Just when you thought the nonstop wave of data breaches had slowed down, a flurry of activity made recent news. In Pennsylvania, a hack of the Department of Education’s website compromised the information of 360,000 teachers and staffers. The city of Atlanta suffered a ransomware attack that took down municipal services and even caused Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the world’s busiest, to turn off its Wi-Fi.

Although it wasn’t technically a breach, 50 million Facebook users had their information accessed without consent in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election.

Ransomware, a type of computer virus that arrives via email attachment, website link, or other online exploit, continues to present a major problem for businesses. Once a virus infects a host computer, it connects to illicit servers, usually located in a foreign country, that then transmit personal information like your IP address, geographic area, system setup, and login details.

Another week, another data breach — at least that’s what it felt like when the federal government revealed last week that the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security had employee information hacked.

Initial reports indicate that no sensitive information was stolen; apparently, the majority of the data breach concerned email addresses, phone numbers, and job titles for nearly 30,000 federal employees.

In the early days of email, excited computer users embraced the new technology because of the freedom it entailed. You could say anything you wanted about any topic, at any length, and fire away. But once the world realized that all those messages would live on in perpetuity, the need to protect the security and integrity of this most basic of all online communications became more prevalent.

After a relatively quiet few months in the data breach world, June featured a surge in news surrounding the compromise of personal information. Relatively small breaches were reported in Texas, New Jersey, and a host of other states. But the biggest announcement came from the United States federal government, which revealed that cyberattackers had hacked into the Office of Personnel Management in December 2014, gaining access to unencrypted data on more than four million federal workers.

Back in January, we wrote about Windows Server 2003, which Microsoft will end support for in July 14th. Remember the build-up last year for the death of Windows XP? A similar scenario will play out in 2015, as Microsoft announced in November that July 14th would mark the end of life for Windows Server 2003 and Server 2003 R2.

The most immediate impact of this announcement is that any system using Windows Server 2003 will no longer receive updates or patches from Microsoft, which the computing giant said in a white paper “can result in a less stable and less secure infrastructure for your organization.

No matter what business you’re in, information and technology management is important for success. But in the health-care realm, the ability to keep data safe and secure is even more paramount. That’s because government regulations mandated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) state that all protected health information must be strictly protected — and that any breach of such information must be reported immediately.

Last month, an online data breach at Anthem Inc., the second-largest health insurance provider in North America, exposed the medical information, Social Security numbers, and email addresses of over 80 million consumers.

Security experts note that a stolen patient medical record sells for 750 times that of a stolen credit card on the black market.