As technology has continued to evolve, the importance of cloud computing has too. According to Flexera’s 2021 State of the Cloud Report, investing in cloud is steadily on the rise in 2021. Businesses of all sizes are reaping the immense benefits of cloud adoption. From SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) – the ability to be more agile, innovative and reach customers in multiple ways has enabled businesses to significantly streamline operations and improve overall customer engagement.

“The knock-on effect of a data breach can be devastating for a company. When customers start taking their business—and their money—elsewhere, that can be a real body blow.” – Christopher Graham

In January 2021, we witnessed the largest ransomware demand in history: the $50 million ransom demand from Acer by REvil gang. Although the actual amount paid will be considerably less then the original demand it is still extremely lucrative for cybercrimals.

The past decade has seen a major transformation in the realm of enterprise network and security.  The traditional data center approach no longer fits the changing landscape that we are in today. With cloud-based security solutions and with the pandemic elevating the need to work and access devices and applications virtually, the need for enterprise network security to become more agile and adapt accordingly has become more important than ever. 

According Flexera’s 2021 State of the Cloud report, for the 5th year in a row, optimizing cloud is the top initiative for the year ahead, with migrating more workloads to the cloud a close second.

One of the biggest problems with traditional user ID and password login is the need to maintain a password database. Whether encrypted or not, if the database is captured it provides an attacker with a source to verify their guesses at speeds limited only by their hardware resources. Given enough time, a captured password database will fall.

As processing speeds of CPUs increase, brute force attacks have become a real threat. GPGPU cracking can produce more than 500,000,000 passwords per second even on lower end gaming hardware. Depending on the software, it can take as little as 160 seconds to crack a 14-character alphanumeric password. A password database alone does not stand a chance against such methods when it is a real target of interest.

2020 brought unprecedented global changes and cyber security was no exception. From the widescale shift to remote working triggered by the pandemic, to the record-high cryptocurrency prices, to one of the worst cyber attacks of all time. The tools and tactics we started with in 2020 are no match for the threat landscape of 2021.

“If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it, too. Criminals are using every technology tool at their disposal to hack into people’s accounts. If they know there’s a key hidden somewhere, they won’t stop until they find it.” Tim Cook

In the game of cat and mouse between data security and bad actors, extended detection and response (XDR) is the latest weapon that organizations can utilize to strengthen their security posture.

XDR is a new approach to threat detection and response, a key element in defending an organization’s infrastructure and data from damage or unauthorized access and misuse. 

As businesses continue to evolve with the rapid advances in technology, the role of the Cloud continues to play a pivotal role in the delivery of flexible, agile IT services. Hybrid IT, also known as the hybrid cloud, is essentially a combination of a private cloud foundation with the strategic use of public cloud services to fulfil the requirements of an organization's entire IT enviroment. 

Among the many priorities businesses are positioning themselves for in 2021, network and data security remain at the top of the list as 'anywhere operations' becomes more rampant in an era of rapid digital transformation. With the current state of times, external attacks have become more sophisticated with the pandemic being a channel to lure unsuspecting users in. Organizations must make every effort to start the year off right and ensure their networks are protected from modern hacking practices. 

As we look ahead to 2021 (and continue to navigate through a global pandemic), organizations of any size are faced with two major challenges: data protection and cyber security. Modern data and analytics have steadily become the ‘gold’ in the era of continuous technological innovation.

According to a recent report from the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), approximately 68% of organizations use data stored on a secondary server for more than just recovery. A recent survey conducted by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) asked C-level IT professionals what their top data protection concerns were. 

With December upon us, businessess are continuing to plan for next year amid an unfamiliar reality that 2020 has brought on. in our prevous post we talked about the importance and financial benefit that managed services providers (MSP) can bring to organizations large and small. So if you're at the point where you've taken the leap and decided to partner with an MSP - where do you start?