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.
Cloud Usage Forecast to Quadruple by 2020 | @CloudExpo #Cloud #DataCenter
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.
Part 2: What ‘Mr. Robot’ Can Teach Us About Incident Response | @CloudExpo #IoT #Cloud #Security
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.
Part 2: What ‘Mr. Robot’ Can Teach Us About Incident Response | @CloudExpo #IoT #Cloud #Security
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.
Cyber criminals compromising virtual machines in cloud to increase scale of DDoS
(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.
Survey shows companies are looking to monetize the cloud
The number of cloud-based products and platforms available today is simply mind-boggling. Yet, there is space for more companies to join the bandwagon of providing cloud services to individual and corporate customers because the demand for cloud is so high. As more individuals and companies turn to cloud for storage and computation, this market is expected to see explosive growth over the next few years.
To tap into this power of cloud and to take a share in the burgeoning cloud market, many companies are looking to monetize their cloud service. In other words, companies that are both directly and indirectly involved in the cloud market, want to get revenue from their cloud products. According to a survey conducted by North Bridge, a growth equity and venture capital firm, and Wikibon, a research analyst firm, a whopping 79.9% of companies involved in the cloud market get some form of revenue through the cloud. Further, 42% of the 1,351 companies surveyed get at least 50% revenue from cloud.
These numbers are significant as they reflect the growing might of cloud, and its pervasiveness among both individual and corporate customers. Also, it shows that more companies are looking for ways to leverage cloud-based services to boost their income streams, rather than being passive players. For example, let’s say, company A has been taking the services of a cloud provider to achieve operational efficiency and to cut back on its costs. Seeing the potential of cloud, it wants to integrate this cloud service into its own product, so the benefits are passed on to the end customers. This reports shows that two out of every five companies that are using cloud services are thinking along these lines. They have either successfully launched such products or are in the process of doing so.
The report, however, does not mention how much monetization is happening, but it can be surmised that much of the revenue is coming from cloud-based e-commerce applications. A similar report published in July 2016 shows that cloud spending is growing by leaps and bounds. It is expected to increase from $75 billion in 2015 to $522 billion by 2026, resulting in an average annual compound growth rate of 19%. This represents a multi-fold increase in revenue, that is likely to come from a wider adoption of cloud across varied sectors including government, healthcare, insurance, and retail. Also, this adoption is expected to spread across the entire world within a decade, so the benefits are shared by customers, regardless of their physical location.
The report further states that cloud will account for nearly 50 percent of all spending related to hardware, software, and outsourcing services, by 2026. The biggest cloud providers are the ones who are likely to gain the most from this wider adoption of cloud, and this is already showing in the increasing revenue of companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, Baidu, and IBM. However, the others involved in this market are also expected to gain much from this trend. In all, it’s bounty time for anyone involved with the cloud.
The post Survey shows companies are looking to monetize the cloud appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
[slides] #IoT – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly | @ThingsExpo #M2M #BigData
Technology vendors and analysts are eager to paint a rosy picture of how wonderful IoT is and why your deployment will be great with the use of their products and services. While it is easy to showcase successful IoT solutions, identifying IoT systems that missed the mark or failed can often provide more in the way of key lessons learned. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Peter Vanderminden, Principal Industry Analyst for IoT & Digital Supply Chain to Flatiron Strategies, will focus on how IoT deployments can go bad, and in some cases downright ugly, when firms focus on the wrong things and fail to be transparent with their customers concerning data ownership and usage surveillance.
Predictive #Analytics and #IoT | @ThingsExpo @Ontegrity #BigData #AI #ML #DL
Companies can harness IoT and predictive analytics to sustain business continuity; predict and manage site performance during emergencies; minimize expensive reactive maintenance; and forecast equipment and maintenance budgets and expenditures. Providing cost-effective, uninterrupted service is challenging, particularly for organizations with geographically dispersed operations.
[slides] #BigData MBA: How to Monetize Your Data | @CloudExpo @Schmarzo
Data is an unusual currency; it is not restricted by the same transactional limitations as money or people. In fact, the more that you leverage your data across multiple business use cases, the more valuable it becomes to the organization. And the same can be said about the organization’s analytics. In his session at 19th Cloud Expo, Bill Schmarzo, CTO for the Big Data Practice at Dell EMC, introduced a methodology for capturing, enriching and sharing data (and analytics) across the organization in a “as-a-service” cloud model, and discussed the role that the data lake plays in monetizing the organization’s growing wealth of data.
[video] #IoT Keynote: Are You Seeing DOTS? | @ThingsExpo #M2M #BigData
The explosion of new web/cloud/IoT-based applications and the data they generate are transforming our world right before our eyes. In this rush to adopt these new technologies, organizations are often ignoring fundamental questions concerning who owns the data and failing to ask for permission to conduct invasive surveillance of their customers. Organizations that are not transparent about how their systems gather data telemetry without offering shared data ownership risk product rejection, regulatory scrutiny and increasing consumer lack of trust in technology in general.