The girl scouts have officially moved into the 21st century.

The Girl Scouts of America recently announced the creation of a whole raft of new badges that address (in the organization's words) "some of society's most pressing needs."

A total of 30 new badges will be available exclusively for girls between the ages of five to eighteen for efforts and advocacy in the following areas:

Computer Science
Cybersecurity
Environment
Robotics
Space Exploration

Badges are awarded on the basis of completing specific tasks.

If you're like most people, you probably rely heavily on the GPS function of your phone.  Type in an address and your phone helpfully guides you, turn by turn, to your destination.  It's one of the most often utilized features of a smartphone, and of course, the hackers are very interested in interfering with it.

Positive Technologies has just released a new report that paints a grim picture for IT professionals.  If your sense is that the number of cyberattacks are increasing, you're not wrong. In fact, it's probably worse than you realize.

So far this year, we've seen a staggering 32 percent increase in the total number of cyberattacks in the first quarter of 2018, compared to the same period last year.

A majority of business owners from around the world (68 percent) feel that they're better prepared to ward off a cyberattack and prevent a data breach than their competitors. This is a figure which is up 8 percent over last year's statistic for the same question.

According to the Kremlin, Russia prevented almost twenty five million cyber-attacks during the World Cup this year.

President Vladimir Putin praised the nation's digital security forces by saying the following:

"I expect that your close and constructive interaction will continue and will contribute to ensuring the security of our states and our citizens in the future.

On May 14th, the Billings Clinic in Montana issued a breach notification statement, which explained that they detected unusual activity within one of its employee's email accounts.

The employee in question was traveling overseas on a medical mission when the email account was compromised.

As if there weren't enough ways for hackers to steal your passwords, now, there's thermal imaging.  If that sounds like something straight out of a science fiction movie, think again.

Researchers from the University of California at Irvine recently discovered and demonstrated a technique that involves the use of a thermal imaging camera to capture heat traces left by human fingertips as they type passwords into a keyboard.

Do you use Timehop?  If you're not sure what that is, it's a popular, clever little app that reminds social media users about posts they've made in the past. It can be quite handy, especially if you're active on numerous social media accounts.

Unfortunately, the bloom is off the rose for Timehop.

Researchers from the digital security firm ESET have recently spotted a new malware campaign with a nasty twist.  It was created using a legitimate security certificate stolen from D-Link.

The malware appears to be the work of an Advanced Persistent Threat group known as BlackTech, which primarily targets high profile users and firms in Asia, with a

particular emphasis on Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Apple recently released an updated version of iOS, 11.4.1.  They did so quietly, and without much fanfare, but the update includes one very powerful and exciting security update that's deserving of special attention.

Specifically, the new version of iOS introduces what the company is calling "Restricted Mode.