According to the Communications Fraud Control Association (CFCA), network operators around the world lose around $38 billion annually to fraud and uncollected revenues. Currently the biggest threat to telecommunications service providers comes from loss of termination revenues.

Termination revenues come from when a network handles someone else’s call -- for example when someone on one network contacts someone on another -- or when you dial abroad. Telecommunications service providers naturally want to have a reward for handing on the call to the final recipient. Annual declines in revenue from termination in many countries are 10 percent or more.

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A class action lawsuit has been filed against Google accusing the company of discriminating against older job seekers and employees. The case against the company has been certified by the Northern California District Court, which is allowing aggrieved applicants aged 40 and older to join together to file a single suit.

Now that the case has been certified, the court has given plaintiffs the right to challenge Google in court as opposed to individually which will make it easier to deal with the company's expert legal team. This move by the court also increases the chances of the company offering those involved in the case a favorable settlement.

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We’ve known for a long time that public Wi-Fi is one of the weakest links in mobile security. But what is proving even weaker is public awareness of just how vulnerable that connection technology can be.

According to iPass, which tracks the global growth of Wi-Fi, there are now 54 million Wi-Fi hotspots in the US, representing a 4,414 percent increase since 2013. Many of these Wi-Fi hotspots are insecure, leaving users open to cyber attack and at risk of significant financial loss. In our recent study Uncovering the True Costs of Enterprise Mobility, 28 percent of US companies report having suffered a mobile breach in the last 12 months -- with the cost of remedying the breach at $250,000 to $400,000 in many cases.

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A new vulnerability has been discovered that could shut down most Linux systems using a command short enough to fit in a tweet.

Linux administrator and founder of the security certificate company SSLMate Andrew Ayer discovered the bug, which has the potential to kill a number of critical commands while making others unstable just by entering the short command: NOTIFY_SOCKET=/run/systemd/notify systemd-notify "".

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Market analyst company Gartner has issued a report that says that investment in big data is up, but fewer companies are actually planning on investing in this field. While 48 percent of companies have invested in big data in 2016, up three percent compared to the year before, the percentage those who plan on investing within the next two years is down from 31 to 25 per cent.

According to Paul Cant, EMEA head of enterprise solutions operation for BMC Software, businesses are giving up on big data because they failed to implement it properly and are not really reaping the benefits.

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Android users, beware. Ransomware for your favorite mobile operating system is picking up -- it's now the main threat in the US, UK, Germany, Denmark and Australia, in the first half of 2016.

These are the figures from security organization Bitdefender. Its report claims the Android SLocker ransomware family accounts for almost half of all mobile malware reported by infected devices in the first half of 2016 in Denmark.

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Worldwide shipments for devices including PCs, tablets, smartphones and mobile phones, are expected to decline three percent this year, according to a new report by market analysts Gartner. The company says this will be the second consecutive year of decline, as the global devices market fell by 0.75 percent in 2015. "The global devices market is not on pace to return to single-digit growth soon", says Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner.

"Growth is on pace to remain flat during the next five years. All segments are expected to decline in 2016, except for premium ultramobiles and utility mobile phones (entry level phones), which are expected to show single-digit growth this year", says Gartner.

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Open source employees in Europe have it good, especially when we compare that market to the rest of the world. This is according to a new report by Dice and The Linux Foundation. The report says that out of 1,000 European respondents 60 percent believe it would be fairly easy to find a new job this year. Globally, the figure stands at about 50 percent.

"Demand for open source talent is growing and companies struggle to find experienced professionals to fill open roles", says Bob Melk, president of Dice. "Rising salaries for open source professionals indicate companies recognize the need to attract, recruit and retain qualified open source professionals on a global scale. Regardless of where they reside around the world, these professionals are motivated by the opportunity to work on interesting projects".

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MasterCard has just rolled out a new feature that should simplify online shopping, without making any compromises in security. The feature, called Identity Check Mobile, allows users to use biometrics like fingerprint scanning or facial recognition to verify their identity before making a purchase, eliminating the need for passwords or PIN codes.

At the moment, the technology is being introduced in 12 European countries: the UK, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden. Worldwide rollout is expected next year, although no specific dates have been given.

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Choosing between a restaurant offering free Wi-Fi and one that doesn't, two thirds (66 percent) of consumers will go with the one that allows free connectivity, according to new research. Hughes Europe's new report says access to free Wi-Fi has become a "major factor" when consumers are faced with eating and drinking choices.

Almost half (46 percent) also say this affects their choice of shops. "Our survey explores how consumers increasingly expect access to Wi-Fi when they shop, enter a restaurant or look for somewhere to stay", says Chris O'Dell, vice president of sales and marketing, Hughes Europe.

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East Asian technology companies want to see 5G in action during the next Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018, and they're doing everything they can to make it a reality. According to a new report by GSMA, entitled Mobile World Live, this effort is 'accelerating the global development of the technology'.

To put things into perspective, 3GPP (the leading standards body) is planning on producing the first 5G specs in June 2018, mere months before the event kicks off. "Given their enormous global profile, it is perhaps not surprising that the Olympics have been central in driving the timeline for 5G, yet it’s hard to recall many other technologies previously being showcased on this stage in this way", says Christopher Cave, director, R&D, InterDigital.

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One of the key features that every database must have is scalability. This is particularly true for eCommerce websites where thousands of transactions take place every day. As such, for eCommerce websites to run smoothly you need to increase the storage as well as memory as your customer base expands. Which is why you need to know about scaling your MySQL databases. Scaling is important for merchants that are looking to add commodity servers as well as improve their read and write performance without migrating databases to bigger servers.

Generally, businesses can scale MySQL databases on cloud effectively, increasing their capacity to handle growth without having to invest in hardware. Even then, MySQL presents limitations, hence it is not surprising for your database to exhibit latency and performance issues that translate to missed revenue. To counter this, you may opt for a database that has the capability of scaling out horizontally, effectively being able to handle an unlimited number of users.

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The United States may well be starting to lose its dominance on the global stage, but it’s hard to deny that its native Silicon Valley has been the envy of global governments for decades. Even China, which generally looks upon American culture with disdain, has been stealthily building clusters of Silicon somethings, if not valleys.

Here, research and development funding has swelled by an average of 64 percent year on year for the past half-decade – all with the hope of creating the same west-coast sweet spot somewhere to the east. Yet, so far, no country can claim to have replicated the prized unicorn farm of the US.

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Our offices are still not entirely paper-free, but we're slowly getting there. This optimistic prediction has been published in a new report by AIIM, entitled Paper-Free in 2016, Are we there yet?. According to it, the amount of paper going into offices is declining, while digital inbound documents are increasing, for two thirds of business executives.

The report launches as part of the run up to World Paper Free Day (WPFD) 2016, AIIM says, taking place on November 4. "The once elusive concept of paper-free business operations is today a real possibility and real progress has been made over the past 12 months", says Bob Larrivee, chief analyst at AIIM. "It remains unrealistic to think that all business processes and transactions will be paper-free in the near future, but there are definitely certain processes where paper can be removed".

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More than one in ten (11 percent) of all UK organizations have never even heard of ransomware, Trend Micro claims. Another 20 percent don't know how the malware works. Yet, more than four fifths, or 82 percent to be exact, consider malware a threat.

This general lack of knowledge about ransomware best reflects in how the organizations in question think ransomware originates. A third (33 percent) of them know it comes from malicious email attachments. However, a quarter (24 percent) believe ransomware infections come from clicking a link in an email, and 14 percent think it happens if you simply browse the web.

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