by Microsoft, XP in April 2014 and Vista in April 2017. Once dropped from support, an operating system stops receiving security updates from Microsoft. Third-party application developers, however, may continue to support their products on retired versions of Windows.

Late last year, Mozilla told Firefox users running Windows XP or Vista that they would be automatically migrated to Firefox's Extended Support Release (ESR), a release track designed for enterprises and educational organizations. ESR builds are updated with security fixes every six weeks, but do not receive new features or enhancements. Instead, Firefox ESR remains feature-static for approximately a year, at which time a new ESR is issued.

Mozilla moved Windows XP and Vista users to Firefox ESR version 32 in March.

The June 2018 date Mozilla tagged as support "end-of-life" was linked to Firefox ERS 52, which is currently slated to receive its last security update on May 1, 2018. The next update is scheduled for June 26, 2018, which means that Firefox on XP and Vista PCs should be protected from attacks from May 1 to June 26, because the first time Mozilla patches Firefox ESR withoutservicing Windows XP or Vista will be the latter date.

It's unclear what percentage of Firefox users run the browser on the two aged operating systems, but analytics vendors portray both XP and Vista as minor players. According to metrics company Net Applications, Windows XP powered just 5.7% of the world's personal computers last month, and Vista -- one of Microsoft's biggest flops -- ran a tiny 0.4% of the globe's PCs.

Mozilla was one of the last browser makers to pull the support plug from Windows XP and Vista. Microsoft stopped patching Internet Explorer on XP when it retired the OS in 2014, and did the same with IE on Vista six months ago. Google scratched XP and Vista off Chrome's support list in April 2016.

Firefox accounted for almost 13% of all browsers used in September, according to analytics provider Net Applications. In the last 12 months, Firefox's user share has grown by almost 40%, recovering from a near-death experience in the summer of 2016, when it looked like the browser was headed for extinction.

Mozilla urged Firefox users still on XP or Vista to upgrade to a newer operating system. "We strongly encourage our users to upgrade to a version of Windows that is supported by Microsoft," Mozilla said.

MICROSOFT BRINGS THE EDGE BROWSER TO IOS AND ANDROID, HOPING FOR CROSS-PLATFORM TRACTION

Breaking down the barriers between your PC and your phone is one of the biggest goals of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, which launches October 17. On Thursday, Microsoft paved the way for that initiative by announcing that Windows 10’s Edge browser is coming to Android and iOS, along with a Microsoft Launcher for Android. All are designed to make shifting files and webpages between devices easy-peasy.

Edge’s absence on mobile devices has been a glaring omission for Microsoft’s browser. Beginning today, you can sign up to test Edge on iOS, with an Android version “coming soon,” Microsoft promised. You’ll need to be a Windows Insider preview tester, though.

The mobile Edge browser (pictured at top) syncs with your Microsoft account, so your favorites, history, Reading List, and customized New Tab Page cross over no matter what device you’re working on. Microsoft’s announcement post doesn’t specify whether your collection of e-books from the Microsoft Store syncs as well, but we’d expect them to do so given the recent drive to turn Edge into an e-reader.

The mobile version of Edge also includes a “Continue on PC” button that pushes whatever you’re looking at over to your computer. It doesn’t sound like the mobile Edge browser syncs recent tabs like Chrome does, but this is still a solid start.

APPLE RELEASES MACOS HIGH SIERRA SUPPLEMENTAL UPDATE

Apple on Thursday released the macOS High Sierra Supplemental Update. This update is an important security update that addresses two issues:

• It fixes the security hole in Keychain that made the news last week. Security researcher Patrick Wardle created code was able to access Keychain and collect passwords. Wardle did not release the code he used.
• It fixes a vulnerability discovered by software developer Matheus Mariano, where Disk Utility improperly shows the passwords of encrypted Apple File System volumes.

How to install the macOS High Sierra Supplemental Update

1. Launch the App Store app (located in the Applications folder).
2. Click on the Updates icon. The App Store will check the internet for the update.
3. Once the update appears in the App Store listing, click on the Update button for it on the right. The installation will take several minutes and require a restart.

Apple has a knowledgebase article with details about the update.

This story, "Apple releases macOS High Sierra Supplemental Update " was originally published by Macworld.