Things aren't so easy in the Big Easy right now. The New Orleans ransomware attack has resulted in a shutdown.

As a result, most of the city's servers and computers are currently down.

However, at a recent press conference held by Mayor LaToya Cantrell, all New Orleans emergency services are intact.

With smartphones becoming more and more about data storage and access than just simply communication, businesses are finding that these “pocket computers” are proving to be not just handy, but vital, to their survival in a need-it-now world. But revelations that tech companies were sharing emails, text messages, and other information with the National Security Agency in compliance with their program to track possible terrorist threats has left people concerned about securing their personal data.

The question seems a bit odd given the rapid growth of tablets and their adoption by more than a few computer manufacturers. But the boom has subsided, with sales figures indicating that tablets are not the high-demand item they once were. A number of reasons have been cited for the decline, among them the larger size screens of the latest smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone 6, and tablet technology that has been relatively stagnant.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology is common for decreased telecommunications costs and increases to productivity, among other benefits. There are useful features and capabilities that are desirable for any business sizes. With so much information to sort through, here are five basic things that every business should know about VoIP.

The quality of a VoIP call is dependent on the network.

The terminology of online security threats continues to change, and the creative naming can be both ambiguous and explanatory. The most recent concern being Watering Hole Attacks, which are an increasing risk with the growing use of personal devices and cloud services.

The FBI has published a warning that they have seen an increase in criminals who use spear-phishing to attack and gain access to private computer networks. Access is then used to exploit the data “to create fake identities, steal intellectual property, and compromise financial credentials to steal money from victims’ accounts.

Chrome isn’t quite ready for Android devices – in fact, the program just entered beta – but it’s already exciting many of the Google circles because of its smooth layout and ability to sync.

Google released the new version of Chrome about a week ago.

Day-to-day operations require massive amounts of devotion and time. If there’s a problem with your network, it can take hours, if not days, to fix it on your own. Then, once you do get it up and running again, there’s no telling what kind of data you lost and how much revenue you threw away because of a small network hiccup.

Which do you think will contain malware: an adult website, or one that talks about religion? Most of us would assume it would be the adult website, but most of us would be wrong. Symantec conducted a recent study that indicated that many hackers and digital attackers have evolved.

Cybercrime isn’t going away, and in fact it’s increasing each year by thousands of reports. In the 2012 Security Threat Report by SOPHOS, the company urges all small companies and individuals to step up their game, saying that we “need to be ready for attacks on new platforms and devices—all the places we use data for work and our personal lives,” and that “cybercriminals are becoming more professionalized through the availability of commercial crimeware kits… the result is mass generation of new malicious code and exploits, and a significant increase in the volume of malware.