The Pentagon's decision to grant Apple the security clearance required for iOS 6 devices to go head-to-head with BlackBerry 10 and certain Samsung Galaxy S4 devices on secure military networks could have with a cascading effect that spills over into the private sector.

BlackBerry 10 and the Samsung Galaxy S4 received security clearance from the Pentagon earlier this month. The Pentagon has not approved Android in general, or even the Samsung Galaxy S4 in its default state. The Samsung Galaxy S4 is authorized only as long as it uses Samsung’s Knox security software.

The Pentagon uses approximately 600,000 mobile devices. The vast majority of those are BlackBerry, because BlackBerry established itself early on as a secure, manageable mobile platform. Now, BlackBerry will have to fight with Apple and Samsung to maintain that dominance.

The United States Air Force is eager to jump on the iOS bandwagon. Following in the footsteps of many commercial airlines, the USAF plans to replace bulky flight manuals and flight plans with iPads.

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It’s Patch Tuesday again, and Microsoft has plenty to keep IT admins and users busy this month. Microsoft has released ten new security bulletins for May, but the two that should get the most attention and the highest priority are both related to the Internet Explorer Web browser.

Microsoft patched a total of 33 vulnerabilities this month. There are eight patches ranked as Important, which affect a range of technologies and products including Microsoft Word, Publisher, Visio, and Lync as well as the .NET framework and the Windows kernel. The remaining two patches are both rated Critical, and both address vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer.

Marc Maiffret, CTO of BeyondTrust, explains that MS13-037 affects all supported versions of Internet Explorer—and therefore impacts all supported versions of Windows as well. He points out that three of the vulnerabilities addressed are present in all versions of Internet Explorer, and attackers will likely focus on these to target the broadest possible pool of vulnerable systems with the least amount of effort.

MS13-037 is the expected, or planned, update for Internet Explorer. MS13-038, on the other hand, is a rushed, last-minute addition to the Patch Tuesday inventory. It was less than two weeks ago that a zero day flaw was discovered in IE8.

Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle (a Tripwire company), says, “As anticipated, Microsoft released a critical update for Internet Explorer 8 today that patches an outstanding zero-day bug reportedly used in a targeted watering hole attack against the US Department of Labor. Speculation earlier this week suggests the same attack also targeted employees at USAID and Department of Energy.”

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Google was once a humble startup with a big dream—to be the David that takes down Microsoft’s Goliath. Google has become a tech force to be reckoned with, challenging Microsoft in almost every area including Web search, browsers, email, operating systems, productivity software and mobile platforms. Over time, it has chipped away at Microsoft’s market share.

Microsoft is great at many things, but over the years marketing has not been one of its strengths. Microsoft has also been a victim of hubris, ignoring threats to its products because it believes its dominance is untouchable. Lately, though, Microsoft has been campaigning more aggressively against Google to protect its market share.

Microsoft's marketing playbook

At times, saying nothing or saying too little, too late has done more damage for Microsoft than a poor marketing campaign. Windows Vista had its issues out of the gate, but overall it was a solid operating system with unique benefits. However, Microsoft let its rivals—primarily Apple—control the messaging. The narrative that brainwashed the general population is that Vista was a failure, and Windows PCs aren’t cool.

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LivingSocial revealed last week that it was the victim of a cyber attack that compromised the account details of its 50 million customers. To address the situation, LivingSocial sent a notice to customers, and reset users’ passwords to force people to create new ones.

Don’t make the mistake of believing that changing your password is your only concern.

According to LivingSocial, the unauthorized access of its customer data servers yielded the names, email addresses, birth dates, and encrypted passwords of 50 million customers, but the company stresses that customer credit card details were not compromised because that information is stored on a separate server that the attackers did not access.

There is supposedly no immediate concern because the passwords are encrypted. LivingSocial explained that the passwords are hashed with SHA1 encryption. Unfortunately, the definition of “immediate” may not be much consolation. When Evernote experienced a similar attack, security expert Brian Krebs pointed out that cracking standard hashing algorithms is trivial for attackers, and it probably won’t slow them down for long.

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As we’ve become a more mobile society—working from virtually anywhere on our smartphones and tablets—we’ve also embraced various cloud storage and file sharing tools, so we can access and collaborate on our data. Younity has an entirely different approach, and it could make cloud storage obsolete.

Is that sensational hyperbole? In a word: no. But, it really depends on your data, how you use it, and who you need to share it with.

I use a variety of cloud storage services. I rely primarily on Box, but I also have accounts with Dropbox, Microsoft SkyDrive, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive, and others.

I appreciate that my data synced to Box is available on my MacBook Air and my Windows 8 tablet as well as my iPhone, iPad, and other devices. I frequently use it as a means of sharing files with others—uploading the data to Box, and then sending an email link to the individuals I want to share with. The fact that my data is in the cloud rather than stuck somewhere on a local drive back at the office has been a lifesaver on more than one occasion.

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Before you can take steps to protect your privacy, you need to define just what the word means. And the second task can be more difficult given the spread of social-networking tools and Big Brother legislation such as CISPA.

Microsoft's recently launched privacy-awareness campaign includes a survey ostensibly designed to help consumers determine their "privacy type," based on how they use the Internet and how they perceive privacy concerns. The campaign is a subtle attack on its primary rival, Google, but it also enables Microsoft to ascertain the public's thoughts on privacy and how people go about protecting theirs.

While the very concept of privacy is rapidly evolving, you can protect yours with a combination of discretion and knowing how to use available privacy-protection tools.

Shutterstock

Privacy? LOL

Privacy is in danger of being rendered quaint. Cameras note your presence at virtually every intersection and place of business. Your smartphone betrays your general location when it connects to the nearest cell tower. You disclose your exact location each time you use a debit or credit card. And unless you pay cash, your every purchase is recorded and tracked. The NSA eavesdrops on online communications, and the IRS recently asserted it has the legal authority to do the same.

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Microsoft has confirmed that smaller Windows 8 tablets will come to market in the near future. These will fill a gap in the Windows ecosystem and boost demand for Windows 8 by addressing key downsides to the early Surface tablets.

Windows tablet sales seemed to start off impressively, but the overall results so far are mediocre at best. Microsoft isn't sharing the numbers, but recent reports suggest that 1.5 million Surface tablets have sold, with 400,000 of them Surface Pro. The Surface Pro sold out almost instantly, but without actual sales data, it’s hard to know whether that’s impressive.

Windows 8 tablet failings

If one thing has hampered the success of Windows 8 tablets, it's price. The Surface RT is an impressive piece of hardware and a worthy tablet competitor, but it costs the same $500 as the entry-level model of the extremely popular iPad—and nearly double the price of the Amazon Kindle Fire 8.9 HD. Starting at $900, the 10.6-inch Surface Pro is astronomical for a tablet. Even though it’s really a tablet-ultrabook hybrid of sorts, it is perceived as a tablet.

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Companies make bad decisions all the time. Some of those decisions do irreparable harm, but others—like forcing users to boot to the new Modern interface in Windows 8, and taking away the Start button—can be reversed. Microsoft needs to ask whether it makes sense to backpedal.

There is new speculation that Windows 8.1, known as Windows "Blue," will allow users to bypass the Modern interface and boot straight to desktop mode, complete with the Start button.

Retronaut

Once upon a time in 1985, a carbonated beverage called Coca-Cola was by far the dominant leader of its market. However, Coca-Cola's corporate geniuses decided to scrap the guarded, secret recipe to launch something called New Coke.

It was one of the most spectacular debacles in the history of product marketing. (New Coke makes Microsoft Bob, 10 years later, seem brilliant.) After a customer backlash, Coca-Cola brought back the original recipe under the new name of Coke Classic, but stubbornly hung on to New Coke for awhile, even rebranding it as Coke II. Many credit the return to Coke Classic for saving the brand from complete meltdown.

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PC sales suffered a 14 percent drop in the first quarter, the largest drop for a single quarter in the 20 years that IDC has been tracking the data. Fingers immediately began pointing at Windows 8, but the new Microsoft OS isn’t to blame—at least not in the way you might think.

Traditional PC sales are down. There's no arguing that. However, it’s misguided to assume it’s the result of a failure on the part of Windows 8. Rather, it's because the definition of "PC" is evolving.

In addition, Windows 8 runs well on older hardware and was offered at a bargain price. That means there has been less incentive to buy a new PC, even for users who wanted Windows 8. Many who did purchase new hardware for Windows 8 chose a Surface Pro, another tablet, or a tablet-PC hybrid. This skews the data because analysts aren't tracking PCs and tablets as a unified market.

Don't hate Windows 8

Windows 8 is a dramatic shift from earlier versions of Windows. Its Modern interface was designed with touch-enabled gadgets in mind, and Windows 8 is an attempt to straddle the line between a traditional PC and a tablet. Microsoft melds the two, but in a Jekyll-Hyde, split-personality way that many users aren’t comfortable with. Plus, of course, there’s no Start button (gasp!). Yet, Windows 8's desktop mode is nearly identical to Windows 7, and you can easily simulate the Start button with a third-party add-on.

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Microsoft is making a big mistake. Assuming the leaked Office 'Gemini' roadmap is both legitimate and accurate, it appears that neither Outlook RT nor Office for iOS and Android will arrive any time soon. By the time they do, it’s possible nobody will care.

Mary Jo Foley—a respected and reliable source of inside information from Redmond—shed some light today on what we can expect from the Microsoft Office team. According to a leaked roadmap, Office RT apps will be available this fall alongside the expected launch of Windows “Blue”, followed by a refresh of the Office RT apps, and a new version of Office for Mac in early 2014.

The last bit of the leaked roadmap is the perplexing part, though. The highly-anticipated Office for iOS and Android apps and Outlook RT apparently won’t arrive until late 2014—yes, a year and a half from now.

If the information is accurate, Microsoft is missing a huge opportunity. By the end of 2014, Windows RT may not even exist if it doesn’t start gaining some traction. The Mail client on Windows RT is OK, but it’s not Outlook. The CEO of Nvidia, for one, recently blamed anemic sales of Windows RT tablets at least partially on the lack of an Outlook RT app.

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The one-year countdown to the end of support for Windows XP began ticking down yesterday. If you’re still using the ancient, legacy version of Windows, it’s time to consider your next move.

To be clear, your PC will not burst into flames next year—at least, if it does, it won’t have anything to do with the expiration of Windows XP support. When XP support ends, Microsoft will no longer invest any resources to maintain or update it. Windows XP will still continue to work just as well as it has for the past decade.

In that case, why should you be concerned? Two words: Patch Tuesday.

When support for Windows XP ends, Microsoft will cease developing security patches for the venerable OS. As old and great as the OS is, new vulnerabilities impact Windows XP on a regular basis—including many critical flaws that could allow an attacker to take over or cripple a PC running it.

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It’s Patch Tuesday time again. This month Microsoft has unleashed nine new security bulletins. Nine is a reasonably high number of updates, however, only two of them are rated as Critical. So, it’s actually a little more laid back than most months, but there’s still cause for concern.

There are seven security bulletins rated as Important, which affect a range of platforms and services including Active Directory, the Windows antimalware client, and the Windows Kernel. The two Critical security bulletins apply to Internet Explorer and Remote Desktop. Be prepared—most of the patches require a reboot.

Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys, suggests that IT admins focus on Internet Explorer first. “This month, the most important bulletin to apply to your infrastructure is MS13-028, which contains a new release of Internet Explorer (IE) covering all versions of the browser starting with IE6 going to IE10, and also including Windows RT, the operating system for mobile devices and tablets.”

Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle (a Tripwire company), agrees that Internet Explorer deserves attention, but adds that Internet Explorer lacks its usual “patch immediately” urgency. Microsoft has assigned the underlying IE flaws with an exploit index rating of two, which indicates that Microsoft believes they are exceptionally difficult to exploit, and there’s not likely to be a successful exploit in the next 30 days.

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Since the dawn of personal computers there have been predictions of an all-digital future where paper was little but a distant memory. Decades later, it seems like we’ve made progress toward the “paperless office,” but the Utopian vision is still a long way off.

Adobe, which bought digital signature company Echosign in 2011, conducted a study to find out how things are progressing on the road to our all-digital documents future. The study is based on data gathered from an online survey among 1051 U.S. managers who draft, send or sign contracts and agreements at small, medium and large companies.

The report, "Paper: An endangered species?" uncovers some interesting results. Just over half of the respondents, 51 percent, believe that digital workflow makes filing and managing documents easier, and 61 percent say that working digitally cuts costs. Nearly a third even feel that digital workflow gives them an edge and helps them win business.

Fair enough. Looking at the infographic from Adobe, those numbers are leaning in the right direction—albeit not as strongly as I would expect after decades of the promise of a paperless office. Then, we get to contracts. The survey results are almost unanimous (98

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Amazon added a new element to its Cloud Drive service this week that expands it usefulness. The new Cloud Drive Sync app keeps files in sync across different devices and platforms, and pits Amazon Cloud Drive head-to-head against rivals such as Google, Microsoft, and Apple. However, businesses should steer clear of Amazon Cloud Drive.

The Amazon Cloud Drive Sync app is available for Windows or Mac OS X. Similar to other cloud file syncing tools, the app places a folder on your PC. Any files saved to the designated folder are automatically synced to Amazon Cloud Drive, and instantly available from any device that can access Amazon Cloud.

By default, the local Amazon Cloud Drive folder created on a Windows or Mac OS X PC includes sub-folders for Documents, Pictures, and Videos. Amazon doesn’t offer a very consistent experience across platforms, though.

The Kindle Fire stores and accesses the data through separate tabs of the mobile OS: Docs, Photos, Videos, and Music. It can get a little confusing because a JPG file stored in the Documents sub-folder on a Windows or Mac OS X PC ends up in Photos on the Kindle Fire, while a video clip stored under Documents will be found in Videos. It makes sense, logically, but may throw people off because the files are not located in the same place from device to device.

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Whether talking about the constellation in the night sky or the sign of the zodiac, the word "Gemini" is synonymous with twins. It's no coincidence that Gemini is reportedly the code name for an upcoming Microsoft Office build that could be the twin project to Windows Blue. Together, the two efforts represent a complete shift in the way Microsoft develops and rolls out software.

According to Mary Jo Foley, a respected authority on Microsoft with reliable inside sources,  Gemini will be released inititally this fall alongside Windows Blue, with new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

For Office, Gemini could have multiple meanings. It could even be an altogether new Microsoft Office suite, a fraternal twin to the existing Office 2013. Perhaps instead of replacing Office 2013, Gemini will be a suite of Office MX apps designed for the Windows 8 Modern interface, following in the style of the current OneNote MX.

What does Microsoft have in store for Office Gemini? Here are four things Redmond should consider:

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Yahoo recently made waves when CEO Marissa Mayer revoked all work-from-home arrangements and mandated that employees show up at the office. However, the real-world data Mayer reportedly based her decision upon is not a valid metric for work-from-home performance.

According to reports, Mayer reviewed VPN logs to determine how much time remote workers spend connected to Yahoo. She found that many were connecting infrequently, if at all, implying that those working from home were doing more "home" and less "work."

Hopefully Yahoo's CEO looked beyond the virtual private network (VPN) logs before making a decision. VPN logs alone are not enough to prove that people working from home are slacking off, because connecting to the company network is not the same thing as delivering results.

What are you paying for?

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A bill that would foster stronger cyber security by enabling government and private sector companies to share information is facing opposition from privacy and civil liberties groups. The controversy is misguided, though, and the legislation is a step in the right direction.

CISPA, or the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, was introduced last year by the ranking members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence—Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD). The legislation's goal is to establish a framework for government and private companies to share sensitive information in the effort to identify and block cyber attacks more effectively.

CISPA initially made it through the Senate, buoyed by support from a large number of high-tech companies like AT&T, Comcast, Oracle, Symantec and Microsoft. It later died on the vine, however, over concerns of Big Brother spying on American citizens. But now it's back again: Last month, its congressional sponsors resurrected the bill in response to high-profile attacks against American targets during the last year.

The CISPA backlash

Yes, the bill is back, but CISPA hasn’t gotten any more popular since last year. The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), and other privacy advocacy groups are aligning to oppose the legislation once again. What's more, Facebook, an original supporter of the legislation, just rescinded its its support this week.

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It’s the second Tuesday in March, which means that it’s also the third Patch Tuesday of 2013. Microsoft released seven new security bulletins today, with four rated as "critical," but security experts are particularly concerned about a flaw rated as merely "important" that exposes your Windows PCs to major risk.

Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys, notes in a blog post that the number of security bulletins is about par for the course for Microsoft. He adds, “In technical terms though we are seeing some interesting vulnerabilities that definitely rate higher-than-average.”

For starters, there is a cumulative security update for Internet Explorer (MS13-021). It addresses nine separate vulnerabilities, one of which has had exploit code circulating in the wild for the past month. Kandek urges IT admins to apply this update as soon as possible.

“Every supported version of Internet Explorer (6 through 10) is affected, thus implicitly making all supported Windows platforms (including Windows RT) a target for attackers,” points out BeyondTrust CTO Marc Maiffret.

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You’re going to be hearing the name Tripwire a lot more, and the name nCircle a lot less probably. Tripwire announced today that it is acquiring nCircle—making it one of the biggest companies in information security.

The combined company will be a powerhouse in the security industry. Combined, Tripwire and nCircle have over 500 employees and 7,000 customers spanning 96 countries around the globe. Their combined revenue in 2012 was about $140 million. The new company will rank as a competitor for McAfee, Symantec, EMC, and others in the security and vulnerability management arena.

Tripwire isn’t a household name like Symantec or McAfee, but it’s known and respected in information security circles, and it boasts nearly half of the Fortune 500 as clients. The company has been around for over a decade, and initially made its mark with a file integrity product that alerts IT admins when critical files have been altered—a possible sign of exploit or malware attacks. Tripwire has products for identifying and remediating file and configuration changes, and for logging and correlating security events.

Meanwhile, nCircle has established itself as a key player for compliance and risk management. Its nCircle Purecloud service provides clients with a cloud-based, automated vulnerability management tool, and nCircle Benchmark enables CISOs to measure the security performance, and gather relevant, real-world metrics they need to build a business case for new security initiatives.

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There never will be a perfect computer or network defense. Computer security is a constantly elevating game of cat-and-mouse. As quickly as you address the latest threat, attackers have already developed a new technique to access your network and compromise your PCs. But if you focus on the fundamentals, you can minimize your risk and defend against most attacks.

Small companies have limited IT resources, and can’t possibly defend against every possible exploit or attack. How do you know what to prioritize? Start with the 20 Critical Security Controls report, written by the Center for Internet Security (CIS), the SANS Institute, and the National Security Agency (NSA). To help businesses and governments, they have defined the security controls that block the most frequent attacks.

Speaking recently at the RSA Security conference, Philippe Courtot, chairman and CEO of Qualys, cautioned against mistaking compliance for security. He stressed that security should facilitate rather than impede business goals, naming the report as a valuable starting point.

John Pescatore, director of the SANS Institute, drew a comparison to the Pareto principle. The axiom commonly referred to as the “80/20 rule” says essentially that 20 percent of the effort or input results in 80 percent of the output.

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Facebook is rolling out a revamped News Feed starting Thursday that changes the way users view shared content. If your business has a Facebook Page, here's how the updated layout can help you engage users in new ways.

Facebook appears to be following in the footsteps (or stepping on the toes) of the popular Flipboard app. At a media event Thursday announcing the new News Feed, CEO Mark Zuckerberg likened the updated layout to a “personalized newspaper." Facebook won't have the broad diversity of content that Flipboard offers, but the way the new layout segregates content will make it more inviting.

Think about a newspaper for a minute. (They do still sell them at corner stores and gas stations, or you can ask your parents.) A newspaper is laid out in sections. The front page has the most important news, but there are sections devoted to sports, entertainment, politics, and other categories. That's essentially what Facebook is trying to let users create.

The existing News Feed displays a mash-up of posts from friends alongside Facebook pages you’ve liked . Those posts include check-ins, photos, videos, and status updates in some arcane order determined by an algorithm. The updated News Feed, by contrast, separates  types of content, and lets users choose to view only photos, or only music, or only updates from businesses like yours—in other words, the pages they’ve liked.

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Microsoft has heard the uproar from customers over the draconian Office 2013 licensing limitations, and it has relented. Today, Microsoft announced an update to Office 2013 retail licensing agreement that should quell the uprising and force customers to put away the torches and pitchforks.

Effective immediately, customers who purchase (or have already purchased) the Office Home and Student 2013, Office Home and Business 2013, Office Professional 2013 suites, or any of the standalone Office 2013 applications can move the software to another computer once every 90 days.

A couple weeks ago, Microsoft explained the Office 2013 licensing to specify that it is non-transferrable. In a nutshell, if you bought Office 2013 and installed it on a PC, and then that PC was stolen next week, Microsoft would expect you to buy a brand new copy of Office 2013 to install on your new replacement PC.

When I asked for further clarification, a Microsoft spokesperson told me, “Office 2013 has the same licensing provisions around transferability as the equivalent Office 2010 package, which was the package purchased by most Office 2010 customers.”

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Evernote revealed over the weekend that it was the victim of a data breach, emailing users and posting a notice on its Web site that attackers had gained access to usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords associated with Evernote accounts. As a precaution, Evernote forced all 50 million users to reset their passwords. That's a good step, but it's not really not good enough—so Evernote is accelerating its plan to roll out two-factor authentication.

Evernote wasn't originally designed as a business service, at least until the December release of Evernote for Business. Evernote is primarily a note-taking and organizational tool similar to Microsoft’s OneNote. Evernote provides a range of services—including Evernote Food, Evernote Peek, Skitch, Penultimate and more—as Web-based tools or apps across a range of operating systems and mobile platforms. Its capability to access and sync data across a broad range of devices makes it appealing as a business tool.

By its nature, Evernote is a prime example of a service where you stash both personal and professional data. Like any cloud-based service, it comes with some inherent risk. Any time you place business data in the cloud—particularly sensitive information such as customer names or addresses, banking or financial details, or proprietary company research—you are trusting the vendor to protect it. The big caveat, though, is that you are still ultimately responsible for what happens to your data.

One password to rule them all?

Evernote claims that the password data captured by the attackers was encrypted, but it still made all users select new passwords, just in case. As respected security authority Brian Krebs notes in his blog post on the Evernote breach, the standard hashing and salting algorithms used by vendors to encrypt password data offers trivial protection that can be cracked with relative ease.

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For many IT managers, moving your company's backbone to the cloud brings a certain sense of freedom. However, the task of caring for and protecting your assets remains. After all, the operative word in "virtual server" is "server"; virtual or not, it’s still a fully functioning server from an operational sense, carrying the same risks and vulnerabilities inherent in physical servers. You'll need vulnerability management tools to ensure those servers are secure.

To that end, Qualys announced this week that QualysGuard—its cloud-based suite of security and compliance tools—now works with Amazon's popular cloud services.

The rate at which new vulnerabilities are discovered is staggering. An estimate from 2010 put the figure at two per second. That may be on the extreme high end, but the point is that securing a server—virtual or physical—is a fluid, constantly changing process. You have to monitor regularly to determine which vulnerabilities your servers are exposed to, what the potential impact is, and what you can do to eliminate or mitigate the risk.

The new QualysGuard connector uses Amazon APIs to connect with virtual servers in the Amazon cloud. Businesses that use Amazon EC2 or VPC cloud services can use QualysGuard to conduct automated scans of virtual server assets, and generate reports to help IT admins address potential risks.

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Rumors have abounded this month that Apple is designing a smart watch—maybe even  a flexible-glass, slap-bracelet type of device. As cool as that sounds, an "iWatch" needs to be equal parts form and function for working adults to take it seriously. There’s still no confirmation that such a device is being developed, but let’s consider what it would take for it to have a serious impact on mobile productivity. 

Businesses are still coming to grips with the consumerization of IT and the BYOD (bring your own device) trend, with smartphones and tablets entering the workplace. Wearable tech could bring a whole new shift in mobile computing. What if an iWatch were a mobile command center that lets you get things done more efficiently? You could read email, check your schedule, set reminders, and video conference right on your wrist. An added bonus is that you're less likely to drop or lose a device worn on your wrist.

Origins of the 'iWatch'

I got an iPod Nano and an accompanying band to wear the device as a watch for Christmas in 2011. It's impressive as a watch, with a variety of clock face designs to choose from, a built-in radio, Nike+ fitness functionality—and it syncs up with music and photos from my PC. But, it’s not an iOS device, and doesn’t really live up to its potential.

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Mobile malware and narrowly-targeted attacks are steadily rising, according to a McAfee report released earlier this month. These ticking time bombs and other security threats should concern your small business.

In many ways we've achieved a sort of equilibrium with regard to malware since the days of Internet-crippling cyber attacks like Code Red and SQL Slammer. The flood of malware hasn't stopped, but as long as you have security software in place and keep it up to date you're relatively safe from most threats. You still can't let your guard down, though. McAfee's research indicates that threats are rapidly proliferating as criminals' goals and techniques evolve.

McAfee distilled information gathered from a network of millions of sensors, as well as its cloud-based McAfee Global Threat Intelligence service, and compiled the data to produce the "McAfee Threats Report: Fourth Quarter 2012 (PDF)." In this report, the security provider found that spam volume spiked initially, then declined by the end of the year. It also found a similar pattern with botnet infections—a dramatic increase that tapered off, then dropped to reach lower than previous levels.

McAfee has been sounding the alarm over mobile malware for a while. It’s true that McAfee has a vested interest in raising concerns over potential security threats because it sells security software, but as the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

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Microsoft might be selling two versions of its Office suite, but its licensing policies suggest the company is not only trying to thwart software piracy, but also drive customers away from Office 2013 and over to the Office 365 subscription model. 

First, a little background. Purchasing Office 2013 only provides a license for a single PC (as opposed to up to five PCs with Office 365). The Office 2013 license goes one step further into the draconian abyss, though, by specifying that the software is literally tied to the device it’s installed on. This means you can’t re-install Office 2013 if you get a new PC.

Let’s state that again: You can never install Office 2013 on a new PC—even if you own the new PC, and even if you have removed Office 2013 from the original PC. So, if you buy Office 2013 today and install it on your PC, and then tomorrow your PC is turned into a molten pool of plastic in a house fire, Microsoft will expect you to purchase a new copy of Office 2013 for your replacement PC. Seriously.

I asked Microsoft for clarification, and I received this official response: “Office 365 Home Premium works across up to 5 devices (Windows tablets, PCs or Macs) and can be transferred across devices. The Office 2013 software is licensed to one computer for the life of that computer and is non-transferable.”

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Rumors have ramped up this week that Apple is developing an "iWatch." The success of wearable technology like the Nike Fuelband, and demand for the Pebble, the Kickstarter-backed smart watch, have fueled the speculation.

It's a logical move for Apple, which could use a new device to generate buzz and drive revenue. The iPhone and iPad are still selling almost as fast as Apple can produce them, but it will be hard to sustain growth and relevance by pushing out annual, incremental updates to them.

If Apple is working on some sort of intelligent watch, what exactly would it be? Here are a few concepts to consider.

1. A standalone iWatch

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It doesn’t break the record for most vulnerabilities patched, or even the most security bulletins in a single Patch Tuesday, but Microsoft comes pretty close. For the February 2013 Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has a whopping 12 security bulletins, which fix a mind-numbing 57 separate flaws.

Paul Henry, security and forensic analyst at Lumension, says, “It’s going to be a rough Valentine’s Day for many IT admins this month. With ongoing issues with Java and 12 bulletins from Microsoft, including 5 critical issues and many restarts, it’s going to be a very disruptive Patch Tuesday.”

Senior Manager of Security Engineering, Ross Barrett, senior manager of security engineering for Rapid7, on the other hand, tries to stay positive. “On the plus side, none of the issues patched this month are known to be actively being exploited "in the wild".”

That is definitely good news, but IT admins still have their work cut out for them. Henry notes, “It’s disturbing to note how many different Microsoft platforms are critically affected this month. Everything from Windows XP to the new Windows RT is critically impacted.”

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BlackBerry customers are at a crossroads: Either stick with BlackBerry or switch to some other smartphone platform. If you’re still using a BlackBerry, then you’ve probably grown tired of watching the smartphone world pass you by. However, the new BlackBerry 10 OS is here, and the BlackBerry Z10 is selling fairly well out of the gate.

Let me be clear; I'm not arguing whether people in the market for a new smartphone should consider a BlackBerry Z10 over, say, an iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy SIII. That's certainly a debate worth having, but I'm focusing specifically on whether existing BlackBerry customers should stay the course. If you're on the fence, here are arguments both in favor of and against staying loyal to BlackBerry.

Reasons to stay the course

1. Balance

Businesses that either provide BlackBerry smartphones, or that allow workers to use their own smartphones through a BYOD ("bring your own device") policy, need to be able to protect company data. Thankfully, BB10 includes a feature called Balance, which segregates personal apps and data from business apps and data.

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