GHD's foray into network automation wasn't deliberate, but it turned out to be a game changer. Five years ago, the global professional services company, which has 12,000 employees and 260 locations around the world, needed to add another 100 North American sites onto the network because of an acquisition. And time was of the essence.

C. Randy Taylor, global network manager for GHD, decided to get 50 of those sites on the network using traditional Cisco routers, switches and wireless technology. It took 18 months to implement those first 50 sites, and two technicians had to be present on site to bring up each one.

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As companies increasingly turn to artificial intelligence to communicate with customers, make sense of big data and find answers to vexing questions, some say it's time to think about hiring a chief A.I. officer.

A chief artificial intelligence Officer – or CAIO -- could round out your C-level execs, sitting at the big table with your CIO, CFO, CTO and CEO.

"A.I. is going to be really important to some companies – enough to have top officers who will focus on just that," said Steve Chien, head of the artificial intelligence group for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "And beyond that, you'll want every employee thinking about how A.I. can improve what they do and you'll want a chief A.I. officer overseeing all of that. They should be constantly thinking about how A.I. can improve things."

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After its acquisition of Yahoo wraps up, Verizon plans to place AOL and Yahoo under the umbrella of a new company, called Oath.

AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong on Monday announced the move on Twitter, writing, "Billion+ Consumers, 20+ Brands, Unstoppable Team. #TakeTheOath. Summer 2017."

AOL, which owns the Huffington Post, Engadget and TechCrunch, will pool all of the properties with Yahoo under the Oath umbrella, according to Armstrong, in an interview with CNBC.

"This is a sad thing for everyone who remembers when Yahoo and AOL were riding high," said Dan Olds, an analyst for OrionX. "For many people, AOL was their first experience with the Internet and was probably their first email address. A lot of people's first experience with Internet search, and other services, was probably with Yahoo. Unfortunately, the companies couldn't keep up with the ever-changing competition and fell into the backwaters of the Internet."

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With reports of Russia using social media and bots to push fake news to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, questions are arising over how these same tactics could be used against an enterprise.

"Twitter bots could absolutely be used against a company," said Dan Olds, an analyst with OrionX. "Someone using bots could manufacture a fake groundswell of opinion against a company or a product."

The subject of Twitter bots has made headlines since federal investigations into Russia's interference with the presidential election unearthed evidence that the Kremlin used chatbots, particularly on Twitter, to seed fake news stories in order to confuse discussions and taint certain candidates, especially Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

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On a windy, snowy night in Dover, N.H., about 15 people gathered in an old converted mill, staring at computer screens and furiously tapping at their keyboards.

The group – some students, some programmers, and at least one part-time dishwasher and data entry clerk – were braving the snowstorm and volunteering their time to try to keep scientific data from being lost.

It was one of dozens of data rescue events spread out in cities from Toronto to Los Angeles, and Houston to Chicago. These events, many on university campuses, have been going on since December, bringing together software programmers, librarians and other volunteers who are trying to safely archive scientific data from government websites.

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IT managers are finding it difficult to keep their applications and data safe in the cloud, and many are slowing cloud adoption because of it.

That was one of the findings of an Intel cloud security report that surveyed 2,000 IT professionals in different countries and industries last fall.

The issue isn't with the cloud itself, since trust outnumbers distrust for public clouds by more than two to one, according to Intel's survey.

IT professionals told Intel that shadow IT and a shortage of cybersecurity skills are causing the most problems.

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A move by a watchdog group and a small group of shareholders to oust Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg from his post as chairman would be an uphill battle that would be unlikely to succeed and could hurt the company, analysts said.

It would completely destabilize Facebook," said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy. "Zuckerberg still makes most of the key decisions and without him it would be a major risk… I don't see a single piece of upside in removing Zuckerberg from the board."

It's also unclear whether Zuckerberg could even be removed as chairman, since any shareholder vote would be advisory only.

The proposal is being led by Facebook shareholders who are members of SumOfUs, an international consumer watchdog group focused on "curbing the growing power of corporations."

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Twitter is extending its campaign to curb trolls and abuse on its social network.

The company announced today that it's making three changes to continue its efforts to give Twitter users more control over what they see on the site and who can use it.

"Making Twitter a safer place is our primary focus," wrote Ed Ho, Twitter's vice president of engineering, in a blog post. "We stand for freedom of expression and people being able to see all sides of any topic. That's put in jeopardy when abuse and harassment stifle and silence those voices. We won't tolerate it and we're launching new efforts to stop it."

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