Conclusion: Fire CTO Design Challenge: "Privacy vs. Security: Finding a Technology Solution"

The Challenge Judges: Mark Anderson, Founder and Chair, INVNT/IP; Vaclav Vincalek, President, Pacific Coast Information Systems Ltd.; Richard Marshall, CEO, Secure Exchange Technology Innovations;

The Challenge Team: Barry Briggs, IT Chief Architect and CTO, Microsoft; Hugh Bradlow, CTO and Head of Innovation, Telstra; Larry Smarr, Director, Calit2, UC San Diego/UC Irvine (HQ Qualcomm Institute), UCSD; Kevin Surace, CEO, Appvance; Simon Aspinall, Chief of Vertical Markets, Strategy, and Marketing, Virtustream; David Schoenberger, CIO/CTO, Secure Cloud Systems; Thomas Aidan Curran, CTO Imarum GmbH

When mega- social media platform Facebook purchased messaging app WhatsApp in February, much was made of the price paid for the company. Depending on how you look at the numbers, WhatsApp was purchased for somewhere around $16 billion to $19 billion. Much was also made of one of the WhatsApp founder’s rags-to-riches story as well. Jan Koum went from waiting in line for food stamps as a newly arrived teenage immigrant from Ukraine to billionaire — not overnight, but the story is still pretty incredible.

Although people with disabilities are not usually the target audience when new technology hits the market—think smartphones, accessible vehicles and home automation—they have certainly reaped the benefits.

FiRe CTO Design Challenge: "Getting to Zero: Achieving Zero Loss of Crown-Jewel Intellectual Property - A CXO Checklist"

Judges Charging the CTO Panel: Mark Anderson, Founder and Chair, INVNT/IP; Richard Marshall, CEO, X-SES; Steven Sprague, CEO, Wave Systems, and Founding Member, INVNT/IP; and

The Challenge Team: Barry Briggs, IT Chief Architect and CTO, Microsoft; Ty Carlson, Senior Manager, Technology Program Management, Digital Products Group, Amazon; Jeff Hudson, CEO, Venafi; Pete Nicoletti, Chief Information Security Officer, Virtustream; Eric Openshaw, Vice Chairman and US Technology, Media and Telecommunications Leader, Deloitte LLP; Larry Smarr, Director, Calit2, a UC San Diego/Irvine Partnership (HQ Qualcomm Institute), UCSD; Vaclav Vincalek, President, Pacific Coast Information Systems Ltd.; and Jerry Woodall, Distinguished Professor, College of Engineering, University of California-Davis, and National Medal of Technology Laureate

The Queen Elizabeth Theatre is cautioning anyone searching online for tickets to the hit musical "Wicked" not to confuse official sellers with ticket brokers.

The show, based on the witches of The Wizard of Oz, opens in Vancouver this June and there are plenty of tickets available through Ticketmaster.

B.C.'s privacy commissioner has confirmed that a breach that compromised users' account details forced the shutdown of the B.C. Lottery Corporation's new online casino PlayNow.com just hours after it was launched last week.

A B.C. security expert says alphanumeric passwords and PINs should eventually be replaced with images.

"Breaking: Bill O Reilly is gay." That message was sent from the Fox News Twitter feed in January. A hacker had broken into Twitter's systems, thanks to a weak password chosen by a Twitter employee.

Cybercriminals could start to take advantage of the popularity of search engines like Google as vehicles for relaying malicious code to botnets every time a particular keyword is searched for, said one security expert.

When a social network is taken down by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, it’s somewhere between “an inconvenience and real trouble” for an enterprise, according a security expert.