Archivo de la etiqueta: security

AWS, Data Transfer, News & Analysis, Public Cloud

AWS launches new features at Chicago Summit

amazon awsAmazon Web Services has launched a number of new features, along with the announcement that AWS Import/Export Snowball is now available in four new regions, including Europe.

Speaking at AWS Chicago Summit, the team announced several updates including new security features, tools which simplify the movement of data around an organizations cloud, platforms for automatically deploying and running apps on Amazon’s cloud infrastructure, testing features, as well as authentication services.

Firstly, the AWS Device Farm Update is a feature, initially introduced last June, which enables customers to test mobile apps on real devices. The service is built on the concept of ‘write once, test everywhere’, enabling developers the chance to test apps in more than 200 unique environments (a variety of carriers, manufacturers, models, operating systems etc.). The update now provides customers with remote access to devices for interactive testing.

Writing on the AWS blog, Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist at Amazon Web Services said, “you simply open a new session on the desired device, wait (generally a minute or two) until the device is available, and then interact with the device via the AWS Management Console. You can gesture, swipe, and interact with devices in real time directly through your web browser as if the device was on your desk or in your hand. This includes installing and running applications.”

Amazon S3 and Snowball, designed to increase speed of the data migration process, also received attention during the event. The AWS Import/Export Snowball was launched for customers who intend to move larger amounts of data, generally 10 terabytes or more, and has now been beefed up once again. New features for S3 make use of the AWS edge infrastructure to increase speed, and Snowball also has larger-capacity as well as now being available in four new regions.

“Many AWS customers are now using AWS Import/Export Snowball to move large amounts of data in and out of the AWS Cloud,” said Barr. “The original Snowball appliances had a capacity of 50 terabytes. Today we are launching a newer appliance with 80 terabytes of capacity.”

Amazon Kinesis, a service which enables users to manage data that is streamed into the cloud, has been updated to allow users to deploy, run, and scale Elasticsearch in the AWS Cloud, as well interaction with Amazon CloudWatch, its monitoring service.

The Cognito service allows apps to add authentication, user management, and data synchronization without having to write backend code or manage any infrastructure. The ‘Your User Pools’ feature update allows developers to build a user directory that can scale to hundreds of millions of users, to help manage the authentication process.

“Using a user pool gives you detailed control over the sign-up and sign-in aspects of your web and mobile SaaS apps, games, and so forth,” said Barr. “Building and running a directory service at scale is not easy, but is definitely undifferentiated heavy lifting, with the added security burden that comes when you are managing user names, passwords, email addresses, and other sensitive pieces of information. You don’t need to build or run your own directory service when you use Cognito Identity.”

Finally, the Elastic Beanstalk, which automatically deploys and runs apps on Amazon’s cloud infrastructure, has also been updated, by adding support for managed platform updates. Developers are now able to select a maintenance window, and the new feature will update the environment to the latest platform version automatically.

“The updates are installed using an immutable deployment model to ensure that no changes are made to the existing environment until the updated replacement instances are available and deemed healthy (according to the health check that you have configured for the application),” said Barr.

Intel, News & Analysis

Only 13% trust public cloud with sensitive data – Intel survey

Solving problems. Business conceptA survey from Intel has highlighted companies are now becoming more trusting of cloud propositions, though public cloud platforms are still not trusted to secure sensitive data.

The Blue Skies Ahead? The State of Cloud Adoption report stated 77% of the respondents believe their company trusts cloud platforms more than 12 months ago, though only 13% would utilize public offerings for sensitive data. 72% point to compliance as the biggest concern with cloud adoption.

“This is a new era for cloud providers,” said Raj Samani, CTO at Intel Security EMEA. “We are at the tipping point of investment and adoption, expanding rapidly as trust in cloud computing and cloud providers grows. As we enter a phase of wide-scale adoption of cloud computing to support critical applications and services, the question of trust within the cloud becomes imperative. This will become integral into realising the benefits cloud computing can truly offer.”

One area of the survey which could be perceived as a concern is only 35% of the respondents believe C-level executives and senior management understand security risks of the cloud. Industry insiders have told BCN that executives are almost using cloud security as a sound-bite to demonstrate to investors that the board prioritizes technology as a means of driving business innovation, though few could be considered technology orientated or competent.

“The key to secure cloud adoption is ensuring sufficient security controls are integrated from the start so the business can maintain their trust in the cloud,” said Samani. “There is a growing awareness amongst the C-suite of the potential consequences of a data breach. Yet IT must take steps to educate senior management further on the enabling capabilities of the cloud, underlining the importance of always keeping security considerations front of mind.”

“Securing the cloud is a top-down process but getting every employee to follow best practice and behave in a secure manner requires company-wide participation. For example, when faced with many of the cloud threats defined by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), IT will absolutely require employee support to ensure data remains secure.”

Contemplate. Business concept illustrationFrom an investment perspective, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) continues to lead the way with 81% of respondents highlighting their organization is planning to invest in this area. Security-as-a-Service followed closely with 79%, whereas Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) accounted for 69% and 60% respectively. The survey also highlighted respondents expect 80% percent of their IT budgets to be dedicated to cloud computing services in the next 16 months.

While the increased trust in cloud platforms is a positive, it would appear in some circumstances it is a case of blind trust. More than a fifth of IT decision makers are not sure whether unauthorized cloud services are being used within the organization and 13% cannot account for what is currently being stored in the cloud. Shadow IT continues to distress IT departments throughout the industry and the most popular means of dealing with it would appear to be database activity monitoring according to 49% of the respondents.

Shadow IT maybe a concern for the vast majority of companies in the journey to cloud security, but it does lead to the question as to whether conquering shadow IT is possible, and whether 100% secure can ever be a realistic goal. “Faced with a rapidly expanding threat landscape, IT should never consider their infrastructure to be 100% secure,” said Samani. “Attack methods are constantly updated: there is no room for complacency. IT departments must ensure they regularly update and check their security measures, undertaking their due diligence to ensure corporate data remains secure.”

The concept of secure IT would appear to be a growing conversation throughout the ranks within enterprise, though the concrete understanding and commitment behind the sound-bites from executives remains unclear. 100% may well be an unattainable goal however until the concept of secure IT is appreciated completely throughout the organization, from top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top, it would appear companies will be unlikely to utilise cloud platforms for any sensitive data.

News & Analysis

Duo security and Teneo introduce new authentication system for employee mobility

Security concept with padlock icon on digital screenDuo security and Teneo have teamed up to create cloud-based two-factor authentication to simplify employee’s access to work networks through their smart phone.

The new system will enable businesses to deploy a one-tap authentication via smartphones rather than using separate ID key fobs. Teneo will provide the Duo cloud solution to customer organisations worldwide as a managed service, with employees simply downloading the Duo Security mobile app to their

“Duo is an easy step to securing corporate access across all users, in any environment,” said Henry Seddon, VP EMEA at Duo Security. “Easy and effective solutions are key to ensuring trusted access across an entire organisation.”

Duo Security’s two-factor authentication solution works across a wide variety of PCs, Macs, laptops and mobile devices as well as Apple iOS, Google Android and Blackberry operating systems, providing a more flexible two-factor network authentication system.

“Duo Security ties in with Teneo’s ethos of bringing to market smarter software offerings that make business-critical tasks like security simpler and intuitive for IT teams and employees alike,” said Marc Sollars, CTO of Teneo. “Even now, many data security set-ups are difficult and represent a kind of rules-based drag on workplace productivity. Duo Security gives forward-thinking customers a simple way to make network access much easier and beef up their overall network security. This ‘one tap’ authentication will become crucial as today’s businesses become ever-more dependent on mobile devices and applications to compete”

Recent research has highlighted to the community that security continues to be an issue for enterprise, as employees would appear to be indifferent to security protocols. As the employees themselves are seemingly one of the greatest threats to the organization, making any security standards as simple as possible would appear to be a sensible strategy in shoring up an organizations perimeter.

Government, Govies 2016, Parallels Remote Application Server, virtual application and desktop delivery, workspace

Parallels RAS Wins Prestigious Govies Security Award

2016 Govies Government Security Awards honor Parallels Remote Application Server as winner of its Platinum Network Security Award The 2016 Government Security Awards (Govies) honored Parallels Remote Application Server as the winner of its Platinum Award for Network Security at the ISC West Expo, the largest security tradeshow in the United States, which is held […]

The post Parallels RAS Wins Prestigious Govies Security Award appeared first on Parallels Blog.

cloud security, IBM, News & Analysis

IBM Security targets incident response marketplace with Resilient acquisition

security monitoring roomIBM Security has completed the acquisition of Resilient, as part of the company’s expansion in the incident response marketplace. Financial terms of the agreement have not been released.

The company had announced its plans to acquire Resilient in February, alongside the launch of its X-Force Incident Response Services. Resilient’s incident response system allows customers to automate and orchestrate the many processes needed when dealing with cyber incidents. The new services include a remote incident response capability to help clients map how a breach occurred and take action to shut it down.

“The combination of Resilient’s people – top thought leaders in the incident response marketplace – and their technology is a differentiating addition to our security business,” said Marc van Zadelhoff, General Manager at IBM Security. “Our investments in threat detection and prevention have helped us move into a leadership position in the security market. With Resilient, we’re expanding the capabilities we bring to customers, helping them manage the complexities in resolving security incidents, including the coordination of teams, best practices, and reporting.”

The company have claimed by combining Resilient Systems’ Incident Response Platform with IBM’s QRadar Security Intelligence Incident Forensics, BigFix, X-Force Exchange and other Incident Response Services, it will be able to offer increased speed in dealing with threats.

IBM has been quietly building its security business over recent years through various acquisitions and company hires. In the last three years, the company has bought a number of security specific vendors including CrossIdeas, Lighthouse Security Group and Trusteer, the latter was rumoured to be around the $1 billion mark. The company now claims to be the largest cloud and cyber security vendor in the market, exceeding $2 billion in revenue and hiring more than 1000 security professionals in 2015, as well as holding than 3,000 security patents.

“The Resilient team is delighted to be joining IBM Security,” said John Bruce, Resilient’s CEO, “Together, we will be a powerful force helping organizations to manage the evolving security challenges that they face. With the scale of IBM research, development and investment behind us, we’re excited about the possibilities for innovation and to engage with new clients around the world.”

Citrix, cloud security, News & Analysis

Employees are biggest security inhibitor – survey

Cybersecurity2A survey from Citrix and Censuswide has revealed employee negligence and indifference to IT policy is one of the most significant inhibitors to cloud security.

Polling around 2000 IT workers, the results showed respondents have a much more stringent approach to security at home than in work, while older younger employees are more likely to ignore company protocols when using devices and platforms.

“This research demonstrates that despite many individuals being well aware of basic precautions for handling their own personal data, too many are not so conscientious at work,” said Chris Mayers, Chief Security Architect at Citrix. “Employers have a responsibility to provide the tools and safeguards: employees need to use them.  Protecting a company’s digital assets is a two way street.”

The survey highlighted specifically that while 45% of workers are likely to use passwords to secure documents at home, this number drops to 35% at work. In terms of shredding and disposing of important documents, 68% would do this at home, whereas only 40% would do it in the work environment.

Despite security being consistently highlighted as a top concern for decision makers and the board, industry insiders have told BCN the company culture, as opposed to the technical challenges, should be more of a priority. The importance of security is underplayed by employees as they do not appreciate the threat of downloading unauthorized software or using public cloud platforms that are not approved by the IT department.

Our sources highlighted that board members in enterprise are focusing their attention on technology to address security challenges, when very little will change if the culture towards security is not altered, and education programmes are not launched.

The survey results also highlighted there is a much more relaxed approach to security from younger generations. Respondents aged over 55 are more likely to only use work devices with trusted company security software, 59%, compared to 47% of those aged between 25 and 34.

hybrid cloud, Information security, Internet of Things Telecoms, IoT, News & Analysis

Hybrid environments and IoT pose biggest threats to infosec – F5

F5 Forum 2Service providers and enterprises face an insecure networking environment in coming years as more applications, data and services are sent to the cloud, according to networking vendor F5, writes Telecoms.com.

Speaking at the F5 Forum in London, VP of UK and Ireland Keith Bird stressed security is now front and centre not only to the CTO and CEO, but to consumers as intrusion or security breaches regularly make headlines. Bird pointed to the hybrid on-premise/cloud-based environment, in which an increasing number of enterprise and service providers operate, as a huge challenge looming for the information security industry.

“Not so long ago, we looked at just single points of entry. In today’s hybrid world, we’ve got apps in the data centre or in the cloud as SaaS and this is only increasing,” he said. “What we know for sure is that there is no longer a perimeter to the network – that’s totally disappeared.”

“81% of people we recently surveyed said they plan on operating in a hybrid environment, while 20% said they’re now moving over half of their corporate applications to the cloud. Even some of the largest companies in the world are taking up to 90% of their applications to the cloud.”

Given the volume and nature of data being hosted in the cloud, firms are far more accountable and held to tighter information security standards today than they have ever been. The average financial impact of an information security breach is now in the region of $7.2 million, according to F5 research.

“The average cost of a security breach consists of $110,000 lost revenue per hour of downtime – but the effect on a company’s website or application is costing potential business,” said Bird. “The average customer will abandon an attempted session after roughly four seconds of inactivity, so there’s new business being lost as well.”

F5 said of the threats it is seeing at the moment, according to customer surveys, the evolving nature and sophistication of attacks ranks highest, with the internal threat of employee ignorance a close second.

“So what are the top security challenges our customers are seeing?” said Bird. “58% are seeing increasingly sophisticated attacks on their networks, from zero-day to zero-second. 52% were concerned that their own employees don’t realise the impact of not following security policies. Obviously plenty of people said they don’t have enough budget, but that’s not quite the biggest problem facing security departments today.”

F5’s Technical Director Gary Newe, who’s responsible for field systems engineering, said the looming prospect of IoT “scares the bejesus” out of him.

“We’ve all heard about the IoT,” he said before pointing to the connected fridge as a farcically insecure IoT device. “There are 3 billion devices which run Java, which makes it 3 million hackable devices, and that scares the bejesus out of me. This isn’t just a potential impact to the enterprise, but it could have a massive impact on consumers and families. Fitness trackers, for example, just encourage people to give a tonne of data over to companies we don’t know about, and we don’t know how good their security is.”

The scariest bit, Newe emphasised, is the growing knowledge and intelligence of more technically adept youngsters today, and how the rate of technological change will only exacerbate the requirement for a fresh approach to network security.

“Change is coming at a pace, the likes of which we’ve never seen nor ever anticipated,” he said. “We’re building big walls around our networks, but hackers are just walking through the legitimate front doors we’re putting in instead.

“The scariest thing is that the OECD [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development] has said the average IQ today is 10 points higher than it was 20 years ago. So teenagers today are smarter than we ever were, they’ve got more compute power than we ever had, and they’re bored. That, to me, is terrifying.”

cloud security, Dell, enterprise mobility, News & Analysis

IT security still a barrier to public cloud and employee mobility – Dell survey

Dell office logoDell has released the findings from its Data Security Survey which revealed IT decision makers are still not confident enough to encourage mobility or use of public cloud platforms.

Although the pattern over the last few years has been to broaden employee boundaries, increasing flexibility within the working environment, the survey demonstrated that a substantial number of businesses are resisting mobility due to security concerns.

The majority of businesses would claim cyber and cloud security sits at the top of the priority list, and whilst this might be the case, Dell’s survey has highlighted a number of deficiencies across the board.

Over the last 12 months the tech world has been lit up by numerous data breaches, hacks and leaks on both sides of the Atlantic. From TalkTalk to Ashley Madison to Kaspersky Labs, security has once more been highlighted as a major deficiency in the IT world.

Following a number of PR disasters for large scale enterprise throughout the world, 75% of decision makers agree that C-Suite recognises the importance of data security, though only 25% believe that the C-Suite is adequately educated about the issues to make informed decisions. The survey also highlighted that only 25% feel that their leadership has the ability to set suitable budget to tackle the challenges of data security over the next five years.

65% of mid-market companies are freezing plans to increase mobility within their workforce, with 67% resisting BYOD programmes, due to security concerns. The benefits of a mobility strategy, both from an employee satisfaction and productivity perspective, are well documented, though these statistics demonstrate security fears drastically outweigh the benefits. In fact, 82% of decision makers have made attempts to reduce mobility for employees, by decreasing data access points.

On the contrary, only 40% of respondents highlighted that they were actively interested in pursuing opportunities to increase employee mobility.

In terms of public cloud platforms, there does not appear to be a high level of confidence in offerings such as Google Drive. Almost 80% of decision makers said that they would not be confident in uploading critical data to the cloud, 58% highlighted that they believed the threat to be greater than 12 months ago, and 38% restricted access to public cloud sites within their organization.

Another area addressed by the survey is that of Shadow IT. Almost every business will have a strict IT policy in place, though there will still be a proportion of the workforce deems this to prohibit their working day. Despite the concerns of public cloud platforms, 83% of respondents acknowledge that their employees are using such platforms to store or share valuable data.

As these statistics demonstrate, most organizations have not identified the crossroads between security, assumed business risk and productivity, to most effectively enable the workforce.

“Security programs must enable employees to be both secure and productive, and this means enabling technology that helps them do their jobs,” said Brett Hansen, Executive Director, Data Security Solutions for Dell. “Companies can try to limit or prohibit public cloud use, but it’s more effective to use intelligent data encryption to protect corporate data wherever it may go, and reduce the risk of employees working around restrictive policies in order to be productive.”

While the survey demonstrates growth within the cyber and cloud security world, it also highlights a number of restrictions. On the positive side, security is now a priority throughout the business, as opposed to simply in the IT team. It also emphasises a slight overreaction from decision makers who have taken the move of reducing mobility and access to public cloud offerings; two areas which could increase an organization’s competitiveness in an already challenging market.

Disaster Recovery, Opinion, wandisco

The economics of disaster recovery

Disaster Recovery Plan - DRPCompanies increasingly need constant access to data and the cost of losing this access – downtime – can be catastrophic. Large organizations can quickly find themselves in the eye of a storm when software glitches strike. It can result in lost revenue, shaken customer loyalty and significant reputational damage.

In August 2013, the NASDAQ electronic exchange went down for 3 hours 11 minutes, causing the shutdown of trading in stocks like Apple, Facebook, Google and 3,200 other companies. It resulted in the loss of millions of dollars, paralyzing trading in stocks with a combined value of more than $5.9 trillion. The Royal Bank of Scotland has now had five outages in three years including on the most popular shopping day of the year. Bloomberg also experienced a global outage in April 2015 resulting in the unavailability of its terminals worldwide. Disaster recovery for these firms is not a luxury but an absolute necessity.

Yet whilst the costs of downtime are significant, it is becoming more and more expensive for companies to manage disaster recovery as they have more and more data to manage: by 2020 the average business will have to manage fifty times more information than it does today. Downtime costs companies on average $5600 per minute and yet the costs of disaster recovery systems can be crippling as companies build redundant storage systems that rarely get used. As a result, disaster recovery has traditionally been a luxury only deep-pocketed organizations could afford given the investment in equipment, effort and expertise to formulate a comprehensive disaster recovery plan.

Cloud computing is now making disaster recovery available to all by removing the need for a dedicated remote location and hardware altogether. The fast retrieval of files in the cloud allows companies to avoid fines for missing compliance deadlines. Furthermore, the cloud’s pay for use model means organizations need only pay for protection when they need it and still have backup and recovery assets standing by. It also means firms can add any amount of data quickly as well as easily expire and delete data. Compare this to traditional back up methods where it is easy to miss files, data is only current to the last back up (which is increasingly insufficient as more data is captured via web transactions) and recovery times are longer.

Netflix has now shifted to Amazon Web Services for its streaming service after experiencing an outage in its DVD operation in 2008 when it couldn’t ship to customers for three days because of a major database corruption. Netflix says the cloud allows it to meet increasing demand at a lower price than it would have paid if it still operated its own data centres. It has tested Amazon’s systems robustly with disaster recovery plans “Chaos Monkey”, “Simian Army” and “Chaos Kong” which simulated an outage affecting an entire Amazon region.

Traditionally it has been difficult for organizations like Netflix to migrate to the cloud for disaster recovery as they have grappled with how to move petabytes of data that is transactional and hence continually in use. With technology such as WANdisco’s Fusion active replication making it easy to move large volumes of data to the cloud whilst continuing with transactions, companies can now move critical applications and processes seamlessly enabling disaster recovery migration. In certain circumstances a move to the cloud even offers a chance to upgrade security with industry recognized audits making it much more secure than on site servers.

Society’s growing reliance on crucial computer systems mean that even short periods of downtime can result in significant financial loss or in some cases even put human lives at risk. In spite of this, many companies have been reluctant to allocate funding for Disaster Recovery as management often does not fully understand the risks. Time and time again network computing infrastructure has proven inadequate. Cloud computing offers an opportunity to step up to a higher level of recovery capability at a cost that is palatable to nearly any sized business. The economics of disaster recovery in the cloud are such that businesses today cannot afford not to use it.

Written by David Richards, Co-Founder, President and Chief Executive of WANdisco.

News, Services

Telstra and Cisco Unveil New Products

Telstra and Cisco have recently announced three new software-designed networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) products that aim to improve both cloud security and global data center interconnection. These products come in addition to Telstra’s two additional functions for its SDN PEN platform, announced in January.

Cloud Gateway Protection: This product was the first of the three made available in beta. It is a virtual security application that aims to secure cloud services and  internet access, as well as Next IP networks against cyber-attacks.

Internet Virtual Private Network (VPN): This product will provide both a secure and encrypted office network over public internet. This can be used by businesses across several sites. The launch is expected to occur later in March.

Data Center Interconnect: This product will extend Telstra’s SDN PEN1 global data center interconnection. Australian data centers will be added. Customers may configure links between domestic and foreign data centers.

These products aim to revolutionize the cloud. The three new products will be connected by Telstra’s self service portal. The two companies have a long standing partnership and this combined effort utilizes both companies’ assets.

The additional features Telstra added in January allow customers to call upon network functions and make digital partnerships.

PEN Exchange: This function allows customers to connect their network services with other customers’.

Improvements to PEN Marketplace: This function improved the marketplace; businesses may order NFV equipment from various vendors.

In addition to the strong partnership between Telstra and Cisco, Telstra has also formed a strong connection with HP and other businesses, allowing Telstra to further its BFV strategies and other programs.

Telstra-2

Comments

Philip Jones, Telstra executive director of Global Products and Solutions: “By allowing us to overcome the constraints of traditional network infrastructure, the software-driven customer experiences dramatically increases our agility by enabling us to quickly create new solutions, and puts the control of those solutions into the hands of our customers.”

Kelly Ahuja, Cisco senior vice president of Service Provider Business, Products, and Solutions: “By combining Cisco’s agile and flexible software platform with Telstra’s customer-focused and customer-friendly range of products, we send a powerful message to the industry and a provide a clear example of how to develop and design the network services of tomorrow.”

David Robertson, Telstra Operations director of Transport and Routing Engineering for Networks, said at the time: “Partnering with multiple vendors helps us to deliver impactful virtualization and orchestration capabilities within a flexible architectural framework. As service providers look to build seamless application delivery networks, vendors that have qualified their technologies with the industry’s standardization groups are seen as more attractive to customers.”

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