Picture this: you open your laptop to begin checking online sales for your business. You log in with your email address, only to receive an uncharacteristic error message: "Your Password is Invalid". You type in the password again. "Your Password is Invalid". You try again. "Your account has been temporarily locked. Please contact support".

You quickly grab the phone and begin to dial. As you wait on hold, you decide to check your business’ website and are stunned to see a "Web Page Not Found" error. A technical support specialist answers your call and begins to explain that the website and linked email account have been hacked.

Weak passwords can put business data at risk, but if employees are using their own devices, poor security practices from their home life can spill over into the workplace.

Password manager app Dashlane has a solution to this issue in the form of a new Spaces feature for its Business version, which allows employees to manage both their business and personal passwords on mobile devices.

Terrorism has been front and center lately thanks to high profile attacks around the world and the scare tactics being used in the current US election. But how do these people communicate? What is the tool of choice for today's Jihadist – well the ones that don't fire bullets or blow up.

Communications and internet are essential to any modern group. Flashpoint Security took a look into what programs are most prevalent, and results are largely unsurprising.

Just a couple of days after a horrendous DDoS attack took down Pokemon GO servers for a day, Arbor releases its new report on the state of DDoS around the globe, which basically says things are only getting worse.

The reasons are still the same -- DDoS attacks are simple to launch, cheap and easy to obtain, for anyone "with a grievance and an internet connection".

Pokémon Go has proved almost unbelievably popular, and like any app that gains a huge following, malicious versions of the app soon appeared. The game has been in the headlines after hackers knocked gaming servers offline, but there have also been major privacy concerns.

Now there could be a nightmare brewing for developer Niantic Labs in Germany, where consumer advocates say the game violates the country's consumer and privacy laws. Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV) says the company needs to make sweeping changes to a raft of clauses in the app's terms of use in order to avoid further action.

An equivalent to Android’s Stagefright vulnerability has recently been spotted on iOS and OS X devices. It has since been patched, and security experts from Sophos are urging all Apple users to patch up as fast as they can to protect themselves from the serious flaw.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, Stagefright (in its multiple version) allowed a hacker to take over a victim’s Android smartphone by sending a message with an image or a video file. Long story short, it had something to do with the way Android managed images, and pretty much every Android version you can think of was vulnerable (many of them may still be).

Protecting your information, especially if it’s information you’ve collected about your customers that includes things like their address or their credit card number, is absolutely vital to your business. Even if the information you lose isn’t customer-related, it can still lead to the loss of thousands, even millions, of dollars if it’s related to a trademark or other intellectual property.

If you’re concerned about your company’s information security, you may be interested in learning about these seven different information security trends that are currently dominating the market.

Often the weakest link in an enterprise’s cyber security is the person behind the endpoint. Although technology solutions can offer a high degree of protection, there’s no substitute for making users aware of the potential threats.

Social engineering attacks are increasingly used to try and catch out employees. Education on cyber security is therefore something that's being taken seriously by businesses of all sizes. We spoke to Scott Youngs, CIO of infrastructure solutions and managed services company Key Information Systems to find out more about the threat and how education can help beat it.

Executives are dancing on a thin line between state-of-the-art security for their company, and just overdoing it, frustrating their employees. This is according to a new report by BlackBerry Limited, which says that, as executives fail to implement the highest levels of security possible, they’re opening up their business to various vulnerabilities, mostly in the mobile segment.

There’s an interesting survey following it -- 82 percent of executives said mobile security precautions cause "at least some frustration among employees" and is even being lined with hindered productivity. Overall, 44 percent believe too much security prevents people from doing their job.

Flash is seen, quite rightly, as the scourge of the internet, and for some time there has been a vocal movement to eradicate all traces of it. Following the lead of Google Chrome and upcoming versions of Safari, Mozilla is taking the step of blocking Flash content from Firefox that is "not essential to the user experience".

It's part of the company's drive to reduce reliance on Flash, whilst recognizing that there is still a need to provide a degree of support for "legacy Flash content". Mozilla has taken the decision to ditch Flash in a bid to improve browser performance, boost security and improve battery life on mobile devices.

Ransomware is one of the biggest cyber threats businesses and individuals face and tackling it requires a customized approach.

Israel-based illusive networks is launching a new Advanced Ransomware Guard product that uses deception techniques to spot threats across the entire network, endpoints and servers and neutralize ransomware activity at the source hosts.

Security is often something that gets left until late in the development cycle and as Agile development takes off, security can be an inhibiting factor.

Since many security breaches now target the endpoint, there's more emphasis on building secure software which means it's something that needs to be integrated into the development process. Fixing security flaws late in the day can prove costly and time consuming.

After accusations that Windows 10 collects too much data about users, France's National Data Protection Commission (CNIL) has order Microsoft to comply with the French Data Protection Act within three months. The company has been ordered to "stop collecting excessive data and tracking browsing by users without their consent".

In addition to this, the chair of CNIL has notified Microsoft that it needs to take "satisfactory measures to ensure the security and confidentiality of user data". The notice comes after numerous complaints about Windows 10, and a series of investigations by French authorities which revealed a number of failings on Microsoft's part.

Both virtual and augmented reality, machine learning and big data analytics, as well as the Internet of Things, are the most in-demand skills, according to a new report by Packt.

The report, titled "Skill Up", polled more than 11,500 worldwide developers and IT professionals. Besides identifying the most sought-after skills, it also says that security is one of the highest-paying industries in 2016, especially for freelancers.

The increasing use of mobile devices and spread of BYOD means that there’s a risk of data falling into the wrong hands if a device is lost or stolen.

Mobile identity and password management company LogMeOnce is adding new features to its app making it simpler to manage, track and wipe personal and business data from devices.