A very substantial proportion of websites are based on PHP (Pre-processed Hypertext Protocol), so it's always important to stand-up and take notice when a critical PHP issue is patched.

Today is one of those days, with a second update issued to fix a criticial remote execution vulnerability. The vulnerability means that an attacker could potentially run unauthorised code on your server, something nobody wants! Attacks have already been detected in the wild by various honeypot services, so it's absolutely critical that everyone updates as soon as possible.

All Virya Technologies customers are advised to check which version of PHP they are currently running and to update where necessary, the latest versions  are 5.4.36 or 5.3.13. All earlier versions must be considered vulnerable.

The mobile world now plays a far greater part in our lives than ever before. Businesses are becoming reliant on the ability to access and process data wherever they are, and smartphones are one massive driving force behind this evolution of business practices.

However, with portability comes risk. If you can access your data from anywhere, it raises the potential that someone else can. We all take steps to mitigate this risk, such as using strong passwords and limiting access to specific devices. Unfortunately, the result of using strong passwords is that users begin to rely on the 'remember password' functionality of their device. All well and good until the device goes missing.

In this post, we'll be looking at a free piece of software that you can install on Android Devices (Such as the Samsung Galaxy range, the HTC One range and many other phones and tablets) in order to regain control should a device with access to business data be lost/stolen.

Similar solutions are also available for users of iPhones and iPads, but we've not tested those!

Early yesterday morning, the Virya Technologies team left our office at Basepoint to go and setup Stands 8 & 9 ready for ISSBA's Suffolk Business Exhibition 2012. By the time Chris and Ruth arrived at the Office, I had already set the coffee machine brewing in order to provide the caffeine dependant amongst us with a much needed early-morning kickstart!

Upon arriving, we met up with Chris Pond who had helpfully agreed to help us run the stand and began setting up our little area (which felt far, far more organised than our last minute dash at SBE 11!). The guys at Trinity Park helpfully provided us with the power outlets we needed to run multiple machines (a true geek will always use more than one!)

Joomla! 1.6 requires PHP 5.3 or later to be installed. When requesting a new server, this is far less of a problem as many will be provisioned with PHP 5.3 already installed. What should you do, however, if you are running a version of CentOS prior to 5.6 you will need to manually update PHP before Joomla 1.6 will install.

In fact, even with Joomla 1.5 you may experience issues if you are running an earlier version of PHP. The latest build of Akeeba Backup, for example, requires PHP 5.3.

This post will detail the method you need to use to update from PHP 5.1 or 5.2 to PHP 5.3 (Note: These instructions should not be followed to update from PHP4 unless you know exactly what you are doing!)

Google's search engine is a fantastic tool, and there still seem to be no effective competitors. Unfortunately, however, Google have been making quite a few changes which have hugely affected the relevance of results, and often leads to needing to enter a second search.

This post details some of the tips users can use to try and reduce this, including minor changes you can make to Chrome/Chromium and Firefox to allow searching through the inbuilt search bars to be less irritating!