Airbnb, the home rental startup, is raising another $850 million (£651m), according to a new report by Bloomberg, at a valuation of $30 billion, making it the second most valuable start-up, right behind the $68-billion-worth car-sharing Uber.

The document, filed with the state of Delaware, does not show who the investors are, and Airbnb has yet to make a comment.

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UK's Science and Technology Committee recently published a report stating that the digital skills gap is costing the UK economy £63 billion a year in lost GDP. It’s a time of turbulent change, both politically and economically and fostering home grown talent with the most up to date digital skills is more important than ever.

We caught up with Julian Wragg, EMEA Managing Director at online IT learning provider Pluralsight, to see what can be done to address the STEM and IT skills gap in the UK.

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There is a "clear disconnect" between vision and the ability to execute that vision among companies that want to use Internet of Things (IoT) devices to collect data and act on them to improve product quality.

Those are the results of a new study by LogMeIn’s Xively, entitled Simplifying the Complexity of IoT.

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Uber is the latest poster child for technological disruption. The company found an industry stagnated by anti-competitive regulations and, with the simple addition of a mobile app that enabled its users to provide what only taxis and limousines could do before, it stood that industry on its ear. And ever since, we have faced a litany of startups that call themselves the "Uber of" something or other.

There’s just one problem: not everyone can be an Uber.

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Some 11 million workers in the UK would very much like to see a six-hour workday, according to a new report by remote working solutions company, TeamViewer.

TeamViewer says workers believe a six-hour workday would improve their work - life balance, and reduce their stress levels. Productivity is also expected to increase.

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There once was a time when most people hadn’t heard of casual dating site Ashley Madison. That all changed in July 2015, when hackers stole sensitive customer information and posted the information on the dark web in a massive data dump, 9.7 gigabytes in size. The files included account details and logins for approximately 32 million of the dating site’s users.

One year later, the dating site is doing several things to redeem its damaged reputation, including rebranding its parent company from Avid Life Media to Ruby, bringing in a new CEO and President to lead the business, revamping their value proposition and launching their first-ever TV ad.

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Time is relentless. The GDPR is moving ever closer, while at the same time apps aren’t. And that’s a huge problem for businesses, because if apps are not GDPR-compliant, they’re not GDPR complaint. That can mean huge fines, possibly even the end of businesses.

The fact that apps are far away from being GDPR compliant came as a result of a new and extensive study by Blue Coat Labs. The company analyzed more than 15,000 enterprise cloud applications in use and 108 million enterprise documents stored and shared within them.

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Here’s an interesting thought -- if you don’t use flash storage, you risk reputation damage. Interesting conclusion, right? Well, this is basically what data management company NetApp is saying in its latest report.

NetApp claims that almost a quarter (23 percent) of businesses risk damaging their reputation because they do not support business-critical applications with flash storage.

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Internet performance management company Dyn says businesses are still under a lot of disruptions, which severely hurts their internet performance, resulting in unsatisfied customers.

The company polled 100 IT senior IT leaders from enterprises across the United States, and released the results in a report titled "Constant Website Disruptions Demand a New Kind of Performance Management".

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​Application control, such as greylisting, paired with selective local admin rights management, is 100 percent effective against ransomware and unwanted file encryption.

This is according to CyberArk Labs’ new report, based on the analysis of more than 23,000 real-world samples from common ransomware families, such as Cryptolocker, Petya and Locky. More than 30 different malware families were tested, and the results posted in the report entitled Analyzing Ransomware and Potential Mitigation Strategies.

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Earnings created by the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in financial technology (fintech) will skyrocket in the next five years, according to new reports by Juniper Research.

The researchers have said that, by 2021, we should expect a jump of 960 percent, with revenues hitting $17 billion (£12.95bn).

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According to Gartner, more than half of all big data projects fail to make it beyond the pilot stage. It’s important to consider what it takes to make big data projects successful in a production environment and to ensure you’re building in the right elements from the outset to support your big data initiatives.

If you’ve had a successful pilot, it’s a good time to step back and generalize and reexamine any expedient choices you may have made. And if you’re not yet to the pilot stage, even better -- you can build your pilot on sound principles and a proven approach, which will make the project go faster.

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Ransomware is no longer a quick and easy way for cyber-criminals to get their hands on some money. It is now considered a "permanent fixture on the threat landscape" -- at least according to PhishMe’s Q2 2016 Malware Review.

The security experts’ new report says ransomware now accounts for 50 percent of all malware configurations, meaning it is now a mature business model. It also says it shows no outward signs of diminishing.

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Salesforce is taking the fight to Alphabet and Microsoft with the $582 million acquisition of Quip, a document collaboration firm that competes with Alphabet’s Google Docs and Microsoft’s Office products.

The deal will be completed entirely in stock options and is Salesforce’ third acquisition in the last few months, following the £2.8 billion purchase of enterprise cloud commerce solutions provider Demandware and the acquisition of deep learning company MetaMind.

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SharePoint continues to be an "underused" piece of software, despite Microsoft adding new features in hopes to increase the uptake.

These are the results of a new survey by independent information management analysts, AIIM.

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