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More and more cyber threats keep emerging every day, affecting organizations across the board, targeting the entire spectrum of the Internet. Digital or cyber-extortion has come across as the most serious of such threats as it seeks to profit from criminal activity, akin to blackmail.

Preventing Digital Extortion from Packt Publishing will teach you the art of preventing digital extortion and securing confidential data.

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Now that the Windows 10 April 2018 Update is done and rolling out to users, Microsoft can focus all of its energy on the next big feature update. Insiders who haven’t yet opted out of the program will, from today, start receiving updates from the Redstone 5 branch.

The first of these updates to be rolled out to Insiders on the Fast ring, as well as Skip Ahead, is Build 17661, and this introduces a number of big changes.

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The industrial control systems (ICS) used to run equipment in manufacturing, energy, and other sectors are secured differently from office networks. Vulnerabilities often go unpatched, because organizations are afraid to make changes that might cause downtime.

To minimize the chances of exploitation of vulnerabilities, measures put in place include placing ICS components on a separate network, isolating them, or air-gapping them entirely from Internet-connected corporate systems. However, penetration testing performed by Positive Technologies has shown that such measures often fall short in practice, leaving attackers plenty of opportunity to access critical equipment.

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It's World Password Day and we've already looked at tips for safe password use, but a new survey from identity management company SailPoint reveals that IT professionals aren't practising what they preach when it comes to password use.

In partnership with research company Vanson Bourne, SailPoint surveyed 400 IT decision makers about their password habits and came up with some worrying results.

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Ransomware attacks grew by 400 percent last year, largely down to the success of the WannaCry attack. It’s perhaps not surprising that other variants slowed down, but this signals a shift in the way ransomware is being used.

A new report from F-Secure shows WannaCry accounted for nine out of every 10 ransomware detection reports by the end of the year.

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The Windows 10 April 2018 Update is rolling out to users. If you install it and encounter major problems, as some users doubtless will, you might want to go back to your previous version, and wait until the update is a bit less buggy.

If you've been using Windows 10 for a while you’ll probably know how to do this, although the process may be slightly different to what you've been used to.

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We're constantly being told that the password's days are numbered. No less a figure than Bill Gates predicted the end of the password as far back as 2004. Yet we still rely on them to protect many of our day-to-day activities.

To mark today’s World Password Day, Raj Samani, chief scientist and fellow at McAfee, has produced a set of tips that people can follow to make the best use of passwords.

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Linux Mint is a pretty good Linux distribution. Many people love it because of the Cinnamon desktop environment. Hell, despite having other DE versions -- such as Mate -- the Linux Mint operating system sort of exists only because of Cinnamon. I mean, look -- Mint is based on Ubuntu, so if you want to use Mate or Xfce environments, for instance, why not just run Ubuntu Mate or Xubuntu?

The thing is, Cinnamon is available to any distro that wants to use it -- it is not only a Linux Mint affair. Since the Mint team both maintains and popularized Cinnamon, however, it will be forever thought of as a Mint DE -- right or wrong. And that is why today's announcement is so puzzling -- Cinnamon 3.8 is now available (yay!), but no Linux Mint users can try it (boo!).

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Branching out into yet another field, Amazon has launched its own pet product brand, Wag.

This is not the first time the company has launched an own-label product -- it has already enjoyed success with household goods and baby products. Available to Amazon Prime subscribers, the Wag line starts off with dry dog food, but it will expand into further supplies soon.

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Earlier today, LG revealed its latest Android flagship smartphone. It is called the "G7 ThinQ" and oh wow, it looks damn nice! I suppose I shouldn't be surprised -- LG has long made impressive smartphones. With the exception of the fairly terrible LG G5, both its "G" and "V" series have been consistently great.

This new G7 ThinQ has something that may annoy you, however -- a notch. Yeah, all the manufacturers seem to be copying the iPhone X in this regard. It's a very polarizing topic -- some folks like a notch, while others hate it. Me? I don't really care either way, to be honest. LG has taken a cool approach to handling the notch on the G7 ThinQ, however. You see, using software trickery, you can make the notch disappear -- sort of. The top of the screen gets filled in with black, so it appears there is no notch. Some may call this gimmicky. I call it clever. And it is.

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While many companies seem to focus on a race to the bottom these days, offering low-cost and low-quality devices, Huawei has taken a much different approach. You see, Huawei makes extremely elegant tech products that are also affordable. If you buy one of its tablets, laptops, or smartphones, you will be in for a treat. They are well-designed and won't break the bank. Quite frankly, you can tell the company truly cares about what it produces -- Huawei wants its customers to be delighted, and it succeeds.

The Huawei Mate 10 Pro is a favorite of mine. I have been testing the Android smartphone recently and I am very impressed by the build quality, performance, and exceptional camera. With Mother's Day soon approaching, it's definitely a device you should consider buying for your mom. If she has been wanting a new smartphone, the Mate 10 Pro will make her very happy. If you can't afford a new smartphone for your mother this year, do not worry -- we here at BetaNews are giving one away!

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A new study of password and account security on 55 of the world's most popular travel-related sites reveals that 89 percent leave their users' accounts potentially exposed to hackers due to unsafe password practices.

The research by password management company Dashlane tested each website on five critical password and account security criteria. A site received a point for each criterion it met, for a maximum score of 5/5. Any score below 4/5 was considered failing and not meeting the minimum threshold for good password security.

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Workload automation specialist Turbonomic has released a major update to its software, delivering application-aware infrastructure and making any type of workload -- virtual, cloud and container -- self-managing.

Turbonomic's AI-powered decision engine analyzes performance, cost and compliance data across the entire IT stack and generates trustworthy decisions at scale faster than before.

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Samsung’s flagship smartphones get a lot of coverage, but not everyone can afford the latest state-of-the-art handsets. The South Korean tech giant offers a number of more affordable devices, and today it announces the Galaxy A6 and A6+.

The new phones feature powerful front and rear cameras, Super AMOLED screens and Samsung’s signature Infinity Display, offering an 18.5:9 screen ratio. The larger Galaxy A6+’s Dual Camera has a Live Focus mode, meaning users can control the depth of field and bokeh effect before or after taking a shot.

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A critical remote code execution vulnerability has been discovered in two Schneider Electric applications heavily used in manufacturing, oil and gas, water, automation and wind and solar power facilities.

The vulnerability, discovered by cyber exposure company Tenable, could, if exploited, give cyber criminals complete control of the underlying system.

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