9 steps for a successful incident response plan

Making a planImage by PexelsDetails matter when developing an incident response (IR) plan. But, even the most successful IR plans can lack critical information, impeding how quickly normal business operations are restored.This quick guide from Cybereason takes a closer look at nine of the often forgotten, but important steps that you should incorporate into your IR plan.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 innovative ways to solve unimportant problems

5 innovative ways to solve unimportant problemsImage by Envoy/Pacific ContentAll work and no play not only makes Jack a dull boy, it makes for a pretty disengaged workplace. In Silicon Valley, especially, the competition for talent is cutthroat, and offering fun and innovative projects is a great way to attract and retain elite talent. Digital guest management and visitor sign-in solutions company Envoy's CEO Larry Gadea and his team wanted a way to publicly recognize the efforts of employees. Technology provided the answer: an automated 'sales gong' that would reverberate throughout the office whenever a new subscriber signs up. The solution's built using a Raspberry Pi connected to a series of relays, and the mechanism to ring the gong is written into the main codebase. Any time there's a new subscriber, the system springs into action and rings the gong. The overall effect is more than just to recognize the efforts of salespeople, marketers and developers within the company, Gadea says. It's to remind Envoy's teams of the "bigger picture" and to build on the culture of innovation and teamwork at the company. "We wanted to remind everyone that all the hard work we're doing is making an Continue reading

Health care organizations 114 times more likely to be ransomware victims than financial firms

Health care organizations were 114 times more likely to hit by ransomware infections than financial firms, and 21 times more likely than educational institutions, according to a new research report by Solutionary.The Omaha-based security firm detects millions of attacks a year, according to threat intelligence analyst Terrance DeJesus. But while health care accounts for just 7.4 percent of the company's client base, it saw 88 percent of all ransomware attacks during the first half of this year."These numbers do not count all of the email delivery or exploit kit activity that happens pre-infection and would be attempts to deliver ransomware," he said. "These are confirmed ransomware outbreaks on directly affected systems."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Health care organizations 114 times more likely to be ransomware victims than financial firms

Health care organizations were 114 times more likely to hit by ransomware infections than financial firms, and 21 times more likely than educational institutions, according to a new research report by Solutionary.The Omaha-based security firm detects millions of attacks a year, according to threat intelligence analyst Terrance DeJesus. But while health care accounts for just 7.4 percent of the company's client base, it saw 88 percent of all ransomware attacks during the first half of this year."These numbers do not count all of the email delivery or exploit kit activity that happens pre-infection and would be attempts to deliver ransomware," he said. "These are confirmed ransomware outbreaks on directly affected systems."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Twilio API sinks all the application sync issues

It is only a few short weeks since Twilio, the communications platform developer, had its stock market debut. It's also a safe bet that in these turbulent times for tech stocks, Twilio spent much time thinking about product and other announcements it could make post-listing to keep the markets positive about its performance.And so it is doing so today with a seemingly small, but actually pretty cool piece of news for the company. Twilio is rolling out Sync, a tool designed to help keep applications in sync across different devices and sessions. The idea being that developers can build experiences that are consistent across the different devices they wish to support. It also means they can add multi-user collaboration capabilities into their applications without having to think about the pesky details of state.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cybersecurity firm offers users reimbursement for ransomware infections

Security firm SentinelOne is confident it can beat any of today’s ransomware -- and is willing to put money behind that claim. The company is offering a new service that will cover up to US$1 million in damages for any customers infected by ransomware. SentinelOne is calling it the “Cyber Threat Guarantee” and treating it like an extended warranty that customers can buy starting Tuesday. However, the company is convinced it won’t have to make any pay outs, said Jeremiah Grossman, its chief of security strategy. SentinelOne’s failure rate in stopping ransomware attacks is “way less than 1 percent,” he said in an interview.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cybersecurity firm offers users reimbursement for ransomware infections

Security firm SentinelOne is confident it can beat any of today’s ransomware -- and is willing to put money behind that claim. The company is offering a new service that will cover up to US$1 million in damages for any customers infected by ransomware. SentinelOne is calling it the “Cyber Threat Guarantee” and treating it like an extended warranty that customers can buy starting Tuesday. However, the company is convinced it won’t have to make any pay outs, said Jeremiah Grossman, its chief of security strategy. SentinelOne’s failure rate in stopping ransomware attacks is “way less than 1 percent,” he said in an interview.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Case study: IoT lighting system cuts energy costs, improves productivity

You’d think that with a 3-year-old building, its fixtures and systems would be among the best on the market. Not necessarily so. As Atlas Global Solutions found out after conducting an energy audit of a relatively new manufacturing facility, the light fixtures were costing them more than aging manufacturing equipment—the focus of the energy audit. + Also on Network World: How the IoT keeps Ben & Jerry’s ice cream safe +Atlas, a global protective packaging company based in Sutton, Mass., knew its 200,000-sq.-ft. manufacturing facility was not as energy efficient as it could be, said Frank Tavares, the global process engineer for the company. He never thought the biggest waste would be from the lights in the building, though.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel Broadwell Rollout Complete With Xeon E5 Quads

Just because Intel doesn’t make a lot of noise about a product does not mean that it is not important for the company. Rather, it is a gauge of relative importance, and with such a broad and deep portfolio of chips, not everything can be cause for rolling out the red carpet.

So it is, as usual, with the Xeon E5-4600 processors, the variant of Intel’s server chips that has some of the scalability attributes of the high-end Xeon E7 family while being based on the workhorse Xeon E5 chip that is used in the vast majority of the servers

Intel Broadwell Rollout Complete With Xeon E5 Quads was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Identifying Infrastructure Security Breaches

A security breach is a serious matter, but most IT leaders aren't even aware when it has happened. In this episode of Network Matters with Ethan Banks, learn about the likelihood of something malicious lurking in your infrastructure, and how you can find it. Ethan explains the dangers and recommends several security tools that can help IT pros ferret out the bad stuff.

Apple’s electric car plans just got serious

For months now, reports of Apple secretly developing an electric car have been making their way through the rumor mill. And in a move that perhaps signals that Apple's electric car plans are much more than a run-of-the-mill research project, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the company has brought in esteemed hardware executive Bob Mansfield to oversee the entire development process.A longtime Apple employee, Mansfield was highly regarded as both an engineer and executive who helped bring important Apple products and hardware innovations (such as the Retina Display on the iPhone 4) to market. But in recent years, Mansfield quietly stepped away from his day-to-day duties at Apple and instead enjoyed what can accurately be categorized as a pseudo-retirement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware protection guarantee is offered by SentinelOne

SentinelOne is offering a to pay customers $1,000 per endpoint for customers’ machines that get infected by ransomware if its products don’t either block or remediate the problem.The deal is for customers who use the company’s Endpoint Protection Platform in a mandatory configuration running on computers with fully patched operating systems and applications, and that have volume shadow copy service enabled, the Microsoft service that backs up files in use.Customers must also be quick to respond to alerts about infections by adding threats to a blacklist and to remediate and rollback within an hour.The $1,000 per machine offer only applies to payment of ransom, not for costs related to the disruptions ransomware causes. SentinelOne also won’t pay if the ransom doesn’t lead to successful recovery of the encrypted data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware protection guarantee is offered by SentinelOne

SentinelOne is offering a to pay customers $1,000 per endpoint for customers’ machines that get infected by ransomware if its products don’t either block or remediate the problem.The deal is for customers who use the company’s Endpoint Protection Platform in a mandatory configuration running on computers with fully patched operating systems and applications, and that have volume shadow copy service enabled, the Microsoft service that backs up files in use.Customers must also be quick to respond to alerts about infections by adding threats to a blacklist and to remediate and rollback within an hour.The $1,000 per machine offer only applies to payment of ransom, not for costs related to the disruptions ransomware causes. SentinelOne also won’t pay if the ransom doesn’t lead to successful recovery of the encrypted data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FBI probes DNC hack as suspicions of Russian involvement widen

The FBI has launched an investigation into the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computers, even as more evidence surfaced of possible Russian involvement in the attack.The data breach was first disclosed last month, when hackers published confidential DNC files, including opposition research on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.Then on Friday, Wikileaks published over 19,000 emails that were stolen from the DNC, some of which now threaten to damage the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here