Month: May 2020

CRN recognizes achievements of 13 Sophos “Women of the Channel” – Sophos News

CRN has announced its annual Women of the Channel, and 13 Sophos executives have been named.

For the fourth year in a row we have the most executives from an IT security company honored and acclaimed for their “strategic vision and unique achievements… innovative thought leadership, and unwavering dedication to the IT channel”, as Bob Skelley, CEO of The Channel Company puts it.

Sophos executives recognized on the CRN list, which is comprised of women from all areas of the IT ecosystem, including technology vendors, distributors, solution providers, and other IT organizations, include:

Kendra Krause, senior vice president, global channels and sales operations
Justine Lewis, vice president, worldwide regional and channel marketing
Erin Malone, vice president, North America channel sales
Caralyn Stern, vice president, global channel and Americas marketing
Regina Vignone, senior director of sales, channel east
Nicki Dewhurst, senior marketing director, Asia Pacific and Japan
Allison Clarke, director of global channel programs
Andrea Carter, regional director marketing, NEMEA
Maria Ardila, LATAM channel director
Claudia Vizcarra, multi country sales director, LATAM
Alejandra Garcia, country director, Mexico
Christina Nairn, senior manager, channel marketing
Tara Bresnahan, senior manager, channel marketing, Americas

2020 Power 100

Kendra Krause, Erin Malone and Caralyn Stern have also topped CRN’s 2020 Power 100, an elite subgroup of standout individuals from the Women of the Channel list.

These executives are recognized as extraordinary women who have inspired peers through their thought leadership and tireless dedication to channel advancement.

Michael Valentine, chief revenue officer at Sophos says of the achievement:

To keep pace with increasingly cunning cyber attackers, Sophos is arming IT professionals and the channel that serves them with the industry’s most innovative and highly effective next-generation cybersecurity solutions. These 13 women are committed to helping businesses stay one step ahead of cybercriminals’ advanced attacks, and together they’ve built and continue to enable the industry’s best channel program, bar none.

The Women of the Channel accolades are the latest in a series from CRN. Already this year, seven Sophos executives were named 2020 Channel Chiefs. We also received a 5-star rating in CRN’s 2020 Partner Program Guide for the competitive advantages only provided through the Sophos Partner Program.

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How Google Meet supports two million new users each day

More than a decade ago we introduced secure, easy-to-use business collaboration and productivity apps (now known as G Suite), and we envisioned a new way of working in the cloud. And although we always knew the value of cloud-based collaboration, it is more important than ever at a time like this.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen Google Meet—G Suite’s video conferencing solution—help millions of people stay connected, whether it’s colleagues working at home, companies livestreaming to global employees, doctors caring for patients, banks providing loans, retailers and restaurants helping the elderly place orders for home delivery or curbside pickup, social services conducting welfare checks, governments serving citizens, or schools staying in session.

Earlier this week, we surpassed a new milestone, with more than 2 million new users connecting on Google Meet every day, and they’re spending over 2 billion minutes together—that’s more than 3,800 years of secure meetings in a single day. We’re humbled by the huge responsibility that comes with this growth, and we’re determined to continue doing our part to help.

Here’s a little more on what that means.

Meet, and all of G Suite, runs on Google’s secure, resilient global infrastructure, which helps us reliably manage our capacity to keep our services up and running. With Meet, organizations around the world can take advantage of the same secure-by-design infrastructure, built-in protection, and global network that Google uses to secure your information and safeguard your privacy. You can learn more in our Google Meet security blog post.

Last month, we made advanced Google Meet video-conferencing capabilities available at no cost to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers. We’ve now extended that availability to September 30, 2020 to ensure businesses, organizations, institutions, and educators continue to be supported during this time.

Earlier this year, G Suite also hit another important milestone, surpassing six million paying businesses and organizations. We’re acutely aware of our responsibility to these teams as they support their own constituents, patients, students, and customers during this pandemic. Here are a few stories they’ve shared.

Cambridge Health Alliance, a health system with 140,000 patients in Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston’s Metro North region, has relied on G Suite to support its staff and caregivers. “We didn’t realize how integral G Suite had become to our daily work until dealing with a pandemic where consistent communication with our CHA staff was of utmost importance,” said James LaPlante, Sr. Director, Technology and Biomedical Services. “With one click, staff have been able to connect from their Gmail, Calendar, or from Meet-enabled conference rooms across three hospitals, 15 health centers, or from home.”

In the UK, Hackney Council is using G Suite, Meet and Chromebooks to keep its team of 4,000 staff connected and to make sure that essential services can still be delivered for its citizens.

In Peru, the Judiciary branch is using Meet to continue operating during the nation-wide quarantine. Through video conferences they are carrying out both internal meetings and also hearings. By doing this, attorneys, lawyers and judiciary clerks don’t have to physically attend court, keeping the virus from spreading, while maintaining the administration of justice in the country.

Korean Air has transformed its internal business system with G Suite since July 2019, creating a positive company culture. Employees communicate effectively with G Suite in a variety of ways, including chat, voice, and video, which reduces decision-making time. Korean Air recently opened a ‘Google G Suite Meeting Room’ within the company to further enhance its cloud-native communication capabilities and accelerate mobile-based collaboration.

German manufacturing company KAESER Compressors adopted G Suite in 2018, which allowed them to transition 4,000 employees to working from home smoothly, with minimal disruption. They are using G Suite to connect with customers and job applicants.

When their news anchor voluntarily self-quarantined after suspecting he had been in contact with a person with COVID-19 during a convention, Milenio Televisión, a Mexican television cable news channel, had to figure out how to keep their show on the air. They chose Meet for its security, and high quality image and sound. Milenio Televisión is now broadcasting multiple shows through Meet and has been using the tool to have video conferences with correspondents in other countries.

To help its staff cope with the impact of COVID-19, Italian bank Credem (Credito Emiliano S.p.A.) relied on G Suite, in particular Drive, Docs, and Meet, to seamlessly adapt to a collaborative work-from-home environment. It’s also helping them maintain business continuity, relying on Meet to continue to meet one-on-one with customers.

In the Philippines, the Department of ICT (DICT) is responsible for the planning and development of information and communications technology. As a result of COVID-19, the department has been continuously seeking ways to improve its programs and services to help quarantined workers and citizens, including use of GovMail, which is built on G Suite, Google Chat, and Google Meet. “The migration to cloud-based GovMail which started last year has proven to be particularly useful for remote government operations in this time. Coordination between government agencies is more organized, resulting in faster responses benefitting their constituents,” said Emmanuel Rey Caintic, DICT Assistant Secretary for Digital Philippines.

Kärcher, a German company known for its wide range of cleaning products, had initially planned to roll out G Suite to its workforce by 2021. In response to the pandemic, Kärcher rapidly accelerated their rollout, deploying G Suite to its entire 14,000 workforce in only five days. As of the end of March, Kärcher’s number of weekly active Meet and Chat users has grown by 20X.

Salesforce’s CRM solution brings companies and customers together, and they turned to G Suite to bring their own teams together. “With Salesforce employees working from home given COVID-19, innovative solutions like Meet are even more critical for effective virtual collaboration,” said Andy White, VP, Platform Engineering Salesforce. “Even with 2x our daily video calls—50,000 every workday—Google Cloud’s scale and support keep our teams reliably and seamlessly connected.”

The team at Shopify, a leading global commerce company, is relying on Meet to help them keep their workforce connected. “Even with the demand surges seen around the world, recently we had a 20 person meeting livestream to 4,000 people and there were no issues,” said Garth Pyper, Director of Technical Infrastructure. “Google Meet is our primary means of video conferencing across 5,000 people at Shopify, and we are grateful for the security, reliability, and flexibility it provides.”

With the global move to a fully remote workforce during COVID-19, software company Xero has embraced G Suite to help them make a smooth transition. “Google Meet is vital in keeping our teams socially connected, and Docs, Gmail and the full G Suite family of apps has the team’s productivity and collaboration working as if we were in the office. The reliability and performance of G Suite has allowed the IT team to focus on other challenges we face with a remote workforce.”

In Singapore, NTUC Fairprice Co-Operative, the largest supermarket chain of the island nation, has experienced a surge of 400%+ increase in capacity needs as customers urgently prepare for COVID-19 with in store and online purchases of all the necessities. With the help of G Suite, NTUC was able to handle this increased demand even as they transitioned the vast majority of their workforce to remote work.

Schnucks, a family-owned supermarket retailer with 100 stores in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin, was able to think outside the box to keep their business running and employees safe and connected. “We are running our Helpdesk 24/7 on Google Meet so that both our corporate and in-store employees can join in and get questions answered quickly. Our transportation department is able to practice social distancing by using a Google Meet ‘hotline’ as the WFH dispatch platform.”

Meet had long been the standard collaboration tool for TELUS International, which provides customer experience solutions for global brands. “The Meet platform has helped us maintain and foster our caring culture as we transitioned from an on-site workforce to a work from home model,” said Michael Ringman, Chief Information Officer. “Whether through real-time collaboration, live meetings or a little stress relief with some virtual happy hours, our team’s ability to reliably connect ‘face-to-face’ through Google Meet has been integral to keeping us engaged despite the distance between us.”

These are just a few of the many stories we’ve heard. We’ll continue to support all our users to stay connected in the cloud. Read more on how Google Cloud is supporting businesses and communities here.

What is the Average Cost of a Data Breach? Highlights from Fortinet’s Executive Cyber Exchange Series

The global six-year average cost of a data breach is $3.78 million. To address this liability head-on, organizations must incorporate industry and security best practices into their cybersecurity posture to reduce the cost of what most cybersecurity professionals recognize as an inevitable data breach.

FortiGuard Labs’ Chief of Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances, Derek Manky, recently teamed up with Dr. Larry Ponemon of the Ponemon Institute for Fortinet’s Executive Cyber Exchange: The Perspective Series. This presentation, titled “The Economics of Data Breaches & Cybersecurity Exploits” centered on the economic impact of data breaches and cyberattacks, while also noting the investments that organizations should make to minimize the financial burden of such an event.

Below are some of the key takeaways from Ponemon and Manky that explain why organizations should shift from a detection-based focus to one that is centered on breach prevention to save on the resources, costs, damages, time, and loss of reputation that occurs following a successful attack.

What Factors Contribute to the Cost of a Data Breach?

Benchmark research conducted by the Ponemon Institute concluded that, the global six-year average, cost of a data breach amounts to $3.78 million. However, the financial consequences of a data breach can vary based on several factors, including root causes, network size, and the type of data held by an organization.

Overall, malicious attacks were found to be the leading root cause of data breaches, followed by human error and system glitches. Loss of business was determined to be the most significant cost contributor resulting from business disruption, system downtime, customer turnover, and reputational damage that inevitably result in revenue losses. Additionally, cost amplifiers like cloud migration, IT complexity, and third-party breaches were found to add close to $370,000 to the total cost of a breach.

So, what can organizations do to address these security challenges? Derek Manky highlighted the importance of incident response and automated threat intelligence, explaining how his team leverages these concepts to lessen the impact of data breaches:

“At FortiGuard Labs, we are essentially an external SOC for customers in the sense that we’re creating definition updates, antivirus updates, and actionable intelligence. We’ve seen considerable cost benefits stemming from machine learning models, particularly with application vulnerabilities with actionable intelligence on malware. We have one system on the backend that analyzes malware and when it can properly identify that something is malicious, it creates actionable updates that are then pushed out to our Security Fabric and our customers. That system is effectively doing the output job of a team of several analysts. Therefore, organizations can realize a considerable cost benefit by implementing machine learning within their incident response plans.”

On the other hand, cybercriminals are also leveraging automation and machine learning to increase the speed and efficiency of attacks. Manky notes:

“Cyber adversaries are weaponizing AI and leveraging swarm technology as a catalyst to speed the attack cycle up even further. The use of offensive automation results in decreased latency for attackers, or a reduced time to breach (TTB), thereby increasing their rate of success. Security teams need to account for the fact that attacks are happening at a much quicker pace and adjust their defensive strategies accordingly. This requires advanced automation technology.”

The Cybersecurity Lifecycle and the Importance of Prevention

There are five phases of the cybersecurity lifecycle, ranging from prevention to remediation, that should be part of every organization’s security strategy. Each stage is crucial to reducing the impact of a breach through threat identification, incident response, and resolution.

Prevention is the effort to stop malicious threats from infiltrating the network and to classify the types of attacks that are targeting the organization in real-time. In this phase of the lifecycle, organizations can stop attacks before any process can run on the network.
Detection is the effort to recognize and identify threats within an organization’s IT security infrastructure that have managed to bypass prevention efforts. During this phase, organizations need to be able to identify malicious processes that are running on a device in the network.
Containment refers to the effort to stop the spread of a cyber threat once it has been detected and identified on the network.
Recovery occurs following threat containment. In this phase of the cybersecurity lifecycle, security teams work to restore the IT infrastructure to its previous, stable state.
Remediation refers to the effort made to ensure that processes and technologies are updated to mitigate future cyber events. This includes updating training and awareness programs when individuals played a role in enabling a breach to occur.

Most organizations tend to focus the majority of their cybersecurity efforts on the detection of cyberattacks because they perceive prevention as too complicated to achieve. In fact, 76% of respondents to a Ponemon survey agree or strongly agree that prevention would be too challenging to accomplish within their cybersecurity program. When asked about their reasoning, respondents noted issues around attack identification, deploying effective technologies, their own in-house cybersecurity experience, and the challenge of false-positive cyber threats.

Although preventing a cyberattack is challenging, Dr. Larry Ponemon explained that organizations can realize significant cost savings when an attack is thwarted during this phase of the cybersecurity lifecycle. He detailed such cost savings with the following example:

“Fending off phishing attacks costs an average of $832,500. But 82% of that cost is spent during the detection, containment, recovery, and remediation phases, and only 18% is spent during prevention. So, if an attack is prevented, total cost savings would be $682,650.”

Security Operations Centers and Cost Efficiency

According to findings from the Ponemon study, most organizations believe their security operations centers (SOCs) are a crucial element of their security strategies. When asked to rank the importance of SOC activities, respondents reported that most of their SOC value comes from the minimization of false-positive detections, the enhanced reporting of threat intelligence, the monitoring and analysis of alerts, and improved intrusion detection. However, close to half of all respondents also reported dissatisfaction with their SOC’s overall ability to detect attacks.

Additionally, after investigating the economics of security operations centers, researchers found that outsourcing SOC services does not improve cost efficiency. On average, organizations spend $2.86 million per year on their in-house SOC – but this cost increases to $4.44 million when outsourcing SOC functions to a managed security service provider (MSSP).

However, those numbers depend on having the right SOC resources in-house. Three-quarters of organizations rated the management of a SOC environment as challenging. At the same time, only half of those organizations found they were able to hire the right talent to manage their SOC. Which may also be why only half of those organizations felt that their SOC environment was effective. The crucial takeaway is that cost is only part of the equation in establishing an effective SOC environment. Organizations need to focus on assembling the best possible SOC team.

AI Improves Incident Response and Lowers Costs

Considering the high success rate of data breaches, Manky highlighted the critical role of incident response and automation in reducing data breach costs. He emphasized that Artificial intelligence (AI) is an essential tool that can help SOC teams overcome the challenges associated with breach mitigation and incident response.

Most organizations report success with AI implementation, seeing increases in the speed of threat analysis, acceleration in threat containment through the automatic separation of infected endpoint devices or hosts, and improved identification of security vulnerabilities. By realizing these benefits, organizations can leverage AI to reduce the time and cost of incident response. Dr. Larry Ponemon further explained:

“When AI is used to contain cyber exploits, the time and cost are significantly reduced. The average cost of not using AI to address cyber exploits is more than $3 million, versus $814,873 if AI is used. Thus, a company can potentially save an average of more than $2.5 million in operating costs.”

Final Thoughts

Top CISOs and experts in the security field warn that data breaches are inevitable. With breach costs reaching close to $4 million, organizations must be fully prepared to prevent or deal with the fall out associated with a successful attack. For this reason, organizations should focus their efforts on developing a security framework that highlights prevention and incident response while also leveraging AI capabilities to decrease the economic impact of a breach.

Learn how FortiGuard Labs provides unmatched security and intelligence services using integrated AI systems.

Find out about the FortiGuard Security Services portfolio and sign up for our weekly FortiGuard Threat Brief.

Discover how the FortiGuard Security Rating Service provides security audits and best practices to guide customers in designing, implementing, and maintaining the security posture best suited for their organization.

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Securing user remote access to AWS – Sophos News

Moving data and other corporate resources to the cloud makes a whole lot of sense, especially with more of us than ever needing flexibility in how, when, and where we get work done.

While cloud providers like AWS give you the flexibility to make your move to the cloud as temporary or permanent as you need, there are some practical considerations you need to manage.

For example, you need to provide users with essential virtual desktop services required for day-to-day work. You also need to provide secure remote access for administrators and developers to private applications running on virtual machines in the cloud, which is the focus of this article.

Simple, secure remote access with Sophos XG Firewall

VPN connections are crucial to enabling secure remote working. Sophos XG Firewall provides two options for creating secure access to services hosted in AWS:

Option 1: SSL VPN

If you have users working remotely the XG Firewall User Portal is a convenient and secure way to access resources within AWS. From it, users can download a customized SSL VPN client software bundle, which includes an SSL VPN client, SSL certificates, and a configuration.

You first need to deploy XG Firewall in your organization’s Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). In the example below, the XG is deployed in a single Availability Zone, with one Elastic Network Interface (ENI) in each of the two subnets, a Public subnet and a Private subnet.

The Public subnet ENI has an Elastic IP address mapped that can be either used directly or in a DNS record. (View instructions for deploying Sophos XG Firewall on AWS).

An alternative to the XG Firewall User Portal is to install the SSL VPN client (or SophosConnect) on user systems.

View SSL VPN Client Instructions or SophosConnect Instructions / Video.

To complete this setup in your AWS console:

Confirm your AWS route tables have a route for the Internet via the XG’s private interface (ENI) that the internal subnets use, and the public subnet table has an Internet route via the Internet Gateway, for the XG to use.
Confirm your XG security group(s) allow the SSLVPN port in use (may not be 443)
Confirm your other security group(s) allow traffic internally for the SSLVPN connections

Option 2: Sophos Remote Ethernet Device (RED)

If you want the ultimate in VPN reliability and security between your remote workers and your cloud environments, unique to Sophos is the Remote Ethernet Device (RED).

While perhaps not every employee in a business may require a RED, it may be a suitable choice for senior managers and people who deal with confidential information. Using a RED is simple:

The IT team preconfigures and registers the RED with the XG Firewall, then mails it out to the recipient.
The recipient plugs the device into their home router.
The recipient sets up a wireless or wired connection between their laptop and the RED device.

Once connected to the router the RED connects back automatically to the XG Firewall (in AWS) and establishes a secure RED Tunnel. (Full Instructions – with video).

Helpful Resources:

Fortinet Addresses Customers’ Network and Application Security Needs with a Dynamic Cloud Solution

As organizations deploy workloads and critical resources in the cloud, they must ensure they’re also properly securing data, applications, and other digital resources that are getting migrated. With the threat landscape continuing to evolve, organizations need to create a security framework as part of their cloud strategy so that digital innovations don’t result in cyber threats and increased business risks.

Protecting the cloud requires going beyond the traditional security model. With secure access to cloud resources available from anywhere, organizations should now have the confidence to deploy any application on any cloud infrastructure with ease. Fortinet’s Dynamic Cloud Security offerings are helping customers reap the benefits of cloud adoption while providing the necessary visibility and control across cloud environments. In this blog, we look at three customers who have deployed the Fortinet Security Fabric’s cloud offerings to secure their cloud environments and critical business applications.

Large Retirement Funds Manager

Since its inception, one of Mexico’s largest retirement funds manager has aimed to provide their customers with a bright and secure future managing individual accounts and helping ensure they can retire at ease. Serving thousands of customers and with years of sensitive customer information, the company needed comprehensive security to protect its web application servers, through which it grosses 90% of the organization’s revenue.

After a WAF architecture evaluation that included Fortinet alongside several other vendors, the company chose Fortinet’s solution to protect their web applications, including IP reputation, DDoS protection, protocol validation, application attack signatures, bot mitigation, and machine learning capabilities. Having a hybrid environment, consisting of cloud and on-premise workloads, the company took a comprehensive approach to defend its core business applications that power critical information and services and ensure constant communication with customers.

In addition to the comprehensive WAF architecture, Fortinet identified additional pain points for this large retirement funds manager that required key security components that Fortinet was able to uniquely address by providing complete cybersecurity protection, including next-generation firewall protection that also provides internal segmentation and company-wide VPN service. By implementing Fortinet solutions, and specifically leveraging FortiWeb WAF, this customer has been able to decrease its customer attrition rate, increase application performance without compromising security, and reduce complexity and TCO by enabling and implementing diverse network and security options.

Private Pharmaceutical Company

A major Italian pharmaceutical company was looking to better secure its critical business information and sensitive data. They were looking for both security and simplification, enabling a holistic security solution that would allow them to expand into other countries while managing more for less.

Not only were they looking to ensure workflows and applications could securely travel across and between different clouds, data centers, and devices to accomplish their tasks, but they also needed their security to scale. The organization was also looking to secure their entire network in order to move to the Office365 cloud solution. Additionally, they needed to optimize WAN links between HQ and their four main sites.

With Fortinet’s Security Fabric offerings, this major pharmaceutical company was able to accomplish all this and more. Deploying Fortinet’s cloud solutions, the organization was able to implement advanced security and simplification with a lower TCO compared to other competitors. Using Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN, this customer has been able to accelerate connectivity to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications as well as applications located in major public cloud providers globally.

A Leader in Real Estate

As a top leader in its sector, a real estate service provider in France focuses on delivering a high-quality experience across multiple sites to their customers. The organization caters to student housing, retirement facilities, and hotel residences, working with thousands of customers year-round. In order to remain competitive in the industry, they were looking to implement a solution that would modernize and protect them as they migrated workloads to the public cloud.

By deploying Fortinet’s Security Fabric offerings, they were able to securely migrate several core web applications to Azure Cloud. Additionally, the organization wanted to have full visibility across their network as well as leverage a Secure SD-WAN solution that was scalable and independent from telco operators. Using Fortinet’s FortiWeb WAF and FortiCWP, the organization was able to reuse their data center 1200D as a hub, thereby reducing costs, and were also able to establish extensive visibility across their environments. This leading French real estate service provider also deployed Fortinet’s FortiGate NGFW for its Secure SD-WAN capabilities, which has allowed the organization to digitalize remote locations and securely connect their branches to the cloud.

Securing Environments with Fortinet’s Dynamic Cloud Security

It’s necessary to develop a unified technology approach across all computing environments to optimally secure business operations. With the right deployment, organizations can secure their networks, including any application on any cloud infrastructure. Similar to the three customers mentioned above, any organization can take advantage of impressive performance and cost savings, while ensuring their data is protected, through the adoption of Fortinet’s Dynamic Cloud Security offerings.

Learn how Fortinet’s dynamic cloud security solutions provide increased visibility and control across cloud infrastructures, enabling secure applications and connectivity from data center to cloud.

Read these customer case studies to see how Cuebiq and Steelcase implemented Fortinet’s dynamic cloud security solutions for secure connectivity from data center to the cloud.

Engage in our Fortinet user community (Fuse). Share ideas and feedback, learn more about our products and technology, or connect with peers.

Google Voice now generally available in Canada

Quick launch summary

Google Voice is now available in Canada. This means that:

G Suite customers based in Canada can now sign up for Google Voice.

Google Voice customers in Canada, as well as international customers with Google Voice Premier edition, can assign numbers with Canada country codes (+1) to users.

Soon, customers will be able to port existing +1 numbers in Canada to Google Voice. Follow the G Suite Updates blog to see when this becomes available.

With this launch, Voice is now available in these 11 countries.

Google Voice is a cloud-based phone system that’s optimized for businesses of all sizes. Customers can use it to deploy and manage phone numbers at scale with the intelligence and security of Google Cloud. Google Voice offers:

Smart cloud telephony for end users

Simple provisioning and management for admins

Easy adoption and migration at scale

Getting started

Admins: G Suite customers based in Canada can now sign up for Google Voice. Find more information about Google Voice availability and pricing.

End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.

Availability

Google Voice is available to all G Suite customers in supported countries through an additional license.

Resources

Roadmap

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Why teaching kids about cybersecurity and privacy is more important than ever

Technological advancements have redefined the way we live, across generations. With easy access to the internet, we can now conveniently stay safe and work from the comforts of our home. Educational institutions have switched to online learning as well to combat the ongoing pandemic. With an unprecedented amount of reliance on smart devices and online applications from people of all ages, basic cyber awareness is now more important than ever.

While the IT departments of most organizations take measures to protect their business data and conduct frequent sessions to educate their employees on the importance of cyber security, our little ones at home are often left to play or study unmonitored. Kids lack complete awareness of online safety and the potential risks involving cyber attacks. Over three in five children have access to the internet, and they spend over 45 hours per week online. As the internet becomes an inseparable part of childhood, there’s no better time than now for us to talk about internet safety, and we have some cybersecurity tips to help you get started.

Create cybersecurity awareness
Mobile devices and the internet have become a common, entangled part of the lives of today’s kids and it’s important to teach them about privacy, computer security, and social media safety at an early age. Brief them about issues such as cyber bullying, phishing, cyber threats, and their impacts.

Secure their devices
If you and your children share a common computer in the house, it’s essential to keep your system updated with the latest upgrades. This increases your device’s safety, protecting your personal and financial details from any imminent cyber threats.

Talk to them about privacy
Kids are often attracted by the lure of online games and social media. Remind them never to share personally identifiable information or financial details with online applications or services and teach them the difference between safe and malicious applications.

Popular social media services like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok require users to be at least 13 years old to sign up, however, many underage users still join. Talk to your children about the impacts of sharing sensitive details on social media and the risks of interacting with strangers online. If you wish to monitor your children’s online activity, use parental controls on their device.

Use strong passwords
Passwords are the first line of defense for any account and their security should never be compromised. Encourage your kids to use complex passwords that include symbols, numbers, upper and lower case letters. To help them generate and remember strong passwords, add them to your family’s password manager account.

Restrict access from public networks
The appeal of free WiFi in public places could get kids with data restrictions excited. However, potential attackers can steal data transmitted through unsecured networks. Instruct your kids never to access sensitive information or to even completely avoid connecting to such networks.

Take them offline
Ensure your kids spend some quality time off-screen to prevent them from getting addicted to being online. Limit their screen time and encourage them to try spending some time outdoors, reading a book, or making something creative.

We hope these tips were helpful. Let us know if you have other online safety tips for kids in the comment section below!

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Remote sales: Hands-free selling at home with Zia Voice

It hasn’t been long since companies shifted to working remotely, and work-from-home has already become the new normal. For seasoned remote workers, getting things done at the comfort of their houses is second nature. But salespeople who are used to working at their desks—constantly glued to their phones, chairs, and notes—are finding it difficult to adapt to the new paradigm.

You can’t travel to meet colleagues and clients for the time being. This means no more table meetings, no after-work drinks, and no guest tours. Thankfully, remote tools have proven to be a viable workaround that allows us to adhere to social distancing guidelines. Tools for video conferencing, chat, email, and telephony help us stay connected to our customers and colleagues.

But there’s a downside—working from home blurs the line between work time and leisure time. You’re always around your family, Netflix is running on the other tab, there’s some cleaning left to be done, and your kid needs help with homework. It can almost feel like you’re working in perpetual overtime within your own home. This is where a virtual assistant can help. De-clutter your work from home lifestyle with Zia.

Zia Voice, the work-from-home assistant

Zia is an AI-powered assistant built into Zoho CRM, designed to help salespeople work smarter and faster. Imagine Siri or Alexa, but uniquely built for salespeople. Zia is an intrinsic part of Zoho CRM, which allows her to monitor, analyze, and understand your sales data, processes, and activities. Zia can use these findings to automate routine tasks, predict deal outcomes, detect anomalies, recommend workflows, and more!

For salespeople camped out in their houses right now, Zia’s conversational skills will be particularly valuable. Zia can talk and listen, follow commands, and answer questions. Zia’s voice assistance can help relieve some of the burdens of working from home and help you stay on top of your game. Here’s what Zia can do for you:

Find information faster with Zia

The mark of a smart sales rep is always staying on top of the details. Looking up relevant information about the deal, the lead, the notes, and the minutes of your last call could take just a minute. But an awkward pause during a sales call could seriously slow down the tempo of the conversation.

Ask Zia! Just request what you’re looking for in simple English, and Zia can find it almost instantly. Zia can then display the answers on the screen or read them out for you. You can cut down on time spent looking for data, and focus on doing what Zia can’t do: connecting with clients and building relationships. With the amount of time you’re saving, you may even be able to start cooking dinner early!

Get things done with your voice

When you’re busy selling, you won’t have the time to add, edit, and save new information. Updating fields, adding call notes, creating follow up tasks, placing orders—these are all important tasks, but can often feel like they’re getting in the way of your real work of making sales.

Being talkative is a prerequisite for salespeople, and luckily, Zia is programmed to be a great listener. You could be in the living room watching a movie with the kids or in the kitchen baking a pie—pull your phone out and ask Zia to perform mundane tasks like creating charts, changing a deal status, or even placing calls.

Stay organized with your personal assistant

Between client calls, grocery shopping, team conferencing, and washing the dishes, it’s easy to lose track of time. However, with a personal assistant like Zia, you’ll never have to worry about missing a thing.

You can plan out your entire day with Zia. You can ask Zia to remind you to get things done, show you what’s on your schedule for the day, list your open activities, and take notes for later. You can even use these features to make plans around your work, too! Zia can remind you to follow up with a client and tell you when to take the cookies out of the oven.

Try Zia on your smartphone

Wherever you go, Zia can come with you. While it may not be wise to leave the house, for the time being, having your business assistant available on iOS and Android makes it easier to get work done, regardless. Once the pandemic is behind us, having an assistant in your pocket will prove very useful. You don’t have to be glued to your work laptop to still be selling, thanks to Zia.

Zia is more than just a conversational assistant. Here’s the full list of what Zia can do for your business. It’s high time that businesses leverage the power of artificial intelligence to sell smarter, and this lockdown presents the perfect opportunity to get started. Start talking to Zia now!

Note: This is the fourth post in a series of blogs focused on how Zoho CRM can help you sell remotely, from the comfort of your homes. You can find the entire blog collection here.

Net Universe offers all Zoho subscritpions and consultant services with worldwide Delivery Services.
Send us an email to [email protected] for more information or visit https://www.netuniversecorp.com/zoho.

Why Cybersecurity Training Is More Important Than Ever

With the global shortage of cybersecurity professionals having surpassed 4 million – according to a study conducted by (ISC)2 – the global cybersecurity workforce must now grow at a staggering rate of 145% each year just to meet the growing demand for skilled talent. As a result, 82% of employers claim to be dealing with a lack of experienced cybersecurity professionals within their organization.

The cybersecurity skills gap has become an even more critical issue for many organizations transitioning to a remote workforce model. IT teams are stretched as they rapidly secure and scale their network to meet new demands.

To help IT professionals looking to expand these timely security skills, Fortinet has made its entire catalog of advanced security courses available for free as part of our continued investment in closing the cybersecurity skills gap. Since the launch of this free training initiative on April 28, we have seen more than 80,000 course registrations from people in 144 countries. This is a compelling indication of the need and desire for training as the threat landscape continues to evolve.

Free Cybersecurity Training to Narrow the Skills Gap

The recent introduction of additional free cybersecurity courses further builds on Fortinet’s existing efforts to address the cyber skills gap through training and education. Fortinet established the Network Security Expert (NSE) Institute in 2015, comprised of the Fortinet Network Security Academy (FNSA) program, the Authorized Training Center program, the Fortinet Veterans (FortiVet) program and the NSE training and certification program which to date has issued more than 350,000 Network Security Expert certifications. In addition, the Fortinet NSE training and certification program was named “Professional Certification Program of the Year” by the 2019 CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards. Together the programs of the NSE Institute are well positioned to help build and augment skill sets, as well as help develop the next generation of security professionals, especially given the current times.

Our latest training initiative opens up 24 self-paced advanced security courses for free to anyone interested in learning about cybersecurity. For those interested in pursuing certification, you will be pleased to know that the majority of the free training content comes directly from the NSE training and certification program. NSE certification is a great way for companies to validate skills and a great addition to a resume for students pursuing a career in cyber security.

These 24 additional advanced courses join our three existing no-cost courses comprised of NSE 1 and NSE 2 lessons focused on overall cybersecurity awareness and the FortiGate Essentials course recently released. NSE 1 and NSE 2 lessons provide participants with a basic understanding of today’s threat landscape, including common tricks and strategies used by cybercriminals, a familiarity with essential cybersecurity concepts, and an introduction to critical security principles and technologies. The FortiGate Essentials course teaches participants about the fundamental concepts of a next generation firewall (NGFW) including configuring firewall policies, establishing user authentication, and setting up routing and SSL VPNs.

Training for Students, Veterans and Nonprofits

NSE Institute’s training and certification program is also leveraged by the FNSA and FortiVet programs in an efforts to train students, veterans, veteran spouses and nonprofit constituents looking into a cybersecurity career. Through the FNSA program, academic institutions and nonprofits receive access to Fortinet’s NSE training and certification curricula to prepare students and participants for a career in cybersecurity. Fortinet has more than 250 academic partnerships in more than 70 different countries as part of the FNSA program.

As part of the FNSA and FortiVet programs, Fortinet collaborates with nonprofit organizations focused on helping Veterans and their spouses enter the workforce. Nonprofits joining the FNSA program are able to provide their constituents with access to Fortinet’s NSE certifications and training, while the FortiVet program helps Veterans transfer relevant experiences to a career in cybersecurity.

Boldly Tackling the Skills Gap Challenges

With an evolving and expanding remote workforce, more people are connecting from home networks for internet access, gaming, entertainment, education and training, and more. It has become abundantly clear that we are only as secure as the most vulnerable device or user in our networks and cyber criminals are taking advantage of this by directly targeting remote users and teleworker environments. As the skills gap grows and the threat landscape becomes more complex, it is up to businesses like Fortinet to step up to the plate and help organizations address these challenges. Ultimately, Fortinet’s NSE Institute programs and overall skills gap initiatives, like our free training courses, is helping everyone better protect themselves or their organizations against threats across the globe.

As Fortinet partners, Net Universe offers all Fortinet devices and subscriptions with worldwide Delivery Services.
Send us an email to [email protected] for more information or visit https://www.netuniversecorp.com/fortinet.
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Expect More from Your Network Firewall: The FortiGate 4200F

Digital Innovation Has Transformed the Way We Live

The rapid rise of both e-commerce and online gaming expresses society’s firm reliance on the power of the internet and what services they expect it to deliver. The proof, as reported by the US Department of Commerce, is that e-commerce increased from $461B in 2017 to $602B in 2020 – a 31% increase.

New trends like 5G will transform what’s possible even further by enabling a world of hyperconnectivity between users-users, users-machines, and machine-machines that require hyper speed and hyperscale.

Because of the speed at which user traffic is growing – propelled by the rate at which applications, workflows, and transactions need to take place – many organizations have had to adopt a hyperscale data center. And a growing number of these high-performance networks are built using advanced routing and switching infrastructures.

As a result, traditional security solutions are being discarded because they cannot provide adequate protection due to inherent performance limitations that lead to workflow bottlenecks and poor user experience. In many instances, security has been deprioritized in favor of preserving user experience because security devices would meltdown when they were used to secure user consumption of online services. Instead, a growing number of organizations have had to replace their enterprise-grade security with VLANs and Layer 4 access controls lists to protect their high-performance environments.

It’s a terrible tradeoff.

From a security perspective, this can be disastrous. These alternatives do little to prevent attackers from impersonating themselves as legitimate users, establishing a beachhead, and then moving laterally across the network to gain access to credentials, applications, and data. Using a completely different attack method, nefarious actors could also send volumes of requests to overwhelm a website. This could bring down e-commerce sites or online services, resulting in the loss of revenue, bad press, and in worst cases, shut an organization’s doors – permanently.

Organizations should never have to make the impossible choice between performance and protection.

Disruptions Can Result in a Detour, but the Journey to Dgital Innovation Continues

While organizations were mulling over the tradeoff of providing high-speed online services to grow their business while reducing the uncertainties of not having high-performance security controls in place, a more certain calamity hit us – the onset of the COVID19 pandemic. Those same organizations had to pivot their resources to quickly provision a suddenly massive remote workforce with encryption-based VPN technologies. Business continuity and disaster recovery plans were initiated to keep workers productive and maintain morale during a time of uncertainty.

However, far too many organizations quickly found that their firewalls – built using off-the-shelf hardware – did not provide enough scalability and performance headroom to inspect and secure the large number of remote connections that had come online. Even after paying high VPN upgrade license fees to scale connectivity, they still had to install new firewalls to deal with escalating scale and performance needs. And as a result, two of their prevailing concerns about cost and complexity just got exacerbated.

But a Time of Crisis Can Also Become of a Time of Opportunity

The outgrowth of this sudden transformation of networks around the world is that users are now able to more effectively collaborate – between themselves, with customers, and with partners – in ways unfathomable before. Using rich streaming media enables organizations to deliver content and collaboration and training while preserving the user experience. This is now the new normal.

But capitalizing on this opportunity requires building ultra-high-performance networks capable of handling the needs of both external and internal users equally well. But these same networks create security challenges that require an approach that traditional, off-the-shelf hardware-based firewalls cannot address.

Build Ultra-Fast Security-Driven Networks with FortiGate 4200F

The power to provide the security that today’s networks require is only possible by using purpose-built hardware. Fortinet’s latest NP7 network processor - enables astronomical performance and unparalleled capacity, all delivered in the industry’s most cost-effective FortiGate 4200F security platform.

As an integral part of the Fortinet Security Fabric, the FortiGate 4200F has been specifically engineered to deliver the scalability and performance required for the networks of today and tomorrow by enabling an innovative, security-driven network approach that seamlessly integrates networking with security. And it provides the highest Security Compute Ratings in the industry to meet the extraordinary demands of today’s data center security demands.

The hardware acceleration of FortiGate 4200F is made possible through Fortinet’s seventh-generation network processor, the NP7, that delivers Security Compute Ratings 5 to 15 times higher than any other security solution in the market. For example, it offers 15X the industry’s average with more than 8M sessions per second.

The FortiGate 4200F also delivers the highest speed, scale, and performance for large enterprises and MSSPs, allowing mobile operators to provide security capable of protecting the hyperconnected world. It offers 400M of normal or carrier-grade NAT user connection scalability – providing the highest Security Compute Rating of 14x above the industry average.

By delivering the industry’s highest performance, it securely enables the most demanding digital innovation as well as meets the vast capacity and performance demands of critical business operations, both now as well as a future-proof investment against future calamities.

Essential FortiGate 4200F Use Cases

Financial services organizations building massively scalable remote access: In this ever-changing world, financial services organizations need to enable a remote workforce to come online expeditiously and conduct sensitive transactions that rely on microsecond responses – speed translates to productivity. The FortiGate 4200F offers the industry’s highest security compute rating of 10x for IPsec-encrypted performance, allowing organizations to maintain business continuity while sustaining ongoing operations.

Large manufacturing and energy companies managing internal security risks: Addressing the growing attack surface, especially in today’s dynamic networked environments, is essential for protecting critical applications running across sensitive infrastructures. Providing trusted application access and maintaining compliance requires these organizations to segment their networks at scale. With a Security Compute Rating of 5x for SSL inspection (including TLS 1.3), FortiGate 4200F delivers the industry’s best price/performance.

High-velocity e-retail and e-commerce providers handling event-based connection bursts: Managing previously unseen capacity requirements and support for up to tens of millions of user connections per second is mandatory for today’s virtual business environments. With a Security Compute Rating of 14x for connections per second, the FortiGate 4200F provides high-performance security to handle escalating business needs without compromising user experience. With a further Security Compute Rating of 8x for firewall functionality, FortiGate 4200F delivers essential protection for a wide variety of online businesses.

Advanced pharmaceutical research, oil and gas, and government organizations that require support for elephant flows. Today’s data centers need to securely transfer massive datasets (e.g., 1 TB files) for activities such as AI/ML simulations used within cutting-edge research. The FortiGate 4200F allows the rapid transfer of large datasets by supporting multiple 100Gbps elephant flows so that organizations don’t have to choose between performance and protection.

Cloud providers and large enterprises that must segment massively scalable virtual networks: Typical security products that use software-based Virtual Extension LAN (VXLAN) solutions have low performance and high latency, which increases time to service. FortiGate 4200F offers hardware-accelerated VXLAN to enable secure and super-fast communication without impacting performance.

Continue on Your Path of Digital Innovation Without Compromise with the FortiGate 4200F

With its unmatched scale, performance, acceleration, internal segmentation capabilities, speed, and agility, NP7-powered FortiGate 4200F NGFWs provide large organizations with the ability to develop and segment services, manage internal and external risks, secure large-volume transactions, and preserve user experience. Fortinet’s NP7 will also power future FortiGate appliances to enable agile, high-performance security for hyperscale data centers and other environments where hyperscale, hyperconnectivity, and hyperperformance are table stakes.

Read more about how the FortiGate 4200F enables ultra-fast network firewalling, accelerated internal segmentation, and massively scalable teleworker solutions.

Find out how Echoenergia and New Zealand Red Cross used Fortinet’s Security Fabric for protection from the network edge to core.

Engage in our Fortinet user community (Fuse). Share ideas and feedback, learn more about our products and technology, or connect with peers.

As Fortinet partners, Net Universe offers all Fortinet devices and subscriptions with worldwide Delivery Services.
Send us an email to [email protected] for more information or visit https://www.netuniversecorp.com/fortinet.
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