Google has always offered cash to those who report vulnerabilities and bugs that could result in an exploitation of a Google product, but as the reports began to trickle in, the search engine giant decided to up the ante.

In general, the amount for reporting a bug has more than doubled from the previous $3,1333.70 to $7,500 when reporting a bug from Google Accounts.

Facebook is the most popular platform for developing brand awareness because it allows businesses to target users based on what they have posted in the past. But after the recent data breach scandal, is your data still safe? Read on to find out if you need to worry about your privacy.

The Google Keyboard may not have all of the interesting features that some smartphone keyboards have (like Swype), but it’s still an exceptional new application worth downloading to your mobile (and not so mobile) devices.

The best thing about the Google Keyboard is that it’s 100% free, which is something that many competitors have not been able to offer up to this point.

Smartphones have hit the world with full force and have changed how many people communicate with one another. With instant access to things like Facebook and email, people have been spending less and less time on their computers and more and more time on their phones.

Twitter recently announced that it now supports two-factor authentication (or 2FA), but it’s far from the first website to encourage users to use it. Google, Facebook, and Amazon are just a few of the companies that currently use 2FA to prevent hacking attempts.

A list was released in the past few months that included the most commonly-used passwords of last year. These passwords, and any variation of these passwords, are some of the passwords that will be tried first when a hacker is attempting to get into an account.

You may think it’s a little outlandish that you have to protect your phone from cyber attacks, but unfortunately, celebrities aren’t the only people who get their phones hacked. In reality, it’s much easier than anyone thinks, and even an amateur can manage to get into your voicemail or view your smartphone’s browsing history.

With hacking attempts, DDoS attacks, and stolen data becoming more prevalent as of late, it’s more important than ever that you and your employees exercise the proper protection techniques. This starts with knowing what to look out for. Since we all use email regularly to communicate with others, it makes sense to start there when it comes to protection from hacking attempts.

Two of Microsoft’s flagship services are going to no longer have any support as of April 8th, 2014: Windows XP and Office 2003.

So what does this mean for the business owner that depends on these products to run their business? Microsoft simply says it means you should “take action”. There will no longer be any security updates or assisted support options, online or otherwise, through Microsoft.

If your network gets breached, it can cost you some serious cash to get it handled. A lot of small businesses, especially startups, simply don’t have that kind of money to hand out to fix the problems caused by a breach. When data is lost, not only do you need to reach out to your customers, you have to handle the massive amount of fallout that happens in response.