The major disasters this past year made people aware of a lot of things including the manner in which businesses assess risk and devise plans to deliver critical services in the event of a disruption. Although catastrophic events have a minimal probability, the businesses that plan carefully for business continuity are the ones that stand the best chance of continuing their services in the event of a disaster.
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CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, has been named Thrive to its 2018 Solution Provider 500 list. The Solution Provider 500 is CRN’s annual ranking of the largest technology integrators, solution providers and IT consultants in North America by revenue.
Serving as CRN’s predominant channel partner award list, the Solution Provider 500 is the industry standard for recognition of the most successful solution provider companies in the channel since 1995. The complete list will be published on CRN.com, making it readily available to vendors seeking out top solution providers to partner with. (more…)
What’s Your Patch Management Strategy?
The security of today’s information systems go far beyond the general protection measures that were once considered to provide ample security against intrusion. For many companies that are implementing new technologies one of the top priorities in today’s world is security. There are many different aspects that define the overall security of a company’s infrastructure, one of which is patch management.
There is no question that technology today is changing at a rapid pace. Running a business can get pretty stressful when you are focused on both corporate growth, and staying up to date on your technology needs. Thankfully, there are plenty of options that can help take some of that stress off your shoulders. One of the most popular, helpful options is outsourcing to an IT service provider. Looking for the right provider can be a pretty daunting task. How are you supposed to trust someone to keep your business’s technology running? Here are the top 5 things you should look for in a service provider that will help ease your mind.
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The Fundamentals and Future of Blockchain and Bitcoin: Part 2 of 4
In Part 1, I narrowed the problem set of blockchain to proof of ownership in order to create a value proposition context from which to understand the purpose of the technology. This next part begins to explain how the specific technical implementation of blockchain works.
The Immutable Distributed Public Ledger
The word blockchain evokes its fundamental structure. It is a chain of blocks (of data) connected in sequence. The sequence is defined by a reference in each block to the block that came before it. For example, if there is a block alpha, and a block beta, and a block zed, each block contains a reference to the block before it. If someone hands me block zed, and I find written on it, “comes after beta,” I know that I need beta to complete the chain, and when I get that, I likewise know I need alpha. But how do I know that someone did not erase the reference and write a reference on it that inserts the block into a different part of the chain? If there’s other data on the block (of course there is, that’s the point) how do I know they did not edit it?
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During my last blog post, I discussed the differences between vulnerability scanning and a penetration test. Now that I, hopefully, explained why you want both and how they are useful, it is time to discuss what to do with this information. Both a vulnerability scan and a penetration test will give you the standard way to fix the vulnerability. I hate to say this, but I doubt your network is standard, and if you do fix it, you will most likely break something else.
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If you’ve heard anything about blockchain, or Bitcoin, or the nearly 2000 crypto coins offered so far, you’ll likely have also heard some pretty wild and far-reaching prognostication about the many ways in which it will alter the very fabric of society, government, and power relationships. We are told that this revolution in tech, this Internet 3.0, this 6th wave of digital technology [Bill Tai] will first revolutionize payments; then obviate governments’ role as monetary mint; then revolutionize everything from identity management, to supply chain management, to energy markets, and even our corporate model of value creation.
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With the rise in shadow devices being used by employees, your corporate network is at elevated risk of an attack. Shadow devices include all devices not directly issued by the company, but are being used on the corporate network(s). What people do not realize when they bring these devices into the workplace is they open up a potential for ex-filtration of data from the corporate network.
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I still talk with people in the security industry that confuse a vulnerability scan with a penetration test. These are very different yet complimentary tools.
A vulnerability scan can be run against your external IP range, as well as your internal IP range. If you run it against your external IP range you will see what the hackers see when they look at your network from the outside. If there are any known vulnerabilities, the scanner should pick it up and report it to you. This would be the first step in getting your network more secure.
Too Much To Manage? Top Challenges Facing Tech Leaders Today (And What To Do About Them)
Guest blog co-written with Precision Solutions Group, Inc.
As the technology landscape continues to change and evolve at lightning speed, CIOs and CTOs have more on their plates than ever before. For many, spending time on valuable business drivers—the ones that give your business a competitive advantage—takes the backseat to managing and maintaining an IT environment that’s increasingly complex. This challenge is diverse, with many tech leaders needing to oversee everything from vendor management, to rising cyber security concerns, to the many facets associated with maintaining business continuity. And at the end of the day, these tasks leave little time to focus on innovation.
Throughout this blog series, we’ll touch on three major challenges that today’s tech leaders are facing, along with some suggestions to alleviate the burden. Let’s start with our first challenge: vendor management.