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Defense in Depth: User-Centric Security

It’s impossible to create a security system that removes the user from the equation. They are integral and they have to be part of your security program. Security is defined by the individual. The minimum expectation you can have of your users is that they’ll operate in good faith. Avoid complexity because as soon as it’s introduced it drives problems everywhere. Instead, keep asking yourself, how can I make security more usable?
Individuals are suffering from alert fatigue. If you’re going to send an alert to a user, make it relevant and actionable. And always be aware that your security alerts are not the only alert the user is seeing and deciding or not deciding to take action on. Think about all the alerts you completely ignore, like the confidentiality warning in a corporate email.

Spotlight

Cellwize

Cellwize is all about enabling the networks of the future today. With CHIME, our cloudified and AI-driven RAN automation and orchestration platform, we enable mobile network operators (MNOs) to accelerate 5G network deployment and go-to-market, as well as the ROI on their network investments. Even in the most complex and dynamic of network environments, CHIME enables operators to connect to any application and any vendor, as well as co-create on top of the platform, delivering unprecedented ease, speed, and agility. With the future of 5G already here, Chime is helping leading MNOs all over the world to launch and leverage their next-generation networks and face the future with confidence.

OTHER ARTICLES
Application Infrastructure, Application Storage

Data Center as a Service Is the Way of the Future

Article | July 19, 2023

Data Center as a Service (DCaaS) is a hosting service that gives clients access to actual data center infrastructure and amenities. Through a Wide-Area Network, DCaaS enables clients to remotely access the provider's storage, server, and networking capabilities (WAN). Businesses can tackle their on-site data center's logistical and financial issues by outsourcing to a service provider. Many enterprises rely on DCaaS to overcome the physical constraints of their on-site infrastructure or to offload the hosting and management of non-mission-critical applications. Businesses that require robust data management solutions but lack the necessary internal resources can adopt DCaaS. DCaaS is the perfect answer for companies that are struggling with a lack of IT help or a lack of funding for system maintenance. Added benefits data Center as a Service allows businesses to be independent of their physical infrastructure: A single-provider API Data centers without Staff Effortlessly handle the influx of data Data centers in regions with more stable climates Data Center as a Service helps democratize the data center itself, allowing companies that could never afford the huge investments that have gotten us this far to benefit from these developments. This is perhaps the most important, as Infrastructure-as-a-Service enables smaller companies to get started without a huge investment. Conclusion Data center as a service (DCaaS) enables clients to access a data center remotely and its features, whereas data center services might include complete management of an organization's on-premises infrastructure resources. IT can be outsourced using data center services to manage an organization's network, storage, computing, cloud, and maintenance. The infrastructure of many businesses is outsourced to increase operational effectiveness, size, and cost-effectiveness. It might be challenging to manage your existing infrastructure while keeping up with the pace of innovation, but it's critical to be on the cutting edge of technology. Organizations may stay future-ready by working with a vendor that can supply DCaaS and data center services.

Read More
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

The Drive with Direction: The Path of Enterprise IT Infrastructure

Article | October 3, 2023

Introduction It is hard to manage a modern firm without a convenient and adaptable IT infrastructure. When properly set up and networked, technology can improve back-office processes, increase efficiency, and simplify communication. IT infrastructure can be utilized to supply services or resources both within and outside of a company, as well as to its customers. IT infrastructure when adequately deployed aids organizations in achieving their objectives and increasing profits. IT infrastructure is made up of numerous components that must be integrated for your company's infrastructure to be coherent and functional. These components work in unison to guarantee that your systems and business as a whole run smoothly. Enterprise IT Infrastructure Trends Consumption-based pricing models are becoming more popular among enterprise purchasers, a trend that began with software and has now spread to hardware. This transition from capital to operational spending lowers risk, frees up capital, and improves flexibility. As a result, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) revenues increased by 53% from 2015 to 2016, making them the fastest-growing cloud and infrastructure services segments. The transition to as-a-service models is significant given that a unit of computing or storage in the cloud can be quite cheaper in terms of the total cost of ownership than a unit on-premises. While businesses have been migrating their workloads to the public cloud for years, there has been a new shift among large corporations. Many companies, including Capital One, GE, Netflix, Time Inc., and others, have downsized or removed their private data centers in favor of shifting their operations to the cloud. Cybersecurity remains a high priority for the C-suite and the board of directors. Attacks are increasing in number and complexity across all industries, with 80% of technology executives indicating that their companies are unable to construct a robust response. Due to lack of cybersecurity experts, many companies can’t get the skills they need on the inside, so they have to use managed security services. Future of Enterprise IT Infrastructure Companies can adopt the 'As-a-Service' model to lower entry barriers and begin testing future innovations on the cloud's basis. Domain specialists in areas like healthcare and manufacturing may harness AI's potential to solve some of their businesses' most pressing problems. Whether in a single cloud or across several clouds, businesses want an architecture that can expand to support the rapid evolution of their apps and industry for decades. For enterprise-class visibility and control across all clouds, the architecture must provide a common control plane that supports native cloud Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) as well as enhanced networking and security features. Conclusion The scale of disruption in the IT infrastructure sector is unparalleled, presenting enormous opportunities and hazards for industry stakeholders and their customers. Technology infrastructure executives must restructure their portfolios and rethink their go-to-market strategies to drive growth. They should also invest in the foundational competencies required for long-term success, such as digitization, analytics, and agile development. Data center companies that can solve the industry's challenges, as well as service providers that can scale quickly without limits and provide intelligent outcome-based models. This helps their clients achieve their business objectives through a portfolio of 'As-a-Service' models, will have a bright future.

Read More
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Application Infrastructure

A Look at Trends in IT infrastructure and Operations for 2022

Article | July 19, 2023

We’re all hoping that 2022 will finally end the unprecedented challenges brought by the global pandemic and things will return to a new normalcy. For IT infrastructure and operations organizations, the rising trends that we are seeing today will likely continue, but there are still a few areas that will need special attention from IT leaders over the next 12 to 18 months. In no particular order, they include: The New Edge Edge computing is now at the forefront. Two primary factors that make it business-critical are the increased prevalence of remote and hybrid workplace models where employees will continue working remotely, either from home or a branch office, resulting in an increased adoption of cloud-based businesses and communications services. With the rising focus on remote and hybrid workplace cultures, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet have continued to expand their solutions and add new features. As people start moving back to office, they are likely to want the same experience they had from home. In a typical enterprise setup, branch office traffic is usually backhauled all the way to the data center. This architecture severely impacts the user experience, so enterprises will have to review their network architectures and come up with a roadmap to accommodate local egress between branch offices and headquarters. That’s where the edge can help, bringing it closer to the workforce. This also brings an opportunity to optimize costs by migrating from some of the expensive multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) or private circuits to relatively low-cost direct internet circuits, which is being addressed by the new secure access service edge (SASE) architecture that is being offered by many established vendors. I anticipate some components of SASE, specifically those related to software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), local egress, and virtual private network (VPN), will drive a lot of conversation this year. Holistic Cloud Strategy Cloud adoption will continue to grow, and along with software as a service (SaaS), there will be renewed interest in infrastructure as a service (IaaS), albeit for specific workloads. For a medium-to-large-sized enterprise with a substantial development environment, it will still be cost-prohibitive to move everything to the cloud, so any cloud strategy would need to be holistic and forward-looking to maximize its business value. Another pandemic-induced shift is from using virtual machines (VMs) as a consumption unit of compute to containers as a consumption unit of software. For on-premises or private cloud deployment architectures that require sustainable management, organizations will have to orchestrate containers and deploy efficient container security and management tools. Automation Now that cloud adoption, migration, and edge computing architectures are becoming more prevalent, the legacy methods of infrastructure provisioning and management will not be scalable. By increasing infrastructure automation, enterprises can optimize costs and be more flexible and efficient—but only if they are successful at developing new skills. To achieve the goal of “infrastructure as a code” will require a shift in the perspective on infrastructure automation to one that focuses on developing and sustaining skills and roles that improve efficiency and agility across on-premises, cloud, and edge infrastructures. Defining the roles of designers and architects to support automation is essential to ensure that automation works as expected, avoids significant errors, and complements other technologies. AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations) Alongside complementing automation trends, the implementation of AIOps to effectively automate IT operations processes such as event correlation, anomaly detection, and causality determination will also be important. AIOps will eliminate the data silos in IT by bringing all types of data under one roof so it can be used to execute machine learning (ML)-based methods to develop insights for responsive enhancements and corrections. AIOps can also help with probable cause analytics by focusing on the most likely source of a problem. The concept of site reliability engineering (SRE) is being increasingly adopted by SaaS providers and will gain importance in enterprise IT environments due to the trends listed above. AIOps is a key component that will enable site reliability engineers (SREs) to respond more quickly—and even proactively—by resolving issues without manual intervention. These focus areas are by no means an exhaustive list. There are a variety of trends that will be more prevalent in specific industry areas, but a common theme in the post-pandemic era is going to be superior delivery of IT services. That’s also at the heart of the Autonomous Digital Enterprise, a forward-focused business framework designed to help companies make technology investments for the future.

Read More

Cartesi creates Linux infrastructure for blockchain DApps

Article | April 20, 2020

DApps (sometimes called Dapps) are from the blockchain universe and so, logically, the apps part stands for application (obviously) and the D part stands for decentralised (only obvious once you know that we’re talking distributed immutable language here). According to the guides section at blockgeeks, DApps are open source in terms of code base, incentivised (in terms of who validates it) and essentially decentralised so that all records of the application’s operation must be stored on a public and decentralised blockchain to avoid pitfalls of centralisation. So then, Cartesi is a DApp infrastructure that runs an operating system (OS) on top of blockchains. The company has now launched a more complete ‘platform-level’ offering, which is described as a layer-2 solution

Read More
Application Infrastructure, Application Storage

Mastering Infrastructure: Hyperconvergence Courses and Certifications

Article | July 19, 2023

Data Center as a Service (DCaaS) is a hosting service that gives clients access to actual data center infrastructure and amenities. Through a Wide-Area Network, DCaaS enables clients to remotely access the provider's storage, server, and networking capabilities (WAN). Businesses can tackle their on-site data center's logistical and financial issues by outsourcing to a service provider. Many enterprises rely on DCaaS to overcome the physical constraints of their on-site infrastructure or to offload the hosting and management of non-mission-critical applications. Businesses that require robust data management solutions but lack the necessary internal resources can adopt DCaaS. DCaaS is the perfect answer for companies that are struggling with a lack of IT help or a lack of funding for system maintenance. Added benefits data Center as a Service allows businesses to be independent of their physical infrastructure: A single-provider API Data centers without Staff Effortlessly handle the influx of data Data centers in regions with more stable climates Data Center as a Service helps democratize the data center itself, allowing companies that could never afford the huge investments that have gotten us this far to benefit from these developments. This is perhaps the most important, as Infrastructure-as-a-Service enables smaller companies to get started without a huge investment. Conclusion Data center as a service (DCaaS) enables clients to access a data center remotely and its features, whereas data center services might include complete management of an organization's on-premises infrastructure resources. IT can be outsourced using data center services to manage an organization's network, storage, computing, cloud, and maintenance. The infrastructure of many businesses is outsourced to increase operational effectiveness, size, and cost-effectiveness. It might be challenging to manage your existing infrastructure while keeping up with the pace of innovation, but it's critical to be on the cutting edge of technology. Organizations may stay future-ready by working with a vendor that can supply DCaaS and data center services.

Read More
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Transforming Data Management by Modernized Storage Solutions Using HCI

Article | October 3, 2023

Introduction It is hard to manage a modern firm without a convenient and adaptable IT infrastructure. When properly set up and networked, technology can improve back-office processes, increase efficiency, and simplify communication. IT infrastructure can be utilized to supply services or resources both within and outside of a company, as well as to its customers. IT infrastructure when adequately deployed aids organizations in achieving their objectives and increasing profits. IT infrastructure is made up of numerous components that must be integrated for your company's infrastructure to be coherent and functional. These components work in unison to guarantee that your systems and business as a whole run smoothly. Enterprise IT Infrastructure Trends Consumption-based pricing models are becoming more popular among enterprise purchasers, a trend that began with software and has now spread to hardware. This transition from capital to operational spending lowers risk, frees up capital, and improves flexibility. As a result, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) revenues increased by 53% from 2015 to 2016, making them the fastest-growing cloud and infrastructure services segments. The transition to as-a-service models is significant given that a unit of computing or storage in the cloud can be quite cheaper in terms of the total cost of ownership than a unit on-premises. While businesses have been migrating their workloads to the public cloud for years, there has been a new shift among large corporations. Many companies, including Capital One, GE, Netflix, Time Inc., and others, have downsized or removed their private data centers in favor of shifting their operations to the cloud. Cybersecurity remains a high priority for the C-suite and the board of directors. Attacks are increasing in number and complexity across all industries, with 80% of technology executives indicating that their companies are unable to construct a robust response. Due to lack of cybersecurity experts, many companies can’t get the skills they need on the inside, so they have to use managed security services. Future of Enterprise IT Infrastructure Companies can adopt the 'As-a-Service' model to lower entry barriers and begin testing future innovations on the cloud's basis. Domain specialists in areas like healthcare and manufacturing may harness AI's potential to solve some of their businesses' most pressing problems. Whether in a single cloud or across several clouds, businesses want an architecture that can expand to support the rapid evolution of their apps and industry for decades. For enterprise-class visibility and control across all clouds, the architecture must provide a common control plane that supports native cloud Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) as well as enhanced networking and security features. Conclusion The scale of disruption in the IT infrastructure sector is unparalleled, presenting enormous opportunities and hazards for industry stakeholders and their customers. Technology infrastructure executives must restructure their portfolios and rethink their go-to-market strategies to drive growth. They should also invest in the foundational competencies required for long-term success, such as digitization, analytics, and agile development. Data center companies that can solve the industry's challenges, as well as service providers that can scale quickly without limits and provide intelligent outcome-based models. This helps their clients achieve their business objectives through a portfolio of 'As-a-Service' models, will have a bright future.

Read More
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Application Infrastructure

Designing an Advanced Data Center for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Article | July 19, 2023

We’re all hoping that 2022 will finally end the unprecedented challenges brought by the global pandemic and things will return to a new normalcy. For IT infrastructure and operations organizations, the rising trends that we are seeing today will likely continue, but there are still a few areas that will need special attention from IT leaders over the next 12 to 18 months. In no particular order, they include: The New Edge Edge computing is now at the forefront. Two primary factors that make it business-critical are the increased prevalence of remote and hybrid workplace models where employees will continue working remotely, either from home or a branch office, resulting in an increased adoption of cloud-based businesses and communications services. With the rising focus on remote and hybrid workplace cultures, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet have continued to expand their solutions and add new features. As people start moving back to office, they are likely to want the same experience they had from home. In a typical enterprise setup, branch office traffic is usually backhauled all the way to the data center. This architecture severely impacts the user experience, so enterprises will have to review their network architectures and come up with a roadmap to accommodate local egress between branch offices and headquarters. That’s where the edge can help, bringing it closer to the workforce. This also brings an opportunity to optimize costs by migrating from some of the expensive multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) or private circuits to relatively low-cost direct internet circuits, which is being addressed by the new secure access service edge (SASE) architecture that is being offered by many established vendors. I anticipate some components of SASE, specifically those related to software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), local egress, and virtual private network (VPN), will drive a lot of conversation this year. Holistic Cloud Strategy Cloud adoption will continue to grow, and along with software as a service (SaaS), there will be renewed interest in infrastructure as a service (IaaS), albeit for specific workloads. For a medium-to-large-sized enterprise with a substantial development environment, it will still be cost-prohibitive to move everything to the cloud, so any cloud strategy would need to be holistic and forward-looking to maximize its business value. Another pandemic-induced shift is from using virtual machines (VMs) as a consumption unit of compute to containers as a consumption unit of software. For on-premises or private cloud deployment architectures that require sustainable management, organizations will have to orchestrate containers and deploy efficient container security and management tools. Automation Now that cloud adoption, migration, and edge computing architectures are becoming more prevalent, the legacy methods of infrastructure provisioning and management will not be scalable. By increasing infrastructure automation, enterprises can optimize costs and be more flexible and efficient—but only if they are successful at developing new skills. To achieve the goal of “infrastructure as a code” will require a shift in the perspective on infrastructure automation to one that focuses on developing and sustaining skills and roles that improve efficiency and agility across on-premises, cloud, and edge infrastructures. Defining the roles of designers and architects to support automation is essential to ensure that automation works as expected, avoids significant errors, and complements other technologies. AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations) Alongside complementing automation trends, the implementation of AIOps to effectively automate IT operations processes such as event correlation, anomaly detection, and causality determination will also be important. AIOps will eliminate the data silos in IT by bringing all types of data under one roof so it can be used to execute machine learning (ML)-based methods to develop insights for responsive enhancements and corrections. AIOps can also help with probable cause analytics by focusing on the most likely source of a problem. The concept of site reliability engineering (SRE) is being increasingly adopted by SaaS providers and will gain importance in enterprise IT environments due to the trends listed above. AIOps is a key component that will enable site reliability engineers (SREs) to respond more quickly—and even proactively—by resolving issues without manual intervention. These focus areas are by no means an exhaustive list. There are a variety of trends that will be more prevalent in specific industry areas, but a common theme in the post-pandemic era is going to be superior delivery of IT services. That’s also at the heart of the Autonomous Digital Enterprise, a forward-focused business framework designed to help companies make technology investments for the future.

Read More

Cartesi creates Linux infrastructure for blockchain DApps

Article | April 20, 2020

DApps (sometimes called Dapps) are from the blockchain universe and so, logically, the apps part stands for application (obviously) and the D part stands for decentralised (only obvious once you know that we’re talking distributed immutable language here). According to the guides section at blockgeeks, DApps are open source in terms of code base, incentivised (in terms of who validates it) and essentially decentralised so that all records of the application’s operation must be stored on a public and decentralised blockchain to avoid pitfalls of centralisation. So then, Cartesi is a DApp infrastructure that runs an operating system (OS) on top of blockchains. The company has now launched a more complete ‘platform-level’ offering, which is described as a layer-2 solution

Read More
MORE ARTICLES

Spotlight

Cellwize

Cellwize is all about enabling the networks of the future today. With CHIME, our cloudified and AI-driven RAN automation and orchestration platform, we enable mobile network operators (MNOs) to accelerate 5G network deployment and go-to-market, as well as the ROI on their network investments. Even in the most complex and dynamic of network environments, CHIME enables operators to connect to any application and any vendor, as well as co-create on top of the platform, delivering unprecedented ease, speed, and agility. With the future of 5G already here, Chime is helping leading MNOs all over the world to launch and leverage their next-generation networks and face the future with confidence.

Related News

How to Get a Prospect to Test Your Security Product

Spark Media Solutions, LLC | February 21, 2018

I’ve never met a harder sale than cybersecurity to the IT team,” admitted a security vendor. The challenges are unique at each firm and they are reluctant to even take a call let alone share real concerns. ”In the security products market, cybersecurity vendors simply want to be considered, and that often requires compelling a prospect to test the darn product. But getting a response from a prospect, let alone a product test, is often a Herculean task. One vendor I spoke to said he would often have to initiate ten contacts with a prospect before he’d even get an acknowledgement. Companies whose primary objective is to test products can’t even keep up with the volume. As of last December, 451 Research was aware of more than 1,600 security vendors. “Those were only the ones we had time to write down,” said Wendy Nather (@WendyNather), formerly of 451 Research and now director, advisory CISOs at Duo Security. “That wasn’t even the total number of products!”

Read More

How to Uncover Security Concerns When Customers Won’t Tell You

Spark Media Solutions, LLC | February 06, 2018

“What are your security concerns?” It’s the one question all security vendors want to know from potential customers. It’s also the one question potential customers don’t want to divulge for obvious security, privacy, and “I don’t have the time” reasons. All is not lost! There is still a way, in fact multiple ways, security vendors can sleuth out a company’s security needs. I asked a few security professionals how they go about figuring out the answer to the “what keeps you up at night” concern. Here’s their advice (plus one tip from me!): “While everyone likes to say their problems are unique and challenging in a way no one has ever seen before, it’s really not true,” said Michael Farnum (@m1a1vet), SA manager, Set Solutions. You may not even need to dig that deep, or at all. If your product solves a rudimentary security need you will probably already be in sync with a company’s security concerns. Farnum believes many organizations are still struggling just dealing with the basics of security.

Read More

30 Security Vendor Behaviors That Set Off a CISO’s BS Detector

Spark Media Solutions, LLC | February 19, 2019

I had never seen such disdain and aggravation from a CISO. Richard Rushing (@SecRich), CISO of Motorola Mobility, sent me an email with a litany of vendor pitches. Each one punctuated with vitriolic commentary and frustration. It appears a lot of companies will fully protect his network and automatically detect threats. Rushing’s diatribe was so vicious that any security vendor would be horrified to know their marketing emails were eliciting this reaction. Now I’m telling you. ‘Tried and true’ marketing and sales techniques can often be irritants to very wise security buyers. They’re not fooled. Worse, they’re turned off. Read on for sales techniques and claims you should avoid when communicating to a security professional. For each item to avoid, I asked security professionals how they’d prefer to be engaged. This is a long article, but it’s jammed with gems. Take it slowly.

Read More

How to Get a Prospect to Test Your Security Product

Spark Media Solutions, LLC | February 21, 2018

I’ve never met a harder sale than cybersecurity to the IT team,” admitted a security vendor. The challenges are unique at each firm and they are reluctant to even take a call let alone share real concerns. ”In the security products market, cybersecurity vendors simply want to be considered, and that often requires compelling a prospect to test the darn product. But getting a response from a prospect, let alone a product test, is often a Herculean task. One vendor I spoke to said he would often have to initiate ten contacts with a prospect before he’d even get an acknowledgement. Companies whose primary objective is to test products can’t even keep up with the volume. As of last December, 451 Research was aware of more than 1,600 security vendors. “Those were only the ones we had time to write down,” said Wendy Nather (@WendyNather), formerly of 451 Research and now director, advisory CISOs at Duo Security. “That wasn’t even the total number of products!”

Read More

How to Uncover Security Concerns When Customers Won’t Tell You

Spark Media Solutions, LLC | February 06, 2018

“What are your security concerns?” It’s the one question all security vendors want to know from potential customers. It’s also the one question potential customers don’t want to divulge for obvious security, privacy, and “I don’t have the time” reasons. All is not lost! There is still a way, in fact multiple ways, security vendors can sleuth out a company’s security needs. I asked a few security professionals how they go about figuring out the answer to the “what keeps you up at night” concern. Here’s their advice (plus one tip from me!): “While everyone likes to say their problems are unique and challenging in a way no one has ever seen before, it’s really not true,” said Michael Farnum (@m1a1vet), SA manager, Set Solutions. You may not even need to dig that deep, or at all. If your product solves a rudimentary security need you will probably already be in sync with a company’s security concerns. Farnum believes many organizations are still struggling just dealing with the basics of security.

Read More

30 Security Vendor Behaviors That Set Off a CISO’s BS Detector

Spark Media Solutions, LLC | February 19, 2019

I had never seen such disdain and aggravation from a CISO. Richard Rushing (@SecRich), CISO of Motorola Mobility, sent me an email with a litany of vendor pitches. Each one punctuated with vitriolic commentary and frustration. It appears a lot of companies will fully protect his network and automatically detect threats. Rushing’s diatribe was so vicious that any security vendor would be horrified to know their marketing emails were eliciting this reaction. Now I’m telling you. ‘Tried and true’ marketing and sales techniques can often be irritants to very wise security buyers. They’re not fooled. Worse, they’re turned off. Read on for sales techniques and claims you should avoid when communicating to a security professional. For each item to avoid, I asked security professionals how they’d prefer to be engaged. This is a long article, but it’s jammed with gems. Take it slowly.

Read More

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