Hong Kong companies and residents have lost more than $250 million in more than 9,000 cyberattacks this year, making the city one of the prime global targets for hackers, a new report states. Experts say that Hong Kong's lack of investment in cybersecurity is one of the reasons the city has been so vulnerable, especially to scams involving financial transactions.

Qualcomm has won a court injunction against Apple in China that bans the sale of all but the most recent iPhone models and hinders Apple's potential revenue in world's biggest smartphone market. The Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court ruled that Apple is infringing on Qualcomm patents and issued an injunction against the sale of the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X.

A "culture of cybersecurity complacency" was at the heart of the Equifax breach that jeopardized the personal information of 148 million US residents, according to a report by the Republican staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "Had the company taken action to address its observable security issues prior to this cyberattack, the data breach could have been prevented," said the report, which disclosed that Equifax had been using an expired SSL security certificate for more than a year and a half, allowing suspicious activity to go unchecked.

One of the biggest risk factors for an energy grid cyberattack is failure to use common sense, says one expert, who attributes eight in 10 cyberhacks to bad human decision-making. Training to limit mistakes that could infect an entire energy grid system and collaborating with other companies to design a multifaceted approach are two measures that companies can take to prevent a catastrophic breach.

Researchers from IntSights evaluated 50 health care databases and found that 15 were exposed online, compromising 1.5 million patient records at the rate of about 16,687 records per hour. The researchers' report states that hackers target medical data and health care organizations because they can buy and sell personally identifiable information, test cyberattack tools and techniques, and demand ransom for the release of infected devices.

Microsoft Teams has grown from being used among 3% of IT companies in 2016 to 21% in 2018 after the release of the product beyond Office 365 users, according to a Spiceworks report. The workplace messaging app surpassed Slack and Google Hangouts but still trails Skype for Business in the market for business messaging apps.

Verizon will remove 10,400 workers by mid-2019 through a voluntary separation program as the company shifts toward a 5G-focused structure. The program offers up to 60 weeks' salary, benefits and bonuses depending on how long the employee has been at Verizon.

The leader of a group that engaged in distributed denial-of-service attacks against websites and made bomb threats against schools has been sentenced in the UK to three years in prison. George Duke-Cohan, part of a group that called itself the Apophis Squad, could still face charges in the US.

China is demanding the US withdraw the arrest warrant for Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou after her arrest in Canada, where she faces extradition to the US. "The actions of the US seriously violated the lawful and legitimate rights of the Chinese citizen, and by their nature were extremely nasty," Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said to US Ambassador Terry Branstad.

Google has purchased Sigmoid Labs, creator of the popular train-location app Where is My Train. Google reportedly will pay $30 million to $40 million for the Bengaluru, India-based startup, which is part of Google's "Next Billion Users" initiative.