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By Eric Corcoran, Posted in Technology Week in Review

Monday 7/24 Five Ways to Secure External Identities (CyberArk) The cast of characters playing essential roles in driving your high-stakes initiatives continues to grow in number, scope and risk. Keeping their identities secure is essential for preventing third-party breaches and attacks – and for protecting everything these external B2B users are building for your enterprise. https://bit.ly/43FTGSj Ransomware Roundup - Cl0p (Fortinet) The Cl0p ransomware appears to be a descendent (or variant) of... read more.

• July 28, 2023

By Carlo Costanzo, Posted in Infrastructure, Virtualization

Do you have any Raw Disk Mappings (RDMs) in your environment? If so, you might want to learn more about Clustered VMDKs. Clustered VMDKs vs RDMs Before Clustered VMDKs, clients would have to use RDMs to present a shared disk between VMs. RDMs were basically LUNs passed directly through the ESXi host to the Virtual Machines. The cluster software then handled writes and locking directly with the SAN. You could abstract the interactions a bit more by using Virtual Raw Disk Mappings (vRDMs), but the gist of t... read more.

• July 27, 2023

By Steve Gold, Posted in Security

Steve’s Thoughts I’ve heard this many times in my life from a bouncer at a club/event. Sometimes it was my ID, sometimes there were too many people already in, and sometimes it was because, well, they just said no. Nightclubs and events employ bouncers to control access and maintain security within the venue. Bouncers act as a barrier between the outside world and the controlled environment inside, ensuring that only authorized individuals are granted entry. Similarly, a firewall can be compa... read more.

• July 25, 2023

By Eric Corcoran, Posted in Technology Week in Review

Monday 7/17 VMware's Purple Screen of Death Similar to Microsoft’s Blue Screen of Death, the Purple Screen of Death occurs when there is a kernel panic in Linux variants that result in a system halt. This typically is due to a driver issue, hardware issue, or in my case, a recent patch. https://www.gothamtg.com/blog/vmwares-purple-screen-of-death Log4j Vulnerability: Are Organizations Still at Risk? (F5) It’s been almost 2 years since the log4j vulnerability was exposed, and organizations a... read more.

• July 21, 2023

By Steve Gold, Posted in Security

Steve’s Thoughts My girlfriend asks me this question almost every time we leave our home. Why, you ask? Because I’ve forgotten my keys more often than I should and then been locked out. This happens because our front door automatically locks when we leave as a safety precaution. Maybe I need to replace my Ted Lasso “BELIEVE” sign with a “Do you BELIEVE you have your keys?” sign. Automatic session locking is a security feature that automatically locks a user's session on... read more.

• July 18, 2023

By Eric Corcoran, Posted in Technology Week in Review

Monday 7/10   June 2023’s Most Wanted Malware: Qbot Most Prevalent Malware in First Half of 2023 and Mobile Trojan SpinOk Makes its Debut (Check Point) Our latest Global Threat Index for June 2023 saw researchers report that Trojan Qbot has been the most prevalent malware so far in 2023, ranking first in five out of the six months to date. https://bit.ly/3NNCQef Zero Trust: The Key to a Hybrid Workforce (Palo Alto Networks) Helping the workforce adapt to a work-from-home lifestyle doesn&rsq... read more.

• July 14, 2023

By Steve Gold, Posted in Security

Steve’s Thoughts You may know "Drift Away" is a song by Mentor Williams written in 1970 and originally recorded by John Henry Kurtz on his 1972 album Reunion. Mentor Williams was a country songwriter, and John Henry Kurtz was an actor and swamp rock singer. Dobie Gray then recorded/performed that famous song in 1973. However, that’s not the lesson here, although who doesn’t like useless information? We’re talking configuration drift here folks. Configuration drift refers to the gra... read more.

• July 11, 2023

By Eric Corcoran, Posted in Technology Week in Review

Monday 6/26 Key Takeaways from the State of Zero Trust Report (Fortinet) In April, Fortinet commissioned a survey of 570 IT and security leaders from 31 different countries, covering nearly all industries, including the public sector. The resulting 2023 State of Zero Trust Report provides insight into the progress IT teams are making in implementing their zero-trust strategies. https://bit.ly/3CLKGQj Think Your Secrets are Safe in their Vault? Think Again (Check Point) As organizations grow and develop... read more.

• July 07, 2023

By Carlo Costanzo, Posted in Infrastructure, Support

While working on some older DL360’s, I ran into the infamous Purple Screen of Death. Similar to Microsoft’s Blue Screen of Death, this occurs when there is a kernel panic in Linux variants that result in a system halt. This typically is due to a driver issue, hardware issue, or in my case, a recent patch. When I patched the system, the ESXi host restarted as normal, but got stuck on a task appropriately called VMK Shutdown: World_DestroyAllUsersWorlds. The task hung for a few minutes and the... read more.

• July 07, 2023

By Steve Gold, Posted in Security

Steve’s Thoughts Fort Knox is a United States Army post located in Kentucky and is famous for housing the United States Bullion Depository, which holds a significant portion of the country's gold reserves. Fort Knox serves as a symbol of impenetrable security due to its robust physical and technological defenses. Similarly, in the digital realm, secure configuration acts as a virtual Fort Knox for enterprise assets and software, ensuring that they are protected against unauthorized access, data brea... read more.

• July 05, 2023