Riviera Beach, a city of 6 million on Florida's eastern coast, recently found itself in the grip of hackers who brought down its 911 and email system.  Their attack started with a simple email to the police department in May, whose attachment contained a virus that quickly infected computers on the network.  However, what the city did next is what's newsworthy - they paid the $600,000 ransom to the hackers to get their system back.  At this time, it's unknown if the hackers held up their end of the deal.  The city is also in the process of replacing computers and working with security exper

Take a look at just about any new car these days and it'll be filled with tech - lane departure warning systems, cameras everywhere, and even self-driving cars.  But new concern is developing about the infotainment systems now found in cars, their integration with owners' mobile phones, and what happens with the data generated.

Users of Microsoft services such as Outlook, Office 365, OneDrive, Skype, and Xbox Live will now get to enjoy the benefits of not having to remember their passwords.  Now, with physical hardware keys using the FIDO2 technology, access to a Microsoft account is as simple as plugging into a USB port or using Bluetooth or NFC to pair a phone to the key.

Initially, the keys were used as part of a two-factor authentication policy, but new browser technology has enabled the elimination of the password requirement.  Now, Microsoft's no-password log on process offers three options:

Five researchers recently announced that they'd developed a way to use AI to mimic human fingerprints - which has recently become a popular security format.  Philip Bontrager of the New York University engineering school led the team and the group ultimately named their project DeepMasterPrints.

PaperFree partner Dell EMC recently announced their new Dell EMC Cyber Recovery and Cyber Recovery Services products - both designed to serve as a "last line of data protection defense against ransomware and destructive cyber attacks."  These software packages include automation, workflow, and security analytics tools to help isolate secure copies of critical data in a way that those copies are protected, but still available for use should a system recovery need to be made.

URLs have become ubiquitous in our time - nearly every company and individual has some sort of online presence - all with associated URLs.  And, while URLs for the biggest names are generally easy to guess (simply add a .com to their name) - that's not always the case, as is such with nissan.com and companies that use .biz or .info top level domain names.  Worse yet, a wrong guess can land you on a webpage that you definitely don't want to be on.  Google wants to take the guesswork out of URLs.

Believe it or not, your bank is among the experts in fraud detection.  Many of us have experienced urgent phone calls from the bank when we make a larger-than-normal purchase, and this is a good thing.  The bank's systems constantly track customers' card use - amount, locations, day of time, etc. to develop a map of your spending habits - and it's when something wanders out of this map that they alert customers before serious damage can be done.  Doing so gives customers a chance to interrupt fraud as it happens, as well as minimizing losses for the bank.

Many cities, perhaps your own, are taking steps to implement "smart" measures - measures that include intelligent traffic control, streetlight management, and even tracking bicycle use.  However, a new report from IBM Security reveals concerns about how secure these measures are from hacking and malicious takeover.

Users of Windows 10 are well familiar with the inescapable grip of forced system updates - taking their system down for a period of time with no way to cancel or schedule it for later.  However, Microsoft took note of how inconvenient this is for users and implemented a snooze function in 2017.  Now, it's enlisting the help of machine learning to determine the best time to run mandatory updates that won't reboot your computer when you weren't expecting it (and losing all your unsaved work!).

PaperFree partner M-Files recently announced their achievement of recertifying for ISO 9001:2015, billed as the "world's leading quality management standard".  In addtion, their annoucement also included news of maintaining their ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certificate related to their cloud system security program.  Achievement of both of these certifications is rare in the indusry; M-Files is among only a few who have done so.  M-Files' development of its own information management and quality management systems - M-Files QMS - factored into the certification.