iboss announced an integration partnership with Microsoft Cloud App Security (MCAS). The partnership allows organizations to leverage Microsoft Cloud App Security in a more powerful way by integrating it with the iboss cloud. The iboss cloud secures user Internet access, on any device, from any location and this integration allows iboss cloud and MCAS to connect seamlessly. Through this connection, data from users is automatically sent from iboss cloud to MCAS to provide insight into cloud application use. In addition, risky applications sanctioned within Microsoft Cloud App Security are automatically synchronized with iboss cloud to ensure those applications are controlled to prevent data loss.

Written by David Marshall

An independent researcher has discovered what he reports to be a zero-day vulnerability in VirtualBox, a popular general-purpose virtualization platform targeted at server, desktop and embedded use.

What’s interesting here is that the researcher chose to publicly disclose the security hole rather than privately inform the vendor, which in the case of VirtualBox is Oracle.  He justified this act by calling it a reaction to his previous bad experience with Oracle.  Last year, he found and reported a vulnerability that took almost 15 months for the vendor to release a fix.  So this time, he took a different path of notification. 

Sergey Zelenyuk, the Russian researcher, said he discovered a security flaw in Oracle’s VM VirtualBox that would allow someone to escape from the virtual environment of the guest machine to reach the Ring 3 privilege layer used for running code from most user programs with the least privileges.  The zero-day vulnerability could allow an attacker with root access to then gain access to the underlying OS.

The vulnerability is reported to exist in VirtualBox 5.2.20 and prior versions.

Cloudability today announced the integration of its cloud cost management platform with monitoring and analytics platform provider, Datadog. This integration helps customers achieve cloud excellence by delivering performance efficiency recommendations that are cost optimized, a key requirement of financial cloud management and cloud agility.  Cloudability will be demonstrating the integration at AWS re:Invent Nov. 26-29 in Las Vegas, Booth #1316.

"Seeing Cloudability and Datadog collaborate on this integration makes perfect sense and brings tremendous value to our savvy customer base," said Javier D’Ovidio, CEO of Edrans, an AWS Partner. "We’ve experienced the power each of their technologies brings to table, and can attest to the demand for an integrated cost optimization and performance solution for customers who are committed to achieving true cloud success."

Cloud Academy, the leading enterprise cloud training platform, today announced the launch of its Technology Partner Program, a partner initiative focused on enabling technology vendors to train customers and generate awareness throughout the entire cloud ecosystem by leveraging the Cloud Academy platform. Inaugural partnerships include agreements with cloud ecosystem leaders Spotinst, Aviatrix, HashiCorp, NGINX, and the DevOps Institute.

Technology partners can leverage the program to place their training materials in Cloud Academy’s content library, which covers topics including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, agile, DevOps, SaaS, machine learning and more. Partners can also power training portals on their sites using the Cloud Academy platform to power their programs which accelerate learning and certification for internal staff, customers, and partners.

"Cloud Academy is excited to partner with industry-leading organizations to add their technology training to our extensive content library", said Randy Streu, VP Global Partnerships & Alliances at Cloud Academy. "The addition of new 3rd party curriculum will accelerate learning opportunity for our customers preparing their teams for upcoming digital transformation projects while also creating world-class training programs for our partners."

Nerdio, a provider of cloud IT automation for the public and private cloud, today announced the availability of new security features in Nerdio for Azure on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store providing applications and services for use on Microsoft Azure. The new features, also available in Nerdio Private Cloud, are designed to help managed service providers (MSPs) and small to medium-sized corporations (SMCs) with enhanced cybersecurity guidance.

"As new threats are constantly emerging and known vulnerabilities continue to evolve, it’s increasingly challenging for organizations to stay ahead of security issues in an effective and resource-efficient way," said Vadim Vladimirskiy, CEO of Nerdio. "Our new security tools extend the efficiencies and benefits of MSPs and internal IT departments and empower them to be more effective in identifying and implementing which controls will truly serve the organization best."

Nerdio for Azure is an automation platform for pricing, packaging, provisioning, management, and optimization of IT environments. It uses Office 365 with Azure Active Directory ADFS, Azure virtual machines with premium managed disks, Azure Recovery Services for both backup and DR replication, and the latest Server 2016 with its optimized RDP v10 protocol running on top of GPU-enabled virtual machines. Nerdio Private Cloud is a fully integrated platform that delivers comprehensive IT infrastructure.

Rubrik announced the Andes 5.0 release of its flagship Cloud Data Management platform, delivering a single software to protect, automate, and govern applications and data across datacenters and clouds. Rubrik Andes, the company’s fourteenth and most expansive release, accelerates enterprise digital transformation with groundbreaking innovation for mission-critical applications, including Oracle and SAP HANA business data platform, and cloud-native applications, including Microsoft Office 365 and NoSQL databases.

As enterprises drive digital transformation initiatives, they grapple with the fragmentation of business applications and data across multiple datacenters and clouds while adhering to ever more stringent security requirements. To successfully deliver business outcomes, enterprises require a data management solution that can protect applications across datacenters and clouds, automate self-service at scale, and eliminate operational complexity while maintaining governance, compliance, and security against cyber threats such as Ransomware.

"Legacy solutions are not built for digital-minded enterprises to meet compliance and protect against security attacks," said Rubrik Co-Founder and CTO, Arvind Nithrakashyap. "Rubrik’s Andes 5.0 release provides a single software platform to protect and organize business critical information for implementing governance, meeting compliance, and recovering from today’s intensifying security threats. With Rubrik Andes, enterprises achieve business uptime, accelerate development, and leverage the cloud for all mission-critical and next-gen applications – all foundational to digital transformation."

Sysdig, Inc., a cloud-native intelligence company, today announced that Sysdig is available on Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) Marketplace. AWS customers can now purchase and deploy Sysdig Monitor, Sysdig Secure, and the entire Sysdig Cloud-Native Intelligence Platform directly through AWS Marketplace. Sysdig has created one of the first platforms to unify container security, monitoring, and forensics with native Kubernetes, Prometheus, and AWS services.

Enterprises that choose to purchase Sysdig through AWS Marketplace get the peace of mind of knowing that the two are easily deployable together and they can save time by simplifying tasks, including procurement and billing. This announcement comes on the heels of Sysdig being recognized as an Advanced Technology Partner in the AWS Partner Network (APN) and demonstrates the commitment by both companies to continue working together.

The OpenStack Foundation (OSF) launched four pilot projects in the last 12 months, emphasizing its expanded mission to help users integrate and operate open infrastructure. The communities driving these pilot projects-Airship, Kata Containers, StarlingX and Zuul-announced substantial progress on new features, technology roadmaps and use cases, and they are accelerating that progress via collaboration with the broader open infrastructure community at the Summit this week, driving their projects forward.

Airship Community Delivers Release Candidate for Declarative Infrastructure Management, 5G Demo at Berlin Summit

Airship makes it possible for users to deploy and manage containers, virtual machines and bare metal infrastructure environments across multiple sites in a repeatable and declarative fashion. The value of Airship for 5G and edge computing is that users can deploy and easily manage the same environment across hundreds or thousands of smaller sites. There also is value for upgrades and lifecycle management in large datacenters. Airship is a user-driven project being developed in production by AT&T and SK Telecom for 5G to NFV, VDI and big data processing.

During the OpenStack Summit Berlin keynote today, AT&T is demonstrating how its 5G commercial deployment is "born in the cloud," powered by OpenStack while deployed and managed by Airship.

TEKsystems Global Services, a leader in full-stack technology services, announced today it will be speaking and exhibiting at AWS re:Invent 2018. AWS re:Invent is a learning conference hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for the global cloud computing community. The event features keynote announcements, training and certification opportunities, access to more than 2,000 technical sessions, a partner expo, after-hours events, and so much more.

TEKsystems’ deep cloud experience offers a full-stack perspective that can help organizations maximize their cloud strategies and provide tailored solutions that fit the specific needs of their business. With over 100 cloud, application re-architecture, data warehouse migration and DevOps automation projects completed; over 1,000 on-premises workloads migrated to the cloud; and a 60 percent decrease in provisioning time for new builds delivered to a client, TEKsystems has a proven track record in accelerating their clients’ success to meet the demanding pace of digital transformation.

Protecting your business doesn’t always require you to spent six figures on security infrastructure or perform hundreds of penetration tests. As with many things in life, it’s the little things that really count. Here are a few things you can do right now to enhance your business’s security posture – and they won’t cost a thing.

There’s a lot of doom and gloom in the cybersecurity space. It seems like you can’t even read the news without hearing about some terrifying new black hat organization, or some highly-sophisticated malware that’s bringing businesses to their knees across the world. It’s hard not to adopt something of a fatalist outlook amidst all that chaos.

After all, if these large enterprises with their million and billion dollar security budgets can’t fend off hackers, what chance do the rest of us have?

A pretty good one, actually. See, while it’s certainly true that there are a ton of well-funded, extremely advanced hacking groups out there, the chances that one of them will directly target your business are extremely slim. Likely as not, anyone who goes after you is simply taking a shotgun approach to their hacking – throw a bunch of attempts at the wall and see which ones work.