BizTech Brief #17

Week Commencing 5th December

As the Christmas period is drawing nearer with us now in the last month of the year, the majority of big news within the industry has taken a back seat to the Christmas parties and holidays. However, it is clear that the industry giants won’t rest and are still working hard to ensure the end-users of their products are happy and able to work without any issues. 

The UK falls below global cyber security confidence 

The UK falls below the global confidence in the ability to accurately assess cyber risk which has dropped to 70% ( a 12% decrease from 2015) over 2016.

In the UK, confidence among respondents in their organisation’s ability to assess risks has taken a significant knock, falling from 73% to 59%. Security assurance has also taken a slight decrease from 74% to 73%. These figures give the UK an overall score of 66% which is classed as a D-Grade or in other words….FAIL. 

Cris Thomas, Strategist at Tenable Network Security said ‘Today’s network is constantly changing – mobile devices, cloud, IoT and more – and the data incidents that a lot of organisations lack the visibility hey need to feel confident in their security posture’. 

For more statistics and the full article, click here. 

Introducing App Volumes 2.12

Delivering applications and ensuring application availability in virtual desktop infrastructure and published application environments is as important as ever for administrators today. App Volumes allows IT to deliver applications and data to users or desktops in seconds, and at scale. VMware has now released the seventh major release of App Volumes 2.12. The new set of capabilities in this release include huge improvements that impact end-users:

1. Better User Experience. When tested App Volumes 2.12 was reported to have 30-50% faster login time. 

2. Improved Active Directory Integration. Allows IT to manage assignments across multiple domains using a single management cluster. 

3. Security enhancements. this release includes agents to manager certification validation. 

4. Windows 10 Anniversary Update and Office 2016. Both these platforms are now supported by App Volumes 2.12. 

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Harry Labana, VP Management Services & Strategy for End-User Computing at VMware, introduces App Volumes 2.12. This release includes exciting new enhancements such as better user experience with improve login times, security enhancements, and an update to the Tech Preview of Instant Clone Technology for Citrix.

VP Management Services & Strategy (EUC) at VMware, Harry Labana introduces App Volumes 2.12. For more information, visit DABCC. 

For more information, on the new release of App Volumes 2.12, click here.

ComputerWorld turn their most successful event into an on-demand virtual event

The ComputerWorld team were excited to announce that their latest Define Tomorrow event was the best yet with over 200 people in attendance. The day was full of inspirational and thought provoking presentations from industry leaders such as VMware CTO and VP, Joe Baguley and AppSense CTO, Simon Townsend. The event also welcomed over 10 of ComputerWorld’s key partners to showcase their technology and discuss the burning issues within the industry with all attendees on the day. 

Following on from the success of this event, ComputerWorld have put all the content from the event online within an on-demand Virtual Event. The virtual event includes recordings of the keynote presentations from Joe, Simon and ComputerWorld Director Barry Coombs. There is also an opportunity for visitors to take a look around the solutions exchange and understand what the sponsors of the event do and how they can help your business.

In addition to what was there on the day, there is also the opportunity to watch recordings of all the technical deep dive webinars that ComputerWorld held with their partners following the event. 

For more information about the success of the event, click here.

Join the virtual event

Microsoft Azure Information Protection December Preview Now Available

Since Microsoft released Azure Information Protection (AIP) on October 1st the team have been working on rapidly delivering requested updates and new features. Microsoft now has a new preview release available. This preview includes a number of enhancements important to your active information protection deployments. 

What is new in preview: 

1. Scoped Policies
2. A new, unified Windows Client 
3. An Updated viewer for protected files
4. Manual labelling and protection for non-office files
5. Bulk classification and labelling for data at rest

Here is what is now released

1. Event logs for labelling and protection events
2. Hold Your Own Key (HYOK) for protecting highly sensitive content from anyone but you
3. Cloud App Security (MCAS) integration of labels into their product offering

For more information, click here. 

Security veteran urges firms to prioritise spear phishing defence

Spear Phishing is an e-mail spoofing fraud attempt that targets a specific organisation, seeking unauthorised access to confidential data.

Protection against spear phishing attacks should be top of organisations’ cyber security priority lists for 2017 according to Peter Wood, Cheif Executive of Security Consultancy. 

“Our investigations show that phishing, particularly spear phishing, is the most prevalent threat to organisations, and is a key component in just about every cyber attack,” he told Computer Weekly. There are some technologies available that are designed to detect and stop anomalous behaviour, but without this capability, stolen credentials effectively give attackers free rein.

To read the full article, click here.