There are five security advantages these new micro-segmentation offerings provide to the cloud that haven’t previously been obtainable:

1. New micro-segmentation offerings enable companies to use a consistent set of tools for both their local data centers and the cloud. In the past, security administrators and operators have had to use different security tools for their local data centers and each cloud service provider. This meant the security roles and policies within their companies had to be mapped and maintained across multiple data centers (private and public) and different toolsets – a very complex and costly undertaking. Contemporary micro-segmentation tools work within a company’s local data center and across leading cloud service providers’ data centers, greatly simplifying operations and reducing costs.
2. New micro-segmentation technologies provide encryption within the cloud from virtual machine to virtual machine. Traditionally, it was believed that data was secure enough once within the security protection provided by the perimeter of the public data center. New micro-segmentation technologies now encrypt data between the virtual computing instances within the cloud for each company and user community. This encrypted added layer of security is a major step forward for protecting the most sensitive data in the cloud.
3. New micro-segmentation technologies use concealment as a basis for security strategy. Traditional security offerings have used a fortress strategy in which they build a wall around the data they are trying to protect, but still leave the processing environment visible to cybercriminals. New micro-segmentation offerings conceal the applications and data on the cloud to the point where it doesn’t appear like anything is active. Cybercriminals aren’t seeing information such as active IP addresses, operating system types or other information that would provide insight as to how to attack a company’s data. The cybercriminals are not aware of the applications and data in the cloud, and therefore it is not a target.
4. Micro-segmentation prevents lateral movement of security infiltrations to the data center. A key concern of the cloud is that a company’s data may be compromised because “the other guy” on the cloud didn’t take the appropriate precautions. Micro-segmentation protects cloud users from “the other guy.” Each company’s cloud processing environment is isolated and secure. Malware and cybercriminals are bounded by any given segment, and this makes all users of the cloud more secure.
5. Micro-segmentation can prevent security breaches in the cloud. A security breach occurs only when a company’s data leaves the cloud, not when the actual security infiltration occurs. New micro-segmentation capabilities contain threat intelligence that recognizes abnormalities and invoke policies to prevent data from leaving the cloud where these inconsistencies occur until the appropriate security analysis can be applied.

The cloud has never been more secure and micro-segmentation takes cloud security to amazing to new levels, so that enterprises can fully realize the benefits of the cloud even for their most critical and sensitive data.

About the Author

Rod Sapp, Global Vice President, Security and Cloud Product Management, Unisys

Rod Sapp manages the Unisys products portfolios including Enterprise Servers, storage, security products and cloud products.

Rod and his team are responsible for business planning, server portfolio definition, partner selection & management, and product launch and lifecycle management.

Rod’s organization collaborates extensively with Unisys sales channels and clients as well as Unisys engineering and services organizations to develop market-leading whole product solutions. Rod’s organization works closely with Unisys strategic technology partners including Dell, IBM, EMC, Oracle, VCE, Intel and Microsoft.

Rod’s background includes ten years of sales experience and twenty years of product and portfolio management that has included the Unisys ClearPath mainframe servers and more recently comprises the Unisys X86 business, storage offerings and software products.

Source: TheWHIR

It is little surprise that internet advertising is growing, or that mobile advertising growth outpaces desktop, but the extent of these trends is striking. There was a 20 percent increase in overall spending to $60 billion in the US in 2015, and mobile ad spend roughly doubled in that time. Still, the report shows that based on time spent, mobile still represents a major opportunity for advertisers, with 25 percent of time but only 12 percent of advertising spent on mobile. Non-mobile internet use takes 22 percent of consumer’s time, and 23 percent of advertising spending.

Ad blockers and muted videos represent major growing barriers to the effectiveness of that advertising, however, with 93 percent of internet users considering using ad blocking software, and 81 percent muting video ads. Privacy is also a looming issue, with 50 percent saying they are very concerned about data privacy and how companies use customer data.

READ MORE: China Said to Push for More State Control Over Video Websites

US data privacy regulation policy is in currently in development by the FCC, with advertisers expressing fear earlier this week that their effectiveness could be curtailed by proposed rules.

The report also highlights the declining use of text as a form of internet communication, suggesting it is being replaced in many areas by voice and image. The number of Baidu queries by speech, for instance, had reached one in ten in September 2014, when the company’s chief scientist Andrew Ng predicted that half of all searches will be done by voice or image in 2020.

As big data is adopted by businesses, opportunities for business apps will continue to emerge, according to the report, which is potentially a boon for both web hosts and cloud service providers.

A general point made throughout the report is that the pace of market transformation related to the internet is out of proportion with historical changes in media or technology. The rapid pace has made many internet companies highly profitable very quickly, but it puts pressure on companies to be nimble and forward-thinking.

Source: TheWHIR

SEE ALSO: Special Report: The Internet of Things and You

Mobile traffic growth will be driven by streaming video, as consumers now in their teens lead a shift away from traditional televisions. Smartphone TV and video viewing by teens has increased by 85 percent in the last 4 years. The shift will see streaming video, including embedded video in social media and on web pages, grow by 55 percent to well over 30 exabytes globally each month, or close to 70 percent of all mobile data traffic, over the next five years. Web browsing by contrast will grow at a compound annual rate of 15 percent.

LTE subscriptions increased by 150 million to 1.2 billion in Q1 2016. Smarphone subscriptions also rose, and Ericsson expects them to exceed basic phone subscriptions in the third quarter of this year.

The report also calls for “global spectrum harmonization to secure early 5G deployments.”

Cisco also predicts that video will make up more than half of all mobile data traffic by 2020, and Gartner identified mobile video as a huge opportunity for communication service providers (CSPs) last year. Data center interconnection is another market likely to benefit from mobile video growth.

Ericsson partnered with AWS in February to encourage telecoms and CSPs to build links to the cloud to improve the efficiency of mobile app delivery, in anticipation of increased data demands. The company also joined with Orange Telecom in November to test different networking approaches and hardware for IoT devices.

Source: TheWHIR

SEE ALSO: Security Pros Split on Whether Private Data is Safer with Government or Private Companies

The documents, later obtained by Bloomberg, span 2,239 pages and are heavily redacted. The records don’t identify hackers or say whether sensitive information was accessed or money was stolen, Reuters said. The Fed didn’t immediately have a comment on the report.

Cyber security at central banks is under increased scrutiny following the theft of more than $80 million from the Bangladesh central bank’s accounts at the New York Fed. The Reuters article covered cases involving the Fed’s Board of Governors in Washington and the news agency didn’t have access to reports from local teams at the 12 regional Fed banks, which include New York.

Theft Briefing

House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, on Tuesday sent a letter to New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley asking for a briefing and information related to the February theft. Hackers stole from Bangladesh Bank’s account at the New York Fed, which has said instructions to make the payments were authenticated by the Swift message system that’s widely used by financial institutions.

READ MORE: Half-Baked Government Consolidation Causes Cybersecurity Headaches: Report

While acknowledging that the Bangladesh bank’s systems “appear to have been the weak link” in that case, the Smith letter states that it’s Congress’s responsibility to ensure that the New York Fed is “taking all precautions to protect American finances and aggressively execute its own role as overseer of Swift.”

In response to a letter earlier this year from Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York, New York Fed General Counsel Thomas Baxter said that “there is no evidence of any attempt to penetrate Federal Reserve systems in connection with the payments in question.”

Source: TheWHIR

Whereas an attacker needs to find some way to access your network, a malicious employee’s already inside. From the beginning, they’re operating from within your firewall, from within every line of defense designed to prevent a data breach. Not only does this make them significantly more difficult to stop, it also means they can cause far more damage if left unchecked.

So what can you do, exactly? How can you prevent an insider from wreaking havoc within your security perimeter?

First, understand their motivations

The motive behind a malicious insider’s actions often boil down to one of two things: either they’re acting on some frustration or grievance with their company, or they’re motivated purely by financial gain. The good news is that the former can be mitigated through good management techniques. After all, an employee won’t generally have reason to cause harm to their company if they love their job, right?

Of course, understanding’s only the first step. You aren’t really going to be able to do much to satisfy an employee that’s angry about being laid off, nor can you really stop a greedy insider threat with kind words and good management. In order to actually protect your data, you’ll need to take things a little further.

Second, implement strict access controls

Too often, I see enterprises that seemingly take a communal approach to file security. That is to say, everyone has access to everything – even a lowly desk jockey in accounting is able to log in to a file repository containing their business’s most sensitive data. Simply put, this is unacceptable – an employee should only be able to access a particular file or repository if it’s directly related to their work.

Otherwise, they need to be locked out.

Third, utilize document-centric security

Now, even access controls won’t always stop an employee if they’re aware of a particular security hole or glitch. That’s where document control comes in. If you protect all of your sensitive files with a solution that lets you control how, when, and where they’re accessed, then it won’t matter if a malicious insider releases them into the wild – you can just flick a switch and they’ll be unusable.

Finally, be proactive

Last but certainly, always make sure you stay abreast of the latest vulnerabilities, and remove access permissions from employees that no longer work for you. A disgruntled former IT professional might be aware of an unpatched vulnerability that they can exploit to access your network – it falls to you to keep that from happening. Active prevention offers more protection than even the most hardened firewall.

About the Author

Max Emelianov started HostForWeb in 2001. In his role as HostForWeb’s CEO, he focuses on teamwork and providing the best support for his customers while delivering cutting-edge web hosting services.

HostForWeb Facebook

HostForWeb Twitter

Source: TheWHIR

Demandware is based in Burlington, Massachusetts, and traded on the NYSE, with share prices just below $48 at Tuesday’s close. Salesforce estimates it will bring in an extra $100 to $120 million in the second half of fiscal 2017, but Demandware’s value to Salesforce will largely come through providing ecommerce to its existing customer base, and in bringing Demandware’s enterprise customers onto Salesforce’s core CRM products.

“Demandware is an amazing company—the global cloud leader in the multi-billion dollar digital commerce market,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce. “With Demandware, Salesforce will be well positioned to deliver the future of commerce as part of our Customer Success Platform and create yet another billion dollar cloud.”

SEE ALSO: Magento, WooCommerce Lead Ecommerce Platform Market Share: Report

Demandware’s customers include globally recognized brands like L’Oreal and Marks & Spencer, and the company enables them to deliver personalized experiences with software for web, mobile, social, and in-store shopping.

“Demandware and Salesforce share the same passionate focus on customer success,” said Demandware CEO Tom Ebling. “Becoming part of Salesforce will accelerate our vision to empower the world’s leading brands with the most innovative digital commerce solutions that enable them to connect 1:1 with customers across any channel.”

It appears from comments in a blog post by Ebling that Demandware employees will all join Salesforce.

A report released in March by aheadWorks shows the Demandware platform is used by 1.2 percent of the Alexa top 1 million sites. It trails far behind Magento and WooCommerce in that regard, but is still tied for 11th among all ecommerce providers, and adding even a small percentage of Salesforce’ customers would easily push it into the top ten.

Source: TheWHIR

DigitalOcean has hired a local team and partnered with NASSCOM’s 10,000 Startups initiative in order to support the Indian startup ecosystem. The NASSCOM program brings corporations and early stage Indian tech companies together.

“India is poised to unleash a tremendous amount of innovation in the next decade,” Ben Uretsky, CEO and co-founder of DigitalOcean said in a statement. “We want to empower the next generation of software companies by providing them robust and easy to use cloud infrastructure they need to grow.”

Bangalore is DigitalOcean’s second data center in Asia. The facility will feature DigitalOcean’s latest servers and network architecture.

Source: TheWHIR