The digital landscape is changing at a rapid pace, and with change comes an increase in the need for cybersecurity measures that protect businesses. Although technology is providing exciting opportunities, it also brings with it challenges that enterprises must learn to overcome.
With the advancement in technology, employees are no longer stuck working at their desk in order to access the information they need to do their jobs. This freedom allows greater flexibility and productivity, but it also opens the door for enterprise cybersecurity threats and the potential for unauthorized access to proprietary information.
Ransomware was a top concern for enterprises around the world in 2017 and continues to be one moving forward. Organizations around the globe are increasingly dependent on technology to help reach business goals, but it comes with risk. Cybercriminals are masters at exploiting technological weak spots to hit companies where it hurts the most.
It feels like every time we turn around there is a new cybersecurity threat to report that organizations need to protect themselves from. Malware is an unfortunate reality of living in a digital world, but there are many lessons we can learn from these attacks to safeguard sensitive material.
It’s been two weeks since the IT world was rocked by the news of the CPU vulnerabilities known as Meltdown and Spectre. It’s making headline news due to how far the vulnerabilities extend—to nearly every processor manufactured over the past 20 years—as well as the potential impacts in mitigating these vulnerabilities. Every server, computer, tablet, phone or any other computing device with a modern CPU is potentially affected. (See WEI’s Customer Advisory about Meltdown and Spectre in this blog post.)
Happy New Year! As we say hello to 2018, we can reflect on the massive progress technology made throughout 2017. The cloud came to a new level of maturity, cybersecurity incidents rocked the world and organizations embraced hyperconverged infrastructure as the future of data center modernization. But what lies ahead? Read on for a look at cybersecurity predictions for the coming year.
Have you ever looked at your dog or cat staring out the window of your house towards the horizon? Ever wonder if they contemplate what may be beyond their visible perimeter? It used to be that internal IT did not have to contemplate what lay beyond the perimeter. Network security was fairly simple – create a wall of security around the data center and its resources, along with the users and their desktops scattered throughout the building. Traffic passed through the perimeter firewall while users passed through the front building entrance to access the network. It was a page out of the medieval castle defense playbook in that unauthorized users, unknown devices and external threats were kept at bay outside of the walled perimeter.
WEI is aware of the new vulnerabilities related to Intel and other CPUs which could potentially allow an attacker to gather privileged information from CPU cache and system memory, putting enterprise security at risk. The vulnerabilities are code named “Meltdown” and “Spectre." The “Meltdown” issue is reported to only affect Intel CPUs while “Spectre” is reported to affect Intel, AMD, and ARM. The impact of these vulnerabilities could extend back to CPUs from as early as 1995 (in the case of Intel).
This holiday season, the frenzy is not about the “must have” toy, it is the must have investment – Bitcoin. The TV networks cannot stop talking about the dramatic rise in its value that seems to occur on a daily basis, if not hourly. The cable business news shows shuffle in cryptocurrency and financial industry pundits to discuss the significance the new digital gold and the cryptocurrency market at large. They debate each other whether bitcoin is a sure deal that will continue returning positive dividends, or a bubble that is about to burst. Both sides of the argument have their “experts” as to why you should or should not get involved bitcoin mania. CNBC reports that people are maxing out their credit cards to buy, buy, and buy. Some people are even taking home equity loans on their house to maximize the number of coins they can afford.
Mark Twain popularized the phrase, “There’s gold in them thar hills,” when he wrote about the gold rush of 1849. Today, the gold lies not in the hills of California, but within crypto mining servers dispersed across the Internet. This new gold is not mined by the power of the pick and shovel, or even dynamite. Instead, computer processors power the mining operations that create this digital gold. Welcome to the modern day gold rush of today’s digital age.
