Archive for October 28, 2020

Terranova Security Announces New Program Tiers, Special Offers, & An Enhanced Portal Experience For Cyber Security Partners Globally

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 28, 2020 by itnerd

Today, Terranova Security, a global security awareness partner of choice, announced various enhancements available to MSSPs, OEMs, distributors, resellers, and technology partners worldwide, as well as existing members of their partner program.

These enrichments include expanded partner program tier options, a host of special offers to bolster revenue generation opportunities, and an enhanced, easy to use partner portal interface

The Terranova Security Partner Program offers its community of security awareness leaders a simple but powerful ecosystem that supports long-term business and portfolio growth.

Participants enjoy access to:

  • Comprehensive online training and certification that establishes them as a trusted information security awareness advisor.
  • Special incentives and offers that drive new sales opportunities and facilitate new account acquisition and portfolio expansion.
  • Sales and marketing resources that promote continuous business growth.
  • Reliable, engaging security awareness solutions that leverage Terranova Security’s proven training material and phishing simulations.
  • A transparent, mutually beneficial program structure where all sales engagement is conducted with the utmost attentiveness.

The Terranova Security Partner Program will also be home to the new Terranova Security Partner Portal interface. The streamlined online experience will make it much easier for MSSPs, OEMs, resellers, and other partners to register deals, complete certifications, and access exclusive partner-only content.

The Terranova Security Partner Program offers significant advantages for the network of Microsoft Partners

The enhancements made to the Terranova Security Partner Program include several additional benefits specifically for all Microsoft distributors, resellers, and other partners. This is due to the ongoing Terranova Security and Microsoft partnership, which was made official early in 2020.

Microsoft Partners can leverage attack simulation as a value-added product in various Microsoft bundles, helping to upgrade E3 license holders to the E5 and ATP2 tiers. Terranova Security can also help Microsoft Partners increase their earning power and drive additional sales with special offers for E3 clients who aren’t ready to make the jump to E5.

The industry-leading security awareness training solution from Terranova Security

The effectiveness of the Terranova Security training solutions and phishing simulations have solidified the organization’s standing as a security awareness training global partner of choice. This extends to the 2020 Market Guide for Security Awareness Computer-Based Training (SACBT), where Gartner, Inc. recognized Terranova Security as a Security Awareness Program Platforms Representative Vendor.

Terranova Security accomplishes this by utilizing:

  • High-quality content that is continually evolving to address current phishing threats and effectively target user behavior.
  • A variety of training formats, including micro- and nanolearning modules, to deepen and reinforce user knowledge.
  • Compliance with WCAG 2.1 accessibility measures to make security awareness training available to all users.
  • Customizable phishing simulations to safely test user acumen with real-world threat scenarios.
  • Downloadable, instantly shareable communication tools to help boost participation and underscore key training campaign concepts.

The importance of a robust security awareness training program has come into sharp focus since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Accelerated digital transformation and a global shift toward remote work have elevated the risk of data exposure for many organizations.

Verizon reports that users are three times more likely to click on pandemic-related phishing links. At the same time, a recent Malwarebytes study revealed that more than 55% of executives cite training employees to work securely and compliantly outside the office as their biggest cyber security challenge.

Terranova Security is hosting a Security Awareness Virtual Summit for all prospective and existing partners on November 12th. Sponsored by Microsoft, the event will provide additional insight into the Partner Program and feature an in-depth solution demo.

To save a spot and view a complete agenda for the event, visit the Terranova Security website.

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Sonos Announces Some Holiday Promos

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 28, 2020 by itnerd

This year, Sonos is offering great savings across its family of products that I wanted to put on your radar. I’ve included a few of these offers below:

  • Brilliant Sound Upgrade – Take your and your loved ones’ at-home sound experience to the next level with a $150 CAD savings on Move ($349 CAD), Beam ($349 CAD) and Sub ($749 CAD) between Nov 22 – 30.
  • Treat Yourself – Get a head start on treating yourself in the new year with a $50 savings on One SL ($179 CAD) and One ($199 CAD) between Dec 4 – 13.

And don’t forget – if you’re a fan of The Mandalorian, Sonos has joined forces with the series award-winning composer Ludwig Göransson to debut a new hand-curated station exclusively on Sonos Radio, starting October 30.

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TELUS & Calm Sign Global-First Agreement To Deliver Content For Better Mental Health Through A TV Service

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 28, 2020 by itnerd

Strengthening its commitment to improving the health of all Canadians, TELUS today announced a global-first agreement with www.calm.com, the award-winning mental fitness app, to bring sleep, meditation and relaxation content into the homes of Optik TV and Pik TV customers, through the TELUS Healthy Living Network.

This collaboration is the first of its kind for Calm and will enable TELUS to provide mental health resources to Canadians of all ages as they deal with the stresses brought on by life during the COVID-19 pandemic. The content, which is free for all Optik TV and Pik TV subscribers, includes guided meditations, breathing exercises, and Calm’s Sleep StoriesTM, bedtime stories for grown ups.

By partnering with Calm, TELUS is once again stepping up to support Canadians, and there couldn’t be a better time. With more than 90 million app downloads, Calm is the number one mental fitness app helping users sleep more, stress less, and live better.

Since March, individuals and families across Canada have had to adapt to increased physical and social isolation, economic downturn, and changing expectations at school, work, and home. As Canada is in the second wave of COVID-19, many are very concerned about the challenges ahead. Nearly twenty-five percent of Canadians reported being very or extremely stressed about the pandemic, according to an Angus Reid poll conducted last month. As people look for ways to adapt to these new stresses, proactive mental healthcare is more important than ever.

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AppDynamics Solves Visibility Gap Between Traditional Infrastructure and Cloud Environments With New Portfolio Of Cloud Native Solutions

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 28, 2020 by itnerd

AppDynamics, a part of Cisco and the world’s #1 APM solution and full-stack, business centric observability platform, today released new capabilities designed to help IT teams build cloud native applications with confidence by connecting hybrid cloud application performance to business performance in real-time. Through a context-sensitive visualization interface, correlated insights across domains and intelligent resource optimization, enterprise IT leaders will be able to reduce noise and surface only the most business-critical information and insights across their unique hybrid environments.

Technologists are adopting cloud services faster than ever before in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and the increased pressure it has placed on IT.  While new cloud technologies have delivered flexibility and enabled innovation for businesses as they seek to deliver seamless customer and employee digital experiences, they have also led to more complex and distributed application architectures. This has created huge challenges for technologists in enterprise organizations who typically rely on many traditional IT systems to run their businesses but now operate in a hybrid cloud environment. As IT teams adopt more cloud native services to meet the digital demands of their users, the challenge to refactor applications and design new features at scale becomes increasingly challenging due to a lack of holistic visibility and business context across the multiple environments.

AppDynamics’ new portfolio of cloud capabilities closes that visibility gap and allows users to connect traditional systems with cloud native services, all in the context of business outcomes.

These new capabilities include:

●      Full Stack Observability Platform: A new data platform designed to increase visibility and seamlessly ingest data from multiple sources including AppDynamics agent-based data, open-source tools and agent-less services and correlate the data across domains.

●      Cloud Data Collector: An extensible architecture for capturing and automating data collection and correlating cloud services with application code, user experience and business impact to provide full stack, context rich observability. Starting with Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) monitoring and observability service, Amazon CloudWatch, and then expanding to incorporate additional public and private cloud environments.

●      Cloud Native Visualization: A new visualization interface that reduces the complexity of monitoring cloud-native applications with a context-sensitive, easy to understand, visual representation.

●      Intelligent Application Resourcing and Cost Optimization: An integration with CiscoIntersight Workload Optimizer will transform operations from reactive to proactive by optimizing infrastructure resources and costs in hybrid cloud environments.

In the crowded HR technology market, a flawless customer experience is how businesses are staying competitive. Jobvite – known for its best-of-breed applicant tracking system (ATS) and recruiting software – understands the importance of investing in cloud technologies as a way to support the digital experiences they offer to customers.

AppDynamics’ new cloud native capabilities are generally available today. Learn more about how to access these new services here.

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SkipTheDishes and Wine Rack Partner to Deliver Alcohol Throughout Ontario

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 28, 2020 by itnerd

SkipTheDishes, Canada’s largest and most popular food delivery network, is excited to announce its partnership with Wine Rack, Ontario’s leading chain of wine boutiques. Launching October 29, Skip will begin delivering alcohol directly to customers from 34 stores in Toronto, and over 100 stores across Ontario shortly after launch.

Through the SkipTheDishes app or website, customers will be able to conveniently order over 100 different wines and refreshment options from Wine Rack, including well-known brands such as Jackson-Triggs, Inniskilin, OPEN, Bodacious, Naked Grape, Growers Cider, Cartier and many more.

With the holiday season being one the busiest times of the year, this partnership conveniently helps customers social distance, avoid long line ups and shop their favourite local wines and refreshments from the comfort of home. 

In addition to Wine Rack’s wide selection of quality wine, ciders and liqueurs that can be enjoyed responsibly, they offer great gifting options for any occasion. Gift baskets and more will also be available for delivery through Skip, just in time for the holiday season. 

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Trump Campaign Website Pwned By Scammers

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 28, 2020 by itnerd

President Trump’s campaign website was briefly and partially hacked Tuesday afternoon as unknown adversaries took over the “About” page and replaced it with what appeared to be a scam to collect cryptocurrency:

There is no indication, despite the hackers’ claims, that “full access to trump and relatives” was achieved or “most internal and secret conversations strictly classified information” were exposed. The hack seemingly took place shortly after 4 PM Pacific time. The culprits likely gained access to the donaldjtrump.com web server backend and replaced the “About” page with a long stretch of obfuscated javascript producing a parody of the FBI “this site has been seized” message. 

“the world has had enough of the fake-news spreaded daily by president donald j trump,” the new site read. “it is time to allow the world to know truth.” Claiming to have inside information on the “origin of the corona virus” and other information discrediting Trump, the hackers provided two Monero addresses. Monero is a cryptocurrency that’s easy to send but quite difficult to track. For this reason it has become associated with unsavory operations such as this hack. One address was for people that wanted the “strictly classified information” released, the other for those who would prefer to keep it secret. After an unspecified deadline the totals of cryptocurrency would be compared and the higher total would determine what was done with the data.

The website was reverted back to normal in a few minutes. But it is the latest cybersecurity issue that Trump has had in the last few weeks. After all a Dutch security researcher claimed to have pwned his Twitter account not too long ago. Clearly, Trump and his minions have no clue about IT security.

UPDATE: I have a comment about this incident from Mike Beck, Global CISO at Darktrace 

This news does not come as a surprise – in the run up to elections, in this case one of the most significant in history, political parties and individuals will be battling attempts against their systems on a daily basis. Some attacks are more successful than others, some are advanced and others less so. This is an example of an “unsophisticated scam” but this does not preclude involvement from nation-state affiliates, and we shouldn’t ignore that the hackers were still able to gain access to the website and cause mischief.

The more pressing concern for the candidates is how to detect sophisticated attacks or insider threats. 

Digital campaigning is now central for reaching the electorate. As political campaigns are run increasingly within a digital context, attackers might aim to do damage in a number of ways, whether by accessing data on voters or campaign strategy that would deliver a competitive advantage to the adversary, by opportunistically digging for information that could be reputationally damaging to prominent individuals, or by disrupting the organization so as to slow productivity. 

In this new era of deepfakes, disinformation and increasingly sophisticated hackers, governments, political parties, the media and campaign groups must all be on the leading edge of innovation to protect targeted data and minimise the impact of any attempts to disrupt their activities. Cyber security AI will be a fundamental ally to not only detect these attempts early but actively stop them in their tracks, before confidence and data integrity is seriously undermined.

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Review: Mujjo Full Leather Wallet Case for iPhone 12 & 12 Pro

Posted in Products with tags on October 28, 2020 by itnerd

Most of the time my iPhone 12 Pro is a tool to check my email and get calls. But there are times that I also want the iPhone to be a bit of a fashion statement. For example at formal events. That’s where a case like the Mujjo Full Leather Wallet Case for iPhone 12 & 12 Pro comes in handy.

This is a vegetable tanned leather case in what Mujjo calls “Monaco Blue”. You’ll notice two things about this case. One is that the bottom of the case isn’t covered. But that’s not uncommon for leather and even some rubber cases. Second, you’ll see a pocket on the back. I got it to hold my credit card and drivers license which is what I would take with me if I was going out for the evening and I wish to leave my wallet at home so that my suit would look better as there would be no bulges in the jacket or pants.

It was a bit tight to get cards in and out of the pocket, but I would imagine that the leather will loosen up over time. Speaking of the leather, out of the box it had a nice smell to it, the case looks well assembled, and all the duplicate buttons worked perfectly. Plus the cutouts also have very tight tolerances. For example, here’s the cutout for the camera array.

Overall the craftsmanship is top notch as it is clear that Mujjo spent a lot of time and effort to design this case. It’s also a very thin case that doesn’t add much if any bulk. I will however point out that there likely isn’t going to be much drop protection for that reason. Though it will likely protect your iPhone from bumps without a problem. The edge around the screen is slightly raised. That means if you put your iPhone face down, the screen won’t touch the surface that you put it on which is a good thing. Finally, wireless charging and Apple Pay worked fine.

There’s one other thing that I would like to point out:

There’s a microfiber liner on the inside of the case that’s really classy. Right down to the fact that Mujjo embossed their logo into the inside of the case.

Mujjo has a number of colors to fit your style and the case goes for €41.24. It’s a well made case that is very stylish and I will be using this case when the world stops ending and we can go out to formal events again.

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Stelco Pwned By Criminal Hackers

Posted in Commentary on October 28, 2020 by itnerd

Stelco Holdings Inc., a low-cost, integrated and independent steelmaker and 100% owner of the operating company Stelco Inc., announced that it was subject to a criminal attack on its information systems.

The attack against Stelco proves as evidence on how back-up and recovery plans must be established, so that systems and operations can continue without damage to the business. It is essential to increase cyber resilience, with AI advancing as a defense to catch threats on the inside, before they endanger data or operations. Visibility and understanding of the network are key factors to preventing operational shut down.

David Masson, Director of Enterprise Security for Darktrace had this to say:

“This breach is yet another reminder of why using AI defenses to catch threats inside of an organization, before they endanger data or operations, is essential to increase the cyber resilience of an organization. A company in any industry can fall victim to an attack. In the case of the criminal attack on the information systems of Stelco, the suspension of business operations suggests this may have been a ransomware attack that could have affected their Industrial Control Systems (ICS).

In today’s landscape, cyber-attacks are increasingly prevalent, including ransomware, due to the speed in which they attack. The use of AI to gain proper visibility and understanding of your network is key to preventing fast-acting attacks that risk operational shut down.”

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