The cloud isn’t new. At some point, most companies will make the decision to move to cloud-based services. Moving your environment to the cloud can be a daunting undertaking. The first step in the process is deciding where to place those services. A managed service provider is a very good option to help your business move to the cloud. They can be the go-to solution for a single service or for your entire infrastructure.
Recovery Point and Recovery Time Objectives (RPO and RTO) are business defined targets related to the quantity of data and time lost in case of a disaster. RPO defines the goal related to the maximum amount of data (measured by change over time) that may be lost just prior to the disaster. RTO defines the approximate or maximum time until the data and/or systems can be accessible again in order to continue business operations. In most cases, RTO can be met and measured by the interval at which backups are taken. That is to say, if data is backed up every 15-minutes, no more than 15-minutes of data should be lost. Meeting and measuring RTO, however, is typically a much more difficult and costly endeavor.
Update: If you use Thrive Patching or you patched your windows machines last week, then you already are protected.
Yesterday came a new release of a Wi-Fi vulnerability in the name of KRACK or Key Reinstallation Attacks. This can be particularly bad if compromised, the attacker can see the traffic on your Wi-Fi network. The full paper from the writers is here: https://www.krackattacks.com
Let us break this down a little bit. Within the WPA2 protocol, there is a 4-way handshake. If one of those handshakes gets lost the access point resends it, assuming the packet got lost in transmission. By constantly asking for the 3rd packet in the handshake, the encryption key might be broken, which allows attackers to read the data that you are sending and receiving.
Update: Microsoft Ending Support
Tuesday marked the end of the road for yet another Microsoft product, Office 2007, joining our other 2 old friends at Microsoft, Windows Vista and Exchange 2007. All of these products have reached end of support with Microsoft and you should be off of them long before now.
Intrigued by the notion of learning more about new industry terms? In the first part of this series, we discussed CybeRTO (Sigh Ber To) and CybeRPO(Sigh Ber Po) and the general meanings of both. In the second part of the series, we will take a deeper look at the two different ways to address the particular aspects of CybeRTO.
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Turn Off your BluetoothA newly discovered attack vector named BlueBorne has dropped and vendors are pushing patches as I write. BlueBorne, a play on the words Bluetooth and airborne (as it can spread over the air), was discovered and reported by research firm Armis Labs and was assigned many CVE’s covering Windows, Linux, Android and Apple. The 8 reported vulnerabilities in the Bluetooth Protocol can allow an attacker to server malicious content, exfiltrate data, and install ransomware on the target; Successful exploitation will allow this without ever pairing with the affected device.
Creating Your Own VulnerabilitiesThis past week I went to DerbyCon, which is a security conference in Louisville, KY. Whenever I go to these conferences I learn something new. This time was no exception. I went to a talk by Ben Ten, who is a Penetration Tester, but before this he did cyber defense. Ben’s main point was that many times he is able to gain access to the company’s assets without ever using an exploit.
Keys to Getting Started With Compliance
I have recently jumped head first into a number of compliance initiatives both for our internal needs as well as for our customers. To say that I have learned a lot in 3 months is an understatement. I was working with a compliance consultant who at the beginning of the exercise said, “Mike, you seem like you know a little about this stuff and you could probably play a compliance consultant in a movie but we’ve got a lot of work to do.” Not the comment I was looking for at the time but I am always up for a challenge. (By the way, what movie would need an actor to play a compliance consultant?)
Did you know over 70% of businesses are currently operating on defenseless networks? This puts their own data and customer data at risk. Frequently checking the health of your network is an essential part of maintaining business continuity and productivity. Comparing the health of your network to your routine checkup with your physician may sound a little funny, however, a Network Health Assessment ensures that your business goals are appropriately aligned with the technology required to meet those goals. Just like your checkup with your physician ensures your health is aligned to meet your health needs.
If you’re running SQL Server, you or your employees are probably writing reports and queries to pull important information from the data your applications and websites collect. At the very least, the applications you run likely include built-in reports. Do you find, though, that when reports run, especially certain reports, everything else that depends on SQL server slows down? It could be that you’re simply asking too much of a single SQL instance.