Businesses are moving faster towards a cashless society because it's cheaper than handling "real" money. This is according to a new report by Sage, integrated accounting, payroll and payment software provider. The company’s latest report says small and medium-sized businesses are losing £9.4bn each year through cash payments.

A quarter (24 percent) say that staff members stole some cash, a third (34 percent) believe human error had them losing money, and more than half (56 percent) claim they spend at least an hour every week counting and sending money to the bank.

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According to a recent report from cyber-security experts at RSA, in today’s increasingly computerized world, cyber-crime issues "comprise a threat horizon that continues to accelerate and expand with no end in sight".

Since much the same can be said about the growth of computing power in today’s vehicles -- which rely on technology for everything from 3D navigation graphics to semi-autonomous driving capabilities -- the risks for having your car or truck hacked would seem to be on the rise as well. But should current drivers be worried about the issue right now, or is it time to pump the brakes on the car-hacking panic?

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The head of of the GCHQ believes that distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks could be eliminated completely if internet service providers (ISPs) were to completely rewrite their software and its code.

The technical director of GCHQ's National Cyber Security Centre, Ian Levy, is already preparing to engage in talks with ISPs, such as BT, over how they could be the key to ending DDoS attacks. After the cyber attacks that occurred as a result of the Mirai malware were made public, GCHQ made it a priority to prevent further attacks that could be launched using the same measures.

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What once was the plot of creative Hollywood blockbuster movies is now becoming a reality. The Internet of things (IoT) continues to grow as consumers, businesses and governments recognize the benefit of connecting devices to the internet, be it smart phones, wearable devices or smart homes. It is estimated that the number of connected devices in use by 2020 will be 30 billion, one in five cars will be connected vehicles in the next five years and by 2025 the IoT is predicted to have a global economic impact of US $11trillion.

The growing presence of connected devices is increasing efficiency in homes, workplaces and other areas of life that have seen the introduction of the IoT. Despite the expansion of connected devices however, there remains a number of consumers who are reluctant to adopt the IoT due to security concerns.

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Women in the UK's tech industry earn nine percent less money than men, according to a new report by Hired. In salary terms, that's approximately £5,000 a year in difference.

The worst part is the UK is leading the way globally, when it comes to gender pay gap in the technology sector. The US has a gender pay gap of 8 percent in the tech sector, Canada 7 percent, and Australia has the lowest gap -- five percent. Hired's report also says that it's not just about the pay.

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A new cybersecurity law has been passed in China which will give the country even more control over the Internet and will require foreign companies to store their data locally.

The National People's Congress Standing Committee passed the new law on Monday, causing a great deal of concern amongst human rights groups and foreign businesses. China already limits access to the Internet through its own online security system known in the west as "the Great Firewall" but this new cybersecurity law will allow the country to further censor and control the internet.

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Security company McAfee warns that the cybercriminals behind the Cerber ransomware have begun to target businesses as well as individuals by encrypting their databases until payment is received.

During July, those responsible for Cerber launched over 160 campaigns at 150,000 users. These attacks generated $195,000 in that month -- of which the developer behind the ransomware received $78,000. Overall it is estimated that creating and using ransomware to launch cyberattacks earns the creators of the malware and those who employ it in their attacks around $1 million to $2.5 million a year. The infosec firm Trustwave noted in 2015 that a ransomware creator could earn up to $84,000 a month just by selling their malware on the dark web.

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In an effort to soften the European Commission's inquiry into business practices, Google has claimed that those bringing charges against it do not fully understand antitrust law.

Kent Walker, senior VP and general counsel, took to the company's corporate blog to respond to the commission's concerns over how it has prevented rival sites and services from competing in the areas of online advertising and sales. In his blog post, Walker was quick to point out that the Commission had failed to acknowledge the role that Amazon plays in how consumers shop online.

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Data warehouses are at the core of many information driven business initiatives. They’re used to store large volumes of historical data which can then be used in business intelligence projects to create knowledge-based reporting.

But a data warehouse isn’t just a single, huge repository of data, they come in a number of different types. What they all have in common is that they’re separate from day-to-day operational systems. Data is uploaded to a warehouse after it has served its primary purpose, so that it can be used for statistical analysis and decision support, once out of date for this purpose it can then move on to be archived.

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The idea that the Chinese market is emerging is an idea that firmly belongs in the past -- while online gaming is worth $22 billion, the construction market is worth a staggering $2 trillion. Cross-border ecommerce sales -- consumers from China buying goods from outside China -- is expected to reach just under a trillion US dollars in 2016. Outbound tourists from China reached 120 million in 2015, and they spent $104.5 billion around the globe.

Internet usage and access in China is growing, despite the restrictions in connectivity the region faces. Even though the Great Firewall of China can block certain types of content completely, making websites inaccessible and cause long load times, according to China Internet Watch there were 667 million internet users spending around 25 hours a week online in 2015 -- and this is only set to grow further. Combine these trends -- the necessity of digital commerce and the rise of China as a viable target market -- and then suddenly Western businesses need to carefully scrutinize how their brand presents online.

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The rite of passage from youth to adulthood is filled with "morning after” moments  --  those times when you realize that only 24 short hours ago (or less) you had bad judgment. Last Wednesday is Slack’s morning after... it thought it mattered as much as Microsoft.

Slack is a great product with deeply devoted fans, there’s no doubt about that. Its management has embraced the "accidental genius" narrative ("We don’t know why people use our product"), have talked about revolutions, and have driven one hell of a valuation. Good for them. Sadly, witty narratives, claims that your technology is disruptive and a lot of paper wealth doesn’t often translate into success as an enterprise software company.

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Enterprise collaboration, sometimes abbreviated to EC or ECS for enterprise collaboration systems, is becoming an increasingly vital tool for many businesses. Essentially, it comprises various forms of hardware and software used to enable the seamless and efficient sharing of information and resources within a particular company.

Enterprise collaboration systems can simply be relatively common communication tools such as email and instant messaging. Increasingly though businesses are turning to more bespoke solutions that combine these functions with project management and document management software. It is also worth noting that enterprise collaboration can prove beneficial for teams based in the same office, or those separated by thousands of miles. Collaborative technology is about breaking down the barriers preventing enterprise co-operation from taking place, whether they are departmental, geographical, temporal, or anything else for that matter.

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The US government has just launched its latest website, Code.gov with the aim of preventing the replication of code across government agencies in order to conserve valuable time and resources.

The site, which was launched on Thursday, already contains almost 50 open-source projects from a number of government agencies. Code.gov is the product of the Federal Source Code policy that was first announced in August by the White House.

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Just as in shipping physical cargoes where a load in a container can share transport on a train or ship with other similar loads while remaining separate, so in computing a containerized application is able to share machine space with many others whilst remaining separate in its own "box".

You might be wondering how this differs from full virtualization? A virtual machine provides a complete environment running an operating system and applications totally separate from the OS of the host server. A containerized application on the other hand is fully self-contained in terms of a business application, but is designed to work with the operating system kernel of the host. This provides a lighter weight alternative to full virtualization, allowing the application to be run on any physical machine that shares the same operating system, but otherwise behaving as though it’s independent.

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For all the recent buzz surrounding the cloud and big data, it remains a fact that at the heart of much business computing there is still some form of database. In particular the operation of digital currencies like Bitcoin relies on databases that are able to track large volumes of transactions and keep them secure.

The solution used by digital currencies -- though it’s increasingly finding other applications too -- is the blockchain. First implemented in 2009, blockchain technology consists of blocks that hold batches of timestamped transactions, each block is linked to the previous one, thus forming a chain.

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