Versa Networks
October 25, 2018
The recent surge in cryptomining is providing cyber criminals with more vectors to attack, at the expense of legitimate users. This year has seen a huge increase in the deployment of numerous malwares, with cryptominers as primary or secondary payloads. Cryptominers are becoming easy targets, that allow attackers to go a step further to disguise themselves as the miner in the form of a flash update. Palo Alto Networks reported a list of collected samples, some dating back to August 2018[1]. The author further adds that installers from the Adobe website were legitimate, and the malicious ones were mostly Windows…
Versa Networks
October 18, 2018
Telecom carriers are uniformly seeking ways to broaden their connectivity services for enterprise customers. One motivation is to offset MPLS revenues, which are essentially flat and are expected to decline over the next few years. Broadband and wireless connectivity services are growing fast, with no sign of abating, but revenue from vanilla broadband is much less profitable than MPLS. This scenario is where value-added gateway services may be the key to future revenue growth. Managed service providers already moving in this direction are beginning to reap the benefits. According to research by Catherine Hammond with Analyses Mason, operators now see…
Versa Networks
October 10, 2018
Everyone in IT is keenly aware that the cloud and SaaS are a double-edged sword. On one side, many benefits ensue, like offloading high CapEx and lowering OpEx, and divesting of complex and bloated hardware-based infrastructure. The more challenging side lies in the ever-growing cloud applications that employees in every department are using, many of which are unknown to IT. Cloud and SaaS apps are growing so fast that IT has a difficult time keeping up with the demand. In fact, according to Goldman Sachs, the cloud computing and platform market was just over $10 billion in 2013, and is…
Versa Networks
October 4, 2018
Ransomware is a form of malicious software that latches onto a system and encrypts the files within it, making them inaccessible to the user. The attackers behind this malicious activity typically demand payment in terms of currency (crypto or cash) in return for the keys to decrypt the files. A recent ransomware which has become viral since January 2018 is named GandCrab. This ransomware is believed to be distributed as a Ransomware-as-a-Service [2,3]. GandCrab initially differentiated from other ransomware by demanding a ransom in DASH [7] cryptocurrency. The developers behind GandCrab have been continuously updating and releasing improved versions, with…
Versa Networks
October 1, 2018
Contextual Visibility: WAN-Security Monitoring Gartner estimates that the average cost of network downtime is around $5,600 p/minute, which extrapolates to well over $300K p/hour. A fairly scary number, we have to admit. And to scare you further, here is a video we dug out about the massive business impact of a downtime. IT leaders and CIOs acknowledge the importance of constant network monitoring and a more centralized approach to network management and monitoring. As a result, most enterprises will also boast of a network management and monitoring tool in place. However, as digital transformations and disruptive technologies like cloud and…
Versa Networks
September 19, 2018
Unified communications or collaboration solutions in the private network were supposed to relieve IT from the burden of manually assuring service-level quality by off-loading some of the peripheral applications workload to cloud-based managed services. However, as voice application features advanced incorporating voice, video and interactive elements, quality suffered – digital voice and video-conferencing packets buffered, which were reasons why IT and MSPs ended up battling dramatic increases in service trouble tickets. The problem, however, is not with the concept of UCaaS; it is more about the underlying connectivity solution that transports these applications. Legacy WAN architectures with their inherent drawbacks…
Versa Networks
September 5, 2018
The cloud imperative stretches the network perimeter from a branch office or remote site location to a distributed-application model wherein SaaS acceleration is key. As traffic moves to and from branch locations and multiple clouds over the Internet, SD-WAN and layered security are required. Just as the cloud is more than hosting apps and infrastructure, SD-WAN is more than circuit aggregation and dynamic path selection. Organizations need more than reliability and agility; those are table-stakes outcomes. A modern SD-WAN implementation requires a broad set of functions when connecting to multiple clouds like routing, NAT, DOS, DHCP server and relay, stateful…
Versa Networks
August 27, 2018
Every manufacturer is concerned about the potential risks associated with cyber-crimes. If their data are stolen, it can lead to financial losses in sales, fines and monetary judgments against them; not to mention, the loss of customers and brand loyalty. In 2017, there were over 53,000 security incidents and 2,216 confirmed data breaches. This is according to the 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) by Verizon. The report goes on to state, the most common access among all security breaches (73 percent of breaches) are those perpetrated from outside the organizations through the wide area network (WAN). Enterprise WANs, with…
Versa Networks
August 22, 2018
Internet links to wide area networks (WANs) are often a primary target for cyber-crime in every industry. The healthcare industry deals with particularly sensitive consumer data. Security breaches pose many risks for healthcare providers, including legal liability, revenue loss and erosion of patient trust. To minimize the threat of security incidents and breaches, IT teams are looking for preventive measures to ensure that security is an integrated part of the WAN. The preservation and safekeeping of healthcare data for doctors, clinics and hospitals, and their patients are essential elements to contemporary security posture. Patient health record protection has a direct…
Versa Networks
August 15, 2018
The 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) compiled by Verizon is loaded with cloak and dagger cyber events conducted by both known and unknown bad actors and mechanisms. Verizon identified 53,000-plus incidents and 2,200 breaches in only 12 months, suggesting an information parallel universe in which an uneven playing field exists whereby the bad guys and rouge bots consistently probe from the outside. Here are some of the key findings in terms of actual breaches: 73 percent were perpetrated by external forces 50 percent were carried out by organized crime groups 48 percent were due to hacking; 30 percent from…
