Historically hackers have pursued and targeted individuals more frequently than they have targeted businesses as they are typically the path of least resistance. However, the number of organizations worldwide falling victim to major cyber attacks is dramatically rising. More and more, hackers are infiltrating businesses of all sizes -- and not just through traditional system hacks, but now increasingly through social engineering.

Tricking people to access money or sensitive information on the Internet is by no means a new concept -- these cleverly disguised emails were behind the infamous ‘Celebgate’ hacking case, which exposed nude photos of celebrities. Except now, fraudsters are doing their homework to perfect their technique.

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Here’s an interesting prospect: the majority of companies that consider themselves high-tech have not invested nearly enough to become digital businesses.

That is according to a report just released by Accenture, a global professional services and consulting company. Titled Accelerating Digital Performance in High-Tech, it says that just nine percent, out of 55 companies surveyed, are "digital high performers".

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IT teams will look completely different in the next five years, according to professional IT resourcing company Experis.

The company has released a new report, titled Tomorrow’s Tech Teams, in which it polled 1,000 IT workers and 200 senior IT managers. Six in ten (59 percent) believe the traditional IT department doesn’t exist in modern business.

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Security expert Jérémie Boutoille from Quarkslab says that he has found a critical bug in the Xen hypervisor. The open-source hypervisor, which has the likes of Amazon, and IBM on its cloud clients list, has had a bug which could lead to potential privilege escalation.

The bug, identified as CVE-2016-6258, affects all versions of Xen. However, only PV guests on x86 hardware should be worried. Hardware virtual machine (HVM) and ARM guests are deemed invulnerable.

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We have a lot of news coming out of AMD’s kitchen, including new GPUs, an open-source rendering engine, and a new solution for large dataset applications.

First in line is the Radeon Pro WX Series of professional graphics cards, aimed at modern content creation and engineering. It is based on the Polaris architecture, and AMD says it was built with open-source software in mind. The new cards are "designed for creative professionals and those pushing the boundaries of science, technology and engineering".

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O2 customer data has been found available for sale on the dark web, most likely as a result of a hack that occurred several years ago.

The gaming website XSplit was hacked three years ago and those responsible for the hack were able to obtain usernames and passwords from the site. Through the process of credential stuffing, in which account credentials acquired through a hack are tested on multiple websites, the hackers were able to gain access and log into O2 accounts.

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Here is a scary prospect. Ransomware that hides in a corporate network, analyzing it and multiplying itself until it is found on every machine in an organization. Only after it has contaminated every machine in a network will it activate, in a coordinated attack, bringing an entire company’s business to a screeching halt, until a large sum of money is paid to the attacker.

Such an idea is not yet reality, but it’s not far from it, either. Cisco’s Midyear Cybersecurity Report says it is only a matter before we hit this milestone, mostly because ransomware has become the most lucrative malware type in history.

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Apple today announced its financial report for Q3 FY2016 (Q2 CY2016), revealing a drop in revenue and falling iPhone sales compared to both the previous quarter and this time last year.

Apple posted quarterly revenue of $42.4 billion and a net income of $7.8 billion, with the bulk (nearly $18 billion) coming from the Americas. This revenue is compared to $50.5 billion in Q2 FY2016 and $49.6 billion in Q3 FY2015, drops of 16 percent and 15 percent respectively.

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Over the last decade, enterprise companies have experienced a complete IT evolution. The nature and techniques of companies are transforming to empower new shifts in technology, rapid innovation, and expansion. Culture is at the center of this strategic shift and it’s dramatically changing the way IT organizations operate.

Whether it's the cultural shift in collaboration that’s elevating the rise of DevOps, now predicted by Gartner as a mainstream enterprise strategy for 2016; social communication encouraging shadow IT; or diversity creating more inclusive decision making, culture has truly restructured IT. And, it’s done so for the better. For enterprise organizations who have not reached digital maturity, or lack an integrated digital IT strategy, there are three ways cultural influence can structure a smarter, more innovative IT organization -- hiring, communicating, and establishing purpose.

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US-based data analytics company Teradata has acquired UK-founded Big Data Partnership. Maria Wagner, investment director at Beringea hopes the deal will serve as an inspiration to British startups that the global market is still open to them, despite Brexit results.

Founded in 2012 by Mike Merritt-Holmes, Pinal Gandhi and Tim Seears, Big Data Partnership’s goal is to help businesses use the power of complex data. Two years ago, they got £1.2 million in a Series A funding, which was led by Beringea, transatlantic venture and growth investor. In a Series B round, in May 2015, Beringea again led to a total of £3.1m investment.

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Just days after it was reported that Facebook has a billion people using Messenger, a similar thing will happen with Apple.

The company has either already, or will very soon, sell its one billionth iPhone. In the last reported quarter (Q1 2016), it was unveiled that the company had sold a total of 987 million iPhones in the seven years since its inception. Some 40 million had been sold in the quarter alone, and according to Financial Times, analysts expect at least another 40m quarter ahead.

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To help curb the global rise of ransomware, the European police agency Europol has decided to launch a new initiative and website to put victims of an attack in touch with the police.

The initiative will be called "No More Ransom" and will be coordinated by Europol, but will also be receiving help from the Dutch national police, Intel Security and Kaspersky Lab.

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The official forum for the popular mobile game Clash of Kings is the latest to fall victim to a cyberattack after a hacker broke through its defenses and managed to obtain the user data of around 1.6 million accounts.

The hack occurred on July 14 and the security breach was made known to the website LeakedSource.com by a hacker who wished to remain anonymous. The database of user account details taken from the forum contained the usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, device identifiers in addition to Facebook data and access tokens from those who signed in using their social accounts.

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Picture this: you open your laptop to begin checking online sales for your business. You log in with your email address, only to receive an uncharacteristic error message: "Your Password is Invalid". You type in the password again. "Your Password is Invalid". You try again. "Your account has been temporarily locked. Please contact support".

You quickly grab the phone and begin to dial. As you wait on hold, you decide to check your business’ website and are stunned to see a "Web Page Not Found" error. A technical support specialist answers your call and begins to explain that the website and linked email account have been hacked.

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The US government could save $5.8 billion in technology cost, and at the same time modernize and improve the efficiency of its systems. This is according to the Information Services Group, a technology insights, market intelligence and advisory services company.

Today, at the headquarters of the General Services Administration, it released a report, together with the Commission on IT Cost, Opportunity, Strategy and Transparency (IT COST).

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