Cyber attacks driven by ransom demands are on the increase as criminals seek to cash in on the soaring values of crypto currencies according to a new report.

The 2017-2018 Global Application and Network Security Report from cyber security company Radware finds that reported ransom attacks surged in the past year, increasing 40 percent from the 2016 survey. Half of companies surveyed suffered a financially motivated attack in the past year.

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While a majority of businesses around the world have adopted cloud services, a study released today reveals a wide gap in the level of security precautions applied by companies in different markets.

The study from digital security company Gemalto finds that German businesses are more cautious when it comes to sharing sensitive information in the cloud (61 percent) than British (35 percent), Brazilian (34 percent) and Japanese (31 percent) organizations.

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As enterprises move more data to the cloud one of the problems they have is understanding where everything is and how it integrates with existing workflows.

Cyber security and breach analytics specialist Eastwind Networks is launching a new Eastwind for SaaS platform that offers complete visibility for companies using online services, such as G Suite, Office 365, Dropbox, Box and Salesforce.

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Whenever a business gets a new website it wants to see it ranking highly in search results. But getting to the top in Google and other search engines is a long game, according to SEO company Ahrefs.

UK web design company The Website Group has produced an infographic based on the Ahrefs research. It shows that -- based on random keywords -- the top 10 ranking pages on Google are on average more than two years old.

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With GDPR implementation only a few months away, a worrying new survey shows that 55 percent of UK businesses are still unaware of the GDPR regulations.

The study by compliance solution PORT.im also reveals that only 27 percent of businesses believe GDPR applies to them, despite 73 percent saying that they collect personal data on their customers -- a strong indication that GDPR does apply.

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A new survey from Kaspersky Lab reveals that there is a major disconnect between employees and their employer's IT security guidelines.

In a survey of almost 8,000 full-time employees, 49 percent of those employees surveyed consider protection from cyber threats to be a shared responsibility, but only 12 percent of respondents are fully aware of their organization’s IT security policies and rules.

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As businesses increasingly turn to cloud solutions they rely more on encryption to protect their data. Gartner predicts by 2019, 80 percent of web traffic will be encrypted, but that leads to a problem as it can allow malware to travel undetected.

Detecting malicious content in encrypted traffic is difficult without decrypting it, forcing network operators to choose between privacy and security. A new solution from network specialist Cisco solves this conundrum by allowing traffic to be scanned without decrypting it.

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Security is the top initiative companies plan to pursue in the next 24 months with investments in virus and malware protection, patch management, and intrusion detection and prevention.

According to a new State of Resilience report by big data company Syncsort, 49 percent plan to spend on these areas, with 47 percent planning to spend on business continuity and high availability.

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Security, management and compliance challenges are hitting the benefits businesses are getting from using the cloud as their infrastructures become more complex, according to new research.

The study from security and compliance specialist WinMagic reveals that 39 percent of respondents report their infrastructure is more complex since using the cloud, and 53 percent spend more time on management tasks than they have done previously.

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Shadow applications -- where employees use their own cloud and other software that isn't approved by the IT department -- is a growing problem for many enterprises as it leaves data exposed outside the corporate firewall.

Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) specialist Bitglass is launching a new Shadow IT Discovery tool as part of its Zero-day CASB Core product to help businesses to get a handle on the problem.

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Businesses are increasingly turning to software to allow them to spot cyber threats. But this can lead to a problem in the form of alert fatigue, where there are just too many warnings to allow them to be properly investigated.

Network threat detection specialist Bricata has put together an infographic to highlight the problem of alert fatigue.

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Given the high number of data breaches in the past year and the number of records involved, many consumers now rank identity theft as one of their top concerns with 66 percent of Americans saying it's the crime they most worry about.

Security company McAfee is using this week's CES to move beyond its traditional antivirus products and launch its own Identity Theft Protection.

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Whether you need to put your key in the lock on a dark night, or explore the depths of the cupboard under the stairs, having a flashlight app on your phone can prove useful.

But researchers at Check Point have discovered more than 22 different flashlight and utility apps harboring adware called, appropriately, 'LightsOut'.

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Cyber attacks on industrial organizations are a growing problem, with 28 percent admitting they faced an attack in 2017, compared to only 20 percent in 2016.

This is among the findings of a new survey by Kaspersky Lab which also shows that many attacks are going unnoticed with organizations taking an average of several days (34 percent) to several weeks (20 percent) detecting a cyber attack.

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Most digital services still rely on passwords for security, but recent breaches have shown that they are far from a perfect solution.

Password management specialist Dashlane has set an ambitious goal to kill off the password in 2018 with the launch of its Project Mirror.

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