Articles about Cloud

Ransomware made news headlines worldwide earlier this month after a successful attack against one of Toyota Motor Corp.’s parts suppliers forced the automaker to shut down 14 factories in Japan for a day, halting their combined output of around 13,000 vehicles.

That attack was the latest example of the threat ransomware poses to all industries. The most recent edition of SonicWall’s annual threat report states that the volume of ransomware attacks in 2021 has risen 231.7 percent since 2019. And an advisory jointly issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the FBI, and the NSA reveals the latest trend is ransomware as a service -- gangs of bad actors essentially "franchising" their ransomware tools and techniques to less organized or less skilled hackers.

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It’s hard to overstate the key role of application reliability and performance for today’s organizations. To compete effectively and grow in modern digital markets, businesses must meet high customer expectations for a great experience. Hybrid workplace strategies and work-from-home policies make it all the more critical to deliver a consistent high-quality experience wherever people work. Rising cyberthreats and an expanding attack surface call for a heightened focus on security. And agility is a must to support innovation and keep pace with fast-moving markets.

To address these needs, organizations increasingly host their applications in hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments. In a recent survey, A10 Networks and Gatepoint Research asked senior technology decision-makers about their experiences delivering applications in the cloud, and what today’s organizations need to achieve the digital resiliency on which their businesses depend.

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More than three-quarters (78 percent) of respondents to a new survey say managing user identities between multiple clouds is their number one challenge.

The study carried out by Forrester for Strata Identity finds 70 percent want to migrate to the cloud increase security and protect data. But at the same time 28 percent of companies are using four or more public/private clouds today and that's expected to more than double in two years to 65 percent.

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Nearly 90 percent of device assets in the modern organization are cloud-based, meaning physical devices such as laptops, tablets, smartphones, routers, and IoT hardware represent less than 10 percent of total devices.

However, the latest State of Cyber Assets report from JupiterOne analyzed nearly 10 million security policies and finds that cloud-specific ones represent less than 30 percent of the total.

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Cybersecurity company F-Secure is rebranding its corporate security business under the new name WithSecure and with a snazzy new logo, above.

Previously known as F-Secure Business, WithSecure will focus on corporate security products and solutions, while consumer security products and services remain available under the existing F-Secure name.

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New research from service orchestration and automation solutions company Stonebranch finds 88 percent of enterprises intend to grow their investment in these technologies this year.

The report is based on a survey of respondents from companies with over 1000 employees to find their views about automation and orchestration as it relates to cloud, data pipelines, IT operations, self-service enablement, and more.

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With cloud costs accounting for nearly a third of IT budgets in 2021 and predicted to dramatically increase in the coming years as more companies undergo cloud migration efforts, the need for organizations to get the highest possible value out of their cloud spend is fairly obvious. Actually doing so, however, is an increasingly challenging endeavor due to the complex nature of public cloud environments, as well as the increasing reliance on containers and microservices.

When it comes down to it, the cloud promises speed, but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that speed at a lower cost than traditional data centers. Maximizing the efficiency of your cloud spend requires buy-in from the entire organization, from the company leadership that makes buying decisions, to the finance teams that track and monitor that spend, all the way down to the developers, engineers and architects responsible for building and implementing those solutions. While there are those who believe that this is just not possible in the world of the public cloud, more modern and diligent approaches have proved that it most certainly is.

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A new survey of more than 800 IT professionals finds that 55 percent of respondents are using three or more cloud providers and 57 percent have five or more cloud security tools.

But the study from Orca Security shows this combination of multi-cloud adoption and disparate tooling is overwhelming security teams with inaccurate alerts. For example, 59 percent of respondents receive more than 500 public cloud security alerts a day, and 38 percent receive more than 1,000 a day.

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Enterprises are producing larger and larger amounts of data and as they deploy more IoT, edge and 5G devices the volume is only likely to increase.

This puts more pressure on storage capacity which has the potential to be an inhibiting factor in digital transformation. We spoke to Dr Tong Zhang, co-founder and chief scientist at ScaleFlux, to learn more about the importance of storage to enterprise IT plans and infrastructure.

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Microsoft is increasing the support it offers to startups by reducing the eligibility criteria for the Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub as the platform is made generally available. With the move, the company is looking to eliminate the boundaries that stand in the way of getting ideas off the ground.

Now billed as being "open to anyone with an idea", the Founders Hub is a startup ecosystem can be used by innovators regardless of whether they have funding or not. The platform gives users access to up to $150,000 in free Azure credits, free access to GitHub and Microsoft 365 as well as potential for mentorship and guidance from experts. There is also $1,000 of credit and more available with OpenAI.

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Windows users are familiar with Microsoft Defender running on their computers offering local protection, but there is also a cloud-based version of the security tool. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the result of the unification of Azure Security Center and Azure Defender.

Having already added support for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft has now added protection for Google Cloud Platform. The latest addition comes as Microsoft recognizes the fact that 92 percent of organizations now embrace a multi-cloud strategy.

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Cloud strategy can make or break an organization's ability to provide timely access to data in order to deliver actionable insights.

Digital infrastructure, data management and analytics company Hitachi Vantara is launching a range of new hybrid cloud products and services that aim to deliver agility, scalability, and flexibility for both private and hybrid clouds.

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The old days of having systems in-house where they were easy to control are long gone. Businesses today are increasingly reliant on a range of cloud, SaaS and other solutions that can be a challenge to manage.

A new report from CloudBolt Software shows that 88 percent of over 500 senior tech people surveyed say they want a 'manager of managers' -- an overarching solution to bridge the siloes, unify the overall multi-cloud/multi-tool strategy, and actively govern everything from a single location.

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Cloud is an enabler of productivity and provides the infrastructure which supports modern distributed workforces. But it also poses a serious security risk to businesses that are unprepared to cope with modern threats. Figures from 451 Research show that 40 percent of organizations have experienced a cloud-based data breach in the past 12 months.

Organizations are spending millions on firewalls, endpoint protection and other security measures. What these organizations are missing, however, is visibility and control of security policies that govern 'what can talk to what' and 'who can talk to who' across the entire organizational infrastructure, including on-premise, cloud-native, and hybrid cloud. This creates security blind spots and misconfigurations.

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Cloud take up is showing no signs of slowing down, with 97 percent of IT leaders in a new survey saying that their strategy includes the expansion of cloud deployments, however, 63 percent say that cyberthreats are the main obstacle to their cloud plans.

The study, from cloud security company Confluera, looks at how IT leaders detect, evaluate, and act against cybersecurity threats in today's cloud environment.

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