When new technology becomes available to the public, it is often met with trepidation by those who feel it’s unnecessary or even hindering. Typically, younger generations embrace technology while older people scorn it, but of course, this is not universal. The “Internet of Things” (IoT) or the growing trend to have internet connectivity in traditionally non-tech devices such as clothing, accessories, and home appliances, offers a lot of benefits to people of all generations. For example, being able to track your health data and fitness information is useful to young millennials trying to be fit, as well as older individuals who need to monitor specific health concerns.

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Software delivery was once specific to the IT industry. Now, Continuous Delivery pipelines are used around world from e-commerce to airline software.
Building a software delivery pipeline once involved hours of scripting and manual steps–a process that’s painful, if not impossible, to scale. However Continuous Delivery with Application Release Automation tools offers a scripting-free, automated experience. Continuous Delivery pipelines are immensely powerful for the modern enterprise, boosting production and even customer satisfaction.

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Central to the idea of DevOps is collaboration between all of the teams involved in IT applications and infrastructure. Developers, Operations, Quality Assurance, Security, and more, all have stakes in the delivery of a product or service. So, what does collaboration mean when it comes to monitoring in the world of DevOps? In the past, different teams involved in creating or maintaining an application would first finish their portion completely before passing it on to the next team. For example, the Development team would first write code for the entire app, or specific features in the app, before passing it to the Quality Assurance (QA) team. The QA team would then do their testing and analysis before sending it forward to Operations, and so on.

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In his session at Cloud Expo, Robert Cohen, an economist and senior fellow at the Economic Strategy Institute, provideed economic scenarios that describe how the rapid adoption of software-defined everything including cloud services, SDDC and open networking will change GDP, industry growth, productivity and jobs. This session also included a drill down for several industries such as finance, social media, cloud service providers and pharmaceuticals.

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It doesn’t matter how often you move or where you are moving to, moving is stressful. There are so many questions to be answered, like:
What if something breaks?
How will this impact my commute?
What is it going to cost?
How safe is the new neighborhood?

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Hybrid IT is a catalyst of progressive organizations. In fact, two-thirds of surveyed leaders say a blend of traditional and cloud infrastructure enables a strategic competitive advantage, according to a market study by the IBM Center for Applied Insights.
That said, savvy leaders are using hybrid cloud to power their digital transformation agenda, going beyond cost reductions and productivity gains. They’re also using cloud as a foundation for next-generation initiatives — such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cognitive Computing.

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Hybrid IT is a catalyst of progressive organizations. In fact, two-thirds of surveyed leaders say a blend of traditional and cloud infrastructure enables a strategic competitive advantage, according to a market study by the IBM Center for Applied Insights.
That said, savvy leaders are using hybrid cloud to power their digital transformation agenda, going beyond cost reductions and productivity gains. They’re also using cloud as a foundation for next-generation initiatives — such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cognitive Computing.

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We continue with the second part of our two-part series. If you missed the first part, we are discussing what security professionals can learn from the hit series, “Mr. Robot.” The series explores the world of organized hacking as well as the security measures being used to stop the hackers.
During the two seasons that the show has aired, viewers have seen examples of how hackers can exploit connected devices. One of the most extreme examples was when hackers took over the attorney’s smart home, generating a nightmare of constantly changing sounds and lights and leading the attorney to run from her own home. Another example touching on IoT security was Dominique’s use of a digital assistant to discuss topics of an intimate nature. Should a hacker manage to gain access to the records, the possibilities for blackmail or additional attacks seem likely.

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We continue with the second part of our two-part series. If you missed the first part, we are discussing what security professionals can learn from the hit series, “Mr. Robot.” The series explores the world of organized hacking as well as the security measures being used to stop the hackers.
During the two seasons that the show has aired, viewers have seen examples of how hackers can exploit connected devices. One of the most extreme examples was when hackers took over the attorney’s smart home, generating a nightmare of constantly changing sounds and lights and leading the attorney to run from her own home. Another example touching on IoT security was Dominique’s use of a digital assistant to discuss topics of an intimate nature. Should a hacker manage to gain access to the records, the possibilities for blackmail or additional attacks seem likely.

read more

(c)iStock/kizilkayaphotos

The recently released Microsoft’s latest Security Intelligence Report states that cyber-criminals are compromising virtual machines in the cloud as a way to vastly increase the scale of Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDoS).

Microsoft has warned of many new cyber risks faced by IT companies in the report. It says that hackers have learned how to use compromised virtual machines running in the cloud to launch massive cyber-attacks.

The report says: “In the cloud weaponisation threat scenario, an attacker establishes a foothold within a cloud infrastructure by compromising and taking control of a few virtual machines. The attacker can then use these virtual machines to attack, compromise, and control thousands of virtual machines—some within the same public cloud service provider as the initial attack, and others inside other public cloud service providers.”

Attackers can easily issue commands to launch DDoS attacks that cripple online services and websites or flood the internet with spam.

Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, has witnessed attempts to exploit the cloud to establish communications with malicious IP addresses and brute force RDP, the Remote Desktop Protocol used by Microsoft to allow users to access their desktops over a network, representing 41% and 25.5% of all outbound attacks, respectively. Spam followed at just over 20% and DDoS attempts made up 7.6% of attacks.

The company is also warning IT administrators to be on the lookout for targeted threats aimed at taking control of an email account that has a high probability of containing credentials that can be used to gain access to the public cloud administrator portal. If successful, the threats may open both their on-premises and cloud infrastructures to attack.

The attacker, after logging into the administrator portal, can gather information and make changes to gain access to other cloud-based resources, execute ransomware, or even pivot back to the on-premises environment. They are also keeping tabs on GitHub and other public code repositories, hoping that developers will accidentally publish secret keys that can potentially grant access to cloud accounts and services.

Microsoft has further warned of “Man in the Cloud” (MitC) attacks wherein victims are tricked into downloading and installing malware, typically with an email containing a malicious link. Once active, the malware searches for a cloud storage folder and replaces the victim’s synchronisation token with that of the attacker’s. After this, whenever a user adds a file to their cloud storage accounts each time, a copy is delivered to the attacker.