The benefits of implementing a multi-layered ransomware defense strategy
Ransomware is becoming a risk that UK organizations cannot afford to take, with rising financial and operational costs. A staggering 75 percent of UK organizations were targeted by ransomware in 2021, and where these attacks were successful, most (82 percent) paid the ransom. This makes the UK the most likely country in the world to make ransom payments. As cybercriminal strategies evolve to bypass traditional network-based defenses, a multi-layered ransomware defense strategy is vital for organizations to protect their mission-critical data.
First, it’s important for us to understand the typical defense strategies that attackers have adapted to, in order to appreciate the rationale for the boost in cyber protection. And, we need to understand the rising costs of these incidents, to prove the business value of initiatives that are aimed at prioritizing prevention and detection of cyber-attacks before they occur. It’s not just a quick fix -- failure to implement these solutions can affect your profitability, reputation and even put your company out of business.
No code test automation is a game changer
Manual testing of software, no matter how rigorous, poses significant risks to businesses that rely on it. It is time-consuming, prone to human error, and extremely difficult to scale effectively. So why then, when enterprises are increasingly turning to automation to speed up digital transformation, is only 15 percent of software testing currently automated?
Let’s look first at why manual testing is no longer suited to the needs of today’s businesses. With the ever-increasing speed of software development and customization, relying on manual testing alone won’t allow a business to scale effectively. The resource-heavy and time-consuming nature of manual testing can lead to slower release cycles, with companies being forced to cut corners, or not test all their software appropriately. This in turn can lead to systems breaking, and businesses failing to operate as they should. The surge in digital transformation and increased pressure on IT teams has only heightened this challenge, with software needing to be tested 24/7, while everything continues to change.
The one cloud threat everyone is missing
Ask security professionals to name the biggest threat to their organizations' cloud environments, and most won’t hesitate to give a one-word answer: misconfigurations. Technically, they’re not incorrect, yet they’re defining "misconfiguration" much too narrowly. They’re likely thinking of an Amazon S3 bucket that’s left exposed or a misconfigured security group rule. While identifying and remediating misconfigurations must be a priority, it’s important to understand that misconfigurations are but one means to the ultimate end for attackers: control plane compromise, which has played a central role in every major cloud breach to date.
Considering the steady cadence of news headlines tying cloud breaches to misconfigurations over the last several years, it’s understandable that finding and fixing misconfigurations has been the primary focus of security professionals and their solutions vendors.
Adopting big data for business intelligence
It’s hardly contested nowadays that business intelligence is beneficial to any organization, regardless of industry. Data optimization and governance have been shown to produce better decision-making in the long-term.
That doesn’t mean data implementations have been perfect. Some companies have been failing efforts to become data-driven at a much larger scale than one would expect. Others, however, are rushing ahead and have begun using external data sources en masse.
Why are businesses slow on the uptake with logistics tech?
The incremental growth of eCommerce has accelerated significantly in recent years, with national lockdowns raising the profile of online retail to the status of truly rivaling traditional high street retail in every workable sector.
As a proportion of total retail, the UK’s eCommerce sector commands 27.8 percent of all sales as of February 2022, up from 22.7 percent before the pandemic. The figure was as high as 37.7 percent in November 2020, owing to a convergence of lockdowns and peak retail season.
Why poor IT asset lifecycle management is rapidly becoming a serious cyber vulnerability
Earlier this year, banking giant Morgan Stanley agreed to pay plaintiffs $60 million to settle a class-action lawsuit resulting from a pair of data breaches discovered in 2019.
While companies like Morgan Stanley find themselves under constant cyber attacks, these breaches were not from a hacker breaking into a database or an employee accidentally exposing customer information. It was simpler: Morgan Stanley threw away decommissioned servers that were not completely wiped clean, leaving customers’ personally identifiable information vulnerable.
How IoT connectivity is reaching new heights
IoT solutions utilizing SIM-based cellular technology for connectivity are not new -- but the speed with which IoT is expanding, embracing ever more exciting and dynamic use cases is both compelling and creating market confusion in equal measure. From a market which is reaching maturity -- the standardized, tried and tested, M2M SIM IoT deployments -- to one (e.g. 5G SIM-based IoT) which is largely in its infancy, separating between those solutions that can be bought with confidence and those where continued innovation warrants discussion and consultation, may not be straightforward. And, for these latter cases, choosing the right cellular (SIM) technology and network type will require an understanding of the technical requirements for each use case and the data profile of the asset to be connected.
With the definition of IoT expanding almost daily and suppliers increasingly jumping on the IoT bandwagon, this is a complex landscape, requiring knowledge, understanding, and expert partnerships. Nick Sacke, Head of IoT Solutions, Comms365 explains how to navigate the maze of options to optimise and future proof your cellular IoT investments.
Does your Microsoft 365 need to be protected?
As organizations move to fully embrace cloud, the significant benefits of running IT infrastructure via cloud services are becoming even more evident. Not only do cloud-based services come at a far lower cost than physical platforms and deployments, IT leaders are also able to side-step much of the risk and 'heavy lifting' around tech investment and maintenance by moving this out of local data centers. They can also enjoy expert third-party systems management and reliable service delivery, without having to give up much of the control for end users.
Microsoft 365 is a great case in point. The procurement model for this ever-expanding suite of high-quality IT services is based around a price per user. It is easily scalable as teams and organizations grow and can therefore help to optimise budgets, avoiding payment for infrastructure that may go unused. It’s also growing, with new features and functionality added every day that will keep IT departments at the cutting edge of optimal business processes.
The essential ingredient to manage the complexity of energy models: AI
In just a few years, energy management has become a real headache. Not only must the growth in electricity consumption be taken into account, but also the reduction in fossil fuels, and the increase in the production of renewable energies, knowing that they operate intermittently -- a complexity that cannot be resolved without massive data collection, high computing capacity and AI algorithms.
While global warming should force us to reduce our energy consumption, on July 15, 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced an increase in global electricity demand of five percent in 2021 and four percent in 2022. This is a trend that is not ready to be reversed, driven by the increasingly abundant and electricity-intensive technology era, by a global population that should reach 10 billion in 2050 or even by the development of metropolises and megacities that are still energy intensive.
Game developers shouldn't overlook Python's potential
Python is an object-oriented, general-purpose, and high-level programming language that was developed in 1991 by Guido van Rossum. Since its development, Python is one of the most popular programming languages worldwide. It often ranks high in surveys -- for instance, it claimed the first spot in the Popularity of Programming Language index and came second in the TIOBE index.
Python has gained its acclaim as a widely used tool with multiple purposes for various projects, from data analytics and visualization to artificial intelligence, language development, design, and web development. Python isn’t renowned for its use in video game development. But should this mean game developers should just disregard Python completely?
Critical steps to ransomware protection in the cloud
The ransomware threat is very real with attacks growing in size and frequency, in part, because of the acceleration of digital transformation initiatives and the move to embrace digital services as well as the rapid implementation of hybrid ways of working.
As new digital systems required multiple access points for customers, partners, and employees, this has created a vastly expanded attack surface. This has hastened the rise in ransomware attacks, as attackers quickly took advantage of the increased number of possible attack vectors.
Lessons learned from 633 destructive ransomware events
The threat landscape continues to see rapid evolution, especially as the digital world grows increasingly connected and more organizations outsource business services. Adversaries are getting smarter, and their techniques are getting more advanced by the day. This has put a spotlight on the security of our global supply chain and how unstable and unprotected it is.
In fact, software supply chain attacks have tripled in 2021. The potential ripple effects of risks and disruptions within an organization’s supply chain that could ultimately impact their business are immense. Research shows that a data breach affecting multiple parties causes 26X the financial damage of the worst single-party breach.
Pay up or play different? Five tips for beating ransomware with backups
When it comes to ransomware, sometimes the cost of downtime can exceed the cost of paying up. Companies with frozen data and systems face loss of revenue, productivity, customer departures, damaged reputations, never mind the cost of the ransom itself. Take an organization like Colonial Pipeline, which should have had healthy backups in place to quickly recover from their attack and most likely did. However, they opted to shell out $4.4 million in ransom because they didn’t know how long it would take to get up and running again.
And according to ITIC's 2021 Hourly Cost of Downtime survey, one hour of a server being inoperable costs $300,000 or more for 91 percent percent of mid-sized and large enterprises.
Fighting cybercrime: What's next for Microsoft 365
It has been over a decade since we were first introduced to the Microsoft 365 brand -- and now it is one of the most used lines of subscription services in the world. Last year marked the 10th anniversary, and if we take a look back since its early days, the service has only expanded its scope and capabilities especially when it comes to the Security & Compliance Center.
The swift ascension of Microsoft 365 hardly comes as no surprise, given the hybrid world we now find ourselves in. However, as the number of M365 users continues to increase at a rapid pace, the security risks for both users and admins will only grow as well. To break it down, between January and December 2021 alone, Microsoft Azure Active Directory blocked more than 25.6 billion malicious attempts to hijack enterprise customer accounts by brute-forcing stolen passwords.
Breaking away from tech giants: Why businesses should consider Filecoin storage
When it comes to storing data, businesses can often feel inundated with options from a whole host of different providers all promising to offer competitive rates and the security of your businesses’ assets. Add blockchain solutions into the mix as well, and decision-makers have a lot to be weighing up when choosing the best solution for their business.
With cloud-based technologies and blockchain in particular, jargon can be a problem when it comes to fully understanding the principles and mechanics at play. For this reason, many business leaders may dismiss these technologies, without considering the benefits they could offer. So, what exactly is Filecoin?
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