Cloud-based vulnerability management solutions have the advantage of being up and running quickly and are often more cost effective than in-house solutions.

Here is a round-up of five of the best:

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The year was 1985 -- a-ha were racing to the top of the music charts with their smash-hit "Take on Me", Roger Moore was appearing in what was to be his final outing as James Bond, and a young high-school teenager inadvertently stumbled across time travel with his much older scientist friend.

This year of course marks the 30th anniversary of Back to the Future which, as we all know, is one of the most iconic and celebrated films of the 20th Century. Starring Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd as Dr. Emmett Brown (or Doc for short), the film was celebrated for its ingenious and fun take on time travel and later went on to spawn two sequels. Most notable was the 1989 follow-up Back to the Future II in which our plucky heroes travel to the year 2015 in a world which is dominated by hoverboards, self-tying shoes and tablet computers -- remarkably all of which have come to fruition (sort of). Naturally some of the films’ more outlandish predictions haven’t yet left the realms of cinema imagination, like flying cars and power clothing, but nonetheless these are still some amazing technological advances that have helped shape the world we live in today.

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Google Chrome browser has become widely popular thanks to its high speed, elegant, minimalistic interface, and in-built translator; and, well, it is a Google product after all. Thanks to its fame and tons of users, the number of available extensions to improve the usage of this web browser is constantly growing and the quality of the offered apps is increasing as well.

You’ll be surprised by the many extensions that can help you to do so much more than just regular browsing. If you select effective and useful extensions they can increase your productivity online considerably. As we don’t want our favorite readers to spend too much time on trying out the extensions in an attempt to find the worthy ones, we’ve reviewed the top Google Chrome extensions for better browsing.

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Premium exploit acquisition platform Zerodium has announced that the bounty hunt for an iOS 9 zero-day vulnerability has expired, and that it has one winning team who managed to hack into Apple’s mobile operating system.

The winning team has thus won the main prize of $1 million.

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Major global IT vendors -- including leading hardware, systems software, eCommerce, big data, cloud, network, telco and systems integrator companies -- have little wisdom, advice or vision to offer their customers and prospects when it comes to blockchain technology.

This is the result of a survey entitled Searching in Vain for The Block Chain, conducted by enterprise IT specialist consulting firm Lighthouse Partners. It is also the main reason this company decided to start offering consulting services on the topic.

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Over three-quarters (76 percent) of senior IT leaders in the UK, France and Germany feel more personal risk when making decisions than they did five years ago because of IT’s increasingly central role in businesses, a study commissioned by Colt reveals.

At the same time, 77 percent of chief information officers (CIOs) say that pivotal moments in a business calendar define their career trajectories, and not day-to-day performance. This is compounding the sense of vulnerability felt during key decision-making moments, as highlighted in Colt’s recent ‘Moments that Matter’ study.

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On 14 July 2015, Apple’s mobile payments system Apple Pay was finally launched in the UK after a huge amount of build-up and excitement. At the time of launch, Apple Pay was supported by several of the UK’s biggest financial institutions -- including Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander, Natwest and Nationwide -- along with thousands of supermarkets, restaurants, hotels and retailers.

Initial reviews were largely positive and industry professionals were understandably excited about Apple Pay’s potential as it rode the crest of a growing mobile payments wave. Mix this in with Apple’s loyal fan base and its power in the consumer market and it’s easy to see why its competitors might struggle to keep up.

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Internet of things devices need a communication standard, a universal type of communication which would allow these devices to communicate, no matter who the maker is. The standard is now also a subject of debate, as US and European makers are backing one type, while Huawei and other vendors are backing another one.

As Lightreading writes in a report, Intel, Ericsson and Nokia are backing Narrow-Band Long-Term Evolution (NB-LTE). At the same time, Huawei is more leaned towards the existing Narrowband Cellular IoT (CIoT) proposal.

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Email is the go-to platform for business communication, but is it about to be dethroned by a collaboration software successor?

Many businesses have become disenchanted with email, viewing it as an outmoded communications tool that causes frustration and zaps productivity. Recent research found the average employee spends more than a quarter of their working week just reading and responding to email.

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Symantec has released a new solution promising to unify corporate security, something that’s becoming increasingly harder to control.

The Symantec Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is, according to the press release, "the first solution that can detect and remediate advanced threats across control points, from a single console with just a click, all with no new endpoint agents to deploy".

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Hewlett-Packard recently announced HP Helion OpenStack 2.0, the second iteration of the company’s customized version of OpenStack. During the OpenStack Summit Tokyo 2015, HP announced the "production ready, open source based cloud platform designed to meet enterprise requirements".

HP Helion OpenStack 2.0 offers an enterprise grade cloud platform, the company said in a press release, adding that it now offers new features to address organizations’ lifecycle management and security challenges.

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The transition from permanent employee to full time freelancer is filled with questions. Are you ready to make the leap? Can you succeed financially as a contractor? Will you be able to find work?

There are many aspects to factor in when it comes to changing your job -- and contracting is no different. It may seem like a move into the unknown as the legislation and practicalities of contracting can seem confusing at first glance.

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On the heels of September’s National Preparedness Month, an effort sponsored by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Americans are being encouraged to take extra precautions to safeguard their homes, businesses, schools, and communities against disaster -- long before disaster strikes!

According to The National Federation of Independent Business, nearly one-third of small businesses will experience a natural disaster. Even more striking, 25 percent of businesses do not re-open after a natural disaster, and 43 percent do not re-open after catastrophic data loss, according to FEMA.

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With Microsoft unveiling its latest operating system earlier this summer, many businesses are faced with a difficult choice about whether or not to take the plunge and migrate to Windows 10.

It’s a decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly, and it seems that many companies are hesitant about making the move. A recent survey found that 71 percent of businesses polled were looking to wait at least six months from its release date before migrating.

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Gartner predicts that cloud office systems will account for 33 percent of the overall office market by 2017. This is a big step considering a few years ago collaboration in businesses typically involved emails, phone calls, and perhaps a few instant messages (IMs) exchanged within the company.

However, nowadays the arrival of cloud computing and all the remunerations that come with it have shaped the path for collaborative cloud-based services, reforming how businesses work over the internet. Many collaborative services target a specific business need, such as social networking, productivity apps, storage, or good old fashioned email.

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