As ISPs, Hosting Providers and Online Enterprises around the world continue suffering the effects of  DDoS attacks, often the discussions that follow are, “What is the best way to defend our networks and our customers against an attack?” Traditional techniques of defense include SYN-cookies, SYN-proxy, redirects, challenges, and of course the black hole routing technique to name a few.  Most of these techniques have been around since the early 2000’s when DDoS attacks first began to surface.

For those that do not know much about black hole routing, (also called null routing) this technique involves creating an IP-traffic route that virtually goes nowhere.  The packets destined for the null route end up in the bit bucket.  Null routing is essentially available on every commercial router today and there is little performance impact to silently drop all traffic to a specific destination. 

It’s no secret in the world of DDoS attacks, that using null routing is a tool of choice for organizations that have no other means of blocking an attack.  For example, an attacker selects a victim and launches a DDoS attack against them.

The victim may not be the only entity impacted. Other users that share the same infrastructure as the victim may also experience the effects of the attack and have their service degraded or be taken offline altogether as their infrastructure, servers, and applications are severely impacted by the onslaught of the phony traffic.

These unintended victims are collateral damage from the attack, which is sometimes referred to as second-hand DDoS.  With no DDoS defenses in place, victims normally call their ISP and ask for assistance with blocking the attack upstream.  The ISP injects a null route with the IP address of the original victim into their routing infrastructure and begins blocking all DDoS traffic to the victim with the hopes of reducing the impact against the rest of their customers who are experiencing collateral impact as a result of the attack. 

Less than desirable approach 

However there is a problem with this approach; it actually perfects the DDoS attack against the original victim!  Not only does this method block all DDoS traffic, but it also blocks all “good traffic” as well.  This technique is calamitous for the Internet connected business whose business thrives on Internet Availability.  If the upstream ISP null routes all good traffic-and-DDoS traffic into the ‘black hole’, it effectively takes the victim offline.   This method of defense is simply not acceptable for organizations that rely on an always-on Internet. Additionally, since most DDoS attacks are highly spoofed, trying to null route on the source IP addresses is nearly impossible. 

More Collateral Damage 

Many ISP’s are utilizing black hole routing as their only means for DDoS defense. With this approach, for example, when an ISP with residential customers comes under attack they must null route into their infrastructure, for the destination (victim). Resulting in hundreds of their other customers being knocked offline. 

With regards to the ISP’s commercial customers, they range from very high-end hosting providers, gaming providers, web-based businesses, and smaller commercial customers.  These customers have also felt the effects of DDoS attack – some quite often. Due to the shared network environment of a Tier 2 or Tier 3 ISP, the risk of collateral damage is a major issue when it comes to dealing with DDoS attacks.  For commercial customers that require 100% uptime, black hole routing is an unacceptable solution. 

There is a better way 

As we have learned by dealing with the DDoS threat landscape, black hole routing is a rudimentary approach to DDoS mitigation, which in many cases does more harm than good. Technology exists today that is completely capable of blocking all DDoS attacks in real-time.   Purpose built DDoS technology is rapidly becoming the standard for real-time DDoS protection. When deployed at the ISPs peer points, this DDoS defense solution can effectively remove all DDoS attack traffic from ever entering the ISP network; blocking the attacks before they can wreak havoc the ISP infrastructure, or impact their customers.

With proper protection the days of dealing with DDoS attack outages are over.  No more 4:00AM wakeup calls, no more complaints, no more downtime, and no more victims.   If you’re an ISP it’s time to admit, you need to deploy these defenses for proper DDoS protection. 

You can read the original article here.

Are you the unofficial IT support person for your friends and family? If you know a thing or two about computers, mobile and other smart devices, you’ve probably had to get friends and family out of tech trouble on occasion.

Maybe you’ve done some troubleshooting with the family printer – or perhaps you were asked to clean up your friend’s PC that got hit with a virus (he wasn’t doing anything wrong, he swears!).

Well, we’re offering three simple things you can do to help those you care about with the often baffling problems of online security.

1. Check desktops and laptops for viruses and malware.

If your family and friends are coming to you with computer problems – maybe they are getting lots of spam, their computer is super slow, or they are seeing annoying pop-ups – chances are high that they have a malware infection.

You can check Windows computers for malware and viruses and clean up any infection you might find using our Free Virus Removal Tool. Just download the tool, run it, and remove malware with the click of a button. Simple!

2. Use Sophos’s free firewall to protect your family and yourself.

If you live in a shared house, try the Sophos UTM Home Edition. It’s a free firewall offering the same benefits as our award-winning product for businesses – email scanning, web filtering, a VPN, web application security, and everything you need to keep up to 50 devices on your home network secure.

Better yet, you get 12 free licenses for Sophos Anti-Virus for Windows that you can install and manage throughout your household, right from the UTM web console.

You can cover more than just Windows computers – our other free tools include Sophos Antivirus for Mac, Sophos Antivirus for Linux, and Sophos Free Antivirus and Security for Android.

3. Give them this easy guide to computer and data security.

It’s hard to explain security without using a bunch of technical jargon. Have you ever tried to explain phishing to your grandmother? We’ve got just the thing to help you – a computer and data security guide that provides simple definitions to everything from Android malware to Zbot. Download the free Threatsaurus security guide to get definitions of tons of computer security terms, loads of security tips, and more.

You can read the original article here.

Just over a month ago we announced the release of version 4.0 of the Sophos Web Appliance. Many customers and partners have asked me when their appliances will receive the new version so here’s an update on our release progress.

We started our usual staged rollout process in early April. Staged rollout allows us to make the product available to early adopters while giving us the chance to address any issues that slip through our extensive testing and QA procedures.

Delivering high quality is a priority for Sophos. During those first stages, our early adopters identified a couple of areas where version 4.0 was not performing as expected, so we decided to postpone the rollout while we addressed those issues.

We currently expect to re-start the staged rollout by 18 May and customers should see the update becoming available in the following weeks.

More information on what to expect in Sophos Web Appliance version 4.0 can be found here.

You can read the original article here.

SophosLabs tracks huge volumes of spam from around the world, and once in a while we pause to take a look at the countries sending the most spam  – we call it our Dirty Dozen Spampionship.

In the results for the most recent quarter (January, February and March 2015), we found that the biggest spam-relaying country in the world is the United States, once again. Vietnam has climbed to number two, followed by Ukraine, Russia, South Korea, and China rounding out the top six.

Check out the rest of the list and you see some familiar places and some countries that come and go from the Dirty Dozen:

Measured per capita, though, and even a small country like Moldova can end up on top. Moldova hasn’t been in the Dirty Dozen before, but this time, spam coming from hosting providers’ servers, coupled with the more usual problem of zombie malware on home computers, have propelled the country to the number one spot. 

The rest of the dirty dozen measured by population is shown here:

So what does this mean? Cybercriminals have figured out that it’s harder to stop spam from a vast number of computers that have been infected by their malware. That’s why we see spam from all over the world.

All spam-sending computers are dangerous, and to stop spam we need to clean up the malware that makes it such a big problem. To scan your computer for malware, download our Free Virus Removal Tool.

For more about spam, and how to make sure you’re protected, check out these articles and podcasts:

• How bots and zombies work and why you should care
• How to send 5 million spam emails without even noticing
• Snowshoe spam and what can be done about it

You can read the original article here.

Τώρα, μπορείτε να αντικαταστήσετε το WD Arkeia στην επιχείρηση σας με ένα από τα καλύτερα υβριδικά συστήματα αντιγράφων ασφαλείας στον κόσμο, το SEP sesam με έκπτωση 20%. 

Η μετάβαση γίνεται εύκολα, γρήγορα και επιπλέον οικονομικά.  Το SEP sesam είναι μία ολοκληρωμένη, ενιαία λύση αντιγράφων ασφαλείας που ενσωματώνεται απρόσκοπτα σε οποιοδήποτε περιβάλλον χωρίς διακοπές ή απώλειες δεδομένων. Είναι ιδανικό για κάθε περιβάλλον IT και προορίζεται για επιχειρήσεις κάθε μεγέθους, από μικρές έως πολύ μεγάλες αλλά και για οργανισμούς. Είναι εξαιρετικά κλιμακούμενο και επεκτάσιμο, και λειτουργεί το ίδιο απλά, είτε βρίσκεται σε έναν, είτε σε πολλές χιλιάδες διακομιστές. 

Αφού εγκατασταθεί, απλώς λειτουργεί, όπως άλλωστε θα περιμένατε (set & forget). Το SEP sesam μπορεί να κρατήσει αντίγραφα ασφαλείας από 1GB έως 1000TB, και μέσω της τεχνολογίας πολλαπλών ροών (multi streaming) προσφέρει εκπληκτικά υψηλούς ρυθμούς μεταφοράς δεδομένων, πολλών terabytes την ώρα σε κατάλληλα διαμορφωμένα συστήματα. Η λύση SEP sesam ειδικεύεται στα αντίγραφα ασφαλείας σε πραγματικό χρόνο σε εφαρμογές, βάσεις δεδομένων και αρχεία σε περιβάλλοντα πολλαπλών λειτουργικών συστημάτων αφού υποστηρίζει όλα τα δημοφιλή λειτουργικά συστήματα, όλες τις πλατφόρμες εικονικοποίησης και  εφαρμογές, όλες τις βάσεις δεδομένων και τις τεχνολογίες αποθήκευσης. 

Πρόκειται για ένα ιδιαίτερα ευέλικτο, και ισχυρό υβριδικό σύστημα αντιγράφων ασφαλείας σε πραγματικό χρόνο. Το SEP sesam μπορεί να προσφέρει εξειδικευμένα αντίγραφα ασφαλείας για συστήματα όπως τα  Microsoft Exchange Server, Groupwise, Lotus Domino Server, Zarafa, Dovecot IMAP, Cyrus IMAP, Courier IMAP, openLDAP, Microsoft SharePoint και άλλα και υποστηρίζει βάσεις δεδομένων Oracle, MS SQL, IBM DB2, Informix SAP R/3, MaxDB κ.ά. 

Το SEP sesam επίσης προσφέρει εργαλεία που ενεργοποιούν την συγκέντρωση της διαχείρισης και των διαδικασιών ελέγχου για την εξασφάλιση της ευκολίας εποπτείας, παρακολούθησης και ασφάλειας του περιβάλλοντος και προσφέρει εκπληκτικές επιλογές αντιγράφων ασφαλείας για πλατφόρμες εικονικοποίησης συμπεριλαμβανομένων των VMware, Citrix XenServer, XEN, Hyper-V και RedHat. Επίσης μπορεί να ενσωματωθεί πολύ εύκολα με οποιαδήποτε πλατφόρμα στο cloud όπως Citrix Cloud Stack, Amazon EC2 ή οποιοδήποτε άλλο ιδιωτικό cloud.  

Αν θέλετε μία εξαιρετική λύση αντιγράφων ασφαλείας, που υποστηρίζει κλωνοποίηση δεδομένων για εφεδρεία σε περίπτωση διακοπής της λειτουργίας του συστήματος, με εύκολη κεντρική διαχείριση, με αποκατάσταση “bare metal”, με τεχνολογία Deduplication και με τεχνολογία πολλαπλών ροών, τότε αποτελεί την ιδανική πρόταση για να αντικαταστήσετε το σύστημα WD Arkeia, επωφελούμενοι της ειδικής προσφοράς – έκπτωσης 20%!

Back in the day, network speed and throughput were limiting factors for the overall productivity of an organization. Gigabit Ethernet came onto the scene in 1999, and offered a quantum leap in performance over previous connectivity standards.

10GbE was approved by IEEE in 2002, and slowly gained more widespread deployment as the switch vendors and others adopted the standard. Now, 40GbE and even 100GbE are available (though industry analyst firm Infonetics predicts that within one to two years, 40GbE will phase out as 25GbE and 100GbE become the norm).

The Rise of the Application

In that same timeframe, individual PC licenses for generalized office applications have been replaced by Software-as-a-Service offerings such as Microsoft’s Office 365 and Adobe Systems’ Creative Cloud. It’s almost the de facto standard to host an organization’s email on Microsoft Exchange Server. Applications such as Oracle’s suite of products, as well as those of SAP, IBM, EMC and many others, are used for tasks from order entry to business intelligence to electronic medical records and have become intrinsic to the operation, competitive edge, and overall success of the majority of businesses and other organizations today. Can you imagine attempting to conduct your job without the myriad applications you use on a daily basis?

So, Which is King?

Sorry, switch vendors. Ultimately the network exists to support the applications – and without applications, the network is just an empty pipe. Given adequate bandwidth and speed, and acceptable uptime standards, applications will run smoothly and end-users won’t flood the help desk with calls about application availability or slowness.

However, there is a caveat to that. What happens when dozens (or hundreds) of applications and their data are traversing the network? What happens when the same data (such as images, data files, etc.) is downloaded hundreds of times a day by end-users? What if multiple simultaneous connection requests overwhelm the application’s server? And how can you optimize application performance for mobile users on smart devices?

Array’s APV Series application delivery controllers (ADCs) and aCelera WAN optimization controllers can maximize the efficiency of servers and network connections, while providing application intelligence to optimize the end-user experience.

For example, APV Series dedicated ADC appliances can offload CPU-intensive connection management tasks, freeing server cycles for client requests. Connection multiplexing, developed by Array, also aggregates client connections to improve server efficiency by 50% or more.

APV Series ADCs can also apply caching, compression and traffic shaping to improve server performance, reduce bandwidth requirements, and assure critical applications take precedence over non-essential traffic.

aCelera WAN optimization minimizes traffic traversing the network, reducing end-user response times by up to 95% and ensuring a LAN-like experience regardless of end-users’ locations. aCelera also offers a mobile client to accelerate traffic between individual devices and aCelera appliances in the data center or cloud.

Long Live the King!

And the winner is: Your IT team, if your network resources are optimized to support the applications your company or organization needs in order to grow, thrive, compete and succeed. Explore our resources on application acceleration, WAN optimization, and application-specific deployment guides to learn more.

Υou can read the original article here.

Sophos makes enterprise-grade security that works for small and mid-sized businesses. Providing sophisticated protection with simple management, Sophos Endpoint Protection is ideal for under-resourced organizations. Sophos Endpoint Protection also offers flexibility. You choose management in the cloud, or on premise—whichever best suits your business.

Here are a few of examples demonstrating how real Sophos customers benefit from either choice. Midway Energy Services uses Sophos Cloud to secure 600 workers spread out at 11 locations in 5 states – with an IT staff of just one person.

Sophos Cloud offers web-based access to a unified console with policies that follow users across devices and platforms. That means the IT admin can check on remote workers on their laptops or mobile devices in one easy view. Plus, it’s easy to find and block threats and even clean up infections without the need to travel.

Deployment is a snap, because with Sophos Cloud there’s no server to install, so you’ll be up and running in just 60 seconds. And the cloud-based management console is designed with simplicity in mind, so you don’t need to be security expert to use it.

The on-premise Sophos Endpoint Protection is easy to deploy as well. Lassen County, in California, chose Sophos to replace its existing solution, partly because of how easy it was to switch.

“Most of the other vendors promised ease of deployment, but removal and rollout didn’t work when we tested it,” says Lassen County IT Director Robert Talley. “Sophos provided an automatic migration that was smooth, fast and easy.”

We make it even easier for you with default policies that are configured to balance protection, usability and performance – for simple security that works right out of the box.

More reasons to choose Sophos Endpoint Protection

If you’re looking to switch to endpoint protection that’s simply better, we give you five big reasons why you should consider choosing Sophos Endpoint Protection.

Learn more about how you can secure your organization with protection that offers these benefits:

• Innovative technology from an industry leader
• Lighting performance that won’t slow your users down
• Sophisticated simplicity – saves time and easy to manage
• User-based licensing to accommodate a modern workforce
• Flexible deployment – on-premise or in the cloud

You can read the original article here.

As much as we complain about email as an annoyance, a distraction, and a productivity killer, we depend on it for vital business and personal communications. We might hate email, but we’d probably be lost without it. What many people don’t realize is that email is quite old as a technology, and it’s very insecure. Not only are spam and phishing rampant, email snooping is a problem, too.

Because email traverses the Internet in plaintext, it’s only as private as sending a postcard. If you’re not encrypting your email, what you might think is a private communication could be read by anyone – whether it be Google, the NSA, or perhaps one of your competitors.

Sophos Global IT Security Manager Ross McKerchar wrote about the problem of email in a blog post on Naked Security: “Despite its lack of security, we keep using email because it’s become so ingrained in the way we do business, and it’s not going to be replaced any time soon“. To get email security right, you should think about all the ways email can be misused and abused.

Ross’s advice is to look at the options for email encryption, and figure out which one is best for your users – because, ultimately, you rely on them to make it work. Solutions range from the somewhat impractical (PGP and S/MIME), to the not totally secure (file encryption), to what we consider the simplest and least problematic – Sophos’s own SPX encryption technology.

To protect data and your organization from email-borne threats, you should look for a solution that also offers spam filtering and policy-based data loss prevention (DLP).

We can help you crack the problem of email security. Learn more about why unencrypted email is a “deadly IT sin” by checking out our 7 Deadly IT Sins website. It’s got lots of information about the ways organizations commit security “sins,” and it offers videos and other free resources to help you.

You can read the original article here.

Sophos announced the availability of Sophos Mobile Control 5, which redefines how organizations secure mobile devices by focusing on users and the way they work. By securing devices, content, and applications with a user-centric approach, Sophos Mobile Control 5 (SMC 5) makes compliance with corporate security policy simple for both administrator and end users across iOS 8, Windows Phone and Android platforms. 

To get you acquainted with what’s new, here are 5 great things about SMC 5.

1. Simplified dashboard and workflows. 

Instead of configuring, updating and managing each device individually, you can manage rights based on user. IT managers only have to set one policy, from any remote location, to manage the security of corporate content stored on the device or in a personal cloud. SMC 5 also provides administrators with filtering, exporting, sorting, and search across multiple dimensions. This means “find and fix” activities are done in seconds. 

2. Secure collaboration between users and partners. 

Collaboration between users and partners, and sharing data between devices and the cloud, is all made easier with Secure Workspace in SMC 5. With this mobile workspace, data is automatically encrypted and decrypted between users, applications and cloud environments, so that users can take full advantage of their mobile devices without worrying about security or data loss. 

3. Separation of personal and business data. 

With more workers choosing to use their personal devices for business, IT faces the complexity of managing corporate security and adhering to personal data privacy laws. Containerization and separation of personal from corporate information means business security and user peace of mind. 

4. A redesigned self-service portal saves you time. 

The simplified self-service portal allows users to quickly enroll their devices. Simple touchscreen workflows and an intuitive design make it easy for users to take care of their own needs, freeing up your time. 

5. Security that works better together. 

When we design for users it’s not just about the devices and data that need to be protected, but also the systems they interact with. We believe in building products that work better together, delivering security as a system. SMC 5 provides seamless integration into our UTM offering, which improves security by only allowing managed devices on the network. SMC 5 also manages Sophos Mobile Security to deliver anti-malware for Android devices. 

Watch this video to get a closer look at SMC 5. If you’ve been waiting for SMC to support Windows Phone 8.1 or iOS 8, the wait is over. Go to our knowledgebase article for more information on how to upgrade to SMC 5.

You can read the original article here.

Sophos announced the availability of Sophos Mobile Control 5 (SMC 5), to further simplify mobile device management by setting security and data policy by user, across all three major mobile platforms in one solution. New management options enable an administrator to easily achieve the separation and encryption of personal and corporate information, as well as configure access and security settings through automated tasks, reducing management time and costs.

Typically, each device (laptop, tablet, iPad or smartphone) would have to be configured, updated and managed individually, but by managing rights based on user, IT managers only have to set one policy, from any remote location, to manage the security of corporate content stored on the device or in a personal cloud. With a re-designed self-service portal, Sophos Mobile Control 5 makes compliance with corporate security policy simple for both administrator and end user across iOS 8, Windows Phone and Android platforms.

“IT administrators need to secure and manage all the various devices employees use today to get work done – smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops, but most management tools still treat these devices separately,” says Chris Hazelton, Research Director, Enterprise Mobility at 451 Research. “For small to medium-sized businesses, the ability reduce the number of management consoles can significantly streamline the onboarding process for IT departments that don’t have specialized staff. With the goal of  enabling BYOD with simplicity and secure productivity, EMM solutions must enable all forms of mobile computing.  This means managing and securing devices, content, and applications with a user-centric approach that delivers the simplest experience for both users and administrators.”

Dan Schiappa, SVP and GM of Sophos’ Enduser Security Group, said:  “With more workers choosing to use their personal devices for business, IT managers have been faced with the complexity of managing corporate security, and adhering personal data privacy laws. Managing upwards of four devices per user brings considerable risk into the business, and unnecessarily diverts precious IT resource. By focusing on the user permissions, and with remote management and self-service capability, SMC 5 sets a new standard for usability and simplicity. The redesigned user interface and intuitive workflows make security and management of mobile devices a simple task that takes minimal time.”

Recently named as an enterprise mobility management (EMM)  leader by Forrester, Sophos continues to bring enterprise level features to the small and medium business that does not typically have the resources to manage a compehensive BYOD strategy.

“Our relationship with Sophos has allowed us to provide the most comprehensive security to our clients, while still ensuring that we can scale to our customers’ needs. We are testing Sophos Mobile Control 5 and are not only impressed by the easy-to-use console but also by the ability to separate business and personal information. Our current Sophos Mobile Control customers are happy with the complete security this Sophos solution brings to the table and our potential customers are excited about the features in the latest release. This latest version complements the Sophos story nicely and, as a company, we look forward to taking our clients’ security to the next level.” Michelle Drolet, CEO, Towerwall, Inc. a Sophos partner in North America.

You can read the original article here.

Who will cybercriminals target next? James Lyne, Sophos global head of security research, says gangs are creating new ways to attack ever more victims, and improving on the old ways to make more money. 

In a new video from the Wall Street Journal, James sounds off on recent and emerging trends in cybercrime, and talks about what’s coming next for security of the Internet of Things (IoT). 

James talks about:  

• Ransomware gangs that make millions of dollars in Bitcoins by taking files and networks hostage with file-encrypting malware – ensnaring home users, businesses and public sector organizations and demanding a ransom. 

• The Lizard Squad gang, which found new ways to attack big companies like Microsoft and Sony, by creating a weapon out of people’s previously innocent home routers, and harming millions of users in cyberattacks that brought down networks. 

• The rapidly developing Internet of Things, which is what we call the millions of devices coming online – from security cameras and industrial systems, to connected homes and cars, and exciting and innovative new wearables like the Apple Watch. James asks, how will cybercriminals profit from next-generation IoT devices? 

Check out the video to hear more from James and fellow security experts who were interviewed by the Wall Street Journal. 

You can read the original article here.

There’s been a bit of buzz in the normally sedate SSL VPN market lately, with Juniper divesting its flagship Junos Pulse (a.k.a. MAG Series or SA Series) SSL VPN product line to Siris Capital – which in turn rolled out a new company to develop and sell the product line.

This big change has caused customers and resellers to evaluate their options for current and future SSL VPN purchases. Also recently, industry analyst firm Gartner released a Market Guide for Enterprise Infrastructure VPNs, in which the authors rightly found, “The VPN marketplace is mature and fragmented, because the capabilities are embedded in other products, such as routers, firewalls, portals, application suites, unified threat management (UTM) appliances and platform OSs. Mainstream VPN vendors offer it as part of a family of networking products and services, which can also include access management and single sign-on (SSO)”.

The authors also noted that “VPNs are alive and well, and have a long future: Companies should continue to use infrastructure VPN encryption methods as one of their security layers, review options in all four scenarios presented in this research and maintain a five-year plan.” The market guide, which is highly recommended reading, lists Array Networks as a representative vendor, and provides market recommendations that are very practical and well thought out.

At Array, we’ve had a singular focus on SSL from the start of the company nearly 15 years ago. In fact, we think of ourselves as ‘The SSL Company.’ Unlike most (if not all) other vendors, we developed our own SSL stack rather than using OpenSSL as a foundation. Through that foresight, Array’s AG Series and SPX Series have been immune to recent sensationalized OpenSSL vulnerabilities like Heartbleed and Man in the Middle (MitM).

Also through our long history as an SSL VPN vendor, our products are very mature with a rich set of features across a product line with models to serve very small to extremely large deployments.

As the Gartner guide noted, “Encrypted communications are fundamental to assuring the safe and secure transfer of business information.” We’ve got the commitment, the architecture, the features, scalability, performance and more to help you ensure a successful SSL VPN deployment.

Juniper SSL VPN Replacement Program

If you’re one of the many Juniper customers and resellers questioning your current SSL VPN options, Array can help! We’re committed to the SSL VPN market, and our AG Series can meet or exceed the capabilities of the corresponding MAG Series or SA Series products.

We’re offering a very attractive program right now to help you migrate to our AG Series, with free hardware and licensing – all you need purchase is a discounted 3-year support contract. Reach out to your Array sales representative or reseller today to learn more.

You can read the original article here.

Every day businesses are creating and accumulating data they need to protect from loss. Of course it’s absolutely vital to prevent data from getting out of your organization – but are you sure you can get it back if you do lose it?

The growing threat of ransomware like CryptoLocker and CryptoWall in the past couple of years has underscored the importance of backups, but it’s not only malware that can destroy your important files. There are many ways to lose data, from theft or accidental loss of a device to device failures and natural disasters.

Backups are critical for keeping your business up and running when a data disaster strikes. So, in recognition of these stark facts, and with a nod to World Backup Day, we’re providing some helpful tips on how to preserve and protect your data.

Here are three key things to consider when building or revamping your backup process.

Will you be using physical backup devices, cloud storage, or both? There are a variety of backup solutions, from hard drives to cloud storage. Backups should be stored on a different device and in a different location from your master copies. It’s a good idea to have redundancy in case one of your backup devices is destroyed or fails. If you’re using a cloud service, you need to trust that the provider has adequate protections in place to keep your data secure and private. Make sure you control access with strong passwords and two-factor authentication.

Are you able to recover the data easily? Not only is backing up important, but you need to able to restore the data in a suitable amount of time. Your data is important for your business continuity. What happens if everything goes down and you need to restore it? Downtime to restore data could cause significant loss of business and harm your reputation, stock value, etc. You should verify that a restoration procedure works. There’s no point in waiting until the worst happens only to find out that you hadn’t been backing up the right data, or the procedure wasn’t done properly.

Are you encrypting your backups? It’s all well and good to have data on your desktops, laptops and servers encrypted – but if your backups are stored in plain text, think of what happens if they get lost or stolen. It’s still a data breach, and you may still be culpable under data protection laws for failing to protect data.

5 more tips to secure your data

You need to have a data protection policy. Here are some tips to help you develop a comprehensive data loss prevention (DLP) strategy.

1. Understand what industry and government regulations impact your organization. Be sure to know which laws apply to you in your region. For example, the upcoming EU Data Protection Regulation requires you to protect data on EU citizens, even if you’re not located in the EU. If necessary, consult a corporate attorney to get clarity on detailed requirements.

2. Identify the types of data you have within your organization. For example, you should identify data covered under regulations and your valuable intellectual property. Determine where this data resides so you can identify the systems you need to monitor.

3. Evaluate the risk and impact of a data breach for each data type. Based on this information, prioritize risks and address the most serious first.

4. Educate users. User training, guidelines and acceptable use policies are critical to the success of your DLP strategy and should be factored into the project alongside any IT activities.

5. Deploy data protection technologies to prevent accidental data loss. Accidents happen—people lose laptops, or send emails to the wrong address. Protect against data loss by deploying security solutions such as content control, device control and encryption to render data unreadable without a password.

For more help on creating a DLP strategy, download our free whitepaper, Don’t Let Data Loss Burn a Hole in Your Budget. This paper guides you through the steps necessary to implement a practical DLP strategy (registration required).

You can read the original article here.

As organizations around the globe become more-and-more reliant on the Internet, a serious weakness has begun to emerge in our connected world.  

Since its inception, the Internet has been all about availability; when the Internet goes down, businesses that rely on that availability go down with it. DDoS attacks are single handedly the most serious threat to Internet availability and the benefits derived from being online. 

For years businesses have deployed “redundant” sites, circuits, networks, routers, firewalls, switches, servers, applications, and even processes in the attempt to eliminate or reduce downtime due to a failed system or other unexpected outage.  

However, all the redundancy in the world will not help when your organization is targeted by a DDoS attack. Redundancy simply goes down with the ship. 

This dilemma forces any business to ask the question, “DDoS – whose responsibility it is?”  According to a recent survey conducted by a security vendor, 21% of the nearly four-thousand respondents believe it is the responsibility of the network service provider (ISP) or the website/hosting provider to protect businesses against a DDoS attack.  

These statistics demonstrate that many believe that their Service Providers or Hosting providers will solve their DDoS problems. 

However, not all service providers or hosting providers want to get involved in solving the DDoS problem for their downstream customers.  Why? Simple – it costs service providers time and money when they get involved in blocking your DDoS attacks.

Remember the service provider is not under a DDoS attack – you are!  When your organization is the target of an attack, the service provider is simply the delivery vehicle for the attack traffic.  They’re not the root cause of the attack. 

With that said, all businesses must take their own measures to detect DDoS attacks and prevent the outages that would be incurred due to an attack.  If businesses believe that their service provider or hosting provider will solve all of their problems, they should look closely at the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to insure that their service provider will resolve a DDoS attack for them.  

If not then it’s really up to the targeted victims to purchase and/or deploy some sort of countermeasure. According to the survey mentioned above, “50% of all businesses agree that specialized countermeasures against DDoS attacks are an important security requirement. 

Who do you hold responsible for protecting your network against DDoS attacks? 

You can read the original article here.

There has been a flurry of DDoS reports from DDoS protection vendors as of late, and Corero has thrown its hat in the ring as well. The recently released Corero DDoS Trends and Analysis report offers a unique perspective of the growing DDoS threat; offering a stark contrast to the majority of the reports saturating the headlines this month.

The Corero findings are unique and differentiated from other vendor driven analysis of the DDoS landscape, due to the deployment and positioning of the Corero DDoS mitigation appliance in the customer network. The Corero SmartWall TDS is deployed at the very edge of the customer network or at the Internet peering points as a first line of defense, inspecting and mitigating all traffic arriving from the Internet in real time before the attacks impact the customer environment.

Cloud based anti-DDoS solutions, and trends and analysis reports authored by the manufacturers of those products and services only represent DDoS traffic that is re-routed to them for scrubbing, well after the attack has permeated the network. While those reports offer very interesting data points about large scale DDoS attacks, they represent only a fraction of DDoS traffic an organization faces on a daily basis.

For example, in Q4 2014 each of Corero’s protected customers experienced an average of 3.9 DDoS attack attempts per day.  In fact, one customer in particular actually experiences an average of 12 attack attempts per day.   Additionally, 87 percent of DDoS attack attempts were less than 1Gbps in peak bandwidth utilization, while another 10 percent were between 1-5Gbps in peak bandwidth utilization.

These sub-saturating attacks against Corero’s protected customers, if not mitigated at the network edge with real-time DDoS defense technology, may have gone completely undetected by traditional cloud-based DDoS solutions. Furthermore, utilizing cloud scrubbing services to defeat these attacks would be too little, too late.

The attack would have made it’s way into the network, degraded service and opened the door for the potential of further exploits and data exfiltration activity long before the attack could have been redirected to a scrubbing center.

Cloud based anti-DDoS services combined with on-premises real-time defense offer the Internet connected business comprehensive protection against the total DDoS threat landscape. 

In the event that organizations are faced with high volume DDoS attacks that completely saturate the Internet link, switching to the cloud to scrub traffic and re-route to maintain service availability is required. For everyday protection against sub-saturating DDoS events that are increasing in frequency and sophistication requires real-time visibility into the network traffic, immediate detection, analysis and mitigation of DDoS attacks—before the threats penetrate the network.

You can read the original article here.

Late last week industry analyst firm MarketsandMarkets issued a new report on the WAN optimization market that predicted a CAGR of 18.8% from 2014 to 2019, with North America expected to be the largest single market and the APAC region predicted to have a CAGR of 21.2% in that period.

The predicted growth more than doubles the market in just five years. This may be astounding to many – especially compared to overall tepid network equipment market forecasts – but if you drill down into it, you’ll quickly discover what we at Array have been promoting for quite some time:

WAN optimization is the ‘secret sauce’ that makes networks and applications work. It’s that simple. But it’s also a bit complex.

Network/application performance used to be fairly straightforward. Given adequate bits and bytes and speeds and feeds, you could be confident that your network and applications were performing at their peak.

The last five years have been game-changing though. BYOD means that employees can work anywhere, anytime. Applications like Exchange, Oracle and others have become integral to getting the job done. New work concepts like ROWE (Results-Oriented Work Environment) have cropped up, encouraging employees to focus on what matters: the bottom line.

It’s no longer ‘good enough’ to assure the C-suite that your network is providing adequate throughput. What matters now is employees’ perception of your network’s ability to supporttheir efforts in turn. Excessive downtime on a critical application like Exchange server? Slow response times from Oracle? These types of things cause headaches for employees – which will soon become your headache.

Add some Secret Sauce

WAN optimization works by streamlining the data that traverses your network. Put simply, data de-duplication and differencing (with caching) means that data that once was sent multiple times to a local data store now needs be sent only once. Traffic is prioritized so performance for end-users is greatly enhanced. TCP, and even relatively arcane protocols are optimized to eliminate redundant and chatty traffic. Compression further reduces the amount of traffic transmitted over the WAN.

This is, of course, just a small sampling of the many ingredients that combine to make WAN optimization the ‘secret sauce’ of network and application performance. To learn more, visit our WAN optimization solution page, or our aCelera WAN optimization controllers product page.

You can read the original article here.

More and more people are using multiple devices — a laptop for the office, a tablet for customer visits and a smartphone for everything in between.

Our per-user licensing for Sophos Endpoint Protection is affordable and simple to administer. You can protect all your users’ Windows, Mac and mobile devices together. And users can add devices without adding to your security overhead.

Recently we conducted a survey of IT managers to find out how they’re handling the growing challenge of device diversity across their organizations.

We found out that IT departments increasingly need to support Windows PCs, Macs and mobile devices: 78% support or plan to support Macs on their networks, and 41% see the number of Macs increasing in their corporate environments.

Mobile devices are proliferating just as rapidly as Macs, if not more so. Whether it be the iPad Air used by your CEO, the latest Samsung Galaxy smartphone running Android, or the iPhone 6 your users are pestering you to configure for corporate use – you need complete control over all of them.

Mobile devices can access corporate email accounts, corporate Wi-Fi networks, and other data your users share via applications – and that means your IT security is literally in the hands of your users.

With Sophos Endpoint Protection, we’re making it simpler than ever to get control of all your users’ devices. So you can confidently embrace BYOD and support and protect the wide range of user devices.

More reasons to choose Sophos Endpoint Protection

If you’re looking to switch to endpoint protection that’s simply better, we give you five big reasons why you should consider choosing Sophos Endpoint Protection.

Learn more about how you can secure your organization with protection that offers these benefits:

• Innovative technology from an industry leader
• Lighting performance that won’t slow your users down
• Sophisticated simplicity – saves time and easy to manage
• User-based licensing to accommodate a modern workforce
• Flexible deployment – on-premise or in the cloud

You can read the original article here.

Recently we focused on the threat of unprotected Wi-Fi networks to individuals – regular people who might not realize that using free public hotspots found at coffee shops and elsewhere actually leave them open to cyberattacks.

What sometimes goes unmentioned is that those Open Wi-Fi networks leave the owners of those networks vulnerable too. Unfortunately, many small businesses (and even some bigger ones) fail the wireless security test – they’re guilty of one of the more common of the “7 Deadly IT Sins.”

As Sophos Global Head of Security Research James Lyne discovered in his “warbiking” research experiments, around one-third of the Wi-Fi networks he scanned had no encryption or outdated encryption.

That means a hacker could spy on wireless traffic or trick users into visiting phony websites designed for phishing – stealing their account logins, passwords or financial information. These small business Wi-Fi networks often used default network names, and likely default network passwords as well – making it easy for cybercriminals to connect to the network, putting sensitive data at risk.

Bad security practices are common, often because – as James explains in the video – IT departments fail to update configurations over time, what he calls “configuration drift.”

If you’re guilty of the IT sin of unsecure Wi-Fi, we’ve got some tips and resources to help you.

Check out our 7 Deadly IT Sins website to learn more about how to protect your business from this and other security sins.

You can read the original article, here.

“Sophisticated simplicity” sounds like a bit of a paradox. How can something be sophisticated and simple? At Sophos, we bring simplicity to everything we do. It’s easy to use our innovative protection – that’s the sophisticated part – because our products are designed with you in mind.

Sophos is a snap to set up and manage, with just a few clicks. Let’s take a look at how easy it is to use the management console – in both our on-premise and cloud-managed solutions – to give you a better idea of what “sophisticated simplicity” means in action.

Let’s start with the on-premise version of Sophos Endpoint Protection, which (by the way) has won an AV-Test award for Best Usability.

In this video we take a quick look at how to block applications using our Application Control.

With Application Control, you can authorize required applications, and block those your company policy determines should be blocked – such as games – all from the central console.

Other solutions might require you to block each application individually – but with Sophos, you can block applications by type or user group. Τhen there’s Sophos Cloud Endpoint, which independent reviewers say is a “pleasure to use,” and “combines quick performance with ease of use.”

With Sophos Cloud, there’s no servers to set up, because your computers receive protection and updates from servers maintained by us. It’s effortless to deploy, and easy to use and manage.

Admins can log into the Cloud dashboard anywhere, updates and upgrades are automatic, and scalability is unlimited. Plus, we’ve already built in security best practices, so you get effective security settings by default.

Learn more about the simplicity of using our Sophos Cloud management console in this quick video.

More reasons to choose Sophos Endpoint Protection

If you’re looking to switch to endpoint protection that’s simply better, we give you five big reasons why you should consider choosing Sophos Endpoint Protection.

Learn more about how you can secure your organization with protection that offers these benefits:

• Innovative technology from an industry leader
• Lighting performance that won’t slow your users down
• Sophisticated simplicity – saves time and easy to manage
• User-based licensing to accommodate a modern workforce
• Flexible deployment – on-premise or in the cloud

You can read the original article here.

Η ασφάλεια στον κλάδο της Τεχνολογίας Πληροφοριών πάντα αποτελούσε μία προσωρινή λύση. Αγοράζετε ένα προϊόν που επιλύει το ενδεχόμενο πρόβλημα, και μάλιστα αγοράζετε το καλύτερο προϊόν που υπάρχει διαθέσιμο, γιατί πολύ απλά είναι το καλύτερο για κάποιο λόγο, σωστά;

Με τα χρόνια, οικοδομείτε ένα εντυπωσιακό σύνολο από λύσεις που εξειδικεύονται στο να λύνουν συγκεκριμένα προβλήματα, και αυτό σημαίνει ότι είστε πια ασφαλείς.

Ή τουλάχιστον, έτσι λειτουργούσαν κάποτε τα πράγματα.

Αναρίθμητες περιπτώσεις από επιθέσεις υψηλού προφίλ τα τελευταία δύο χρόνια μας δείχνουν ότι αυτή η προσέγγιση έχει αρχίσει να καταρρέει.

Ελάτε στο 5ο συνέδριο Infocom Security, για να μάθετε περισσότερα και να ανακαλύψετε τους λόγους που πρέπει να ξανασκεφτούμε την παλαιά προσέγγιση μας στην Ασφάλεια IT σήμερα, ώστε να διασφαλίσουμε ότι δεν θα γίνουμε είδηση στις εφημερίδες, αύριο.

5ο Συνέδριο Infocom Security

Παρακολουθήστε το 5ο συνέδριο Infocom Security που θα πραγματοποιηθεί την 1η Απριλίου 2015 στο Ξενοδοχείο Divani Caravel. Δηλώστε συμμετοχή συμπληρώνοντας αυτή την φόρμα.  Το 5ο Συνέδριο Infocom Security, στο οποίο είναι χορηγός η NSS ως κορυφαία εταιρεία στον τομέα της ασφάλειας IT στη χώρα μας, διοργανώνουν η εταιρεία Smart Press και τα περιοδικά InfoCom και IT Security Professional.

Μη χάσετε την παρουσίαση της NSS που θα πραγματοποιηθεί από τον Jorn Lutters, Pre-sales Engineer της Sophos, με θέμα “It’s time to rethink security for the modern threat landscape” που θα πραγματοποιηθεί στις 10:00 – 12:00 στην 1η ενότητα του συνεδρίου με τίτλο “The New Rules of Cyber Security”. Στην παρουσίαση θα αναλυθεί για ποιό λόγο η φιλοσοφία του “Best of Breed” πολλές φορές δεν έχει θετικά αποτελέσματα

Σας περιμένουμε!