The city of Atlanta is still feeling the effects of a March ransomware attack that disrupted city government operations for days. News reports indicate that the city has already spent more than $2 million cleaning up from the “SamSam” virus attack, and city officials have estimated that they may need another $10 million over the next year.

It’s not uncommon for organizations to provide business partners and vendors with access to IT systems and data. In some cases, a partner could be storing the other organization’s sensitive data. The assumption is that the third party will act responsibly, but that’s far from guaranteed.

There was a time when a “Great Wall of China” approach to IT security was sufficient. Just focus your resources at the network perimeter to keep invaders out. As long as nobody leaves the kingdom, you’re good to go. Unfortunately, IT resources have jumped the wall, so to speak, thanks to the cloud and mobile.

No organization on the face of the earth is immune to a data breach. Some organizations are more prepared than others to detect and prevent attacks. Some are more prepared to respond to attacks and minimize the damage. But make no mistake, every organization is at risk.

Botnets, ransomware and phishing attacks are the top threats to businesses, according to the latest Microsoft Security Intelligence Report. Although there is some overlap — ransomware, for example, is usually distributed through botnets and phishing attacks — these are nonetheless distinctive threats requiring multiple countermeasures.

Small to midsize businesses (SMBs) can improve market access, cash flow and profitability by more than 300 percent as a result of the “dexterity and flexibility” enabled by adoption of cloud technology, according to a new study from Microsoft and the Thought Arbitrage Research Institute.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect in May. Although it is widely considered to be among the most strict data privacy laws ever enacted, few organizations have made proper preparations. Ninety-three percent of global organizations surveyed in April by the business analytics company SAS said they are not yet fully GDPR compliant.

Email is perhaps the original “killer app,” an application so effective and easy to use that it sparked the rise of the personal computer and the spread of the Internet. Today it is the de facto standard for business communication with more than 4 billion email accounts worldwide generating nearly 200 billion messages every day.

In the digital age, myths and misperceptions are difficult to dispel. Bill Gates, Floyd Mayweather and Eminem aren’t giving away large sums of money on Facebook. A dying English boy doesn’t want your business card. A Nigerian prince isn’t going to transfer his family fortune into your bank account.

Email is a great business communication tool because it’ss fast, easy to use and inexpensive. However, its evolution into a de facto file-sharing application has also made email a potential liability.

It has become a globally common practice to share information with coworkers, partners and customers by attaching files to email messages.