Category: News

Staff shortage in cyber threat intelligence looms

While Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) has played a key role in the public sector for many years, growing demand from the private sector is making CTI one of the fastest-growing cybersecurity markets. But this means that a shortage of experienced CTI professionals is not only driving up salaries but also forcing end-user companies, consultancies and vendors to recruit from more diverse backgrounds with less clearly defined entry points.

A new, ‘Cyber Threat Intelligence, UK Employment Market Report 2020’, has been published by Trident Search. The report is based on a detailed survey of CTI professionals working across the public and private sectors.

It shows that over 23 percent of respondents command a salary of £110,000 or more, while 37 percent of employees in the industry are at Analyst level, with a median salary of £47,500. End-user companies appear to have the most experienced teams in terms of years, with over 37 percent of the highest salaries, compared to 20 per cent in vendors and 18.6 per cent in consultancies.

Coronavirus might not have had much of a silver lining for cloud 

A report has discovered that while cloud uptake increased during the coronavirus outbreak, three quarters of companies were not really happy with it.

iland, a leading VMware-based cloud services provider for application hosting, data protection and disaster recovery, today released the findings of its research into customer confidence in cloud services.

It found that despite the increase in cloud adoption due to the pandemic, three quarters of organisations surveyed say hyperscaler IaaS instance types may not meet their cost and performance needs for mission-critical applications, while more than one in five are not satisfied with key features of cloud provision such as security, performance, availability and support.

The research also found that a lack of migration resources is delaying or preventing cloud projects for more than 80 percent of organisations surveyed. 

Bartholomew named VP of Sophos sales

Security outfit Sophos has promoted Jonathan Bartholomew to vice president, sales, for the United Kingdom and Ireland (UK/I) and Nordics.

After joining Sophos in 2009 to manage strategic channel partners across the UK, Bartholomew then took on the role of senior director of channel for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). In this position. The company said he delivered a clear consistent channel programme.

 Tech Data wins Europe’s distie of the year title

Tech Data has been named winner in the categories of Distributor of the Year Europe and Best Customer Service Distributor Europe in the CONTEXT ChannelWatch 2020 awards, voted for by channel partners across the region who rate their distributors on a wide range of key service areas.

CONTEXT ChannelWatch is one of the world’s largest online IT-reseller surveys. As part of the survey, resellers in each country nominate distributors they work with for the CONTEXT ChannelWatch Distributor of the Year Awards. 

Compal hit by ransomware hackers

Laptop maker Compal has been hit by a ransomware attack with attackers demanding a £13 million ransom.

Taiwanese media were quick to report that Compal had been hit by a cyber attack. At first, the laptop manufacturer denied that it was being blackmailed by cybercriminals and blamed the issue on an “abnormality” in their office automation system.  However, a ransom note was made public which managed to kill all the denial.

Compal had been asked to pay 1,100 Bitcoins, which is around £12,906,473, to receive a decryptor. The group behind DoppelPaymer also reportedly offer their services for others to use, similar to the ‘ransomware as a service’ (RaaS) operation run by the Netwalker group, which has reportedly made over $29 million since March.

DCC rides out pandemic

DCC Technology says that it has seen increased demand for lower-margin consumer and home working products which appear to have off-set some of the woes in its higher-margin B2B areas and Pro AV operation remain challenging.

In the six months to 30 September, DCC Technology revenues rose by 9.7 percent to £1.96 billion and operating profit was almost flat, with a 0.7 percent improvement to £25.5 million.

DCC managing director Tim Griffin said he was encouraged by the revenue growth and had seen demand change as the pandemic wore on.

Barracuda snaps up Fyde for its Zero Trust capabilities

Barracuda has acquired Fyde to give its CloudGen SASE platform  Zero Trust Network Access capabilities.

The Fyde solution is available immediately as Barracuda CloudGen Access to businesses of all sizes. It will be available in the coming weeks for Managed Service Providers.

Fyde’s  Zero Trust solution claims to enable secure, reliable, and fast access to cloud or on-premises applications and workloads from any device and location. Fyde’s ZTNA solution addresses the security risks associated with traditional remote access by continuously verifying that only the right person, with the right device, and the right permissions can access company resources. The solution is ideal to connect users directly to cloud-native and legacy corporate applications deployed in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Intel faces another serious chip problem

An international team of security boffins, including experts from the University of Birmingham, have discovered new vulnerabilities in Intel processors.

This category of attacks, dubbed PLATYPUS, exploits fluctuations in a device’s power consumption to extract sensitive data such as cryptographic keys.

These attacks were difficult to execute as they required accurate power measurements which were difficult to execute using malware. That is why attackers were known to require physical access to the target device, and measurement tools – such as an oscilloscope.

However, new research by the Graz University of Technology, which partnered with the University of Birmingham and the Helmholtz Center for Information Security (CISPA), uncovers a method that makes it possible to access sensitive data using power side-channel attacks with unprecedented accuracy – even without physical access.

ConnectWise buys Perch Security and StratoZen

ConnectWise has bought Perch Security and StratoZen to improve the outfit’s TSP offering.

For those that came in late, ConnectWise has a Fortify security management product solution. Perch provides the only MSP-designed SIEM in the industry, stripping away unnecessary complexity while providing the multi-tenant functionality MSPs need to support multiple SMB clients and easily capture data from the systems they are monitoring for cyber-attacks on behalf of their customers.

Amazon Web Services names its favourite partners

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has just named its favourite partners for the year.

The awards are to recognise members of the AWS Partner Network (APN) who are leaders in the channel and whom AWS thinks play a key role in helping customers to drive innovation and build solutions on the AWS Cloud.

The winners this year include:

APN Consulting Partner of the Year: Accenture
The Accenture Amazon Web Services Business Group in the UK and Ireland has enabled enterprises to accelerate their pace of digital innovation and realise incremental business value from cloud adoption and transformation.

Tech Data works with Bang and Olufsen

Tech Data announced a new distribution partnership with the  audio brand Bang & Olufsen.

Through this partnership, Tech Data customers in Europe can access Bang & Olufsen’s range of audio products, including its portable smart home speakers which work in tandem with Google Assistant. Tech Data will support Bang & Olufsen in accelerating sales of its products in the region, particularly in non-Bang-&-Olufsen-branded retail outlets and B2B segments.

Plextek delivers IoT to Bell Integration and Telefonica

Cambridge-based Plextek has announced a strategic partnership with Bell Integration and Telefonica.

The big idea is to be a part of its IoT partner ecosystem and help bring the latest IoT solutions to market in an efficient and cost-effective way. Plextek has 30 years of experience in research, design and development across areas from smart street lighting and telemetry for automobiles, to smart city infrastructure monitoring and radars for sensing and drone navigation.

The announcement reflects a shift for telecoms companies as they move from a purely connectivity-based business model into a partnership-based ecosystem to develop new connected technologies.

Zivver offers trade up scheme for channel partners

Secure communications outfit Zivver has launched a Trade Up scheme for UK channel partners, enabling end-user organisations to switch and upgrade their communication security solution to Zivver, and the company will buy out the incumbent’s licence.

Steve Lloyd, UKI Regional Director at Zivver, said: “From the outset, Zivver has built its secure communication platform to be user-friendly, seamlessly integrating with popular email clients such as Outlook and Gmail. This allows an organisation’s employees to start using Zivver after just a 15-minute demo, enabling them to securely send information via email or file transfer without changing their usual way of working.”

WANdisco offers LiveDisco to partners

WANdisco has announced the launch of its global LiveDisco Partner Network which it claims will help partners boost growth and open up new revenue opportunities.

The initiative, which is the company’s first channel partner programme, forms part of a new partner-first go-to-market strategy and will provide partners, system integrators, ISVs, and resellers with a slew of new sales, marketing, training, certification and support resources.

Over the last twelve months, WANdisco has shifted its approach direct sales and an OEM focus to become more channel engaged. More than half he vendor’s business is now partner-led and sourced.

Alibaba Cloud continues to grow

Alibaba Cloud saw sales rocket in its Q2 as it continues to outpace the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

Revenue for the period ending 30 September increased 60 per cent year on year to $2.2 million.

CEO Daniel Zhang said that organisations in the public sector and financial services sector made the biggest contribution to cloud growth.

“We announced at our investor day that Alibaba Cloud is expected to turn profitable by the end of this fiscal year.  We believe cloud computing is a fundamental infrastructure in the digital area, but it is still in the early stage of growth. We are committed to further increasing our investments in cloud computing.”