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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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