For the April edition of Patch Tuesday, Microsoft repaired a total of 110 security vulnerabilities across their product line. Included in this count are 37 remote code execution bugs, and 33 elevation of privilege bugs. The company rated eighteen of the vulnerabilities “Critical.”
This release’s most notable item is the follow-up to last month’s announcement, “Cybercriminals are exploiting two unpatched zero-day flaws affecting all supported versions of Windows“. At the time, the company advised a workaround for mitigating the risk. Today, the fix for the two vulnerabilities went live.
Here are the patch highlights:
Adobe Font Manager Library Remote Code Execution
CVE-2020-0938, CVE-2020-1020
Two font vulnerabilities are present in the handling of the old and obsolete Type 1 (PostScript) font standard that makes use of file extensions .PFB and .PFM.
If an attacker is able to manipulate an unpatched Windows system into handling and displaying a malicious Type 1 font file (crafted by the attacker), the bugs could be exploited to compromise the system.
On Windows versions prior to Windows 10, the code responsible for handling fonts is running in high-privileged kernel mode. This makes the impact much more severe on older editions, such as (the now unsupported) Windows 7, or Windows 8.1 – the bugs can be used to perform an elevation of privilege attack, in addition to remote code execution.
Thankfully, on Windows 10 systems the same code has been moved to be running in a low-privileged, sandboxed user mode process. This hardening measure limits the bugs’ usefulness for elevation of privilege attacks. However, they still expose the system to a remote code execution scenario.
Normally, an attacker can take advantage of a font vulnerability to achieve remote code execution by enticing a victim to open a web page or document that has the malicious font embedded in them.
In the case of web pages, the “CSS Web fonts” feature can be used for embedding. Office documents and PDF documents also have support for embedding fonts in them.
Fortunately, due to the Type 1 font standard falling from favor, and being replaced by the newer TrueType and OpenType standards, many software do not support the embedding of Type 1 fonts. This is true for example in web browsers and Office software, so it can be said that the remote code execution attack scope for Type 1 bugs is somewhat limited in comparison to bugs affecting TrueType fonts.
Windows Elevation of Privilege Vulnerabilities
Elevation of Privilege (EoP) vulnerabilities could permit an attacker with limited access to a Windows system to gain more control over it, typically allowing for “escaping” a low integrity or sandboxed process by exploiting such a vulnerability, and subsequently gaining unlimited permissions to the system.
This month’s EoP bugs affect an assortment of Windows components, among them: Win32k (Graphics), Push Notification Service, DirectX, and amusingly enough, two of the bugs were discovered in Windows Defender – the built-in anti-malware component of Windows.
Out of a total of 20(!) different bugs affecting SharePoint, 6 are classified Remote Code Execution.
SharePoint is a web-based collaborative platform. It is almost always used by organizations, not individuals. There wasn’t any detailed technical information about any of the bugs that were found, so it’s unclear whether these bugs affect users of SharePoint Server or SharePoint Online (or both).
However from the sheer amount of fixes being deployed for this product, it’s safe to assume the bugs as a whole constitute a high risk of compromise, and therefore this month’s patch is definitely not something to disregard if you use SharePoint.
Sophos detection guidance
Sophos has released following detection to address the following vulnerabilities. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of protection measures Sophos has implemented, and that additional vulnerabilities and corresponding detection may be released in the future.
Net Universe offers all Sophos Devices and subscritpions also consultant services with worldwide Delivery Services. Send us an email to [email protected] for more information or visit https://www.netuniversecorp.com/sophos.
Unscrupulous marketers and cyber-criminals have seized upon concerns over the emergence of the COVID-19 global pandemic as bait for spam, phishing attacks and malware. In recent weeks, the use of “coronavirus” and “COVID-19” in domain names, potentially unwanted email messages, and phishing and malware delivery schemes has skyrocketed. As of April 14, Sophos has identified over 1,700 malicious domains using “corona” or “covid” in their names, of which 1,200 are currently active.
We’re continuing to work to identify, detect and block these threats. We’re also engaging with the security community to help defend more broadly against the surge in COVID-19 related threats. Joshua Saxe, Sophos’ chief scientist, has launched a Slack channel for open collaboration on taking on pandemic-themed threats. [Update, April 20: The Slack channel now has over 3,400 members from security firms, as well as private and government organizations.]
We’re also publishing indicators of compromise we discover for related threats in a public GitHub. In this report, we’ll examine some of the trends we’re seeing in pandemic-themed spam and scams. The data we present here is just a portion of what we’ve seen so far, and we continue to assess intelligence data as it becomes available.
The surge of spam
The spam we found to be carrying an installer for Trickbot malware earlier this month was just one example of how spammers and criminals are using hunger for information about the pandemic to lure in their targets.
While COVID-19 emerged as a crisis in China in December, references to the virus in spam and phishing emails only really began to emerge in January—and like the virus itself, they grew exponentially. By early March, COVID-19 and Coronavirus already represented a significant percentage of the spam traffic we measured.
Spam campaigns detected by Sophos included:
A sextortion scheme threatening to infect the target’s family with COVID-19 if they didn’t pay.
A scam purporting to be a fundraising plea from the World Health Organization, asking for donations in Bitcoin to fund COVID-19 research.
Messages purportedly from WHO, but carrying documents with dropper malware.
Marketing for “emergency supplies,” including filter masks.
A sales pitch for a $37 video download, purporting to offer insider information from a “military source” on how to survive Coronavirus
[Update, March 27) We’re continuing to see new COVID-19 related extortion scams. Here’s another we’ve detected and blocked:
Building spamming and phishing infrastructure
COVID-19 has left a huge mark on the Internet’s namespace over the past two months. Certificate transparency log data from the major certificate authorities has shown a significant rise in the number of SSL certificates registered for sites using “corona” or “covid” in their names.
To get a sense of how big that change has been, we looked at log data over the past six months for new certificates issued for hostnames with “corona” or “covid-19” in them. To establish a baseline from before the outbreak became global news, we looked at the same period a year ago (September 2018 to March 2019) for comparison.
Before January, most certificates that contained “corona” referred to a locality, service or legitimate brand name. These accounted for an average of 288 certificates activated per month. References to “covid” did not exist in any certificate registrations we could find record of prior to 2020, and the only domain that really stands out belongs to Arizona-based A/V accessory manufacturer COVID, which owns the .com domain.
A typical site registering a certificate with “corona” in its URL in 2018.
The pandemic changed the equation. Starting in January of 2020, there was an exponential rise in new certificates carrying these terms, nearly doubling from the norm to 558 for that month, and then nearly doubling again in February to 868. In the first two-thirds of March, over 6,086 new certificates bearing host names with “covid” and “corona” were issued—nearly a 20-time increase over the year before.
Over 65% of these new domains were programmatically registered for free through Let’s Encrypt, and another 5% used Cloudflare as a Certificate Authority (Cloudflare provides free SSL for sites that use its content delivery network).
By no means are all of these malicious, but many are suspicious—particularly since they include an abundance of sites that were bulk-configured using site templates, domains configured through low-cost registrars or subdomains configured on potentially compromised domains.
One host serving as home for a number of “covid-19” related web addresses—associated with a service that offers free websites and low cost domain name registration—had 11,322 domain names associated with it. Those domains appear to have been programmatically created and registered for certificates, as they follow the same naming pattern {covid-19[additional search keyword].com).
The raw number of domain names we’ve observed being registered that are related to the COVID-19 pandemic is even larger. On March 20, the peak day (so far), people registered 3011 new domains that contained the text “covid” or “corona,” in the four largest top-level domains (TLDs) we monitor (.com, .us. .org, and .info). Since February 8, we’ve observed 42,578 (as of midnight, March 24) newly-registered covid or corona domain names.
While some of these domains may have been registered for benign or even beneficial purposes, many are simply parked, while others are displaying basic, mostly empty website content as placeholders for some promised future content. Part of the collaboration on the Slack channels and with our partners at the Cyber Threat Alliance involves sorting out the useful and legitimate sites that may have been registered by legitimate health authorities from the dark humor, spammy, or actively malicious ones. It’s hard to know the intent of a domain registrant when there’s no content in—just for one weird example, there’s coronavirusshaquilleoneal[.]com.
Sophos has identified over 60 domains as actively malicious, though some of those domains have gone dark since we first detected them. The following specific sites have been linked to malware downloads, and are potential network indicators of compromise, but they are likely just the tip of the iceberg as far as malicious domains go:
[Update, March 27] One domain we’ve investigated, covid19hacks[.]com, is acting as a redirector gateway to a series of deceptive and potentially malicious download sites, including fake software update pages:
These pages are the end of a trail of forwarding HTTPS pages, on domains including:
One of the most prevalent scams related to COVID-19 are sites offering supplies or medicine to prevent or fight infections. Several are picking up on the promotion by some of Hydroxycloroquine and Azithromycin as drugs to help fight COVID-19 infections.
.Some of these sites forward to overseas pharmaceutical sites or to web stores offering filter masks; others have skeletal WordPress installations that appear to be placeholders for future phishing or spam sites. One offers a $9 book on how to create a “do-it-yourself vaccine” for coronavirus.
We’ve identified multiple malware families and potentially unwanted applications thus far communicating with COVID-19 related domains in some way. There are also ransomware that reference coronavirus in the ransom notes.
For example, three different versions of the DownloadGuide adware PUA were detected connecting to domains containing “COVID” or “Corona”. These may have been advertisements pushed to the adware randomly.
Additionally, a group of malicious files used the web host coronavirusstatus[.]space to host payloads or as a C2 server. They include:
An AutoIT dropper script, which we identify as Troj/AutoIt-CYW.
Corona.exe and isoburn.exe, both of which which we identify as Troj/PWS-CJJ and Troj/Steal-JZ.
Corona-virus-Map.com.exe (which we identify as Troj/MSIL-NZP).
The file aut6C13.tmp (which we identify as Troj/PWS-CJJ malware).
In addition to communicating with the host, this malware group also connects to the Telegram encrypted communications API server.
These and additional IOCs will be added to our GitHub repository.
And it was inevitable that someone would eventually create a ransomware and call it Coronavirus.
Acknowledgments
SophosLabs wishes to acknowledge the efforts of Richard Cohen, Brett Cove, Krisztián Diriczi, Fraser Howard, Tamás Kocsír, and Chet Wisniewski to track down various threats, and the efforts of the Cyber Threat Alliance and the community of threat researchers on the COVID-19 Cyber Threat Coalition Slack channel for sharing a wide range of attack data with the wider community of security researchers and SOC analysts.
Net Universe offers all Sophos Devices and subscritpions also consultant services with worldwide Delivery Services. Send us an email to [email protected] for more information or visit https://www.netuniversecorp.com/sophos.
Gone are the days when manufacturing industries, construction and software companies were the only major consumers of project management tools. Every industry has slowly evolved to understand the importance of using a project management methodology to handle all their tasks systemically.
ITS, a dental college in Northern India has started managing all their academic activities using Zoho Projects, our project management tool.
Dr. Gagandeep Arora, their Dean and a veteran in the educational industry, tells us how Zoho Projects has made life easier for him. His favorite feature in Projects is Templates. Dr. Arora says, “It took me 12 hours to plan a conference in 2018. And in 2020, using Projects, it took me just 3 minutes to plan the same conference”.
In 2018, when Dr. Arora had to plan an international conference, he spent a lot of time organizing it by creating tasks, milestones, custom fields and statuses, and assigning them to the right people. The templates feature helped Dr. Arora plan his conference in 2020 without having to redo everything he did in 2018. This also reduces the time and effort he would have to spend on planning other conferences in the future.
Mr. Vijay Sharma, Director of Admin Operations at ITS, spends most of his time on Zoho Projects monitoring the wide range of reports that are available.
Our Resource Utilization chart helps him understand how occupied his team is, helping him delegate work items effectively to strike the right balance. Another interesting way Mr. Sharma uses these reports is to rate staff performance based on the data that’s available from the Planned vs Actual report and Task Reports.
This helps him understand the performance of the ITS Dental College team during that specific academic year and make an informed decision while finalizing their Annual Performance Review.
Mr. Ashutosh Singh, the Head of Operations, is someone who is always busy with meetings and not often found at his desk. He uses the Projects mobile app to approve requests and assign tasks to individuals, helping him stay on top of things, even when he is on the go.
Since most of the ITS Dental College professors are at times busy traveling to global conferences, the collaboration features that Zoho Projects offers have been a great help to them. The integration with Zoho Meetings, for example, helps them get together for a quick digital meeting, no matter which part of the world they are in.
And that’s how ITS Dental college uses Zoho Projects to manage their work more efficiently. We’d love to hear your story as well and publish it here, to share with the whole Zoho community.
When there’s upheaval in the market, small and medium enterprises often take the first hit. And while larger companies have business continuity plans (BCPs) in place, individual teams within those companies often struggle to establish a setup that works for everyone. Why do SMEs, and individual teams at big enterprises, struggle? A lack of preparedness.
Many organizations face hurdles when it comes to equipping themselves to handle emergencies. We’re all human, and we’re sometimes wary of technology, or just set in our ways. We might prioritize today’s deliverables over tomorrow’s preparedness. We think “this can wait,” but the recent global crisis has taught us that the perfect time to prepare never arrives.
While having a business continuity plan is a whole topic in itself, for an SME that’s already been hurled into the remote work world, or for a leader heading a core team, here are some tips to help you steer clear of productivity pitfalls:
Stay focused
While letting your teammates know what you’ve done and what’s pending on their end is important, some people can go overboard and wind up just talking shop. How do you ensure task continuity? Simple. Use a workflow automation tool to run your process. Your tool will automatically notify you on what you need to do, and if you’re a manager, it will help you keep a tab on all your team’s work items.
Capture every detail
With processes come task dependencies, and dependencies aren’t just limited to human resources. For a process to flow smoothly, all the information about the process, like the requestor’s name, its priority, and related documentation must also be shared. When you’re all sitting one desk away from each other, getting what you need is easy. Unfortunately, that’s not the case when you work remotely. Missing important documents, or sending outdated ones is a risk, and it might not be discovered until much later. A workflow management tool, in addition to running your processes, will also help document all the details of every task passing through the system, and make it accessible for everyone involved.
Leverage work insights
In your office, all you had to do to stay up to date was ask your team members what they’d done, and record work progress on spreadsheets. But that can be a time-consuming task, especially if the entire team is working remotely. Well, now’s the perfect opportunity to map out all your processes into neat workflows and begin running all of it using a workflow automation tool. This way, you know everything that’s going on with your team—how much is pending, and who’s doing what—so you can allocate work accordingly. The exhaustive process data, performance insights, and custom reports provided by your tool will make tracking and reporting much easier.
Work from mobile
Trying times lead to revelations. Many jobs that were previously not possible from a “work from home” situation have suddenly become remote-friendly. This has given businesses the opportunity to revisit their policies and think of efficient ways to enable remote working. What better way to do it, than to switch to a tool that lets you track your work right from your phone? If you could simply use your phone to get notified of something that’s come your way, or to retrieve pending tasks, then you’re truly empowering your business and your workforce.
Ensure business continuity
If you’re a leader, you might manage a business, product, or service. But you’re also responsible for the team of people working with you. Analyze risks, identify solutions, and implement security measures for every functioning unit of your team—starting from data backups to ensuring workarounds for things you usually get done by working together. Having every possibility thought out and prepared for will benefit not just your business, but also your workforce. Remember, loyalty is hard-earned.
For organizations that can’t go remote
Hospitals, insurance companies, banks, essential commodity suppliers, transportation and shipping companies, media and telecom companies—what do all of them have in common? The nature of their work doesn’t let them go remote, or cease operations. How can such industries ensure their work goes on unhindered during emergencies?
Here’s how a tool like Orchestly can help essential services stay prepared:
Define your communication command center, and establish emergency communication lines to keep staff informed.
Make all the latest emergency preparedness materials accessible from a single location.
Quickly onboard new staff, and retrain or cross-train existing staff.
Record and keep track of all employees, equipment, issues, services, and processes.
Expedite purchase requests for essential equipment.
Conduct quality testing for manufactured/purchased equipment.
Ensure automated and on-demand sanitation and disinfection services within your premises.
Integrate Orchestly to run in sync with your usual applications—HIS, AMS, MRP, TMS, and ERP—so you can run your processes effortlessly.
During dire times such as this, you need to have all your systems in place to ensure work goes on uninterrupted—and for this, you can count on Orchestly.
If you’re ready to adapt to these changes, adopt Orchestly and empower your business and workforce to run smoothly, regardless of where you are.
The rapid increase in the number of Coronavirus cases has made so many organizations adopt remote working. But the increased demand for remote work is not only due to the ongoing crisis.
As technology advances, remote work will become more and more prevalent in the business world. During this crisis and into the future beyond it, it’s essential to ensure that HR operations keep up with these changes. With this in mind, we’ve put together the different ways in which Zoho People facilitates remote workforce management:
Provides a hassle-free remote onboarding experience to new employees by consolidating all the required documents in a single location
Helps HR professionals and managers provide performance reviews to employees even while working remotely
Enables employees to mark their attendance regardless of their location
Organizes and handles employee cases efficiently
Allows employees to communicate and collaborate with each other
Records the time employees spend on different projects and eases payroll processing
Empowers employees to access essential HR documents and provides information about their attendance hours, time-off balances, insurance, and more.
Facilitates remote learning and helps course instructors conduct live online sessions
Collects vital information from employees and stores it online
Read more about how Zoho people facilitates remote work in our HR Knowledge Hive.
The XG Firewall v18 MR1 release has been temporarily pulled.
Sophos has received reports from a subset of XG Firewall v18 MR1 systems, where the update has caused issues with traffic passing through the Firewall. Sophos strongly advises that users roll back to v18.0 GA-Build354 while our development teams work to resolve this.
More info: https://community.sophos.com/kb/en-us/135378
-FloSupport
Hi XG Community!
We’ve released XG Firewall v18 MR1.
Enhancements
Supports new SD-RED 20 and SD-RED 60 devices.
XG Firewall web console now shows granular reasons for firmware upload failure
Plus, more than 45 issues resolved in this release (refer Issues Resolved section below)
With the tremendous need for VPN connectivity in this challenging time, we have put together some important information here for you to achieve your networking needs:
To configure VPN Remote Access on your Sophos XG Firewall. Check out this useful Community post!
To substitute XG for RED devices via Light-Touch deployment from Sophos Central. Check out this useful Community post!
Note: Upgrade from SF 17.5 MR11 to v18.0 MR1 is now supported.
More on XG Firewall v18
Please refer XG Firewall v18 highlights for more details on all-new Xstream Architecture delivering extreme new levels of visibility, protection and performance. Also, check out our XG Firewall v18 playlist on YouTube to find out what’s new in XG Firewall v18!
Get it now!
As usual, this firmware update is no charge for all licensed XG Firewall customers. The firmware will be rolled-out automatically to all systems over the coming weeks but you can access the firmware anytime to do a manual update through Licensing Portal. You can refer this article for more information on How to upgrade the firmware.
For fresh installations, we will update this post with installer download links soon.
Things to know before upgrading
You can upgrade from SFOS 17.5 (MR6 to MR11) to 18.0 MR1. Check out the relevant sections of the XG v18 release notes for details on:
Issues Resolved
NC-30903 [Authentication] STAS configuration is editable via GUI on AUX machine
NC-50703 [Authentication] Access server restarted with coredump using STAS and Chrome SSO
NC-50716 [Authentication] Cannot import LDAP server via XMLAPI if client cert is “None”
NC-54689 [Authentication] Support download certificate for iOS 13 and above
NC-55277 [Authentication] Service “Chromebook SSO” is missing on Zone page
NC-51660 [Backup-Restore] Restore failed using a backup of XG135 on SG230 appliance
NC-55015 [Bridge] Wifi zone is not displayed while creating bridge
NC-55356 [Bridge] TCP connection fails for VLAN on bridge with HA Active-Active when source_client IP address is odd
NC-52616 [Certificates] Add support for uploading of CRLs in DER format
NC-55739 [Certificates] EC certificate shows up as “RSA” in SSLx CA cert dropdowns
NC-55305 [CM (Zero Touch)] System don’t restart on changing time zone while configured through ZeroTouch
NC-55617 [CM (Zero Touch)] Getting wrong error message in log viewer after ZeroTouch process
NC-55909 [Core Utils] Unable to see application object page on SFM
NC-30452 [CSC] Dynamic interface addresses not showing on Aux after failover
NC-54233 [CSC] EpollWorker coredump
NC-55386 [Dynamic Routing (PIM)] PIM-SM import fails with LAG as dependent entity
NC-55625 [Dynamic Routing (PIM)] In HA with multicast interface, routes are not getting updated in the Aux routing table
NC-55461 [Email] After adding/edit FQDN host with smarthost, it is not displayed on the list until refresh the page
NC-58898 [Email] Potential RCE through heap overflow in awarrensmtp (CVE-2020-11503)
NC-55635 [Firewall] Display filter for forwarded is not working properly on packet capture page
NC-55657 [Firewall] HA backup restore fails when port name is different in backup and appliance
NC-55884 [Firewall] IPS policy id and appfilter id not displaying in firewall allow log in logviewer
NC-55943 [Firewall] Failed to resume existing connection after removal of heartbeat from firewall configuration
NC-57084 [Firewall] Custom DMZ not listed in dedicated link HA configuration
NC-44938 [Firmware Management, UX] Web UI does not surface reasons for firmware upload failure
NC-55756 [Gateway Management] Gateway isn’t deleted from SFM UI after deleting it from SFM
NC-55552 [HA] WWAN interface showing in HA monitoring ports
NC-55281 [Import-Export Framework] Full configuration import fails when using third party certificate for webadmin setting
NC-55171 [Interface Management] VLAN Interface IP is not assigned via DHCP when gateway name uses some special characters
NC-55442 [Interface Management] DNS name lookup showing incorrect message
NC-55462 [Interface Management] Import fails on configuring Alias over VLAN
NC-55659 [Interface Management] Invalid gateway IP and network IP configured using API for IPv6
NC-51776 [IPS Engine] Edit IPS custom rule protocol doesn’t work after creation
NC-51558 [IPsec] Add warning message before deleting xfrm ipsec tunnel
NC-55309 [Logging] Local acl rule not created through log viewer for IPv4 and IPv6
NC-50413 [Logging Framework] Gateway up event log for PPPoE interface not always shown in logviewer
NC-55346 [Logging Framework] Clear All for “Content filtering” does not clear SSL/TLS filter option
NC-56831 [Policy Routing] SIP traffic sometimes not working with SDWAN policy route
NC-46009 [SecurityHeartbeat] Spontaneous reconnects of many endpoints
NC-51562 [SecurityHeartbeat] Heartbeat service not started after HA failover
NC-52225 [Synchronized App Control] SAC page loading issues as the list of apps increases
NC-54078 [UI Framework] Internet Explorer UI issue on certain rules and policies pages
NC-56821 [Up2Date Client] SSL VPN downloading with the 0KB
NC-54007 [Web] File type block messages sometimes contain mimetype rather than file type
Making the most of your new XG Firewall features
Free Online Training
Available for free for all XG Firewall customers, our delta training program will help you make the most of the new features in XG Firewall v18.
This online program walks you through the key enhancements since v17.5 and takes about 90 minutes to complete.
Customer Resources and How-To Videos
Also be sure to visit the Customer Resource Center for the latest How-To Videos and links to documentation, the community forums, training and other resources.
Take advantage of Partner and Sophos Professional Services
To augment your local Sophos partner’s services, we offer services to help you getting up and running and make the most of your XG Firewall, including the latest capabilities in v18.
While Sophos Professional Services can help with any task, here are the most common services they provide:
XG Firewall deployment and setup
XG Firewall v18 DPI, FastPath and SSL Engine Optimization
XG Firewall Health Checks
Here are some direct links to helpful resources:
New to XG Firewall?
If you’re new to XG Firewall, see how it provides the world’s best network visibility, protection and response on the new XG Firewall website.
Net Universe offers all Sophos Devices and subscritpions also consultant services with worldwide Delivery Services. Send us an email to [email protected] for more information or visit https://www.netuniversecorp.com/sophos.
We are excited to announce that powerful new Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) features for Intercept X are now available in early access.
This early access program (EAP) brings pre-built, fully customizable SQL queries for both granular threat hunting and IT health checks and management across your organization’s estate. You can join the EAP now.
Live Discover
Live Discover allows you to examine your data for almost any question you can think of by searching across endpoints and servers with SQL queries.
You can choose from a selection of pre-created queries that can be fully customized to pull the exact information that you need.
IT operations and threat hunting sample questions include:
Why is a machine slow? Is it pending a reboot?
Are users running unauthorized browser extensions?
Have any processes had their registry keys or files modified recently?
Is remote sharing enabled? What about guest accounts?
What processes are attempting to make network connections on non-standard ports?
Live Response (coming in May to early access)
This feature gives you the ability to respond with precision. Using a cmdline interface, remotely access devices in order to perform further investigation or take action. For example:
Reboot a device pending updates
Terminate suspicious processes
Browse the file system
Edit configuration files
Run scripts and programs
How to join the EAP
The EAP is open to everyone that has Intercept X and Intercept X for Server, even if you don’t currently have EDR.
For full instructions on how to join and additional technical information please head over to the Sophos community. We look forward to hearing your feedback!
Net Universe offers all Sophos Devices and subscritpions also consultant services with worldwide Delivery Services. Send us an email to [email protected] for more information or visit https://www.netuniversecorp.com/sophos.
Let’s be honest. We all have sat through it at least once in our lives – a boring presentation pitch.
Poorly designed and delivered pitches will leave your ideas dead in the water, but presenting them expertly takes a lot of time, dedication, and effort.
That’s why we’re offering some guidelines to help amplify your efficacy and engagement in your marketing presentations.
Start with a bang
70% of marketers believe that presenting interactive content is key for engaging the audience.
Compelling data and interesting facts keep your audience engaged. Using these elements at the beginning of your presentation makes it even easier to grab their attention.
Oli Gardner, who is famous for his mind-blowing presentations, follows this formula well. He presents a few pessimistic, doomsday-style slides and then, once the audience is sufficiently bummed out, he swoops in with good news.
Slides from Oli Gardner’s 2014 HeroConf presentation, I Give A Sh!t About Your Conversion Rates
But not all of us are Oli! We’ve got our own speciality.
To make it easier, draw out a “presentation path” and identify the weakest sections. Map out each and every slide in the form of a graph.
If a slide portrays positive information then map it above the baseline, if not, do the opposite. If your final graph doesn’t exhibit a series of sine waves – as taking your audience for a roller coaster will surely make your ideas withstand the test of time.
Rely on built-in templates
Marketing templates not only allow you to get a head start in the design process, but they also provide you with unlimited options to customize your presentation to fit your ideas perfectly.
Fine-tuning them further to reflect your brand identity makes your slides unique and ensures your audience will remember your points even after your talk is over.
Besides just presentation templates, Show goes a step beyond its competitors by offering Slide Templates where you can choose from professionally designed individual slides and plug them into your deck.
This way, your customization options become unlimited.
Maintain minimalism. Configure consistency.
Gone are the days when presenters impressed their audience with loud animations and over-done visuals.
Today, the concept of design is moving towards minimalism, leaving traditional design techniques at crossroads. Thus, it’s always better to tailor your content to your audience to best convey messages.
Put more emphasis on the visual elements, such as customizable shapes, infographics and smart elements. Likewise, a good color scheme ensures consistency without distracting from the essentials you’re presenting.
Convey actionable takeaways
There’s no point in learning fascinating new data if you can’t figure out how to use it to your advantage. Great presentations do not just highlight problems but also provide clear instruction on how to fix them.
As you can see, the presenter is posting users with a challenge.
But unless for the below image which provides a solution, the above slide means nothing to your audience.
Provide actionable takeaways to your audience
Use Gifs for Reaction Slides
If you want an easy laugh, gifs are the way to go.
Giphy has an enormous library of gifs and excellent collection of media.
And the good news is, Show’s integration with Giphy simply makes it easier for you to explore and add GIFs to your slides without switching apps. Elegant!
Review. Rehearse. Repurpose.
There’s nothing more mortifying than standing on stage alongside a slideshow riddled with grammatical errors. This would be a nightmare that would haunt you even after the session is over.
The best way to avoid this mishap is to review your presentations multiple times. Proofreading is a great start, but you may overlook simple errors, so ask your coworkers or friends to review if possible.
When your team reviews your presentation, you can get some valuable insights into what makes sense and where you fall flat. Take the time to understand their suggestions and adjustments before you get on stage.
Practice makes perfect
Finally, when you do your formal presentation, ask the audience a few questions along the way. Ask these in a way that doesn’t put anyone on the spot, and that the audience might have a little fun with. If possible, try to come up with a joke or two they’ll like.
So those are our best tips for how to create and deliver a great marketing presentation. We hope these have been helpful.
Digital recruitment is more than just posting vacancies on online job boards and social media. It involves a whole host of digital tools and strategies that span the entire recruitment process, from sourcing to hiring.
Examples include:
Digital recruitment is the process of using technology and the internet to find, attract, assess, and hire candidates to fill your open job roles. You might already be using one or two of the methods listed above. However, an optimized digital recruitment strategy will use several modern tools. Here’s some of the benefits you can get from digitizing your recruitment process:
A more extensive reach: Recruiters can reach remote and passive candidates from anywhere in the world.
Greater efficiency: Sourcing, selecting, and hiring candidates takes less time with better communication tools and automation.
A higher ROI: Though an initial investment is needed, a digital recruitment strategy allows recruiters to hire top-performing candidates in a shorter time frame.
How to build a robust digital recruitment strategy:
1. Create and share relevant content
Refine your messaging so you can engage with different groups of candidates more efficiently. This means taking the time to discover who your ideal candidates are and using this to fuel your copy. This targeted approach will also give you a better idea of where to share the content. For instance:
Your company website
External blogs
Social media handles
Email newsletters
There are many strategies that you can use to make your content more compelling for a specific audience. For example:
Using stories and testimonials from current employees
Publishing industry salary reports
Posting industry news and updates
Research what your potential candidates are interested in before launching a digital recruitment strategy.
It’s also worth noting that, to create and manage content effectively, you’ll need to discover the needs of your candidates and provide them solutions. The better your solutions, the more you distinguish yourself from your competition.
This means tailoring content to engage with your ideal job seeker. To do this, you must understand their:
Online habits
Interests
Lifestyle
Average expected income
With this info at your disposal, you can better create informative pictures, infographics, or videos that explain and eventually convince potentials to apply to work for you.
2. Have a solid social media recruiting strategy
A strong social media presence is vital in today’s recruitment industry. Once your company profiles are up and running, try to publish informative posts or videos and engage in discussions with potential candidates.
As the ongoing COVID-19 crisis continues, we hope you’re safe with your family, coping as best as you can.
Many major industries have been affected by the Coronavirus, but recruitment hasn’t completely frozen. Remote work is still highly in demand across the globe, and finding qualified candidates to fill these roles will involve changing your mindset about traditional hiring. Switching to a remote hiring platform will help you stay ahead of the curve now and in the future after COVID-19.
Here are some prerequisites for building a remote hiring platform:
Build a strong employer brand online
An employer brand refers to a company’s identity and reputation as an employer. Having a good employer reputation helps you to attract and retain qualified talent. Provide a great candidate experience right from the start by accurately describing the way your company operates. Assure your online presence defines you as a trustworthy, high-profile company that allows candidates to visualize themselves as a member of your team.
To get to that level, create a powerful careers page and an attractive social channel that explains the culture of your organization. Include employee testimonials from remote workers to serve as inspiration for people who are considering applying.
“I was the first-ever remote employee at Zoho. When I joined back in 2008, remote working wasn’t really a thing. Fast-forward to now, and the world has changed drastically. The Coronavirus has accelerated this change, but the change was coming all along. Our modern-day technology and the internet allows most office professionals to do their jobs no matter where they are.
In all these years of working remotely, I have truly come to believe that work is what you do, not a place you go.”
Meera Sapra- Product Manager, Zoho
Digitize your recruitment process
Still figuring out ways to move your team to a fully virtual work environment? You’ll need a comprehensive set of tech tools to run your business from a distance. Screen applicants virtually with video interviewing platforms and connect with top talent from all over the world. Reduce time to hire and automate your recruitment process by creating a video interview invitation email template. Send them to your huge database of candidates, and shortlist the best fit.
With e-sign, you can get rid of the pen and paper and authorize all paperwork online. Send call letters, interview invites, non-disclosure agreements, application forms, and offer letters directly to your candidates’ email inboxes for digital signing.
Find talent and let talent find you
Select the best places to broadcast your job openings. Reach out to the most talented candidates, and stay updated on all ways they apply for jobs. Consider advertising on popular job boards and social networking sites. If your job is location-specific, it might be a good idea to advertise your job openings on local job boards. Looking to fill remote positions? Here’s the ultimate list of the best remote job websites.
Interact with candidates in real-time
Recruiters need new, innovative tools to reach candidates where they are actively looking for jobs. One way to achieve high candidate engagement is through text recruiting. With the highest open and response rate, text recruiting offers an incredible opportunity to reach and connect with candidates in real-time. Proactively reach passive candidates and draw from a library of quality questions.
If candidates can’t easily apply for your jobs using their mobile devices, texting won’t be as effective. A mobile-friendly application for your job listings is important.
Participate in virtual career fairs
A virtual career fair is an online event where employers meet job seekers in a virtual environment using chat rooms, teleconferencing, webcasts, and webinars to exchange information about job openings. Applicants can upload their resumes and match with an employer’s job description to move on to the interview process. This limited duration job search has proven successful for many.
Virtual career fairs can be much more targeted than traditional career fairs. Eliminate bias and encourage candidates to give their first best impression.
Collaborative hiring is the key
Whether you’re hiring for remote roles or you are a remote recruiter yourself, connecting applicants with the perfect job will remain a priority no matter where you are. Bring your entire recruitment team onboard and collectively discuss your next great hire. They can be involved in the initial stages of remote hiring. Review candidates together, add notes and comments, and assess based on the skills required for the job.
We hope this checklist will help you break away from traditional hiring methods. With modern technology, you can make the most of the increased demand for remote work. Long after this crisis is resolved, one of the lasting impressions will be in the area of remote employment and recruiting. Get started now, and stay competitive as your business grows.
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