The U.S. government is in discussions with tech companies on how they could use geolocation data from users to combat the current COVID-19 global pandemic. According to The Washington Post, the discussions include Facebook Inc., Google LLC and a wide array of tech companies and health experts on how they can use location data to ...

Network security startup Axis Security has launched out of stealth mode with $17 million in funding from Cyberstarts, Alex Doll of Ten Eleven Ventures and Gili Raanan, a partner at Sequoia Capital. Fifteen-month-old Axis Security claims several unnamed Fortune 500 companies among its customers. The company offers the Axis Application Access Cloud, an “agentless”  model that’s said ...

Hacking groups are targeting hospitals and medical service providers with ransomware attacks as many struggle with the coronavirus pandemic. In the last week, a health service district in Illinois and a hospital in the Czech Republic were targeted with ransomware disrupting services including coronavirus testing. The Champaign Urbana Public Health District, which services 210,000 people ...

With millions of people worldwide being asked to work from home due to the ongoing spread of the coronavirus, scammers are targeting remote workers with phishing campaigns and malware. In one phishing campaign detailed by security researchers at Mimecast Threat Intelligence, hackers are targeting remote workers with a credential-stealing scam (below) that takes employees to a ...

Digital asset startup Bakkt LLC, the brainchild of New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange Inc. said today it has raised $300 million in new funding at a time cryptocurrency markets are tanking on coronavirus fears. The Series B round included Intercontinental Exchange, Microsoft’s M12, PayU, Boston Consulting Group, Goldfinch Partners, CMT Digital and Pantera Capital. ...

Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 10 operating system has finally passed the 1 billion active devices mark four years and eight months after its launch. “Today we’re delighted to announce that over 1 billion people have chosen Windows 10 across 200 countries resulting in more than 1 billion active Windows 10 devices,” Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft corporate vice president, ...

The Chromium-based Blisk browser for web developers has suffered a data leak, with the records of 2.9 million users exposed via a misconfigured online database. Discovered late last week by security researchers at vpnMentor, the data was exposed by a misconfigured Elasticsearh database. The database included 3.4 gigabytes of records and included email addresses, IP addresses and user-agent details. ...

Amazon.com Inc. is reporting supply shortages of household goods because of panic buying caused by the global coronavirus pandemic. In a blog post directed at customers, Amazon said that “you will notice that we are currently out of stock on some popular brands and items, especially in household staples categories.” The company also said the ...

Apple Inc. has closed all of its global stores outside mainland China until March 27 because of coronavirus contagion fears as the company attempts to respond to arguably the biggest global health crisis in a century. Apple, which announced the move on Friday, said in a statement that it’s also moving to flexible work arrangements ...

The price of bitcoin crashed nearly 50% from a day ago to below $4,000 today as cryptocurrency markets suffered even worse than equity markets from the coronavirus-related economic turmoil sweeping the globe. Bitcoin started the day at above $7,000, down from its peak of more than $10,000 less than a month ago. Coronavirus concerns started ...