Security, Hyper-V
Cradlepoint | August 02, 2023
Cradlepoint, the global leader in cloud-delivered LTE and 5G wireless network edge solutions, today announced that Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (RR/CC) has leveraged Cradlepoint to modernize the network infrastructure of one of the largest and most diverse counties in the United States, creating a new paradigm to enhance accessible voting capabilities to eligible voters.
Before 2020, the voting infrastructure and registration processes across Los Angeles County remained widely unchanged from the 1960s. The county recognized the need for a complete voting overhaul — technological and procedural — to address the significant demographic changes impacting equitable voting access. On the technological front, the RR/CC sought innovative, pop-up networking solutions capable of reliably and securely connecting voting technology across widespread and remote locations, while enabling centralized, real-time monitoring and management capabilities.
In November 2020, RR/CC approached their existing connectivity vendor Cradlepoint to test and deploy Cradlepoint’s 5G-optimized Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) solutions, in the form of NetCloud Manager and E3000 routers, which enabled highly scalable, reliable, and secure pop-up networks across approximately one thousand voting centers during the presidential election. Key solution capabilities and outcomes include:
Centralized network management:With NetCloud Manager, RR/CC’s in-house IT team successfully managed the deployment, configuration, and troubleshooting of each network device from centralized locations, reducing unnecessary complexity and on-site visits to quickly scale networks ad hoc for future election-related initiatives.
Consistent enforcement of security policies:NetCloud Manager and E3000 routers enabled the team to take a multi-layered approach to security with policy-based VPN tunneling and certificate-based authentication, keeping sensitive voting data secure to remain compliant with state and federal laws and maintaining the integrity of the democratic electoral process.
Continuous, flexible network connectivity:E3000 routers utilize ethernet, Wi-Fi, and 5G/LTE connectivity to enable multiple transport layers, which keeps voting technology operational across locations, despite any primary network disruptions or failures.
“Los Angeles County recognized the pressing need to modernize our network infrastructure to enhance the accessibility, transparency, and security in the electoral process, but limited IT resources impacted our ability to deploy and manage distributed networks at scale,” said Aman Bhullar, CIO at LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. “Our partnership with Cradlepoint enabled this transformation, helping us to not only accomplish our mission with innovative solutions, but also to set a new standard for widely accessible voting capabilities.”
“In today’s digital world, pop-up connectivity services have become vital to operate in new places and ways, and the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk is a great example of how LTE/5G connectivity and Cradlepoint’s 5G-optimized solutions seamlessly work together to help the office adapt to the modern needs of its constituents,” said Bryan Wood, Sr vice president of sales, North America for Cradlepoint. “We are honored to partner with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk office to ensure eligible voters have access to polling locations, no matter their whereabouts in the county during an election period.”
About Cradlepoint
Cradlepoint enables the freedom to connect people, places, and things that drive more experiences, more ways to work, and better business results — anywhere. The company is a pioneer in Wireless WAN, offering advanced 4G and 5G routers and adapters — controlled through Cradlepoint NetCloudTM. Enterprise businesses and public sector agencies rely on Cradlepoint and its Cellular Intelligence to build a reliable, secure network wherever they need it, connecting fixed and temporary sites, vehicles, IoT devices, and remote employees. Headquartered in Boise, Idaho, Cradlepoint is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) and part of their Business Area Enterprise Wireless Solutions.
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Virtual Desktop Strategies, Virtual Server Management
PR Newswire | August 25, 2023
Liquidware,the leader in digital workspace management, today announced their first SaaS solution, Liquidware CommandCTRL™, is now generally available at this week's VMware Explore event. CommandCTRL is the only SaaS real-time remediation solution that includes a DVR-like function that provides expeditious point-in-time problem solving. The many other features provide business benefits such as reduced time to resolution of incidents that increases productivity and improves user experience. CommandCTRL is a cost effective solution as there is no infrastructure required with minimal training to get up to speed. With the majority of troubleshooting being done in the background while the user is uninterrupted provides improved user sentiment.
CommandCTRL has four key differentiators to other solutions on the market today:
DVR-like playback functionality- Playback-mode captures 30-days history so admins can see exactly what occurred in the environment at specific dates and times
AI integration - with ChatGPT for process identification
Protocol mirroring - displays the protocol to the physical machine endpoint
Switch - seamlessly switch and navigate between two distinct environments: the local desktop and the cloud-based desktop.
"CommandCTRL fills a gap in the market for assisting organizations in expediting incident resolution, the solution is purpose-built to support interactive remediation of remote workspaces," commentedJason Mattox, CTO Liquidware. "While CommandCTRL is a standalone product, we envisage many customers buying it to accompany their Stratusphere™ UX investment."
In a recent Gartner® research report* it states, "To address the demands of digital business, IT service desks must reduce the number of simple and repeatable incidents and service requests they process manually." Gartner recommends Infrastructure and Operations leaders focused on IT operations transformation should, "Eliminate the cause of low-value, avoidable issues and requests to focus business productivity teams on high-priority work."
CommandCTRL adds another dimension of enterprise management to Liquidware's industry-leading solutions that include ProfileUnity™ user environment management, FlexApp™ application layering and Stratusphere™ UX digital experience monitoring.
Other key features include:
Real-time metrics data updates every three seconds
Real-time remediation actions speed problem identification and resolution
Threshold violations are highlighted in real-time mode and inDVR, these highlights alert the admin to end users' problems in seconds
Admins have two separate ways to shadow users: Quick Assist and Remote Assist
Multi-tenant membership allows partners to be a member of customers' sites to assist with remediation
Powershell and Cmd options for creating scripts to automate needed functions
Full scripting store organizes custom and external scripts for easy access and implementation.
About Liquidware
Liquidware is a leader in digital workspace management solutions for Windows desktops. The company's products encompass all facets of management to ensure the ultimate user experience across all workspaces – physical, virtual, DaaS or in the cloud. Enterprises across the globe utilize Liquidware solutions to dramatically decrease time spent managing desktops, while delivering increased security, flexibility, and scalability. Supported platforms include Microsoft physical, Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), Windows 365, Citrix Desktops, VMware Horizon, Amazon WorkSpaces, and Dizzion Frame. Liquidware products are available through a global network of partners.
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Virtual Desktop Tools, Cloud
Globenewswire | July 04, 2023
Anjuna Security Inc., a confidential computing software company, today announced that its flagship product, the Anjuna Confidential Computing Platform, now supports Microsoft Azure confidential virtual machines (VMs) powered by AMD EPYC™ processors with Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP) security features. This added functionality represents a significant advancement in Anjuna’s support for Azure confidential computing (ACC) solutions and increases flexibility of choice for Microsoft customers.
“As a leader in off-chain computation, where trust and security are non-negotiable, we are very excited by Anjuna’s expanded support for the latest AMD SEV-SNP confidential computing technology on Microsoft Azure that provides powerful isolation, risk reduction, and simplicity for sensitive data and code, taking confidential computing ease of use, trust, and simplicity to next level,” said Mitch Gildenberg, Switchboard CTO.
Azure confidential VMs, powered by AMD SEV-SNP, provide a robust platform to securely migrate and run enterprise applications to the cloud with data-in-use protection. While running in confidential VMs, applications can be isolated from other VMs, the hypervisor, and cloud infrastructure operators. Additionally, Anjuna's solution provides further isolation and safeguards for threats originating from the guest OS, misconfigurations, and other applications running in the same VM and the VM administrator. With more organizations processing more sensitive data in the cloud for generative AI, financial systems, and high-value transactions processing, however, security must extend to cover all these additional threats.
Anjuna Confidential Computing Platform enhances Azure confidential VMs, strengthening data protection and improving operational efficiency at scale. Anjuna automates the end-to-end deployment process and further protects applications in hardened Anjuna Confidential Containers that cannot be accessed by the other applications or the VM administrator. Moreover, Anjuna seamlessly and without code changes integrates attestation-aware key management capabilities via the Anjuna Policy Manager, ensuring that secrets are exclusively distributed to trusted applications.
“At Anjuna, we believe Confidential Computing should be ubiquitous, easy to use, and above all, secure without trade-offs. For too long, enterprises have had to choose between ease of use and security. In today’s digital economy, this is no longer acceptable,” said Ayal Yogev, CEO and co-founder of Anjuna Security. “Microsoft Azure is a leading innovator in confidential computing and we are excited to be among the first Confidential Computing software providers to support both their Intel SGX and AMD SEV-SNP powered infrastructure. We are committed to keep working closely with Microsoft to unlock the full potential of Azure Confidential Computing services.”
“We are committed to making Microsoft Azure a trusted cloud platform offering a broad portfolio of Confidential Computing solutions to customers,” said Vikas Bhatia, Head of Product, Azure confidential computing at Microsoft. “The combination of Azure confidential VMs powered by AMD SEV-SNP and the Anjuna Confidential Computing Platform unlocks value to customers, ensuring high levels of data protection and privacy with streamlined operations and ease of use.”
About Anjuna Security
Anjuna allows applications to run in any cloud with complete data security and privacy. Anjuna isolates workloads in a protected environment that intrinsically secures data in every state. Anjuna empowers enterprises to directly control application-level trust policies, ensuring that only trusted code can access sensitive data. Anjuna works with enterprises around the globe in industries such as financial services, government, and blockchain. To learn more about Anjuna’s platform and impact, visit Anjuna.io.
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VPN
Businesswire | July 18, 2023
The world’s efforts to secure digital communications from the threat posed by quantum computers took a significant leap forward today as a new standard for quantum-safe Virtual Private Networks (VPN) was ratified by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
The new protocol has already been used by Banque de France and Deutsche Bundesbank to secure payments messages, paving the way for full adoption by the Bank for International Settlements to secure communications between the world’s central banks.
‘Harvest Now Decrypt Later’ (HNDL) attacks currently represent the greatest quantum cybersecurity threat. These attacks see hostile actors steal encrypted data now which can be decrypted once a sufficiently mature quantum computer comes online. The new US Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act states that the HNDL risk presents the highest threat to humankind and stipulates that quantum migration must start now. Deploying a VPN based on new post quantum cryptography is the easiest way to protect data-in-transit from such attacks.
The new IETF standard specifies how VPNs can exchange communications securely in the quantum age. The novel approach prioritises interoperability by making it possible for multiple post-quantum and classical encryption algorithms to be incorporated into VPNs. Combining both old and new encryption is essential to ensure no disruption to the functioning of existing IT systems, and to protect data from attack by both classical and quantum computers.
This is a particularly important milestone for internet connectivity and security as we are transitioning from an era where the world relied upon just one or two algorithms (RSA and Elliptic Curve), to a situation where different nation states are deploying a wide variety of different post-quantum algorithms. This new IETF standard is the glue that allows parties using different public key encryption algorithms to talk with one another.
The new IETF standard was proposed and designed by Post-Quantum, a British cyber security company that’s built a portfolio of market-ready quantum-safe cyber security products. Post-Quantum’s own Hybrid PQ VPN uses the new IETF standard and is already in use by NATO to secure its communications from quantum attack, supporting interoperable communications between NATO members.
CJ Tjhai, CTO, Post-Quantum and original author of the new IETF standard said: “I’d like to thank all the technologists that collaborated with us on this IETF standard. Much of the focus has been on NIST’s new post quantum encryption algorithms themselves, but this is insufficient unless you have a protocol that defines how the connectivity is done. The easiest way to prevent Harvest Now Decrypt Later attacks is to deploy a PQ VPN based on the new IETF standard. NIST’s new algorithms are only useful if we have agreed standards for their use and mature products that can accommodate them.”
Andersen Cheng, Executive Chairman, Post-Quantum added: “CJ and his collaborators have completed important work that makes it possible for tech companies to build quantum-safe VPNs that communicate to one another. We are entering a period where different countries are now recommending different encryption algorithms, so engineering our communications infrastructure to be interoperable and backward compatible is absolutely crucial. That’s the value our own VPN is bringing to organisations like NATO, a diverse member organisation with a variety of post-quantum algorithms in use.
“In the commercial sector, we are pleased that Banque de France and Deutsche Bundesbank have also recently completed their project in transmitting payment messages using our protocol, which will pave the way for the Bank for International Settlements to build a complete chain of trust for central bank applications to counter any HNDL risks they already face today.”
José María Lucía Moreno, Lead Partner, EY Wavespace and a Post-Quantum partner added: “Our agreement with Post-Quantum is an important step in helping EY and its clients to become quantum-safe. We’re increasingly consulting with our clients to identify where they use traditional encryption that will need to be upgraded, and to help them prepare for the quantum era. Post-Quantum’s approach is particularly interesting because they have modular software-based products like the VPN, which can be implemented together, or as standalones within existing environments, to offer protection today.”
The IETF is the non-profit organisation with responsibility for developing the standards that define how the internet is built and used. Now that the IETF has ratified this work, VPN providers will adapt their protocols to match it, making this a defining standard for the future of cybersecurity as the world transitions from classical to new post-quantum encryption. Ratification represents the culmination of work dating back to 2017 when Post-Quantum took the lead in creating the original proposal for this standard.
About Post-Quantum
Post-Quantum is upgrading the world to next-generation encryption. Our quantum-safe platform includes modular software for Identity, Transmission and Encryption that protect organisations across their entire digital footprint. Products are interoperable, backward compatible and crypto-agile - ensuring a smooth transition to the next generation of encryption.
Post-Quantum works with organisations in defence, critical national infrastructure and financial services, including a multi-year relationship with NATO to ensure its communications are secure against quantum attack.
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