Christmas time is a time for presents! As in years before, mobile devices like smartphones, tablets and notebooks are expected to top the Christmas gift charts, bringing joy to young and old throughout the world. While the older generation is enjoying the unwrapping and thinking about best installation practices, the younger "generation digital" has already set up their smartphones and shot selfies in front of the Christmas tree. But, no matter if young or old, digital-advanced or computer-basic, every one of them has precious and unique digital data on their devices that has a high personal value to them, like rare family photos with the grandparents, videos of a child’s first steps or the first date SMS by the beloved husband. Alas, all this precious data can easily fall victim to data loss, if the device gets stolen, broken or damaged.

To make sure that all your data stays safe and sound -- wherever it resides and whatever happens to the mobile device -- it is important to always backup your data. Follow these six easy steps to be prepared for the worst:

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The days and weeks after a major security breach can be trying, even for veterans of the security field. Chaos inevitably erupts as the organization attempts to assess and contain the damage. Often far down the list of priorities is the disclosure of the breach, but this can be one of the most critical steps for an organization to get right.

It is vital for financial reasons, to the recovery of the brand and for the viability of the company. It is not an easy task when customer’s personal information has been stolen. The reaction from customers is almost always the same: swift and highly critical of the organization and how it manages the aftermath.

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Not only does every other top manager make payments from corporate accounts via mobile banking, but it was also discovered that over 30 percent of companies use mobile devices to access corporate bank accounts and to make financial transactions.

Those are the result of a recent joint survey conducted by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International.

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A new form of malware that targets mass media agencies has been discovered by researchers at the US-based security firm FireEye. The malware was detected in Hong Kong where it was being used to target a small number of media agencies with the initial targets of the attack being newspapers, radio stations and television studios.

The malware leaves a user vulnerable by offering a backdoor to their system. The way in which this is achieved is unique because its command and control or C&C server is hidden inside Dropbox accounts. FireEye was able to trace the malware back to a group of hackers by the name admin@338, who is believed to have ties with the Chinese government.

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Microsoft has launched a new premium Office 365 package for its enterprise customers, accompanied by a significant price increase.

Office 365 Enterprise E5 replaces Enterprise E4, which will be dropped by June 2016, and will cost $35 per user per month, compared to $22 per user per month for its predecessor.

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Microsoft held its yearly shareholder meeting this week in Bellevue, Washington. According to executive vice president and chief financial officer Amy Hood, the company did well during the fiscal year of 2015 and it has already reported a strong start when it comes to the current fiscal year.

However, former CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer was displeased with the level of disclosure at the meeting concerning Microsoft’s revenue. He believes that revenue is a key metric and that it should be reported as opposed to the run rate.

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Ah, don’t you love the smell of patent trolls in the morning?

In the latest news regarding these wonderful creatures, it was unveiled this week that a Texas company called CryptoPeak Solutions has sued basically everyone, everywhere, for using the HTTPS protocol.

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Notebooks still have a straw to hold on to, while tablets seem to have broken theirs and continue to sink, according to a forecast by global market research firm TrendForce.

TrendForce says total notebook shipments will drop 6.4 per cent for 2015, to about 164.4 million units. The company’s analyst Anita Wang believes shipments will recover in 2016, mostly because of branded vendors, such as Xiaomi and Huawei entering the market.

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In the third quarter of 2015, worldwide server shipments grew 9.2 percent from the third quarter of 2014, while vendor revenue increased 7.5 percent year over year, Gartner has reported.

From the regional standpoint, Asia/Pacific grew the most in shipments, with a 23.8 percent increase. The region also posted the highest vendor revenue growth at 25.4 percent for the period.

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Children are figuring out how to use the internet at a much younger age than in the past. Kids 1 or 2 years old are exposed to computer devices to help distract them. They quickly learn how to press the right buttons on smartphones, tablets and other devices. It is great that kids are learning to use technology at such a young age, but it also can create nightmares for the adults.

The internet is full of information and entertainment for people of all ages, but not everything found on the internet is appropriate for young children. It is up to the parents to make sure that the kids are not exposed to things they are not prepared to handle or that could put them into a dangerous situation. Parents need to find ways to protect their children when they are not around to monitor it themselves.

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This fall we saw the release of iOS 9 from Apple just before the company launched the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.

The success of these new models along with an uptick in the adoption rates of iOS 9 showed how quickly Apple users were to upgrade their devices. So far iOS 9 has an adoption rate of 70 percent which is significantly higher when compared to Marshmallow’s adoption rate.

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A group of hackers is trying to extort money from three Greek banks and is threatening the financial institutions with DDoS attacks unless they comply.

The group, which goes by the name Armada Collective, has asked the three banks which weren’t named, to pay a ransom in Bitcoin or face a distributed denial of service attack.

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Google got accidentally DDoSed by an unnamed European network carrier, sending its cloud service offline on the old continent for about an hour.

The incident occurred last Monday, but it is only now that Google has decided to explain exactly what happened.

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When it comes to migrating to the cloud, 65 percent of companies are concerned with security, a new survey by Netwrix has unveiled.

Moreover, 40 percent worry about the loss of physical control over data in the cloud. In particular, 69 percent of companies fear migration will increase the risk of unauthorized access, while 43 percent worry about account hijacking.

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A little-known Chinese manufacturer, Sage Microelectronics, has managed to out-gun its much bigger rivals (Kingston, Sandisk and Samsung to name a few) by bringing to market the world’s first 10TB 2.5-inch (9.5mm) SSD.

The drive was first demonstrated last month at the China Data Summit 2015 in Beijing and comes months ahead of its previous launch target. Samsung is the only big SSD vendor that has announced an SSD larger than 10TB.

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