2015: Year in review

January

The ICO and ISPA hit out at the government's attempt to use the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris to push formore surveillance powers.Anonymous waded in with attacks on Islamist websites in retaliation.

February

Anonymoushacked ISI-affiliated Facebook and Twitter accounts as part of its #OpISIScampaign.Google also found itself at the receiving end of an anti-trust case against its Android apps. The search giant later breathed a sigh of relief when a judge threw the case out.

March

The BBC hoped to kickstart a second home computing revolution with the release of itsMicrobit computer. It planned to send out one million of these computing devices to students around the UK. TheFreak bugin Android and iOS devices left millions worried over the security of their smartphones and tablets. The flaw had left these and other devices at risk of hacking for more than 10 years, it was reported. It waspatchedlater in the month.

April

This month saw theApple Watchfinally go on sale. Our ownAdam Shephard was there at the Apple Store in London's Regent Street to see what all the fuss was about. He said at the time that the Apple Watch was a "prime example of technology that's going to pave the way for greatness". It was also the last month before theUK general election, with tons of promises around broadband, privacy and education.

May

May played home to Google's I/O event where we learned details about a host of new innovations including the latest version of Android, Android M.

Comms watchdog Ofcom's research also found that half of households now own a tablet. Researchers also predicted that demands for Big Data would help create a $115 billion industry by 2019.

June

Chip giant Intel acquired Altera to help make some of its IoT visions a reality. That same month, creator of the worldwide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, also slammed the government over its snooping plans.

The annual Infosec event also occurred in June, with delegates warned of the spiralling costs of data breaches and the threats they should continue to monitor and protect against. We also learnt that the number of women in tech continues to fall.

Turn to the next page for information on the biggest tech stories from the second half of the year...

Maggie Holland

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.