The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) has done much to cut credit card fraud by ensuring that businesses comply with the rules.

But Charles White founder and chief executive of UK-based risk consultancy Information Risk Management (IRM) argues that it has now become little more than a tick box activity which enterprises go through to gain accreditation.

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The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) intended to strengthen data protection is due to come into force in May 2018, yet new research from content management company Metalogix shows IT professionals in many countries aren't prepared for it.

Among the top IT considerations for a cloud archiving solution, GDPR readiness ranked only fourth, named by 26 percent, behind security (79 percent), administrative control (50 percent), and service level agreements (44 percent).

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Data growth presents a number of problems for enterprises. Aside from the obvious ones like the need for extra storage, there's the risk that employees often unwittingly store sensitive data in unsafe locations within local and network storage, professional email accounts and the cloud.

Security software company Ground Labs is launching a new data discovery solution that scans for 100 different data points and personally identifiable information (PII), so organizations can protect critical information at every endpoint without relying on traditional perimeter security methods.

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Major tech companies rarely manage to surprise us, but Microsoft did it earlier this week when it announced the acquisition of LinkedIn. The software giant is spending an enormous sum -- $26.2 billion, to be exact -- to get its hands on the popular business-focused social network. The new Microsoft likes to take chances, and this high-profile purchase is certainly proof of that.

CEO Satya Nadella says that buying LinkedIn will allow Microsoft to "change the way the world works", but what is its motivation behind the purchase, how does it tie into its current strategy, and what do the two companies stand to gain from it?

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The retail sector has been the subject of some of the most high profile data breaches in recent years. Add to this the willingness of customers to switch allegiance in the event of a breach and it's clear the industry needs to take security seriously.

A new survey from enterprise data protection specialist Vormetric in conjunction with 451 Research focuses on retail companies, detailing IT security spending plans, perceptions of threats to data, rates of data breach failures and data security stances.

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Business IT is undergoing a major shift as many organizations get closer to adopting a fully cloud-based approach. But this means that IT departments inevitably give up some degree of control over data governance, security and overall data management.

Security automation specialist BetterCloud is launching a new automation engine called Workflows that orchestrates critical, complex processes to ensure accuracy, precision, and compliance across SaaS applications.

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A new report into corporate app security, conducted by runtime application security visibility and protection company Prevoty, shows significant discrepancies between IT and security professionals, when it comes to app security.

The report, entitled "The Real Root Cause of Breaches -- Security and IT Pros at Odds Over AppSec", is based on a poll of more than 1,000 IT and security professionals and says there are major divides in how these two groups handle app updates, app security tuning and backlogging.

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It takes businesses in the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, Africa) three times longer than businesses elsewhere in the world to detect a breach, mostly because they’re forced to detect such hits themselves instead of relying on outside help.

Those are the general conclusions of the first Mandiant M-Trends EMEA Report. The report, released by security experts FireEye, is based upon the statistics collected during investigations in the region, done by Mandiant’s leading consultants in 2015.

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Since the launch of Microsoft Edge, numerous changes and updates have been made to Microsoft's latest web browser. The arrival of ad-blocking was a real crowd-pleaser, but Microsoft is mindful of the fact that many enterprise users are going to be sticking with Internet Explorer for some time yet.

Today the company announces that some of the enterprise-specific enhancements and tweaks made to the Windows 10 version of IE11 will also be making their way to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. In fact, the improvements are rolling out to more Windows 10 users as well. Changes made to Internet Explorer 11 in Windows 10 version 1511 are also coming to version 1507 as part of the cumulative updates released today.

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New figures released by Get Safe Online and Action Fraud, the UK’s national fraud and cyber crime reporting center, reveal the cybercrime cost for British businesses over in the last year.

In total, businesses reported £1,079,447,765 in loses as a result of cybercrime, which is a 22 percent increase from the previous year. Each police force in the UK recorded around £19.5 million in losses but this number may in fact be slightly higher as some businesses may not have reported or disclosed the full extent of the losses they incurred to the authorities.

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Symantec has decided to purchase Blue Coat Systems for $4.65 billion in a move that will allow it to more thoroughly protect its users from a variety of threats online.

The deal will also see Blue Coat’s CEO, Greg Clark, become Symantec’s new CEO. This will help the company fill the role which has been vacant since its previous chief executive, Michael brown stepped down in April due to poor financial results.

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As Internet of Things devices expand their reach into the enterprise, they make greater demands on security.

New research from cyber security specialist ForeScout Technologies reveals that while IT professionals acknowledge the growing number of IoT devices on their networks, they are unaware of how to properly secure them.

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The decisions that board level executives make on cyber security are very dependent on the quality of the reports they receive from front line management.

A new report from cyber risk analysis specialist Bay Dynamics, carried out in conjunction with Osterman Research, looks at how boards of directors see cyber security reports. Among its findings are that 59 percent of board members say that one or more IT security executives will lose their job as a result of failing to provide useful, actionable information.

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The use of containers has done much to transform the deployment of applications. However, storage hasn't kept pace as it's difficult to scale up to cope with increased workloads.

Data storage specialist Portworx is launching new purpose-built, enterprise-class storage solution for containers. PX-Enterprise will enable IT to match the agility of application developers and deliver lower costs compared to legacy solutions.

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Since threats to enterprise systems often come from stolen or compromised credentials, managing user identity is a vital part of modern security.

Access control specialist SailPoint is announcing a plugin framework for its SailPoint IdentityIQ platform that will allow customers and partners to develop extensions to the core product features, so they can move towards a more identity-aware organization.

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