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New year, new cyber security threats! We have tracked some of the rising threats for this year and the solutions that your company should be looking at to mitigate them. 1. Cryptojacking Described by experts as a ‘cheaper and more profitable alternative to ransomware’, cryptojacking is seen as one of the major cyber threats to companies, especially those dealing with cryptocurrencies. How does it work? Usually through a phishing email, which will load the crypto-mining code in the victim’s computer, or through an infected website, which will load the code on the victim’s browser. These codes exploit computers and browsers to mine cryptocurrency and generate money. Because this kind of attack is hard to detect, it can […]

COMING SOON! Covenco Enviro-Watch – 24/7 Environmental and Power Monitoring With the majority of server rooms being operated in a 'lights out' mode, can you really be confident that everything within is fine? Covenco Enviro-Watch is perfect for your server environment monitoring needs. It may be obvious, but with peaks and troughs in ambient temperature throughout the year, temperature management is essential in ensuring business-critical IT equipment remains operational. The cost of a server failure due to high temperatures is not just limited to the cost of replacing the server itself but also includes: the on costs of business downtime, potential loss of data and the recovery process (the time it takes to get everything back [...]

Through a Freedom of Information request it has been identified that Staff in five government departments have lost more than 600 laptops, mobile phones and USB sticks in the last four years. The loss of a device is never good, but it appears it happens all too frequently! The outcomes can range from embarrassment and reputational damage at best to the loss of confidential or even classified information at worst. Just how bad the outcome is depends on the level of security of the device. The issue is not so much the cost of the device, but the data which sits on it, that could include sensitive information, confidential data or even national secrets. What’s on your user’s [...]

The latest release of Veeam Backup for Office 365 v2 protects Microsoft OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, and SharePoint on-premises installations, as well as Exchange Online and Exchange on-premise. DOWNLOAD IT RIGHT NOW With over 50 new enhancements it is easier to set up, manage, and maintain protection, and compliance across all Office 365 applications, while ensuring the availability of critical Microsoft Office 365 applications for organisations of all sizes. It protects data within your Office 365 solution complementing the data replication Microsoft provides within its Datacentres. Veeam Backup for Office 365 has always provided the ability to restore email data in a few seconds or minutes the same recovery experience has now been extended to Sharepoint and [...]

Most small and medium businesses keep all their critical information (customer and employee files, Accounts Receivable, sales presentations, contracts, emails, etc.) on a single server, a number of laptops, a couple of networked PCs, or spread among multiple mobile devices. Alarmingly most small to medium sized businesses: Don’t routinely back up all files, apps, and data, including those on personal devices. Don’t know where all the data is stored among the various PCs, laptops, smart phones, and tablets in use by employees. Don’t have a recovery plan in place for when the inevitable crash/loss/theft/spilled coffee happens. Unfortunately, these all too common scenarios leave businesses at risk for all sorts of disasters, including hacking attempts by cyber [...]

ALL LATEST SECURITY NEWS

Overheating at a Microsoft data center operating some of its cloud services, including Outlook, led to services being lost for close to 16 hours from the afternoon of March 12 to morning of March 13. Microsoft said the outage occurred as it went through a regular process of updating firmware on a core part of its physical plant. This failure resulted in a rapid and substantial temperature spike in the data center. This spike was significant enough before it was mitigated that it caused our safeguards to come in to place for a large number of servers in this part of the data center. The failure was “unexpected” and required both infrastructure software and human intervention [...]

Altaro scooped the prestigious Editor’s Choice, Storage Company of the Year 2018 Award at the Annual Storage Awards ceremony held in London on 14th June It validates the Company’s continued success in this competitive marketplace. Altaro is a fast-growing developer of easy-to-use and affordable backup solutions for small and mid-market businesses, featuring enterprise-class features and functionality and specialising in backup for virtualised environments. The company has grown rapidly over the years with the flagship solution Altaro VM Backup, which gained traction as one of the considered technologies  for backing up Hyper-V and VMware Virtual Server estates. Altaro launched the latest version of its leading Hyper-V & VMware backup solution in March 2018.  It now provides Continuous Data Protection [...]

Have you heard about ransomware? Now's the time to ask: Are you covered? During the past year Medium and Enterprise companies in the UK have been hit with £1 million-pound ransom demands after hackers stole business critical data. Power stations and hospital systems connected to the internet were hit by the WannaCry ransomware attack which left residents without electricity, heat and light and hospitals unable to function without patient records. Most cyber attacks are impersonal and aim to extort money but can ultimately destroy a company’s business and/or reputation. The ultimate cost may be covered by insurance and with insurance in place you may decide it is easier to pay the ransom than invoke disaster recovery [...]

Did you know VMware 5.5 Support is Ending Soon?  Are you ready to Upgrade to 6.5 or 6.7? VMware vSphere 5.5 will go end of life on 19th September 2018. To maintain your full level of Support and Subscription Services, VMware recommends upgrading to vSphere 6.5 or vSphere 6.7. To encourage adoption VMware has extended the General Support for vSphere 6.5 to a full five years from date of release, which means for vSphere 6.5 it will end on 15th November 2021. The end of General Support for vSphere 6.7 will also be on 15th November 2021. However, if you are not quite ready to upgrade, then extended support is available. VMware Extended Support is designed to [...]