Our Thoughts on IT Matters

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Crowdstrike: Fiscal Year End and Analysis

Product Summary: Crowdstrike is best known for their cloud-based endpoint protection and response (EDR) solution to detect intrusions across networks and endpoints. The flagship product is Falcon that includes a suite of security products that strive to protect the enterprise against malware and threats in real-time with deep threat intelligence. Arguably, they are known for the breadth and depth of their threat intelligence to identify malicious code or other threats before they do damage or spread across the network. The company claims that its technology can detect 99% of all malware threats before they impact your organization or ...

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Enterprise Security: Getting Ready for Q-Day and PQC

Q-Day: The day quantum computers can render all current encryption methods meaningless. If you are not yet familiar with the terms Q-Day and PQC, you should be starting today. PQC or ‘Post Quantum Computing’ refers to the next wave of potential security headaches coming your way in the next decade if not sooner. The industry already has coined a term for it, called Q-day, which is when your current security that revolves around cryptography will be rendered irrelevant. So, this may be one area where being an early adopter has far less risk than being a laggard. The good news is that we seem to have some time to prepare for this change (more ...

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Act Now: Okta Fiscal Year End is January

Your Virtual Bouncer If you need security from the occasional undesirable intruder in your enterprise and need to convey strength in the way you control access to the information you hold most dear, by restricting access to unwelcomed guests and bouncing them from your cloud, you may very well need to learn more about Okta. In 2021, we named Okta as the #3 technology supplier to watch - largely based on its growth in the enterprise space as a Single-Sign-On platform. In March 2021, Okta acquired Auth0, and by doing so, moved from a cloud-based identity and access management company that provides single-sign-on access for employees to a ...

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Microsoft Wants To Be Your Sole Solution Provider for Security and Compliance. Do You Really Want That?

The news has constant reminders of the risks of an unsecure infrastructure. The Colonial Pipeline ransomware event recently caused blood pressure spikes in boardrooms and C-Suites all over the world. Microsoft continues to expand their security and compliance offerings, with a dizzying and confusing array of services, bundles, and add-ons to your 365 subscriptions. As we come into June, the end of the Microsoft fiscal year, clients are getting heavy pressure from management to “do something” about the very high-risk security and compliance requirements in today’s enterprise – and Microsoft is happy to sell “solutions”. But are they really ...

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Top 10 HCM HRMS Suppliers for 2021

Introduction: The WFA (Work from Anywhere) dynamic has challenged the traditional mission of HCM professionals. With these changes come new and unique ways that HCM and HRMS providers should be engaged and negotiated with. As you read through our top 10 providers, some strategic imperatives to keep in mind: Innovation: Shifts to WFA models require rapid, nimble, innovation focused providers. Keep this in mind when researching your renewal and or new agreements. Ensure the agreement’s terms and conditions meet YOUR expectations and projected business requirements – not the providers sales and margin goals. Return of the niche providers: HCM ...

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SolarWinds Breach: Three Lessons You Need to Heed

What do the Pentagon, the U.S. State Department, The White House, the NSA, all five branches of the US military, the top ten U.S. telecommunications companies, and four hundred twenty-five of the Fortune 500 all have in common? Given the title of this article, you already have a clue, which is that they are all SolarWinds customers. Those are just some of the higher profile organizations, but in all there are 300k SolarWinds customers around the world, with about 18k identified as impacted. The impact of this breach is so far and deep, the actual repercussions will not be fully understood for years potentially. However, we don’t have to wait ...

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Microsoft Alert: September Outage and What You Should Know

Microsoft’s cloud services experienced a significant outage yesterday. There were reports that Microsoft’s efforts to repair the problem affected some customers for more than 6 hours. We are not yet aware of any customer data that was lost. Microsoft customers from all over the world reported significant issues with access to critical functions. In the United States, several 911 Emergency reporting facilities from Atlanta, Georgia to Tucson, Arizona were down. In addition to emergency services, virtual learning in colleges and public schools took a major hit as students, teachers, and administrators all over North America were forced to stop ...

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Financial Services Blog Series: Cyber Security – The Biggest Risk Isn’t the Loss Itself, But the Reputation

Some of you may remember the name Ray Tomlinson. If you’ve never heard of him or can’t recall the name, suffice it to say that he’s had a profound impact on your life. Recently deceased, he is the programmer credited to have invented ‘email’ back in 1971 when he sent an email to himself from one computer to another traveling a network known as ARPANET. Not surprisingly, given Tomlinson invented email, he is also the person who turned the world’s first computer virus “Creeper” into a self-replicating program and then developed a reactionary antivirus program called “Reaper” to delete it. This would prove to be just the first of many thousands ...

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Microsoft: COVID-19 Indifference, New Pricing, and Great News (for Microsoft)

The initial outreach and helping hand that many IT suppliers gave at the onset of the pandemic has already faded. Most offers were not only insufficient to have a real impact, but instead locked companies into less favorable deals long-term in exchange for that short-term assistance. We recently wrote another article on this called ‘Look That Gift Horse in the Mouth’. Microsoft has thus far, in our opinion, followed this same path. Despite COVID-19 issues, Microsoft thus far is holding firm on pricing for its Office365 Enterprise Agreement renewals. Further, we see them in many cases offering ‘list price’ and no discounts at all. Breaking ...

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Security Operations Center: Insource or Outsource to MSSP?

As technology marches ever forward, the threats to Enterprise Security have seemingly multiplied exponentially. Our ability as organizations to stay ahead of the risks that technological advancements have brought to the forefront are challenged daily. Literally. They are challenged everyday by threats from: Foreign governments trying to access data and networks Cloud security as more and more corporate data is stored outside proprietary networks Shadow IT Ransomware Phishing attacks on unaware employees Internal bad actors (i.e. employees who wish to do harm) Malware installed on endpoints surreptitiously by external bad actors There are ...

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