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Organizations in virtually every industry rely on apps to provide a critical part of the customer experience. When those apps prove to be unstable, end users can be impacted in ways that cause considerable consternation. Last year, a variety of major organizations suffered significant app crashes that resulted in serious disruptions, lost revenue and hurt reputation. 

For example, London’s Heathrow Airport, one of the world’s busiest airports, experienced two simultaneous app failures that prevented departure boards from displaying accurate information and kept travelers from being able to check-in electronically, causing thousands of passengers to have their flight delayed or cancelled. Later on in 2020, bugs in Facebook’s Software Developer Kit (SDK) led iOS versions of Spotify, Pinterest, TikTok, Venmo, Tinder, Doordash and other notable apps to crash as soon as they were opened. Finally, popular eSports game Apex Legends encountered so many ongoing app crashes last Fall that a major tournament was ruined, with all matches but one having at least a single player disconnect.

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New research from Menlo Security reveals that numbers of fake login pages and forms looking to steal credential are on the increase.

The majority of attacks are serving Outlook and Office 365 logins, reflecting the widespread use of these services across corporate environments.

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All industries have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to shift to new ways of working. This change has also led to an expanded attack surface for cyber criminals.

The insurance sector has been particularly hit in the past year and we spoke to Ashish Gupta, CEO of crowdsourced security company Bugcrowd to find out how businesses have been affected and how they're responding to the challenge.

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Digital national currencies are no longer just a concept. The Bahamian Sand Dollar was issued in October 2020, and other countries, such as Sweden and China, are currently running pilots. Within the next few years, there could be more than a dozen central banks issuing national digital currencies.

These central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are different from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ether. CBDCs are issued by national banks. The Sand Dollar, for example is backed by the Bahamian government and one-to-one with the Bahamian dollar, which is itself pegged to the U.S. dollar. They’re also not mined like many cryptocurrencies.

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Today, March 31, is World Backup Day. It's the day of the year when those people who do remember to back up their data on a regular basis get to feel a little smug about things, and those of us who don't do so get to feel a bit guilty. But instead of feeling bad about not backing up your important files, why not make this the year that you take the World Backup Day Pledge?

The pledge reads: "I solemnly swear to backup my important documents and precious memories on March 31st". And to make it easier for you to stick to this pledge, we have an amazing special offer for you -- for a very limited period you can make a big saving on the hugely respected backup tool O&O DiskImage 16 Professional.

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Windows 10 is a great operating system for several reasons. For instance, it is stable, secure, and compatible with a ton of hardware. Microsoft has done a phenomenal job of making Windows 10 better year after year.

One of my favorite aspects of Windows 10 is Windows Hello -- the biometic security system that allows you to unlock your PC with your face or a fingerprint. Biometric unlocking on Linux is pretty much non-existent for typical desktop users, which is very annoying. Apple's macOS has Touch ID with compatible laptops, but it can't be used immediately after a boot like Window Hello can. You also can't add Touch ID to a Mac using USB like you can with Windows 10 and Windows Hello.

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Even after a full year of remote work, many enterprises are still concerned about securing their off-site users according to a new study from cloud security company Bitglass.

The biggest remote work security concerns come from data leaking through endpoints (68 percent), users connecting with unmanaged devices (59 percent), and access from outside the perimeter (56 percent).

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According to a report from Transmit Security, more than half of consumers have stopped using a website because of the login process and more than 87 percent have been locked out of an online account because of an error-ridden password process.

The survey of 600 US consumers finds organizations are losing potential customers and a substantial amount of revenue because of their dependency on traditional password systems and outdated customer authentication models.

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Fileless malware attacks were up nearly 900 percent in 2020 and cryptominers grew by 25 percent, but ransomware payloads dropped by 48 percent compared with 2019.

These are findings of the latest internet security report from WatchGuard Technologies which is based on endpoint threat intelligence following WatchGuard's acquisition of Panda Security in June 2020.

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Italian developer Incomedia has released its second major update to the Website X5 Pro 2021 line with the release of Website X5 Pro 2021.2 Pro. This release focuses primarily on ecommerce sites with the introduction of a new Product Sheet Page feature, to help highlight products by giving them their own, automatically generated, separate pages.

Website X5 Pro, also available in a cheaper, cut-down Evo edition and the free, extremely function-limited Go edition, aims to simplify web building through a simple multi-step process that requires little or no HTML coding experience. The new Product Sheet Page feature is, however, exclusive to the Pro version.

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A new study from the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and cloud security company AlgoSec finds that over half of organizations are running 41 percent or more of their workloads in public clouds, compared to just a quarter in 2019.

But 11 percent of respondents have reported a cloud security incident in the past year with the three most common causes being cloud provider issues (26 percent), security misconfigurations (22 percent), and attacks like denial of service exploits (20 percent).

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A new report from Varonis reveals some startling statistics about healthcare data, with almost 20 percent of files open to all employees in an organization.

In addition the average healthcare organization has over 31,000 files -- including those that include HIPAA-protected information, financial data, and proprietary research -- open to everyone.

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Historically ransomware has relied on encrypting data and then demanding money in order to release it.

But a new report from F-Secure shows that 2020 has seen an increase in ransomware that also steals data, giving the attackers more leverage over their victims. If organizations first refuse to pay a ransom to decrypt their data, attackers threaten to leak the stolen information, increasing pressure on victims.

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For Microsoft, March was marred by a string of problematic Windows 10 updates that caused a series of problems with printing and more. As we reach the end of the month, the company has released an optional patch which it will almost certainly be hoping proves less problematic.

The optional KB5000842 update is available for Windows 10 version 2004, and Windows 10 20H2. This monthly "C" release preview update aims to address a number of issues with the operating systems including problems with dark screens and other monitor glitches, and as well as system crashes associated with OneDrive.

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Solid state storage is constantly getting faster. The truth, however, is while PCIe Gen 4 SSDs are now available, they are total overkill for most consumers. Hell, most people would be more than fine with a meager SATA drive. With that said, the previous-generation PCIe Gen 3 SSDs are now very inexpensive (and quite fast) making them a smart buy whether you truly need the extra speed or not. In other words, a SATA SSD should probably be avoided nowadays -- unless your PC simply isn't compatible with anything else.

Today, Kingston launches its latest NVMe M.2 solid state drive for both desktops and laptops. Called "NV1," this PCIe Gen 3 SSD has fairly modest specifications in the grand scheme of things, but it is definitely more than fast enough for the majority of consumers. Most importantly, it is priced very competitively. Just how affordable is the NV1? It starts at less than $65!

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