All businesses should worry about how they'll keep going in the event of a disaster. But those disasters aren't always internal, they can be due to outside forces and can be hard to predict.

As part of this week's Business Continuity Awareness Week 2016 organized by the Business Continuity Institute, managed services company IT Specialists (ITS) has produced a list of the top 10 UK business continuity disasters of the last year.

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Google is introducing a new way to share content with a group. Spaces is a collaborative tool that Google wants people to use to share everything from articles and images to YouTube videos and messages.

So keen is Google for a huge take up of Spaces, that the service is launching in mobile and desktop web versions, as well as iOS and Android apps. It's billed as an alternative to group conversations, and Google wants to help streamline sharing by eliminating app switching -- this is achieved by integrating Google Search, YouTube, and Chrome into a single tool.

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There’s a misconception in the cyber security industry that many IT, security executives and vendors subscribe to.  They equate security analytics to SIEM and user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA). They use the three terms interchangeably as if they are all one of the same and solve the same problems. As a result, companies waste time, leave gaps in their visibility, ability to execute and ultimately fail to minimize their cyber risk.

In a report released this month, analyst firm Forrester states, "Security analytics has garnered a lot of attention during the past few years. However, marketing hype and misunderstandings regarding security analytics have confused the market, making it difficult for security and risk leaders to make information decisions". This statement couldn’t be truer. UEBA and SIEM tools are supporting components of security analytics, but are not equivalent.

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As Google prepares to deploy its self-driving car fleet to Chandler, Arizona, the company is hiring local drivers to test its vehicles.

The company intends to hire local drivers in Arizona who will act as "vehicle safety specialists" that will be behind the wheel of its self-driving cars and ready to take over should an unforeseen problem or circumstance arise.

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Disaster. The term itself inspires worry and downright fear for most IT pros -- and for good reason. Whether it’s a security breach, networking failure, human error or the much-dreaded natural disaster, outages can be financially devastating for IT-centric businesses. While acts of nature are rare, IT failures are inevitable, and most companies experience them multiple times every year.

Despite the pervasive risks, close to 75 percent of companies are failing in their disaster readiness efforts, according to the Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council. How you prepare for this scenario and what continuity solution you choose for recovery will determine if your outages lasts for minutes, hours or days.

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The UK's GCHQ -- like its US counterpart the NSA -- is an agency traditionally shrouded in secrecy. Tasked with the job of spying on all and sundry in the name of intelligence gathering, the agency has just joined Twitter, greeting other users with an unoriginal "Hello, world".

With the concerns about privacy and security that blew up in the wake of Edward Snowden's NSA surveillance revelation, spy agencies around the world have been on a mission to boost their public image. GCHQ -- complete with the blue tick reserved for verified accounts -- will use Twitter to "provide news, updates, and opinions".

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If your files have been scrambled by malware then a decrypter may be able to save the day -- but you’ll need to find it, first. Emsisoft has announced its own Decrypter page, a single source where you’re able to browse and download any of the company’s 14 free decrypters.

The page provides clues to help you find out exactly which type of ransomware might have infected your PC.

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If you're a fan of keeping notes and lists then you really have two main choices -- Evernote and Microsoft's OneNote. Both can be good methods of keeping track of things. For instance, keep a tab open in your browser to add items to a grocery list as you think of them, then arrive at the store and the list is on your phone.

Now Evernote is teaming up with another powerhouse in business, Google. The company is announcing that it will work with the search giant's cloud storage service, Drive.

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While Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make it as easy as possible to upgrade from Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, purists will always prefer to opt for a clean installation. For seasoned Windows users, performing a clean install of Windows 10 is easy enough, but that's not true for everyone.

Acknowledging the fact that clean installations are not a piece of cake for all, Microsoft is beavering away on a new tool to simplify the process. Windows Insiders will be able to try it out before anyone else, and give feedback to help shape the final product.

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Businesses are under increasing pressure to improve their customer experiences and make more effective use of their digital communication channels.

Yet new research from apps, data development and integration company Progress shows that 62 percent of respondents believe their business is in denial about the need to transform digitally.

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By the end of 2016, Google aims to switch Chrome users away from Flash in favor of HTML5. The writing has been on the wall for Flash for some time now, with a seemingly endless torrent of security issues pushing increasing numbers of people toward HTML5.

Google says that by Q4 2016, it wants to make HTML5 the primary user experience. Flash support will still be built into the browser, but it will be disabled by default. Ten sites, however, will be given a year's reprieve.

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The $5 Raspberry Pi is a great little computer, although it’s generally rather hard to get hold of as demand has easily outstripped supply, and manufacture was temporarily put on hold when focus switched to producing the new Raspberry Pi 3.

Today, however, the Raspberry Pi Zero is back in stock. There are roughly 30,000 new Zeros available to buy now, with thousands more being made every day. The diminutive device has also had a much-requested "missing" feature added.

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Security researchers from Talos have written a bunch of fancy words on their blog here, which basically say 7-Zip has a couple of serious security flaws.

Everyone’s up in arms about it, too.

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Apple this week invested $1 billion in Xiaoju Kuaizhi Inc. -- known as Didi -- by far the dominant car-hailing service in China with 300 million customers. While Apple has long admitted being interested in car technology and has deals to put Apple technology into many car lines, this particular investment seems to have been a surprise to most everyone. Analysts and pundits are seeing the investment as a way for Apple to get automotive metadata or even to please the Chinese government. I think it’s more than that. I think it is a potential answer to Apple’s huge problem of foreign cash and a grab for leadership in what may well be the second automotive age.

Apple has about $200 billion in offshore investments. That number is continuing to grow yet making very little return compared to Apple’s phone and computer businesses. As I’ve written before Apple has been very good at leveraging its cash to get better terms from suppliers but that game isn’t going to be getting any better (or worse) and the cash continues to pile up.

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In a little over two weeks, new rules will come into play that pose something of a threat to people who like to install open source firmware on their routers. The Federal Communications Commission is implementing guidelines designed to prevent users from modifying their routers in such a way that would make them operate outside of their licensed frequency range and interfere with other devices.

Many router manufacturers have opted for the easy way out, and decided to simply completely block (or continue to block) the installation of third party, open source firmware. Not so with Linksys. The company has been working with Marvell and the makers of OpenWrt to ensure that the Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS) setting cannot be disabled so that users can still install and use open source firmware.

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