Earlier this year, Google, the parent company of YouTube, found itself in hot water for YouTube's violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPA). They got in trouble for their data collection practices and the fact that the company allowed third-party ads to run rampant on videos that were more likely to be viewed by children under the age of thirteen.

If you're a G Suite user, you're probably already aware that Google has been making plans to shut down Google Hangouts.  In fact, the original plan was to begin phasing it out of the G Suite in October of this year (2019).

If you're a fan of the service and rely on it for interoffice communications, you can breathe a short-lived sigh of relief.

There are changes afoot in Gmail designed to help improve the quality of your writing using new AI features.

These features will auto correct simple spelling errors and offer suggestions to improve your grammar.

As the company notes in a recent blog post on the matter:

"If you're working against deadlines to write a lot of emails daily, correct spelling and grammar probably isn't top of the mind.

When surveying the state of your company's security, it's important to understand what your biggest risks are.

According to the 2019 Application Report published by F5 Labs, the answer is simple.

Fully 71 percent of all web-related data breaches in 2018 specifically targeted customers' financial information.

Recently, an independent researcher named Bob Diachenko worked collaboratively with Comparitech. They discovered an unsecured database containing nearly 700,000 hotel records belonging to Choice Hotels.  Unfortunately, although Diachenko reported his finding to the company, hackers had beaten him to the punch and had already downloaded the file.

Google recently released a large-scale password study that will probably give every IT manager in the country heartburn. The results of their study indicate that a disturbing percentage of users continue to use passwords after they've been warned that those passwords have been compromised.

According to Apple, the 15 Inch MacBook Pros sold between September 2015 and February 2017 have a serious battery issue that makes them prone to fire.

When the company discovered the issue in June of this year (2019), they issued a recall and urged all MacBook Pro owners to check the serial number of their computers to see if the battery needs to be replaced.

Wormable bugs are an ongoing concern for Microsoft.  Recently, the company released a set of patches for two newly discovered 'BlueKeep-Like vulnerabilities" that impact a wide range of Windows Operating Systems.

These bugs plague the company's remote desktop services and permit malware to spread rapidly from one device to another.

Do you employ a biometric security solution at your company to control building access?

If your solution employs BioStar 2 technology (which is often integrated into third-party systems such as Nedap's AEOS access control system), you have cause for concern.

A security researcher known as "_MG_" on Twitter has invented a modified Apple Lightning cable that could allow a hacker to remotely access any Mac computer using them.  He demonstrated his new invention, dubbed the "OM.G Cable" at the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas recently.