With 1.9 billion records stolen in the first six months, more than in the whole of 2016, 2017 proved a bumper year for cyber crime.

According to cyber security company Venafi, this trend is set to continue into 2018, with state-sponsored attacks to the fore.

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Pre-orders for Apple's eagerly anticipated smart speaker -- the HomePod -- start in just a few days' time. Today the iPhone-maker announces that the HomePod will launch on February 9, but you can pre-order from Friday January 26.

The smart speaker will be available in the US, UK and Australia first of all, and springtime will see it launch in France and Germany. The voice-controlled HomePod had been planned for 2017, but was delayed before Christmas. Now Apple is finally ready to offer a premium alternative to the likes of the Amazon Echo and Google Home, with the company placing a firm emphasis on not just the familiarity of Siri, but also audio quality.

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If a hacker were to gain control of a cloud provider for over three days, businesses could face losses up to a whopping $19 billion, with SMBs carrying the largest economic and insurance losses, according to a new report.

In partnership with the American Institutes for Research (AIR), insurance market Lloyd's of London is unveiling a new report detailing the financial impact of a cyberattack on a US cloud provider.

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The recent Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities have been well documented, but for businesses it can be difficult to know which fixes to prioritize.

Software management and security specialist Flexera is announcing a set of recommendations to provide a standardized, risk-based approach to managing this type of vulnerability.

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Mozilla is rolling out Firefox Quantum 58.0 for desktop, along with Firefox for Android 58.0. It arrives over two months after the landmark release of Firefox Quantum 57.0.

The latest build focuses on performance and security, while an update to Firefox’s user profile feature means it’s no longer backwards compatible with previous versions. Android users also gain the ability to pin favorite websites to their home screen for use like native apps.

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Remote offices and decentralization, plus outsourcing, often mean it isn't feasible to have a technician always on site to solve IT problems.

This means many organizations turn to remote management and monitoring of systems and a leader in this field Kaseya is launching its second generation solution aimed at managed service providers and mid-sized companies.

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When out and about, you may well find that you use free public Wi-Fi connections. The chances are that you use more than one as you battle to find one that offers a decent speed. With Android 8.1 Oreo, Google has a new feature that will help to make your life easier.

As the company has been talking about for a little while, Oreo now lets you see the speed of a Wi-Fi connection before you decide if you want to connect or not.

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The rise of the cloud has made for greater complexity in business IT environments, with data accumulating on different platforms and in different locations.

To address this problem, object storage company Cloudian is launching a new version of its HyperStore platform which integrates data management capabilities to bridge traditional and cloud native environments, as well as object and file storage types.

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Facebook has been fighting something of a losing battle against the problem of fake news, but media mogul Rupert Murdoch thinks he has come up with a solution. He says that the social network should pay "trusted" publishers for the provision of news content.

Facebook recently said that it wants to promote content created by outlets deemed trustworthy by users, but Murdoch -- who controls Fox News -- is not impressed. He says that what Facebook has proposed so far is simply not enough, and he believes that the only solution is to start paying.

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The fallout from the Meltdown and Spectre bugs continues to plague Intel. The company has been hit with lawsuits, users complained about performance drops, and some users found that their computers were rendered unbootable. For people with Broadwell and Haswell chips, there was a problem with random reboots, and as a result of this -- some two weeks down the line -- Intel is now advising people to stop installing its patches.

Executive vice president Navin Shenoy says that the company is close to determining the root cause of the problem, apologized for reboots and "unpredictable system behaviour," and warns that customers should stop deploying the current version of the patches until an update is produced.

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When it comes to Chromebooks, Acer is one of the premier manufacturers. From the early days of Google's desktop OS, Acer has produced quality computers running the Linux-based Chrome OS. Best of all, Acer's Chromebooks and Chromeboxes are often quite affordable. This makes sense, since the company is largely a value-focused manufacturer. Quite frankly, Acer and Chrome OS are a match made in heaven.

Hot on the heels of announcing its all-new Chromebook 11, the company today unveils three new Chrome OS computers -- Chromebook 11 C732, Chromebook Spin 11, and Chromebox CXI3. While the Chromebooks will likely get much of the attention, I am quite smitten with the Chromebox. This diminutive desktop is absolutely gorgeous, and it is chock-full of useful ports. The Chromebook 11 C732 is also quite intriguing, thanks to its optional LTE connectivity!

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When designing a dash cam it's easy for manufacturers to focus more on features rather than benefits. That's why we end up with so many devices that look bland, have pretty much the same features, but lack that special touch to set them apart from the crowd. With its new dash cam, VAVA decided to do things differently.

The VAVA Dash Cam is an intriguing proposition, featuring a cylindrical design and a magnetic mount connection, but no display or physical buttons. However, it's not lacking in features, as it packs lots of useful functionality. But how well does it work? I've tested it to find out.

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Coffee... is life. For me, and countless other people, the drink is responsible for daily motivation. Without a cup or two (or five) of the caffeinated beverage, I’d probably be asleep at my desk all the time.

If you live alone or simply don’t want to deal with brewing entire pots of coffee, single-serve pods have proven to be a godsend (not so great for the environment, though). You can quickly make a cup without stress. A new coffee system is looking to make coffee pods even easier. The "illy Y5 DRS Espresso and Coffee System," as it is called, can connect to your smartphone via Bluetooth for more intuitive controls. Even cooler, it can leverage Amazon Dash technology for automatic coffee pod reordering. How clever!

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As the digital economy expands and software becomes more critical, security worries grow. In a new survey, 74 percent of respondents agree that security threats due to software and code issues are a growing concern.

The study of over 1,200 IT leaders, conducted by analysts Freeform Dynamics for software company CA Technologies, finds 58 percent of respondents cite existing culture and lack of skills as hurdles to being able to embed security within processes.

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If you have important data that you need to have easy access to at all times, carrying it around on a USB flash drive makes sense. Unfortunately, these tiny storage devices are easily lost, and software encryption methods may not be 100 percent reliable.

If you want to guarantee that your personal data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands in the event of the loss -- or theft -- of your drive, the best solution is a hardware encrypted memory stick like the new USB 3.1 Aegis Secure Key 3z from Apricorn.

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