Author: Nick Farrell

Infinigate headhunts Kaspersky’s Oudot

Posted on April 12, 2023 by - News

Infinigate has appointed Catherine Oudot as its new managing director of Infinigate France.

Oudot spend five and a half years working for cybersecurity and anti-virus provider Kaspersky building its French channel business.

In her new role, Oudot will use Infinigate’s recent acquisitions and ensure the development of its cloud solutions.

She said: “I am delighted to help our partners take advantage of the opportunities offered by a dynamic French market, supported by the strong potential of Infinigate, so that they support their customers in the digital transformation process.”

“We have a unique and innovative offer thanks to our highly specialised services and our expertise in the field of cybersecurity. I look forward to uniting the team and showing the leadership that will allow it to express its full potential.

Infinigate Group president for Europe Andreas Bechtold said: “The French market represents an extraordinary development opportunity for Infinigate.

“Oudot will take over the management of our French team to take advantage of the growth prospects available to us and our partners. Her expertise, experience, energy and determination are invaluable assets in carrying out this mission.”

Jigsaw buys some more corner pieces in Apple market

Posted on April 12, 2023 by - News

Jigsaw24 has picked up service and repair specialist Amsys to bolster its position in the Apple market for media and entertainment customers.

For those who came in late, Amsys is one of the largest Apple repair and servicing specialists in the UK, with a history that spans three decades.

Jigsaw24’s chief operating officer David Dudman said: “This acquisition and the addition of the Amsys team will significantly increase Jigsaw24’s repair capabilities and bolster our technical expertise while providing Amsys with the financial security of a company with a turnover of £169 million.”

IT spending continues to fall says IDC

Posted on April 6, 2023 by - News

Beancounters at analyst outfit IDC have been adding up some numbers and reached the conclusion that IT spending worldwide is on a downward trend.

In its new monthly forecast for worldwide IT spending growth, IDC projects overall growth this year in constant currency of 4.4 per cent to $3.25 trillion

This is slightly down from 4.5 per cent in the previous month’s forecast and represents a swing from a 6.0 per cent growth forecast in October 2022.

IDC vice president Stephen Minton said that since the fourth quarter of last year, we have seen clear and measurable signs of a moderate pullback in some areas of IT spending.

“Tech spending remains resilient compared to historical economic downturns and other types of business spending, but rising interest rates are now impacting capital spending.”

After reductions to PC forecasts a month ago, IDC has now scaled back its expectations for some additional hardware categories including servers, wearable devices, and peripherals.

UK telecoms regulator launches cloudy anti-trust investigation

Posted on April 6, 2023 by - News

UK telecoms regulator has launched a competition probe into the cloud market.

According to Ofcom, two US vendors Microsoft and Amazon enjoy a 60 per cent – 70 per cent share of the £15bn UK cloud services market.

Ofcom is proposing that the matter be referred to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for investigation.

Writing in its blog, Ofcom said that with business and the public sector ever more reliant on cloud services, this represents an imbalance that is bad for customer choice.

Firms find security a bit tricky

Posted on April 6, 2023 by - News

Security outfit Sophos has been asking around and found that nearly all organisations find essential security operation tasks, such as threat hunting a bit too challenging.

Sophos’s new survey The State of Cybersecurity 2023: The Business Impact of Adversaries on Defenders  which found that, globally, 93 per cent of organisations find the execution of some essential security operation tasks, such as threat hunting, challenging.

These challenges include understanding how an attack happened, with 75 per cent of respondents stating they have challenges identifying the root cause of an incident. This can make proper remediation difficult, leaving organizations vulnerable to repetitive or multiple attacks, by the same or different adversaries, especially since 71 per cent of those surveyed also reported challenges with timely remediation.

More than 71 per cent said they have challenges understanding which signals/alerts to investigate, and the same percent reported challenges prioritising investigations.

Sophos CTO John Shier said that only a fifth of respondents considered vulnerabilities and remote services a top cybersecurity risk for 2023, yet the ground truth is that these are routinely exploited by Active Adversaries.

Orange Cyberdefense wants to hire 800 professionals

Posted on April 5, 2023 by - News

Orange Cyberdefense, the Orange subsidiary and European leader in cybersecurity services, announces the launch of its latest recruitment campaign, which will run until the end of 2023.

The outfit wants to recruit around 800 professionals in the nine European countries where it operates to meet the new cybersecurity challenges of companies of all sizes and who will join the 3,000 experts already in the organisation.

Positions are available across the entire organisation, from analyst roles in operational teams to architects, engineers, consultants, and ethical hackers.

Comms and RM Technology working on Connect the Classroom initiative.

Posted on April 5, 2023 by - News

Comms-care (an Ingram Micro company) is teaming up with RM Technology as partners for the Department for Education (DfE) funded Connect the Classroom (CTC) initiative.

The programme will enable schools to take advantage of future-proofed IT infrastructure and benefit from the speed and capability of full-fibre broadband at speeds of 1 Gigabit per second, which is 20 times faster than the average internet speed in the UK.

RM has supported schools on DfE’s CTC initiative since 2021, working on the DfE grant funded project to co-create and deliver brand new IT infrastructure that sets the foundation of future proofed network connectivity.

Drata teams up with Distology

Posted on April 5, 2023 by - News

Drata has teamed up with Distology to increase its global presence and network of IT resellers.

The new partnership adds Drata to Distology’s existing suite of cybersecurity solutions to support companies with varying compliance needs, within the EMEA market.

For those who came in late, Drata is a security and compliance automation platform and Distology is a value-added distributor (VAD) specialising in cybersecurity. The partnership marks the continued growth of Drata’s channel programme and global expansion efforts by extending its integrated risk and compliance offerings to Distology’s community of IT resellers in the EMEA regions.

According to the companies compliance has increasingly become an essential part of any organisation looking to earn and maintain trust among their customers as global regulations in data protection become increasingly enforced.

Daisy blossoms as it snaps up ECSC

Posted on April 4, 2023 by - News

Daisy has acquired cybersecurity vendor ECSC as part of a cunning plan to build out its cybersecurity services.

The acquisition is the latest in more than 50 acquisitions made by the firm including, more recently,  Phoenix IT, Alternative Networks and Damovo UK.

ECSC was established in 2000 and specialises in security breach prevention, detection, and response support.

Daisy CEO Neil Thompson said that he was really excited about adding ECSC’s longstanding and highly complementary cyber security expertise to Daisy ‘s existing Cyber and Operational Resilience division, and wider managed service business,” said .

“Our people are looking forward to working together, and the skillsets the ECSC team bring will further enhance the market leading IT services we provide to our customers.”

ECSC CEO Matthew Briggs said: “Under Daisy ownership, the ECSC directors believe there is a very real prospect that ECSC can become the UK’s leading cyber security organisation, providing excellent career opportunities and delivering best in class cyber solutions for new and existing clients.”

Nothing weird about vendor firings

Posted on April 4, 2023 by - News

Aviatrix CEO tech leader Steve Mullaney has been telling the world+dog that there is nothing unusual about the large number of layoffs that are occurring in the IT industry.

He said that a large number of sackage is due to the “overhiring” technology companies did over the past few years during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mullaney said: “Everyone just kept hiring, hiring and hiring, whether it made any sense or not. There was no downside to it. And all anyone cared about was growth at any cost. Then last summer hits. All of a sudden everybody then says, ‘We’ll now, hang on. That’s not the way the world works anymore. You actually have to be profitable.’ It’s going back to what’s normal.”

He said that AWS probably hired hired tens-of-thousands of people over the last year so there is nothing wrong with AWS.

 

 

Trustmarque earns all Microsoft’s badges

Posted on April 4, 2023 by - News

Trustmarque has earned all six Microsoft solution badges and is busy sewing them on its blanket.

The outfit said that they are the first UK-based partners to win all designations. It also puts the York-HQ MSP in the highest tier of Microsoft’s partner programme.

The company said that it has been keen to evolve from its past as a reseller to a more sophisticated services provider.

Originally Trustmarque just flogged licenses particularly in the public sector. But that has changed and the new solution designations are a recognition by Vole of the company’s ability to deliver services.

In October, Microsoft revamped its cloud partner programme, scrapping Silver and Gold-level certification badges as well as shaking up how partners are categorised and measured.

 

Russian hackers target Zimbra

Posted on April 3, 2023 by - News

A Russian-based threat group Winter Vivern or TA473 has been targeting a flaw in the Zimbra webmail client to exfiltrate emails from officials in European countries.

Security outfit Proofpoint said the attackers exploit a vulnerability tracked as CVE-2022-27926 on unpatched internet-facing Zimbra Collaboration servers, which it discovered using a vulnerability scanner.

CVE-2022-27926 is described as a “Reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability of Zimbra Collaboration 9.0” that “allows unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary web script or HTML via request parameters.” It was patched by Zimbra in April 2022.

Computacenter has a great year

Posted on April 3, 2023 by - News

Computacenter had another year in the black, with revenue up year on year by 28.5 per cent to £6.5 billion.

The 2022 full-year results also highlighted a growth of 30.7 per cent in gross invoiced income to reach £9 billion, and a nine per cent growth in gross profit from £867.8 million to £947.1 million.

Technology sourcing was the LSE-listed reseller’s biggest growth area, with revenue up 36.7 per cent to £7.4 billion. Services grew by 8.3 per cent to hit £1.5 billion.

Airbus surrenders on French Atos deal

Posted on March 31, 2023 by - News

Airbus has given up on its plans to acquire a 29.9 per cent minority stake in French services giant Atos’ security business.

The company claimed the move does not meet objectives “in the current context and under the current structure”.

According to the Financial Times, Airbus surrendered to pressure from billionaire hedge fund manager, Chris Hohn to pull its bid on Evidian.

Babble gets more cloudy

Posted on March 31, 2023 by - News

Babble has snapped up comms solutions provider Midland Comms and Cloudstream Technology Limited in a move to strengthen its position as a cloud service provider (CSP) in the UK.

The two new acquisitions collectively add £4.5 million in revenues, 90 per cent+ of which is recurring, according to Babble, taking its overall revenue run rate past £100 million annually.

The two acquisitions will see more than 30 new employees join Babble.

Midland Comms has been serving SMEs across the Midlands for nearly 50 years, providing communications solutions to over 500 customers.