Quantcast
Channel: Amazon Web Services – GlobalDots – CDN, Security and Performance Solutions
Viewing all 56 articles
Browse latest View live

Cisco to Acquire Viptela, CloudFlare Rolls Out IOT Security Solution and More in This Week’s News

0
0

Cisco to Acquire Viptela and Add SD-WAN Skills to Portfolio

The IT company is planning to acquire Viptela, the SD-WAN expert company. The $610 mil deal is another effort by Cisco to strengthen its cloud-position. The Viptela acquisition is expected to go through during the second half of 2017. According to Cisco, the logic behind the purchase is that customers are increasingly turning to SD-WAN solutions when managing their WAN. Viptela’s technology is expected to simplify management, increase agility and reduce costs when interconnecting dispersed enterprise networks.

This latest acquisition comes as no surprise since Cisco announced it plans to invest in the cloud back in 2016. Cisco is shifting its business to a subscription model, and previous Jasper Technologies and AppDynamics acquisitions are just confirming it.

Read More:

Cloud Pro, Cisco

CloudFlare Wants to Secure IoT Devices with Orbit Security

Last week CloudFlare announced the release of a new IoT security service. Dubbed Orbit, the game-changing IoT solution will allow manufacturers to secure devices by deploying patches or blocking vulnerabilities. The service comes as a response to the epidemic of IoT-fueled Denial-of-Service attacks (DDoS) during 2016.

Orbit is intended to operate as a firewall, positioning itself a layer prior the device in order to filter malicious requests and act as a shield. Devices protected by Orbit will also benefit from CloudFlare’s data protection and performance optimization features, which will translate to lower power consumption and longer battery life.

Read More:

Bizety, Cloudflare Blog

Akamai Adds liveOrigin to Its Media Services Live Solutions

In order to bridge the gap between live streams and television broadcasting, Akamai announced it will add new capabilities to Media Services Live, its linear video streaming delivery system. The new capabilities, collectively named liveOrigin, are expected to improve broadcast quality and ensure always-on availability for OTT providers.

The new purpose-built capabilities, collectively referred to as liveOrigin, will offer broadcast-quality ingestion, decrease latency, and create redundancies to ensure always-on availability for OTT providers. LiveOrigin is said to reduce standard linear live stream latencies from 30 to 10 seconds for HLS/HDS/DASH streaming in HTTP.

Read More:

Bizety

AWS Cloud Revenue Soars, Microsoft Follows

According to their latest financial statements, Amazon Web Services is still the leader in the cloud business sector with Microsoft slowly closing the gap. AWS revenue went up by 42% reaching $3.66 bn for Q1, north from $2.56 bn for last year. Whilst revenues are growing, market growth is slowing down for AWS, which amounted at 69% last year. Truth be told, it is hard to maintain such high grow rates.

Microsoft’s cloud efforts are paying off. Although full figures are not yet disclosed, they did confirm Azure sales increased by 93% from last year. The third major player, Google and parent entity Alphabet, has not yet released financial reports for their Google Cloud Platform.

Read More:

Cloud Pro

New Vulnerability: PC Carrying Intel Server Chipsets Can be Hacked Remotely

A new vulnerability consisting in a critical remote code execution (RCE) has been discovered. All computers packed with Intel server chipsets in the last 9 years can be affected. The issue lies in the remote management features that allow system administrators to remotely handle fleets of computer. Misusing it enables hackers to hijack and take control of the computers remotely. According to Intel, the security risk was discovered and reported by Maksim Malyutin of Embedi back in March.

By leveraging the vulnerability, a potential hacker can gain access to a computer’s hardware and perform malicious activities without getting noticed.,The operating system never detects any malicious activity as the remote controls have direct access to the computer’s network hardware.

The security flaw affects Intel manageability firmware versions 6.x, 7.x, 8.x 9.x, 10.x, 11.0, 11.5, and 11.6 for Intel’s AMT, ISM and SBT platforms. Intel has since rated the vulnerability as highly critical and recommends customers to install updates to their firmware as soon as possible.

Read More:

Hacker News

The post Cisco to Acquire Viptela, CloudFlare Rolls Out IOT Security Solution and More in This Week’s News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.


AWS vs Azure vs GCP – The Ups And Downs Of The Public Cloud Trifecta

0
0

One does not need to be an expert in the area of cloud computing to be aware of the public cloud trifecta, the three tech giants of the public cloud space. Amazon, Microsoft and Google hold the entire landscape with their respective products. As the title suggest, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) are the leaders that provide the most reliable, functional and safest cloud services.

Image Source

These companies have an enormous impact on the cloud sector which comes as no surprise considering that they greatly contributed to the overall evolution and progress of software development. Their approaches, processes, experiences and methodologies impacted all areas of cloud computing, whether it is for giant enterprises, B2B or B2C IT markets.

Tweet this: The cloud gets embraced by more people every day, from business crowds to the general population

Today, the cloud is widely adopted and has proved itself beneficent in all areas of its application. Moreover, it gets embraced by more people every day, from business crowds to the general population.

The Cloud Keeps Evolving

Constant demand propelled investments to the cloud industry. The market reacted by embracing innovation and improving all aspects of the cloud technology. Today IT necessities are “cloudified” and accessible while offering all kinds of benefits, from integration of resources and wide access to network to scalability, elasticity, reliability, security and more. Accordingly, revenues are hitting all time records with the public cloud spend increasing year over year. Researches from the statistics portal Statista estimate that this year’s revenue will reach over $138 bn, while over $181 bn is to be expected in 2018.

Tweet this: Public cloud revenue predictions – $138 bn in 2017, while $181 bn is to be expected in 2018

With such impressive sums of money involved within the sector, and considering the persistent growth of the market, it is wise to get to know it better. By knowing more about the topic, one will know how to best leverage it to meet requirements and achieve business goals. Although the cloud provides many benefits, different providers have certain differentiators that make them stand out from the others. Next we bring you a breakdown of the pros and cons, the ups and downs of the three major public cloud players.

Amazon Web Service (AWS)

There’s no point to try and fit a description for AWS better than their official one  

Amazon Web Services is a secure cloud services platform, offering compute power, database storage, content delivery and other functionality to help businesses scale and grow. “

Pioneer of cloud computing, the first AWS offerings were launched in 2006 to provide online services and client based applications. Amazon’s firm consistency is what kept AWS on the top since the day they were founded.  

Ups:

  • Data Collection – In this era of internet we are constantly served with tons of information. That challenges users to organize the collected data to avoid getting swamped and lost in it. It’s often necessary to build a data pipeline of a serverless architecture which is where AWS provides the best solutions. With a combination of serverless cloud services such as Amazon Kinesis Streams, AWS Lambda Functions and Amazon SQS queues, AWS provides a reliable structure which enables a smooth and flexible data collection flow.
  • Amount of Services and Features – AWS delivers the highest number of services on the market – allows to choose the operating system, web application platform, programming languages, database and other services.
  • Team Improvements – The usage of AWS can significantly help businesses grow.  Various studies showed that usage of AWS boosts team productivity by taking care of application work and enabling teams more valuable time for creative work.

Downs:

  • Complexity –  AWS is a complex infrastructure with its own rules and laws which can be a serious obstacle for teams that are not familiar with the AWS ecosystem.
  • Service Limitations – AWS service default limits are set according to average user needs. For more resources, users can submit a request and get access to additional resources, of course with certain expenses.  
  • Server Failure – At the end of February 2017, AWS cloud users were shocked by a massive server outage. AWS stated that servers were deleted by an incorrect input during maintenance. Whatever the reason may be, it resulted with cautious users and lost future customers.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft’s own description of Azure, AWS’ major competitor in the public cloud market:

Azure is a growing collection of integrated cloud services that developers and IT professionals use to build, deploy, and manage applications through our global network of datacenters. “

Ups:

  • Backups – Within the public cloud sector there are enormous concerns over server stability. Outages can result in data losses which is a worrying scenario for end user. Azure has an outage protection plan which replicates all user data to their secure virtual environments.
  • Business Benefits – Many user reviews reveal that Azure is the best decision when fast results is what makes a business recognizable. It offers numerous specific features which can be both time and cost efficient. Azure has data centers all around the globe which enables businesses to operate on different markets regardless of geography. More developed business intelligence and analytics support is possible thanks to managed SQL and NoSQL data services.
  • Easy to Learn – What distinguishes Azure from the other is their philosophy of sheer simplicity. The platform offers simple organizational structures for developing applications and Microsoft easy-to-use tools.

Downs:

  • Customer Service – Globally hosted servers are also a drawback. They may confuse customers who don’t follow or skip some of the rules. License to data restrictions depends on Microsoft approval upon request.
  • Difficulties in Monitoring – Business administrators often make small but significant mistakes. They are not involved in performance monitoring of their cloud servers and pathing. This aspect does require a higher level of expertise.

Google Cloud Platform

A brief description provided by Google

Google Cloud Platform is a suite of public cloud computing services. The platform includes a range of hosted services for compute, storage and application development that run on Google hardware.

When it seemed that AWS and Azure were the only serious market contenders, Google’s management decided to get on the market with their Google Cloud Platform. As a third powerful force in the public cloud industry, Google managed to contribute to a further market development by sharpening up the competition.

Ups:

  • Top Class Security – Nearly 20 years of experience in securing the most used platforms makes them entitled to huge trust. Businesses can be sure their data is in the right hands.. All data is encrypted under 256-bit AES between Google and data-centers which is further encrypted with several regularly changed master keys. Now that’s some encryptception.
  • Free Trial – This option can be crucial in choosing the optimal cloud solution. A thought-out move by Google.
  • Best Pricing – By opting for Google’s Cloud, you are sure to get the best rates. Google decided to charge in minute-level increments but with a 10-minute minimum charge. That way you pay only for the time you actually use their services. Also, long-term users with large workload are  granted with notable discounts

Downs:

  • Immaturity – GCP is the youngest of the three. That translates to a smaller variety of cloud service spectrum. Sizeable parts of Google’s budget are invested to improve this inexperience in order to bridge the gap with Azure and AWS in the future.
  • Servers – Google has a solid coverage in the United States, but falls behind in Europe and, particularly in Asia, with no coverage at all in South America. None of the big trio offers services in Africa.
  • Google Cloud Messaging – Social networking applications are leading the world of applications market where GCM is an indispensable tool. The big flaw is the size of messages which are strictly limited to 4096 bytes for most messages and 2048 bytes on iOS.

Tweet this: The ups and downs of the public cloud trifecta

Conclusion

Even though AWS holds the largest portion of the public cloud market, it would be inappropriate to claim it provides the best solutions. Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform sure have their vantages if you’re looking for easy business solutions or bulletproof security. The point is – there’s no universal best bet when it comes to public cloud providers, it all comes down to what best suits your specific needs. It’s why we wanted to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of the three major players, to make it easier for you to learn about them and make the best decision. Luckily, if you’re having trouble deciding which provider will best meet your needs, you can always turn to experts. Don’t hesitate to ask our experts here at GlobalDots to help you choose your best cloud solutions and more.

The post AWS vs Azure vs GCP – The Ups And Downs Of The Public Cloud Trifecta appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

AWS Announces Third Generation EC2, Cisco to Extend Security to Cloud With New Acquisition and More in This Week’s News

0
0

AWS Unveils Third Generation Elastic Cloud Computing

Last week, AWS unveiled their third generation of EC2 (Elastic Cloud Computing) instances.

In order to meet customer needs that require more powerful computing solutions for visualisations and 3D rendering, new AWS instances offer double the CPU power and host memory as well as the most powerful GPU available for cloud instances.

AWS said that the new instances were developed with heavy CPU-needs in mind. Customers that deal with CPU-heavy processes, like medical imagery or seismic visualisations, can now leverage the G3 EC2 instances for all performance and graphic-intensive applications.

Read More:

AWS Blog, Cloud Pro

Cisco Will Acquire Observable Networks to Extend Their Security to the Cloud

In an effort to enable cloud-hosted network forensics security apps, Cisco has announced the acquisition of Observable Networks.

The platform will enable Cisco’s customers to leverage StealthWatch solutions in their cloud. It’s meant to provide real-time monitoring of all traffic, including user tracking, device-tracking and other types of traffic. Observable’s platform uses machine learning to faster detect threats and enables faster reactions to them, which will significantly improve Cisco’s own StealthWatch solutions.

“The ability to improve visibility, security and response capabilities across an entire IT surface, including highly distributed branch environments and public cloud infrastructures, is becoming increasingly important as companies and organizations continue their digital transformation.”

Rob Salvagno, VP of Corporate Business Development at Cisco

The acquisition is due to come through somewhere in the first quarter of 2018, while staff and technology alignments are yet to be defined.

Read More:

Cisco Blog, Cloud Pro

Hacked Dating Site to Reimburse 37 Million Affected Users

Roughly 37 million users whose personal data has been exposed about two years ago, are now entitled to a reimbursement after a US court order.

Ashley Madison, the dating site whose data has been breached, has pledged to pay somewhere near $3,500 to each victim.

The site was hacked back in July 2015 and hackers published almost 100 GB of sensitive data onto the dark web. The leaked data included victims’ usernames, first and last names, email addresses, passwords, credit card data information, street names, phone numbers, and transactions records, which led to blackmails and even suicides.

Read More:

Reuters, Hacker News

Russian Hacker Sentenced to 9 Years for Financial Fraud

Alexander Tverdokhlebov, a 29-year-old Russian-born hacker, has been sentenced to 110 months of prison for running botnets as well as for stealing and trafficking credit card numbers.

The hacker has been accused of running huge 500,000-machines botnets and reselling sensitive data on exclusive Russian-speaking cybercriminal forums. The hacker was arrested in February and pleaded guilty on March 31.

According to court data, Tverdokhlebov offered illegal services on underground forums, operated several botnets made of compromised home and office computers. Further data suggests that Tverdokhlebov claimed that “he possessed 40,000 stolen credit card numbers and could control up to 500,000 infected computers.” at various occasions between 2009 and 2013.

Upon the hacker’s arrest in February, authorities seized $5 million in Bitcoin and $272,000 in cash.

Read More:

Hacker News, IBTimes

In-Car Skype for Business Now Available for BMW Owners

BMW is expanding its in-car tools and will include the ability to join Skype meetings. The feature will be integrated through BMW’s iDrive system.

The software can inform the driver about upcoming meetings or reschedulings. The announcement comes as the latest business-focused tool BMW has implemented.

“In today’s always-on culture, people need to be productive from anywhere – including their cars. Commute times are reaching record highs and people work from a variety of locations. This means that people need a way to capitalise on time spent in their cars.”

Ulrich Homann, Chief Architect at Microsoft

The new features will launch in Germany, France and the UK first, but the dates are yet to be announced.

Read More:

Cloud Pro

The post AWS Announces Third Generation EC2, Cisco to Extend Security to Cloud With New Acquisition and More in This Week’s News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

AWS Brings Own Machine Learning Security to the Cloud, Facebook to Build Another Eco-Friendly Data Center and More in This Week’s News

0
0

AWS Introduces Machine Learning Security Service Macie

Last week, Amazon Web Services unrolled a new security service for their cloud offerings. Dubbed Macie, the new fully managed service for S3 leverages machine-learning algorithms to identify and protect sensitive data against data leaks and unauthorized access.

Macie’s core capabilities weren’t built in-house by Amazon. The service itself was being developed by Harvest.ai, which some may remember as a $20 million acquisition made by AWS earlier this year. They developed a product called Macie Analytics meant to report and prevent possible data leaks within enterprise environments. The same product has now been integrated with Amazon S3 and went to become – Amazon Macie.

Macie is currently available to AWS customers throughout US East and West regions. The service supports only S3 services, but the company said it plans to soon expand its machine learning security capabilities to other Amazon services as well.

Read More:

Forbes, Bizety

Facebook Announces 10th Data Centre

The social network has revealed that it plans to open its tenth data center by 2019. The new facility will be built in New Albany, Ohio, with expected construction costs at some $750m.

As is the case with all of Facebook’s data center facilities, energy efficiency and environmental impact are a big concern. To keep it as environmentally friendly and efficient as possible, the tech giant said it will focus on building its facilities by using clean energy from renewable sources.

“We are committed to powering our data centers with clean and renewable energy, and New Albany is no exception, like our previous seven data centers, our facility in New Albany will be powered by 100% renewable energy.”

Rachel Peterson, Director of Data Center Strategy and Development @ Facebook

Peterson also said that the New Albany data center will be one of the most advanced, energy-efficient data centers in the world.

Read More:

Cloud Pro

Washington University Experiment Shows How Smart Devices Can Be Hijacked to Spy on Users

An experiment performed by a team of students at Washington University demonstrated how easily smart devices can be leveraged as spying tools. The attack method uncovered by four student hackers showed how to easily track every move by making use of built-in microphones and speakers.

The attack, dubbed CovertBand, works even through walls, operating as a sonar to pick up reflected sound waves and efficiently mapping the movement of anyone near the audio source. For the attack to succeed the hacker would first need to hijack the victim’s smart device (by installing a third-party app) and then by playing music tracks with embedded pulses which are picked up via microphone.

By leveraging AudioRecord API to record the signals simultaneously on two microphones, the app could easily achieve 2D tracking. The CovertBand attack requires access only to a speaker and microphone to be successful. It means a criminal could use any smart devices in the victim’s home to spy and gather private data.

Read More:

Hacker News, CovertBand

Microsoft Will Acquire Cycle Computing to Further Boost Azure Offerings

In a recent announcement, Microsoft disclosed the acquisition of Cycle Computing, a cloud computing orchestration company. The acquisition comes as a result of Microsoft’s continued efforts to further strengthen their High-Performance Computing (HPC) and other Big Computing capabilities in the cloud.

“At Microsoft, we believe that access to Big Computing capabilities in the cloud has the power to transform many businesses and will be at the forefront of breakthrough experimentation and innovation in the decades to come.”

Jason Zander, Corporate VP @ Microsoft Azure

Although Cycle Computing had solid relationships with other cloud vendors, such as Google Cloud and AWS, prior to the acquisition, it will continue to support customers using those services. Future releases of the software, however, will be Azure-focused.

Read More:

Microsoft Blog, Cloud Pro

Two Zero-Day Exploits Discovered in Popular PDF Reader

Last week, security researchers discovered two critical security vulnerabilities within the Foxit Reader software. The “zero-day” weaknesses could enable hackers to easily run arbitrary code on a targeted computer.The first one was discovered by Ariele Caltabiano working with Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (CVE-2017-10951) and is a command injection bug. The second bug is a file write issue found by Steven Seeley at Offensive Security (CVE-2017-10952).

The first one was discovered by Ariele Caltabiano working with Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (CVE-2017-10951) and is a command injection bug. The second bug is a file write issue found by Steven Seeley at Offensive Security (CVE-2017-10952).

If you are using Foxit Reader and PhantomPDF, make sure you have the “Safe Reading Mode” feature enabled. Additionally, you can also uncheck the “Enable JavaScript Actions” box from the Preferences menu (some features may crash, however).

Read More:

Hacker News, Zero Day Initiative

The post AWS Brings Own Machine Learning Security to the Cloud, Facebook to Build Another Eco-Friendly Data Center and More in This Week’s News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

Google Further Strengthens its Cloud Security, Over 500,000 Car-Tracking Device Passwords Leaked and More in This Week’s News

0
0

Google Announces New Cloud Security Initiatives

Last week Google announced two new initiatives that are bound to further strengthen their presence in the cloud security sphere.

Forseti Security and Google Cloud Endpoints are the new frameworks that will be available to developers. The first, Forseti Security, is a joint effort brought forward with Spotify aimed to develop an open-source security toolkit that focuses on GCP security.

Forseti has three main features. It catalogues and informs developers about what’s present in their cloud. Then the Scanner feature offers both monitoring and warning systems. Last, the Enforcer feature makes sure that policy files and resources stay as intended, by detecting and fixing GCP resources discrepancies through Google Cloud APIs.

The second project, Google Cloud Endpoints, is meant to help developers better manage their APIs. It mainly deals with API keys and the way developers distribute them, by giving them control over JSON Web Tokens.

Google has been moving aggressively to boost their cloud security. The new tools in the cloud security toolbox are just confirming it.

Read More:

Bizety

Passwords for 540,000 Car Tracking Devices Leaked

Over half a million records from the SVR Tracking company have been leaked. The exposed data contains personal and vehicle data of both drivers and businesses using the service.

The wide open misconfigured Amazon web server was first discovered by Kromtech Security Center. The public storage bucket left publicly accessible a cache containing some 540,000 SVR accounts.

The leaked data contained email addresses and passwords, users’ vehicle data (VIN – vehicle identification numbers, and GPS IMEI numbers), as well as information on 427 dealerships that use SVR’s services.

The exposed database contained exact information about exactly in the car the physical tracking unit was placed. It is still unclear if the data was accessed by hackers.

Read More:

MacKeeper Blog, Hacker News

Cloud Apps Growing in Popularity – 40% of European Organisations Uses Them

According to a recent research by IDC, 25% of EU businesses are using a hybrid approach to app hosting. The cloud, however, is becoming increasingly popular, with 40% of organisations claiming they keep on and off-premise environments separated.

IDC also found that 31% of businesses prefer hosting front-end tech on the public cloud, with back-end infrastructure on on-premise. The company also said it doesn’t seem as a sustainable model on the long run.

Connecting cloud environments with ad hoc bridges in a hybrid fashion won’t be enough in 2018, (…) Nor will standardising on one external provider, at least for large or innovative companies. Developers and line of business require ‘best of breed,’ and the purchasing department wants to avoid being locked in.

Giorgio Nebuloni, Research Director @ IDC European Infrastructure Group

The research has once again highlighted the need for businesses to embrace a multi-cloud strategy in order to optimize their app environments.

Read More:

Cloud Pro, IDC

Viacom Leaves Data Up for Grabs on Unconfigured Amazon Server

A researcher from UpGuard recently discovered a misconfigured Amazon Web Server S3 cloud storage bucket with around 1GB of credentials and Viacom backend configuration files.

The exposed credentials could have easily been misused by hackers to bring down Viacom’s IT infrastructure. The available data could also have granted access to MTV, Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon cloud servers.

The exposed data also contained Viacom’s master key to Amazon Web Services account, and the credentials required to build and maintain Viacom servers.

UpGuard contacted Viacom executives promptly. All the credentials have since been changed and the server has been secured. It’s still unclear if hackers were able to exploit the “up for grabs”. The media giant, however, claims there is no evidence of data abuse.

Read More:

Hacker News

SAP Acquires Gigya to Bring Identity Management to its Hybris Suite

SAP announced the acquisition of identity management company Gigya. The deal, which has been widely reported to be worth some $350 million, is aimed to integrate Gigya features into SAP’s Hybris platform.

The move will allow Europe’s largest software company to further expand its e-commerce services.

Gigya brings a wealth of skills and expertise that will significantly enhance the SAP Hybris Profile solution and allow us to take leadership of the emerging customer identity and access management market

Carsten Thoma, President and Co-founder @ SAP Hybris

Gigya serves roughly 1.3 billion customers globally across sites that use its software to manage identities and profiles. The deal will ultimately enable SAP to track the details of where and how customers shop, whether it be online, in-store or through mobile apps.

Read More:

SAP, Cloud Pro

The post Google Further Strengthens its Cloud Security, Over 500,000 Car-Tracking Device Passwords Leaked and More in This Week’s News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

Public Cloud Market Will Bring in Over $260 Billion in 2017, Credit Card Data Stolen From Over 40 Hyatt Hotels And More in This Week’s News

0
0

Gartner Says Public Cloud Revenue Will Exceed Analyst Expectations

According to analysts from Gartner, the overall public cloud market will grow by 18.5% in 2017, mostly fueled by rising SaaS revenues. The company predicts software revenue to bring in $58.6 bn by the end of 2017.

The SaaS revenue growth is expected mainly due to cloud providers upselling value through apps and products as a service rather than anchored to devices.

“Final data for 2016 shows that SaaS revenue was far greater in 2016 than expected, reaching $48.2 billion, SaaS is also growing faster in 2017 than previously forecast, leading to a significant uplift in the entire public cloud revenue forecast.”

Sid Nag, Research Director @ Gartner

However, research shows that IaaS offerings will achieve the biggest gains until the end of the year. IaaS is expected to rake in $34.7 bn, a 36.6% rise YoY. PaaS predictions are positive too. The least profitable cloud area in 2016 achieved $9 bn in revenue is expected to rise to $20.8 bn this year.

Read More:

Gartner, Cloud Pro

Hyatt Hotels Fall Victim to Yet Another Card Breach

Hyatt Corp. said its cybersecurity department found signs of unauthorized access to payment data entered at the front desk of certain Hyatt locations between March and July 2017.

The company proceeded to alert customers about the incident, the second one in the last two years. Hyatt claims they identified and mitigated the issue as well as launched a comprehensive investigation to track any other possible risks.

The breach impacted 41 properties across 11 countries while the hacked data contained cardholder name, card number, expiration dates and internal verification code. The hospitality chain also said that the breach impacted only a small percent of their customers during the incident period and that no other information was accessed.

Cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs also pointed out that a lot of online and offline merchants are compromised by card-stealing software making it very likely that private data and card numbers from Hyatt hotels were stolen from multiple connected victim companies.

Read More:

KrebsOnSecurity, Hyatt

Google Will Power its Cloud and Infrastructure From 100% Renewable Sources by the End of 2017

Google revealed that by the end of 2017 it will achieve its goal of 100% renewable energy usage.

The company boasts it managed to reduce energy overheads (power used for non-computing tasks) to 12% and using its in-house machine learning system to operate data centers helps save additional 15%.

Google’s Chris Talbott, head of cloud storage product marketing, and Kate Brandt, sustainability lead, explained a blog post that the tech industry will have a significant impact on the environment if businesses don’t opt for sustainable sources. The duo also pointed out that alongside price, reliability, security and openness when choosing technology providers, sustainability should become one of the key factors as well.

Read More:

Google Blog, Cloud Pro

Microsoft Releases Patches for Severe Office Zero-Day & DNS Exploits Among Other

Last week Microsoft released a series of security patches to address a total of 62 known vulnerabilities in its products.

Besides the newly discovered MS office zero-day flaws, Microsoft also patched issues with its Windows operating system, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft Lync.

The huge update release called “October patch Tuesday” also solves a critical Windows DNS vulnerability that could be exploited by a malicious DNS server to execute arbitrary code on the targeted system.

Here’s a list of patched critical and important vulnerabilities:

  • Microsoft Office Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2017-11826)
  • Microsoft Windows DNSAPI Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2017-11779)
  • Windows Subsystem for Linux Denial of Service Vulnerability (CVE-2017-8703)
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint XSS Vulnerability (CVE-2017-11777)

Read More:

Hacker News

New Android Ransomware Encrypts Data and Changes PIN

A new and dangerous ransomware has been discovered by researchers from Slovakia cybersecurity company ESET.

First spotted in May this year, the ransomware, dubbed “DoubleLocker”, not only encrypts users’ data but also locks them out of their devices by changing the PIN lock on the screen.

The ransomware is the first that manages to misuse Android’s accessibility features previously mostly targeted by banking Trojans.

“Given its banking malware roots, DoubleLocker may well be turned into what could be called ransom-bankers. This two-stage malware first tries to wipe your bank or PayPal account and subsequently locks your device and data to request a ransom.”

Lukáš Štefanko, malware researcher @ ESET

The malicious software spreads by presenting itself as an Adobe Flash update on compromised websites. Researchers are afraid that upgraded DoubleLocker-like ransomware could sprout out in the future and go as far as to steal banking credentials other than just extorting ransom money.

Read More:

KrebsOnSecurity, WeLiveSecurity

 

The post Public Cloud Market Will Bring in Over $260 Billion in 2017, Credit Card Data Stolen From Over 40 Hyatt Hotels And More in This Week’s News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

Microsoft Crushes Cloud Services Predictions, New Strain of IoT Malware Discovered And More in This Week’s News

0
0

Microsoft Hits $20 Billion Cloud Services Target Way Earlier Than Expected

Although its target was to reach an annual run rate of $20 bn by the end of 2018, Microsoft managed to hit the target way earlier than planned.

According to a quarterly report from last week, Microsoft’s cloud services achieved $20.4 bn already this quarter.

“This quarter we exceeded $20 bn in commercial cloud ARR, outpacing the goal we set just over 2 years ago. Our results reflect accelerating innovation and increased usage and engagement across our businesses as customers continue to choose Microsoft to help them transform.”

Satya Nadella, CEO @ Microsoft

A great boost to the figures is the latest Costco deal. As reported by Reuters, the retailer had chosen Azure as its prefer hybrid cloud solution.

Here are some more stats from Microsoft’s quarterly report:

  • A 17% increase in server products and cloud services propelled by Azure’s 90% YoY revenue growth
  • A 14% revenue increase of Intelligent Cloud (reached $6.9 bn)
  • 10% YoY increase of Office commercial products and cloud services driven by Office 365 42% revenue growth
  • Office 365’s subscribers rose to 28 million
  • LinkedIn brought $1.1 billion in revenues for the quarter
  • Overall revenue reached $24.5 bn (a 12% YoY increase)

These latest stats come as a result of Microsoft’s heavy investments in their cloud analytics, AI, IoT and improved Office services, making them an even more relevant player in the cloud race against  AWS and GCP.

Read More:

Reuters, Cloud Pro

“Reaper” Is The Latest IoT Malware And Is Spreading Fast

Last week reports from Israel and China indicate a rise of a new strain of IoT malware.

Some researchers claimed that the newly found malware, dubbed “Reaper”, managed to infect over a million organizations. Later on, the number was dismissed by some botnet experts saying that the actual number of Reaper-affected devices was much smaller.

According to security company Arbor Networks, the size of the botnet is somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 bots. The company also noted that hackers didn’t yet assemble a million-device botnet although, considering the pool of available vulnerable devices, they definitely have the capacity to do so.

The Reaper malware is partly based on Mirai’s code, a powerful IoT botnet used for high-scale cyber attacks throughout last year.

Arbor’s team also pointed out that they have identified 2 million potential hosts which haven’t yet been recruited by the botnet. The researchers also said that hackers may have intentionally slowed the spread to keep a low profile.

It appears as Reaper is a product of the Chinese cybercrime underground, being built to be offered as a “stresser” service on the Chinese DDoS-for-hire market.

Read More:

KrebsOnSecurity

Hackers Could Hijack Unpatched LG Smart Appliances

A research conducted by Check Point, the Tel Aviv-based security company, found severe security vulnerabilities in LG SmartThinQ home devices. According to researchers, the devices can be remotely hijacked without the need for the hacker to be on the same network as the targeted device.

Aptly named HomeHack, the vulnerability resides within the mobile app used for handling the LG smart home appliances. Simply put, it allows the attacker to gain control of any device connected through the app.

Considering that some LG smart home devices also carry a camera, the vulnerability could easily turn them into spying robots.

The vulnerability was disclosed to LG on July 31 and the company has since issued an update to patch the threat. All LG SmartThinQ users are strongly advised to update their LG mobile app to the latest version (1.9.23) to prevent appliance hijacking.

Read More:

Hacker News, Check Point Blog

The New AWS P3 Instances Will Enable Even Faster Machine Learning

AWS is set to turbo-charge their machine learning business offerings.

The newly introduced P3 instances for their Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) offers up to 14 times better performances compared to previous capabilities. Businesses will be able to deploy and train machine-learning apps much faster, start operating instantly and with minimal latency.

Each P3 instance carries one, four and up to eight Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs per virtual machine, connected through 300GB/s 2nd-gen Nvidia NVLink for a superior and low-latency GPU-to-GPU communication. Underneath all of it is a support by 64 vCPUs based on a modified version of Intel’s Xeon E5-2686v4 processor.

The P3 instances are mainly built to support systems that require instant analysis of vast amounts of data such as molecular modeling, computational fluid dynamics, computational finance, genomics, seismic analysis, and autonomous vehicle systems.

Read More:

Forbes, Cloud Pro

Hacker Injects JavaScript Into CoinHive’s DNS And Makes it Mine Cryptocurrency For Him

CoinHive is a popular online service which enables website owners to embed a JavaScript to leverage visitors’ CPUs power for cryptocurrency mining.

Last week unknown actors managed to gain access to Coinhive’s CloudFlare account and modify its DNS to replace CoinHive’s JS code and embed their own malicious version into thousands of user websites.

It seems that the hackers reused an old password that was leaked back in the 2014 Kickstarter data breach. The hijacking was discovered and fixed, however, for over 6 hours CoinHive users were mining the Monero cryptocurrency for the hacker rather than for themselves.

Read More:

Hacker News

 

The post Microsoft Crushes Cloud Services Predictions, New Strain of IoT Malware Discovered And More in This Week’s News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

Equifax Attack Dissected, 69% of US Businesses Have Suffered a DDoS Attack And More In This Weeks News

0
0

Equifax attack dissected

3 months has passed from the biggest and most significant data breaches in history. This event has impacted awareness about security in many ways. Cloudflare has released a blog post where they dissect the Equifax tragedy in detail so every developer can be aware of the risks that are out there. One of the biggest lessons however is to always have multiple people in charge of your security (or have it outsourced to professionals) since we’re all humans and mistakes can happen.

At the same time we found this post by Cloudflare, Krebsonsecurity also published a post about Equifax that explains how you can opt-out of their system which makes money at the expense of your privacy.

Image Source

Equifax attacks dissected: Cloudflare

Opt-out of Equifax: Krebsonsecurity

69% of US businesses have suffered a DDoS attack

CDNetworks have recently released a study in which they’ve found that 69% of US businesses claim that they’ve suffered a successful DDoS attack in the last year. Considering this is a very alarming percentage it should come to no surprise that 81% of businesses today feel they are at risk of a DDoS attack.

“The results show that most US companies are mindful of the alarming recent rise in DDoS attacks, and are increasing their investment in mitigation technology in response”
– Akex Nam (Managing Director @ CDNetworks Americas)

Download the report: CDNetworks

Netmeds and Inshorts show success with PacketZoom

PacketZoom, a company from San Mateo, CA that focuses on speeding on mobile apps by eliminating performance roadblocks in WiFi and cellular networks, released two case studies last week demonstrating their usefulness. They’ve increased their client’s speed up to 2x and disconnection rate dropped 80% for Inshorts and Netmeds. PacketZoom gives the ability to developers to analyze, control and optimize mobile app performance across multiple networks by eliminating performance roadblocks in the first mile, enhancing download speed by ip to 3x, taking network errors down by up to 90% and reducing the costs associated with CDN.

Image Source

Read more: Bizety

Why Cloudflare acquired Neumob

Cloudflare recently announced they’re acquiring Neumob, a platform for speeding up mobile apps and reducing errors on challenging mobile networks. They’re saying they will integrate Neumob into their global network to give Neumob a truly global reach. Even though it may seem this acquisition is just a point product added to their portfolio, it seems it actually represents a key part of their long term “Super Secret Cloudflare Master Plan”.

Read more: Cloudflare

root9B Holdings is ceasing operations

root9b Technologies, the company touted itself as an IT security training firm that is staffed by many ex-military leaders with cybersecurity experience at the Department of Defense and National Security Agency (NSA) announced they’re ceasing operations at the end of the year. The entire story about this company can be found on Brian Krebs‘s blog, where he explains just how and when this happened.

“With the absence of any operating assets remaining after the Foreclosure, the Company will cease any and all operations effective, December 31, 2017”
– root9B official announcement

Image Source

Read more: KrebsonSecurity

The post Equifax Attack Dissected, 69% of US Businesses Have Suffered a DDoS Attack And More In This Weeks News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.


Cloud Computing Trends to Watch for in 2018

0
0

One of the main key value propositions of cloud computing and an all-around promise to all enterprises and businesses is a simple and easy-to-understand pricing model.

It seems that this is counter-intuitive now as time moves on – according to Ovum the biggest challenge in 2018 for many organizations will be how to deal with the ever-increasing level of complexity from the number of different cloud services on offer.

For enterprise customers looking to adopt cloud services, the journey and its different stages need to be planned so that cloud adoption is strategic and not just tactical. This means adoption of the cloud is not a single path to follow – the influence of overall market, competitors and geographic challenges are now a crucial part of the process.

In this article we’re going to discuss what the future brings for the cloud computing industry and how enterprises and other businesses can stay prepared for what awaits.

A More Mature Approach to Cloud Adoption & Selection

In just two years, from 2015 to 2017, enterprise cloud spending increased drastically:

  • 50% of enterprises reported an increase in SaaS spending
  • 46% of enterprises reported an increase in IaaS spending
  • 47% of enterprises reported an increase in PaaS spending

However, as the picture below shows, the workloads that are moving to the cloud now are changing based on a multicloud approach:

Image Source

The image above tells us a number of things.

In 2018, there will be a bigger percentage and bigger differentiation between workloads, with application development and testing, and mobile app stores and data still the top two workloads. But in 2019 only 20% of enterprises plan to move to the cloud compared to just over 30% in 2018. This tells us that in 2019, a lot of workloads will already be moved to the cloud.

As cloud adoption is becoming a more mature process, so is cloud selection. The selection process is usually driven by factors such as cost, performance, reliability and reputation. Deeper analysis provides evidence that workloads are being classified and deployed in the most appropriate environments.

Organizations are staying away from being 100% reliant on a single supplier and in turn want to have a small number of key suppliers to reduce maintenance and management, which improves their position in bargaining on pricing.

80% of enterprises say that they will be using hybrid cloud by 2019.

Linking IT Activity to Business Outcome

Linking all IT activities with business outcomes and just how these IT activities are profitable has always been difficult for CIOs. With cloud computing this relationship becomes much clearer due to a ‘clean slate principle’ where the cost, performance and risks can be assessed and quantified as a part of a business case for the move.

In 2018, as Ovum’s research suggests, CFOs will be looking to obtain a direct relationship between spending (not just IT, but general spending) and business outcomes. This kind of transparency will govern that many businesses, especially LoB (Line of Business) leaders, will be focusing on cloud adoption.

How Data Sovereignty and Regulation are Impacting the Cloud

Government and industry regulatory rules on data and privacy as well as political instability in some cases are driving demand for different layers of public cloud availability based on geo-location.

Because of this disruption, a three-tier model has emerged:

  • Global centralized resources
  • Regional resources
  • Local in-country presence

Image Source

Most of the regional and the local in-country presence is realized by using colocation facilities, and service providers are moving towards deploying cost-effective approaches for having a more distributed presence at the edge.

Pre-fabricated data centers that have a complete data center capability do not provide all the answers for operators looking to deploy regional and edge resources. One of the key capabilities that are missing include the speed and scale elements of any development, plus the expected associated reduction of complexity and cost.

What dictates the speed and expansion as well is land, power and connectivity. Most colocation providers and wholesale data center providers have enough land to start with and since there’s been a lot of acquisition activity during the last couple of years (Verizon and CenturyLink have both sold their global DC estates) there’s also a lot of local and regional capacity available from colocation providers.

What’s also worth the mention is that in 2018/2019 AWS, Microsoft, IBM, Google, Alibaba and others will be opening more and more in-country data centers. One of the most interesting and big opportunities for this will be UK, given they will be conducting a lot of cloud-first government projects. Both Microsoft and AWS are adding regions in the UK for the public sector and government.

Organizational Maturity and the Cloud

In 2016, cloud adoption was used for increasing business productivity workloads, but a selection of cloud services was also a confused mix of business-led actions without a clear IT strategic position. The two main factors for this move were switching capex to predictable opex spending and the need to transform businesses to become digital.

The result of the first factor was ‘Lift and shift’, which in 2016 meant that everyone moved their on-premise solutions to the cloud which resulted in only marginal cost benefits. The conclusion was that simply moving a n-tier application stack from one environment to the cloud had very little impact on how the application operated or engaged with the environment.

2018 will see the continued rise of “cloud-native” approach to truly modernize the organizations IT capability where the monolithic stack is broken down into smaller, reusable components that have the ability to be assembled and combined in a way that protects data integrity, performance, security and service quality as well as it scales. 56% of cloud spending will be directed to SaaS in 2018, which is roughly $70B.

Image Source

The future IT department will need to embrace the concepts of decentralised IT management environments, greater use of emerging technologies, and increased automation but without the pitfalls of decentralization like duplicated spending, lack of clear lines of responsibility and compromised security and outages that could damage the company. This is highly tied to the second factor of cloud adoption which is digitalization since technology and its adoption is a major part of it.

2018 will see an evolution in how organizations are thinking about the path to the cloud, and what that path must deliver while on the journey.

The Struggle With Integrating Infrastructure as Code Into Operational Processes

Cloud native goes hand in hand with using microservices and containers. Containers enable applications and processes to operate as an isolated unit of application deployment. This improves overall developer experience, fosters code and component reuse, and simplifies operations for cloud native applications.

What will become a struggle is actually managing containers since new and different tools and skills are needed to provide the ability for containers to be actively scheduled and managed by a central orchestrating process. Currently Kubernetes is the tool of choice for 47% of respondents in the OpenStack user survey in 2017. Skills are what’s currently in very short supply in todays ‘cloudy world’.

DEM or Digital Enterprise Management requires seven different aspects to be considered, and also requires expertise in seven different disciplines:

  • The digital workplace
  • Agile application development
  • The alignment of security teams with operations teams or secops
  • Service management excellence
  • Big data
  • IT Optimization
  • Support for multisource cloud

In 2018 new roles and structures will emerge, such as site-reliability engineers.

The Great Cloud Market Switch

According to Ovum, 80% of the entire IaaS market is served by AWS (Amazon Web Services), GCP (Google Cloud Platform), IBM Bluemix, and Microsoft Azure.

What will start to happen in the enterprise sector is the need for enterprises to start moving mission-critical workloads such as ERP to the cloud in addition to other productivity workloads such as email. This will incentivize the leading cloud providers to position themselves as enterprise-grade in an attempt to secure much of the new workload moving to the cloud.

The result of this is that the Mid-market and SME customers, at the start of 2018, will start to realise they are in a difficult position where they have just as great a need for enterprise-grade cloud as large enterprise customers, but they do not require this globally. Specialist providers for the mid-market will emerge, which will be a tipping point and the mid-market cloud industry will grow exponentially.

Mid-market customer adoption of workloads on the cloud:

Image Source

Conclusion

As the use of cloud continues to mature and become more strategic, the market in cloud computing will change in 2018 and beyond. This change will impact every aspect of cloud computing.

2018 and 2019 will be the pivotal years for the maturity and the expansion of cloud computing. The rise of cloud-native applications designed for multi-cloud environments that include simple open integrations and make workloads portable will begin to change the way organizations value IT within business.

This article is based on research conducted by Ovum, and the complete research can be downloaded here.

If you have any questions about cloud computing or if you’re having trouble deciding which provider will best meet your needs, you can always turn to experts. Don’t hesitate to ask our experts here at GlobalDots to help you choose your best cloud solutions and more.

The post Cloud Computing Trends to Watch for in 2018 appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

Black Friday & Cyber Monday Performance Report, G-Cloud Initiative Extended And More In This Weeks News

0
0

Black Friday & Cyber Monday Performance Report 2017

Black Friday weekend has come to a close. Catchpoint published an article where they dive into their traffic reports and show us which specific retailers had outage problems during this shopping season. Some examples are H&M and Lowe’s which had their share of problems. The article goes into some general stats like mobile performance and overall performance of all websites they’ve successfully analyzed.

Image Source

Read more: Catchpoint Blog

UK’s G-Cloud initiative extended for another 12 months

G-Cloud is the UK Government initiative targeted at easing procurement by public-sector bodies in departments of the UK Government of commodity IT services that use cloud computing. The Ceown Commercial Service (CCS) and the Government Digital Service (GDS) of the UK have decided to extend the G-Cloud for another 12 months, taking its expiry date up to 21 May 2019. They’ve stated that they need more time to develop the digital marketplace and make the end-to-end buyer and supplier journey more improved.

Image Source

Read more: CloudPro

PacketZoom raises $5 million in Series A

PacketZoom, a San Mateo-based company that specialises in optimising app performance on Wi-Fi and cell phone networks, announced last week that it had raised $5 million in Series A funding. This funding is intended to scale the development and optimization of their APMO (Application Performance Management and Optimization) platform.

Image Source

Read more: Bizety

AWS wraps up Kubernetes as a managed container service

Developers will in the near future be able to run Kubernetes much more easily on AWS. The cloud computing giant has announced their support for the open source container platform Kubernetes as a managed service. Kubernetes will be the second supported container system by AWS. This decision entails that AWS has decided to support Google’s technology due to its widespread popularity with customers.

Image Source

Read more: CloudPro

An average IT organization faced 8 DDoS attacks per day in Q3 2017

Corero DDoS Trends reports clearly states that DDoS attacks have doubles in frequency over the last 6 months of 2017 and this roughly means that an average organization was hit 237 times by a DDoS attack per month on average – or eight attack attempts a day. That’s a 35% increase over the previous quarter.

Image Source

Read more about the report: eSecurity Planet, Download the report

The post Black Friday & Cyber Monday Performance Report, G-Cloud Initiative Extended And More In This Weeks News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

The Era Of GDPR Is Here, Cloud Revenues Reached $180 Billion In 2017 And More In This Weeks News

0
0

The era of GDPR

The deadline for complying with the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is approaching as the law comes into effect on May 25, 2018. GDPR will lay down mandates for how companies collect, store, delete, alter and otherwise process the personal data of EU citizens. For each organization that does not comply with these laws there will be a heavy fine. The penalties for those in breach of the new regulations are significant: a tiered approach to fines, with the maximum being up to 4% of annual global turnover or €20 Million (whichever is greater).

Image Source

Read more: Bizety

Cloud revenues growth reaches 24% year-on-year

Cloud is now the new normal for enterprises as stated by Synergy Research Group. IaaS and PaaS services claimed the larges growth rates at 47%, with enterprise SaaS falling behind with a rate of 31%. In total the revenues reached $180 billion last year. What’s also a fact is that cloud service markets grew three times more faster than spend on the hardware and software used for cloud infrastructure.

“We tagged 2015 as the year when cloud became mainstream and 2016 as the year when cloud started to dominate many IT market segments. In 2017 cloud was the new normal”
– John Dinsdale (Chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group)

Read more: CloudPro

Complacency in the European DDoS mitigation market?

The new European survey from CDNetworks released recently shows a sharp increase in DDoS investment and an overwhelming confidence in DDoS resilience in UK and DACH regions, despite 54% of business in Europe suffering successful attacks in the last 12 months.

Some more information:

 49% have invested in DDoS mitigation technologies for the first time in the last 24 months.
 Almost two-thirds (64%) are likely to invest more next year than in the last 12 months.
 9% will be investing in DDoS mitigation for the first time in the next 12 months.
 The average annual spend is £24,200, with one-fifth of businesses investing more than £40,000.

Image Source

Read more: information age

Meltdown and Spectre bugs explanation

These two new and scary security issues that affect nearly every computer are complex to wrap your hear around, especially if you’re not tech-savvy. The Cloudflare team have written an article explaining how these bugs take advantage of very technical systems that modern CPUs have implemented to make computers extremely fast. These vulnerabilities concern security experts because they have their roots in the very design of the processor that powers your gadget.

Image Source

Read more: Cloudflare Blog, Popular Science

1 billion Indian citizens are now susceptible to identity theft

The Aadhaar database that contains personal data on over one billion Indian citizens was recently breached very easily by a journalist at Indian publication celled The Tribune. This leaves the majority of Indian citizens vulnerable to identity theft and intrustions of privacy.

Image Source

Read more: Hacking Threat

The post The Era Of GDPR Is Here, Cloud Revenues Reached $180 Billion In 2017 And More In This Weeks News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

Google Further Strengthens its Cloud Security, Over 500,000 Car-Tracking Device Passwords Leaked and More in This Week’s News

0
0

Google Announces New Cloud Security Initiatives

Last week Google announced two new initiatives that are bound to further strengthen their presence in the cloud security sphere.

Forseti Security and Google Cloud Endpoints are the new frameworks that will be available to developers. The first, Forseti Security, is a joint effort brought forward with Spotify aimed to develop an open-source security toolkit that focuses on GCP security.

Forseti has three main features. It catalogues and informs developers about what’s present in their cloud. Then the Scanner feature offers both monitoring and warning systems. Last, the Enforcer feature makes sure that policy files and resources stay as intended, by detecting and fixing GCP resources discrepancies through Google Cloud APIs.

The second project, Google Cloud Endpoints, is meant to help developers better manage their APIs. It mainly deals with API keys and the way developers distribute them, by giving them control over JSON Web Tokens.

Google has been moving aggressively to boost their cloud security. The new tools in the cloud security toolbox are just confirming it.

Read More:

Bizety

Passwords for 540,000 Car Tracking Devices Leaked

Over half a million records from the SVR Tracking company have been leaked. The exposed data contains personal and vehicle data of both drivers and businesses using the service.

The wide open misconfigured Amazon web server was first discovered by Kromtech Security Center. The public storage bucket left publicly accessible a cache containing some 540,000 SVR accounts.

The leaked data contained email addresses and passwords, users’ vehicle data (VIN – vehicle identification numbers, and GPS IMEI numbers), as well as information on 427 dealerships that use SVR’s services.

The exposed database contained exact information about exactly in the car the physical tracking unit was placed. It is still unclear if the data was accessed by hackers.

Read More:

MacKeeper Blog, Hacker News

Cloud Apps Growing in Popularity – 40% of European Organisations Uses Them

According to a recent research by IDC, 25% of EU businesses are using a hybrid approach to app hosting. The cloud, however, is becoming increasingly popular, with 40% of organisations claiming they keep on and off-premise environments separated.

IDC also found that 31% of businesses prefer hosting front-end tech on the public cloud, with back-end infrastructure on on-premise. The company also said it doesn’t seem as a sustainable model on the long run.

Connecting cloud environments with ad hoc bridges in a hybrid fashion won’t be enough in 2018, (…) Nor will standardising on one external provider, at least for large or innovative companies. Developers and line of business require ‘best of breed,’ and the purchasing department wants to avoid being locked in.

Giorgio Nebuloni, Research Director @ IDC European Infrastructure Group

The research has once again highlighted the need for businesses to embrace a multi-cloud strategy in order to optimize their app environments.

Read More:

Cloud Pro, IDC

Viacom Leaves Data Up for Grabs on Unconfigured Amazon Server

A researcher from UpGuard recently discovered a misconfigured Amazon Web Server S3 cloud storage bucket with around 1GB of credentials and Viacom backend configuration files.

The exposed credentials could have easily been misused by hackers to bring down Viacom’s IT infrastructure. The available data could also have granted access to MTV, Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon cloud servers.

The exposed data also contained Viacom’s master key to Amazon Web Services account, and the credentials required to build and maintain Viacom servers.

UpGuard contacted Viacom executives promptly. All the credentials have since been changed and the server has been secured. It’s still unclear if hackers were able to exploit the “up for grabs”. The media giant, however, claims there is no evidence of data abuse.

Read More:

Hacker News

SAP Acquires Gigya to Bring Identity Management to its Hybris Suite

SAP announced the acquisition of identity management company Gigya. The deal, which has been widely reported to be worth some $350 million, is aimed to integrate Gigya features into SAP’s Hybris platform.

The move will allow Europe’s largest software company to further expand its e-commerce services.

Gigya brings a wealth of skills and expertise that will significantly enhance the SAP Hybris Profile solution and allow us to take leadership of the emerging customer identity and access management market

Carsten Thoma, President and Co-founder @ SAP Hybris

Gigya serves roughly 1.3 billion customers globally across sites that use its software to manage identities and profiles. The deal will ultimately enable SAP to track the details of where and how customers shop, whether it be online, in-store or through mobile apps.

Read More:

SAP, Cloud Pro

The post Google Further Strengthens its Cloud Security, Over 500,000 Car-Tracking Device Passwords Leaked and More in This Week’s News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

Public Cloud Market Will Bring in Over $260 Billion in 2017, Credit Card Data Stolen From Over 40 Hyatt Hotels And More in This Week’s News

0
0

Gartner Says Public Cloud Revenue Will Exceed Analyst Expectations

According to analysts from Gartner, the overall public cloud market will grow by 18.5% in 2017, mostly fueled by rising SaaS revenues. The company predicts software revenue to bring in $58.6 bn by the end of 2017.

The SaaS revenue growth is expected mainly due to cloud providers upselling value through apps and products as a service rather than anchored to devices.

“Final data for 2016 shows that SaaS revenue was far greater in 2016 than expected, reaching $48.2 billion, SaaS is also growing faster in 2017 than previously forecast, leading to a significant uplift in the entire public cloud revenue forecast.”

Sid Nag, Research Director @ Gartner

However, research shows that IaaS offerings will achieve the biggest gains until the end of the year. IaaS is expected to rake in $34.7 bn, a 36.6% rise YoY. PaaS predictions are positive too. The least profitable cloud area in 2016 achieved $9 bn in revenue is expected to rise to $20.8 bn this year.

Read More:

Gartner, Cloud Pro

Hyatt Hotels Fall Victim to Yet Another Card Breach

Hyatt Corp. said its cybersecurity department found signs of unauthorized access to payment data entered at the front desk of certain Hyatt locations between March and July 2017.

The company proceeded to alert customers about the incident, the second one in the last two years. Hyatt claims they identified and mitigated the issue as well as launched a comprehensive investigation to track any other possible risks.

The breach impacted 41 properties across 11 countries while the hacked data contained cardholder name, card number, expiration dates and internal verification code. The hospitality chain also said that the breach impacted only a small percent of their customers during the incident period and that no other information was accessed.

Cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs also pointed out that a lot of online and offline merchants are compromised by card-stealing software making it very likely that private data and card numbers from Hyatt hotels were stolen from multiple connected victim companies.

Read More:

KrebsOnSecurity, Hyatt

Google Will Power its Cloud and Infrastructure From 100% Renewable Sources by the End of 2017

Google revealed that by the end of 2017 it will achieve its goal of 100% renewable energy usage.

The company boasts it managed to reduce energy overheads (power used for non-computing tasks) to 12% and using its in-house machine learning system to operate data centers helps save additional 15%.

Google’s Chris Talbott, head of cloud storage product marketing, and Kate Brandt, sustainability lead, explained a blog post that the tech industry will have a significant impact on the environment if businesses don’t opt for sustainable sources. The duo also pointed out that alongside price, reliability, security and openness when choosing technology providers, sustainability should become one of the key factors as well.

Read More:

Google Blog, Cloud Pro

Microsoft Releases Patches for Severe Office Zero-Day & DNS Exploits Among Other

Last week Microsoft released a series of security patches to address a total of 62 known vulnerabilities in its products.

Besides the newly discovered MS office zero-day flaws, Microsoft also patched issues with its Windows operating system, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft Lync.

The huge update release called “October patch Tuesday” also solves a critical Windows DNS vulnerability that could be exploited by a malicious DNS server to execute arbitrary code on the targeted system.

Here’s a list of patched critical and important vulnerabilities:

  • Microsoft Office Memory Corruption Vulnerability (CVE-2017-11826)
  • Microsoft Windows DNSAPI Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2017-11779)
  • Windows Subsystem for Linux Denial of Service Vulnerability (CVE-2017-8703)
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint XSS Vulnerability (CVE-2017-11777)

Read More:

Hacker News

New Android Ransomware Encrypts Data and Changes PIN

A new and dangerous ransomware has been discovered by researchers from Slovakia cybersecurity company ESET.

First spotted in May this year, the ransomware, dubbed “DoubleLocker”, not only encrypts users’ data but also locks them out of their devices by changing the PIN lock on the screen.

The ransomware is the first that manages to misuse Android’s accessibility features previously mostly targeted by banking Trojans.

“Given its banking malware roots, DoubleLocker may well be turned into what could be called ransom-bankers. This two-stage malware first tries to wipe your bank or PayPal account and subsequently locks your device and data to request a ransom.”

Lukáš Štefanko, malware researcher @ ESET

The malicious software spreads by presenting itself as an Adobe Flash update on compromised websites. Researchers are afraid that upgraded DoubleLocker-like ransomware could sprout out in the future and go as far as to steal banking credentials other than just extorting ransom money.

Read More:

KrebsOnSecurity, WeLiveSecurity

 

The post Public Cloud Market Will Bring in Over $260 Billion in 2017, Credit Card Data Stolen From Over 40 Hyatt Hotels And More in This Week’s News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

Microsoft Crushes Cloud Services Predictions, New Strain of IoT Malware Discovered And More in This Week’s News

0
0

Microsoft Hits $20 Billion Cloud Services Target Way Earlier Than Expected

Although its target was to reach an annual run rate of $20 bn by the end of 2018, Microsoft managed to hit the target way earlier than planned.

According to a quarterly report from last week, Microsoft’s cloud services achieved $20.4 bn already this quarter.

“This quarter we exceeded $20 bn in commercial cloud ARR, outpacing the goal we set just over 2 years ago. Our results reflect accelerating innovation and increased usage and engagement across our businesses as customers continue to choose Microsoft to help them transform.”

Satya Nadella, CEO @ Microsoft

A great boost to the figures is the latest Costco deal. As reported by Reuters, the retailer had chosen Azure as its prefer hybrid cloud solution.

Here are some more stats from Microsoft’s quarterly report:

  • A 17% increase in server products and cloud services propelled by Azure’s 90% YoY revenue growth
  • A 14% revenue increase of Intelligent Cloud (reached $6.9 bn)
  • 10% YoY increase of Office commercial products and cloud services driven by Office 365 42% revenue growth
  • Office 365’s subscribers rose to 28 million
  • LinkedIn brought $1.1 billion in revenues for the quarter
  • Overall revenue reached $24.5 bn (a 12% YoY increase)

These latest stats come as a result of Microsoft’s heavy investments in their cloud analytics, AI, IoT and improved Office services, making them an even more relevant player in the cloud race against  AWS and GCP.

Read More:

Reuters, Cloud Pro

“Reaper” Is The Latest IoT Malware And Is Spreading Fast

Last week reports from Israel and China indicate a rise of a new strain of IoT malware.

Some researchers claimed that the newly found malware, dubbed “Reaper”, managed to infect over a million organizations. Later on, the number was dismissed by some botnet experts saying that the actual number of Reaper-affected devices was much smaller.

According to security company Arbor Networks, the size of the botnet is somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 bots. The company also noted that hackers didn’t yet assemble a million-device botnet although, considering the pool of available vulnerable devices, they definitely have the capacity to do so.

The Reaper malware is partly based on Mirai’s code, a powerful IoT botnet used for high-scale cyber attacks throughout last year.

Arbor’s team also pointed out that they have identified 2 million potential hosts which haven’t yet been recruited by the botnet. The researchers also said that hackers may have intentionally slowed the spread to keep a low profile.

It appears as Reaper is a product of the Chinese cybercrime underground, being built to be offered as a “stresser” service on the Chinese DDoS-for-hire market.

Read More:

KrebsOnSecurity

Hackers Could Hijack Unpatched LG Smart Appliances

A research conducted by Check Point, the Tel Aviv-based security company, found severe security vulnerabilities in LG SmartThinQ home devices. According to researchers, the devices can be remotely hijacked without the need for the hacker to be on the same network as the targeted device.

Aptly named HomeHack, the vulnerability resides within the mobile app used for handling the LG smart home appliances. Simply put, it allows the attacker to gain control of any device connected through the app.

Considering that some LG smart home devices also carry a camera, the vulnerability could easily turn them into spying robots.

The vulnerability was disclosed to LG on July 31 and the company has since issued an update to patch the threat. All LG SmartThinQ users are strongly advised to update their LG mobile app to the latest version (1.9.23) to prevent appliance hijacking.

Read More:

Hacker News, Check Point Blog

The New AWS P3 Instances Will Enable Even Faster Machine Learning

AWS is set to turbo-charge their machine learning business offerings.

The newly introduced P3 instances for their Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) offers up to 14 times better performances compared to previous capabilities. Businesses will be able to deploy and train machine-learning apps much faster, start operating instantly and with minimal latency.

Each P3 instance carries one, four and up to eight Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs per virtual machine, connected through 300GB/s 2nd-gen Nvidia NVLink for a superior and low-latency GPU-to-GPU communication. Underneath all of it is a support by 64 vCPUs based on a modified version of Intel’s Xeon E5-2686v4 processor.

The P3 instances are mainly built to support systems that require instant analysis of vast amounts of data such as molecular modeling, computational fluid dynamics, computational finance, genomics, seismic analysis, and autonomous vehicle systems.

Read More:

Forbes, Cloud Pro

Hacker Injects JavaScript Into CoinHive’s DNS And Makes it Mine Cryptocurrency For Him

CoinHive is a popular online service which enables website owners to embed a JavaScript to leverage visitors’ CPUs power for cryptocurrency mining.

Last week unknown actors managed to gain access to Coinhive’s CloudFlare account and modify its DNS to replace CoinHive’s JS code and embed their own malicious version into thousands of user websites.

It seems that the hackers reused an old password that was leaked back in the 2014 Kickstarter data breach. The hijacking was discovered and fixed, however, for over 6 hours CoinHive users were mining the Monero cryptocurrency for the hacker rather than for themselves.

Read More:

Hacker News

 

The post Microsoft Crushes Cloud Services Predictions, New Strain of IoT Malware Discovered And More in This Week’s News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

Equifax Attack Dissected, 69% of US Businesses Have Suffered a DDoS Attack And More In This Weeks News

0
0

Equifax attack dissected

3 months has passed from the biggest and most significant data breaches in history. This event has impacted awareness about security in many ways. Cloudflare has released a blog post where they dissect the Equifax tragedy in detail so every developer can be aware of the risks that are out there. One of the biggest lessons however is to always have multiple people in charge of your security (or have it outsourced to professionals) since we’re all humans and mistakes can happen.

At the same time we found this post by Cloudflare, Krebsonsecurity also published a post about Equifax that explains how you can opt-out of their system which makes money at the expense of your privacy.

Image Source

Equifax attacks dissected: Cloudflare

Opt-out of Equifax: Krebsonsecurity

69% of US businesses have suffered a DDoS attack

CDNetworks have recently released a study in which they’ve found that 69% of US businesses claim that they’ve suffered a successful DDoS attack in the last year. Considering this is a very alarming percentage it should come to no surprise that 81% of businesses today feel they are at risk of a DDoS attack.

“The results show that most US companies are mindful of the alarming recent rise in DDoS attacks, and are increasing their investment in mitigation technology in response”
– Akex Nam (Managing Director @ CDNetworks Americas)

Download the report: CDNetworks

Netmeds and Inshorts show success with PacketZoom

PacketZoom, a company from San Mateo, CA that focuses on speeding on mobile apps by eliminating performance roadblocks in WiFi and cellular networks, released two case studies last week demonstrating their usefulness. They’ve increased their client’s speed up to 2x and disconnection rate dropped 80% for Inshorts and Netmeds. PacketZoom gives the ability to developers to analyze, control and optimize mobile app performance across multiple networks by eliminating performance roadblocks in the first mile, enhancing download speed by ip to 3x, taking network errors down by up to 90% and reducing the costs associated with CDN.

Image Source

Read more: Bizety

Why Cloudflare acquired Neumob

Cloudflare recently announced they’re acquiring Neumob, a platform for speeding up mobile apps and reducing errors on challenging mobile networks. They’re saying they will integrate Neumob into their global network to give Neumob a truly global reach. Even though it may seem this acquisition is just a point product added to their portfolio, it seems it actually represents a key part of their long term “Super Secret Cloudflare Master Plan”.

Read more: Cloudflare

root9B Holdings is ceasing operations

root9b Technologies, the company touted itself as an IT security training firm that is staffed by many ex-military leaders with cybersecurity experience at the Department of Defense and National Security Agency (NSA) announced they’re ceasing operations at the end of the year. The entire story about this company can be found on Brian Krebs‘s blog, where he explains just how and when this happened.

“With the absence of any operating assets remaining after the Foreclosure, the Company will cease any and all operations effective, December 31, 2017”
– root9B official announcement

Image Source

Read more: KrebsonSecurity

The post Equifax Attack Dissected, 69% of US Businesses Have Suffered a DDoS Attack And More In This Weeks News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.


Cloud Computing Trends to Watch for in 2018

0
0

One of the main key value propositions of cloud computing and an all-around promise to all enterprises and businesses is a simple and easy-to-understand pricing model.

It seems that this is counter-intuitive now as time moves on – according to Ovum the biggest challenge in 2018 for many organizations will be how to deal with the ever-increasing level of complexity from the number of different cloud services on offer.

For enterprise customers looking to adopt cloud services, the journey and its different stages need to be planned so that cloud adoption is strategic and not just tactical. This means adoption of the cloud is not a single path to follow – the influence of overall market, competitors and geographic challenges are now a crucial part of the process.

In this article we’re going to discuss what the future brings for the cloud computing industry and how enterprises and other businesses can stay prepared for what awaits.

A More Mature Approach to Cloud Adoption & Selection

In just two years, from 2015 to 2017, enterprise cloud spending increased drastically:

  • 50% of enterprises reported an increase in SaaS spending
  • 46% of enterprises reported an increase in IaaS spending
  • 47% of enterprises reported an increase in PaaS spending

However, as the picture below shows, the workloads that are moving to the cloud now are changing based on a multicloud approach:

Image Source

The image above tells us a number of things.

In 2018, there will be a bigger percentage and bigger differentiation between workloads, with application development and testing, and mobile app stores and data still the top two workloads. But in 2019 only 20% of enterprises plan to move to the cloud compared to just over 30% in 2018. This tells us that in 2019, a lot of workloads will already be moved to the cloud.

As cloud adoption is becoming a more mature process, so is cloud selection. The selection process is usually driven by factors such as cost, performance, reliability and reputation. Deeper analysis provides evidence that workloads are being classified and deployed in the most appropriate environments.

Organizations are staying away from being 100% reliant on a single supplier and in turn want to have a small number of key suppliers to reduce maintenance and management, which improves their position in bargaining on pricing.

80% of enterprises say that they will be using hybrid cloud by 2019.

Linking IT Activity to Business Outcome

Linking all IT activities with business outcomes and just how these IT activities are profitable has always been difficult for CIOs. With cloud computing this relationship becomes much clearer due to a ‘clean slate principle’ where the cost, performance and risks can be assessed and quantified as a part of a business case for the move.

In 2018, as Ovum’s research suggests, CFOs will be looking to obtain a direct relationship between spending (not just IT, but general spending) and business outcomes. This kind of transparency will govern that many businesses, especially LoB (Line of Business) leaders, will be focusing on cloud adoption.

How Data Sovereignty and Regulation are Impacting the Cloud

Government and industry regulatory rules on data and privacy as well as political instability in some cases are driving demand for different layers of public cloud availability based on geo-location.

Because of this disruption, a three-tier model has emerged:

  • Global centralized resources
  • Regional resources
  • Local in-country presence

Image Source

Most of the regional and the local in-country presence is realized by using colocation facilities, and service providers are moving towards deploying cost-effective approaches for having a more distributed presence at the edge.

Pre-fabricated data centers that have a complete data center capability do not provide all the answers for operators looking to deploy regional and edge resources. One of the key capabilities that are missing include the speed and scale elements of any development, plus the expected associated reduction of complexity and cost.

What dictates the speed and expansion as well is land, power and connectivity. Most colocation providers and wholesale data center providers have enough land to start with and since there’s been a lot of acquisition activity during the last couple of years (Verizon and CenturyLink have both sold their global DC estates) there’s also a lot of local and regional capacity available from colocation providers.

What’s also worth the mention is that in 2018/2019 AWS, Microsoft, IBM, Google, Alibaba and others will be opening more and more in-country data centers. One of the most interesting and big opportunities for this will be UK, given they will be conducting a lot of cloud-first government projects. Both Microsoft and AWS are adding regions in the UK for the public sector and government.

Organizational Maturity and the Cloud

In 2016, cloud adoption was used for increasing business productivity workloads, but a selection of cloud services was also a confused mix of business-led actions without a clear IT strategic position. The two main factors for this move were switching capex to predictable opex spending and the need to transform businesses to become digital.

The result of the first factor was ‘Lift and shift’, which in 2016 meant that everyone moved their on-premise solutions to the cloud which resulted in only marginal cost benefits. The conclusion was that simply moving a n-tier application stack from one environment to the cloud had very little impact on how the application operated or engaged with the environment.

2018 will see the continued rise of “cloud-native” approach to truly modernize the organizations IT capability where the monolithic stack is broken down into smaller, reusable components that have the ability to be assembled and combined in a way that protects data integrity, performance, security and service quality as well as it scales. 56% of cloud spending will be directed to SaaS in 2018, which is roughly $70B.

Image Source

The future IT department will need to embrace the concepts of decentralised IT management environments, greater use of emerging technologies, and increased automation but without the pitfalls of decentralization like duplicated spending, lack of clear lines of responsibility and compromised security and outages that could damage the company. This is highly tied to the second factor of cloud adoption which is digitalization since technology and its adoption is a major part of it.

2018 will see an evolution in how organizations are thinking about the path to the cloud, and what that path must deliver while on the journey.

The Struggle With Integrating Infrastructure as Code Into Operational Processes

Cloud native goes hand in hand with using microservices and containers. Containers enable applications and processes to operate as an isolated unit of application deployment. This improves overall developer experience, fosters code and component reuse, and simplifies operations for cloud native applications.

What will become a struggle is actually managing containers since new and different tools and skills are needed to provide the ability for containers to be actively scheduled and managed by a central orchestrating process. Currently Kubernetes is the tool of choice for 47% of respondents in the OpenStack user survey in 2017. Skills are what’s currently in very short supply in todays ‘cloudy world’.

DEM or Digital Enterprise Management requires seven different aspects to be considered, and also requires expertise in seven different disciplines:

  • The digital workplace
  • Agile application development
  • The alignment of security teams with operations teams or secops
  • Service management excellence
  • Big data
  • IT Optimization
  • Support for multisource cloud

In 2018 new roles and structures will emerge, such as site-reliability engineers.

The Great Cloud Market Switch

According to Ovum, 80% of the entire IaaS market is served by AWS (Amazon Web Services), GCP (Google Cloud Platform), IBM Bluemix, and Microsoft Azure.

What will start to happen in the enterprise sector is the need for enterprises to start moving mission-critical workloads such as ERP to the cloud in addition to other productivity workloads such as email. This will incentivize the leading cloud providers to position themselves as enterprise-grade in an attempt to secure much of the new workload moving to the cloud.

The result of this is that the Mid-market and SME customers, at the start of 2018, will start to realise they are in a difficult position where they have just as great a need for enterprise-grade cloud as large enterprise customers, but they do not require this globally. Specialist providers for the mid-market will emerge, which will be a tipping point and the mid-market cloud industry will grow exponentially.

Mid-market customer adoption of workloads on the cloud:

Image Source

Conclusion

As the use of cloud continues to mature and become more strategic, the market in cloud computing will change in 2018 and beyond. This change will impact every aspect of cloud computing.

2018 and 2019 will be the pivotal years for the maturity and the expansion of cloud computing. The rise of cloud-native applications designed for multi-cloud environments that include simple open integrations and make workloads portable will begin to change the way organizations value IT within business.

This article is based on research conducted by Ovum, and the complete research can be downloaded here.

If you have any questions about cloud computing or if you’re having trouble deciding which provider will best meet your needs, you can always turn to experts. Don’t hesitate to ask our experts here at GlobalDots to help you choose your best cloud solutions and more.

The post Cloud Computing Trends to Watch for in 2018 appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

Black Friday & Cyber Monday Performance Report, G-Cloud Initiative Extended And More In This Weeks News

0
0

Black Friday & Cyber Monday Performance Report 2017

Black Friday weekend has come to a close. Catchpoint published an article where they dive into their traffic reports and show us which specific retailers had outage problems during this shopping season. Some examples are H&M and Lowe’s which had their share of problems. The article goes into some general stats like mobile performance and overall performance of all websites they’ve successfully analyzed.

Image Source

Read more: Catchpoint Blog

UK’s G-Cloud initiative extended for another 12 months

G-Cloud is the UK Government initiative targeted at easing procurement by public-sector bodies in departments of the UK Government of commodity IT services that use cloud computing. The Ceown Commercial Service (CCS) and the Government Digital Service (GDS) of the UK have decided to extend the G-Cloud for another 12 months, taking its expiry date up to 21 May 2019. They’ve stated that they need more time to develop the digital marketplace and make the end-to-end buyer and supplier journey more improved.

Image Source

Read more: CloudPro

PacketZoom raises $5 million in Series A

PacketZoom, a San Mateo-based company that specialises in optimising app performance on Wi-Fi and cell phone networks, announced last week that it had raised $5 million in Series A funding. This funding is intended to scale the development and optimization of their APMO (Application Performance Management and Optimization) platform.

Image Source

Read more: Bizety

AWS wraps up Kubernetes as a managed container service

Developers will in the near future be able to run Kubernetes much more easily on AWS. The cloud computing giant has announced their support for the open source container platform Kubernetes as a managed service. Kubernetes will be the second supported container system by AWS. This decision entails that AWS has decided to support Google’s technology due to its widespread popularity with customers.

Image Source

Read more: CloudPro

An average IT organization faced 8 DDoS attacks per day in Q3 2017

Corero DDoS Trends reports clearly states that DDoS attacks have doubles in frequency over the last 6 months of 2017 and this roughly means that an average organization was hit 237 times by a DDoS attack per month on average – or eight attack attempts a day. That’s a 35% increase over the previous quarter.

Image Source

Read more about the report: eSecurity Planet, Download the report

The post Black Friday & Cyber Monday Performance Report, G-Cloud Initiative Extended And More In This Weeks News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

The Era Of GDPR Is Here, Cloud Revenues Reached $180 Billion In 2017 And More In This Weeks News

0
0

The era of GDPR

The deadline for complying with the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is approaching as the law comes into effect on May 25, 2018. GDPR will lay down mandates for how companies collect, store, delete, alter and otherwise process the personal data of EU citizens. For each organization that does not comply with these laws there will be a heavy fine. The penalties for those in breach of the new regulations are significant: a tiered approach to fines, with the maximum being up to 4% of annual global turnover or €20 Million (whichever is greater).

Image Source

Read more: Bizety

Cloud revenues growth reaches 24% year-on-year

Cloud is now the new normal for enterprises as stated by Synergy Research Group. IaaS and PaaS services claimed the larges growth rates at 47%, with enterprise SaaS falling behind with a rate of 31%. In total the revenues reached $180 billion last year. What’s also a fact is that cloud service markets grew three times more faster than spend on the hardware and software used for cloud infrastructure.

“We tagged 2015 as the year when cloud became mainstream and 2016 as the year when cloud started to dominate many IT market segments. In 2017 cloud was the new normal”
– John Dinsdale (Chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group)

Read more: CloudPro

Complacency in the European DDoS mitigation market?

The new European survey from CDNetworks released recently shows a sharp increase in DDoS investment and an overwhelming confidence in DDoS resilience in UK and DACH regions, despite 54% of business in Europe suffering successful attacks in the last 12 months.

Some more information:

 49% have invested in DDoS mitigation technologies for the first time in the last 24 months.
 Almost two-thirds (64%) are likely to invest more next year than in the last 12 months.
 9% will be investing in DDoS mitigation for the first time in the next 12 months.
 The average annual spend is £24,200, with one-fifth of businesses investing more than £40,000.

Image Source

Read more: information age

Meltdown and Spectre bugs explanation

These two new and scary security issues that affect nearly every computer are complex to wrap your hear around, especially if you’re not tech-savvy. The Cloudflare team have written an article explaining how these bugs take advantage of very technical systems that modern CPUs have implemented to make computers extremely fast. These vulnerabilities concern security experts because they have their roots in the very design of the processor that powers your gadget.

Image Source

Read more: Cloudflare Blog, Popular Science

1 billion Indian citizens are now susceptible to identity theft

The Aadhaar database that contains personal data on over one billion Indian citizens was recently breached very easily by a journalist at Indian publication celled The Tribune. This leaves the majority of Indian citizens vulnerable to identity theft and intrustions of privacy.

Image Source

Read more: Hacking Threat

The post The Era Of GDPR Is Here, Cloud Revenues Reached $180 Billion In 2017 And More In This Weeks News appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

GoDaddy to Move Most of its Infrastructure to AWS

0
0

GoDaddy, one of the world’s largest domain registrars, announced its plans to migrate the majority of its infrastructure to Amazon AWS. The two companies competed in the past, but it looks like they’re becoming partners now – it seems Amazon will become a partner in selling of some of GoDaddy’s products.

The move underscores Amazon’s continuing expansion as a powerhouse in cloud hosting and related services, providing a one-stop shop for customers who come for one product and stay for everything else. Also, it is a reminder of how the economies of scale in the cloud business make it financially challenging to compete if you are not already one of the big players, or lack deep pockets to sustain your business as you look to grow.

It’s important to note that the deal will not include taking on domain management for GoDaddy’s 75 million domains currently under management.

“GoDaddy is not migrating the domains it manages to AWS. GoDaddy will continue to manage all customer domains. Domain management is obviously a core business for GoDaddy.”
– Dan Race, GoDaddy’s VP of communications

Image Source

Read more: TechCrunch

The post GoDaddy to Move Most of its Infrastructure to AWS appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

All AWS Services Become GDPR Ready

0
0

On 26 March 2018, Amazon announced that its AWS (Amazon Web Services) services are completely compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

A quick reminder – GDPR is a new set of data protection and privacy laws which will take effect on 25 May 2018, to significantly enhance the protection of the personal data of EU citizens and increase the obligations on organizations that collect or process personal data.

Amazon announced that during the service readiness audit, their security and compliance experts confirmed that AWS has in place effective technical and organizational measures for data processors to secure personal data in accordance with the GDPR.

This means that, in addition to benefiting from all of the measures that AWS already takes to maintain services security, customers can deploy AWS services as a key part of their GDPR compliance plans.

“This announcement confirms we have completed the entirety of our GDPR service readiness audit, validating that all generally available services and features adhere to the high privacy bar and data protection standards required of data processors by the GDPR.
– Chad Woolf, Vice President, AWS Security Assurance

Image Source

Read more: Amazon AWS Blog

The post All AWS Services Become GDPR Ready appeared first on GlobalDots - CDN, Security and Performance Solutions.

Viewing all 56 articles
Browse latest View live


Latest Images