The personal data of the 1.6 million people served by the Oregon Department of Human Services may have been exposed in a January phishing hack. The department reports that nine employees opened phishing links that compromised 2 million department emails, some of which may have included sensitive information.

Somewhere between 200 million and 600 million Facebook users could have had their account passwords stored in plain text and searchable by more than 20,000 Facebook employees. It is unknown how long the passwords were exposed, but the plain text user passwords date at least to 2012.

The We Co., best known for its WeWork chain of co-working spaces, has a trove of data on how urban entities function, and it's launching an initiative to share that data with cities. Di-Ann Eisnor, who kicked off Waze in the US and was an executive at Google, will lead We's collaborative efforts to help cities come up with technological solutions to problems.

Two hacking groups recently breached zero-day vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins, creating backdoors and redirecting traffic to malicious sites. A report released this year by cybersecurity firm Sucuri found that 90% of hacked content management systems were WordPress sites.

Entrepreneurs can protect their companies' sensitive data by taking proactive steps, said a panel of experts. In addition to using firewalls and updating software, panel participants recommended protecting email, doing regular employee training and limiting access to private data.

As cyberthreats become more sophisticated, continual educational opportunities for employees are vital in order to maintain proper security within companies. With threats changing constantly, training has to be equally adept so employees are constantly on guard, anticipating attacks before they lead to large-scale breaches.

The Police Federation of England and Wales was hit by a ransomware attack that has encrypted many of the agency's servers, rendering email inaccessible. The ransomware attack deleted some backup data and is being investigated by the National Crime Agency's National Cyber Crime Unit.

IBM's investigation of organized cybercrime found increased intergang collaborations in 2018. The report said several top banking malware gangs are working jointly to dispense and profit from malware, including banking trojans and ransomware.

Ensuring diversity and inclusion is a systemic, institutional issue that is everyone's responsibility, and new technology tools are arising to help address it, according to a recent report "Diversity & Inclusion Technology: The Rise of a Transformative Market." The RedThread-Mercer study identified 105 vendors of such technology with an overall market of more than $100 million.

The use of artificial intelligence in health care systems could carry unintended consequences, according to a report in the journal Science by researchers at Harvard University and MIT. The report raises the prospect of adversarial attacks or manipulations that can alter the behavior of AI systems by employing small segments of digital data.