It is an article of faith that Google’s Play Store and Apple’s iStore are the two safest sources for downloading apps. As good as their security routines are, however, they’re not perfect, and sometimes, things slip through the cracks.

The world got a painful reminder of their fallibility last year when a group of hackers managed to infect millions of Android devices by successfully dodging Google’s security and uploading poisoned versions of popular apps with a malware program called “Hummingbad.

Here’s’ an interesting and inspiring story about corporate inventiveness and good citizenship.

If you grew up playing with Legos, then you know that half the fun of them is in sharing your creations with others Adults, of course, have plenty of platforms to share on, but those platforms don’t tend to be kid-friendly, and because of that, Lego has designed a space just for kids 13 and under.

Password security continues to be the single biggest weak point in the realm of digital security. The problems on this front are numerous, but chiefly stem from the facts that:

• Too many people use simple, easily guessed passwords
• Too many people use the same password across multiple accounts
• And too many people adopt a “set and forget” mindset when it comes to passwords.

If you use an Android device, and since they are the most popular devices on the planet these days, you probably do, then you may also be using a pattern locking mechanism to secure it.

On the face of it, that seems to make a lot of sense. After all, given the number of high profile data breaches we’ve seen in recent years, it seems clear enough that standard text-based passwords have real issues.

How’s your network security? Is it on par with police departments, which, you’d have to imagine, have fairly robust security?

If so, you’re still not safe.

Recently, police in Cockrell Hill, Texas, announced in a press release that they had been the victim of a ransomware attack that cost them dearly.

Is your laptop a fire hazard? If it’s using an HP battery, it may be. Recently, HP began receiving reports of batteries overheating, and in at least one case, in Canada, a laptop actually caught fire.

That prompted HP to issue a recall of more than 41,000 batteries, but as the number of complaints continued to escalate, it quickly became apparent that the problem was more widespread than was initially believed.

If you’re a Mac user who uses GarageBand or Logic Pro, you’re going to want to update both of those programs with Apple’s latest patches.

According to the company, they discovered critical security flaws in both pieces of software that could allow hackers to remotely execute code.

The Department of Health and Human Services is off to a busy start in 2017, having just levied their second hefty fine for HIPAA violations. In this instance, the company in question was Puerto Rican insurer MAPFRE.

Back in 2011, MAPFRE had reported an ePHI incident involving a flash drive that was stolen from the company’s IT department, where it had been left in the open and unsecured overnight.

It seems like every week that passes, we become aware of some new threat to security online. In fact, it’s gotten so bad that a slowly increasing number of Americans are simply swearing off the internet, according to a recent survey by security researchers.

There’s a new phishing scam making the rounds, made noteworthy by the fact that it is especially convincing. What makes it so convincing is the lengths the hackers go to in order to fool their potential victims into thinking they’re getting a legitimate email.