Sensor, telematics and actuator technologies are developing at an unprecedented rate. This trend is due, in large part, to the exponential growth of IoT, and increased sensor accuracy, reduced size, cost and the ability to detect and measure things that weren’t previously possible. In fact, sensor technology has become so advanced, IoT devices already far outnumber users, with billions of IoT devices already deployed, and billions of new sensors expected to be deployed each year. In our quest to make connected things perform more efficiently and with more enhanced features, we have to make them, and the connectivity ecosystem, smarter. Actually, to enable…
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…
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…
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…
Lateral Movement Definition: Lateral movement is a technique used by cyber attackers to infiltrate and move through a network with the intent of obtaining secure data. The Cause The term “Lateral Movement” has been around for a little over four years and was in the news when ransomware like WannaCry and APT’s like APT28 and APT29 used lateral movement techniques. Most often an attacker may not have direct access to a machine or resource on the internal network, which the attacker considers a prized trophy. The prized trophy may be the domain controller, a machine hosting confidential information, or the…
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…
Wei Wang, Head of Finance, joined Versa Networks in mid-2018 and hit the ground running. Following an outstanding turn as Director of Finance and Accounting at Cohesity, she’s excited to help Versa get to the next stage of emerging-growth company success. Wei started her career with Hewlett Packard and has held financial leadership positions at PerkinElmer, Oplink Communications, and most recently with Juniper Networks. We sat down with Wei to welcome her to Versa Networks and ask her to share her perspective on what it takes to set up a high performance finance and operations function so that Versa can…
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…
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…
Gartner estimates that the average cost of network downtime is around $5,600 p/minute, which extrapolates to just over $300K p/hour. A large financial impact for any organization. To further highlight the impact, here is a video about the hidden costs and business implications of IT downtime. IT leaders and CIOs acknowledge the importance of constant network and security monitoring to provide visibility, and even automation, to resolve events that lead to network downtime. As a result, most enterprises will identify that they have a number of network management and monitoring tools in place to help them see, mitigate and resolve…
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