Techniques and strategies to overcome Kubernetes security challenges

Five security best practices for DevOps and development professionals managing Kubernetes deployments have been introduced by Portshift. Integrating these security measures into the early stages of the CI/CD pipeline will assist organizations in the detection of security issues earlier, allowing security teams to remediate issues quickly. The use of containers continues to rise in popularity in test and production environments, increasing demand for a means to manage and orchestrate them. Of all the orchestration tools, Kubernetes (K8s) has emerged as the market leader in cloud-native environments. Unfortunately, Kubernetes is not as adept at security as it is at orchestration. It is therefore essential to use the right deployment architecture and security best practices for all deployments.

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Virtual Desktop Tools, Virtual Desktop Strategies, Server Virtualization

Netskope Delivers the Next Evolution in Digital Experience Management for SASE with Proactive DEM

PR Newswire | September 01, 2023

Netskope, a leader in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), today announced the launch of Proactive Digital Experience Management (DEM) for SASE, elevating best practice from the current reactive monitoring tools to proactive user experience management. Proactive DEM provides experience management capabilities across the entire SASE architecture, including Netskope Intelligent SSE, Netskope Borderless SD-WAN and Netskope NewEdge global infrastructure. Digital Experience Management technology has become increasingly crucial amid digital business transformation, with organizations seeking to enhance customer experiences and improve employee engagement. With hybrid work and cloud infrastructure now the norm globally, organizations have struggled to ensure consistent and optimized experiences alongside stringent security requirements. Gartner predicts that "by 2026, at least 60% of I&O leaders will use DEM to measure application, services and endpoint performance from the user's viewpoint, up from less than 20% in 2021." However, monitoring applications, services, and networks is only part of a modern DEM experience, and so Netskope Proactive DEM goes beyond observation, providing Machine Learning (ML)-driven functionality to anticipate, and automatically remediate, problems. Sanjay Beri, CEO and co-founder of Netskope commented, "Ensuring a constantly optimized experience is essential for organizations looking to support the best productivity returns for hybrid workers and modern cloud infrastructure, but monitoring alone is not enough. Customers have told us of the challenges they face managing a multi-vendor cloud ecosystem and so we have yet again innovated beyond industry standards, providing experience management that can both monitor and proactively remediate." For issue identification, Netskope Proactive DEM uniquely combines Synthetic Monitoring with Real User monitoring, creating SMART monitoring (Synthetic Monitoring Augmentation for Real Traffic). This enables full end-to-end 'hop-by-hop' visibility of data, and the proactive identification of experience-impacting events. SMART monitoring enables organizations to anticipate potential events that might impact upon network and application experience. While most SASE vendors rely on "gray cloud" infrastructure - built on public cloud - which limits their ability to granularly identify and control any issues, Proactive DEM leverages Netskope NewEdge - the industry's largest private cloud infrastructure - to deliver 360 visibility and control of end-to-end user experience while providing mitigation of issues, including using various self-healing mechanisms, before the user recognizes their experience has degraded. About Netskope Netskope, a global SASE leader, helps organizations apply zero trust principles and AI/ML innovations to protect data and defend against cyber threats. Fast and easy to use, the Netskope platform provides optimized access and real-time security for people, devices, and data anywhere they go. Netskope helps customers reduce risk, accelerate performance, and get unrivaled visibility into any cloud, web, and private application activity. Thousands of customers trust Netskope and its powerful NewEdge network to address evolving threats, new risks, technology shifts, organizational and network changes, and new regulatory requirements.

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Backup and Disaster Recovery

Pure Storage Simplifies Data Resilience and Enables an Enhanced Service Operations Experience For Enterprises Everywhere

PR Newswire | October 12, 2023

Pure Storage® the IT pioneer that delivers the world's most advanced data storage technology and services, announced critical new data resilience offerings, including the introduction of Pure Protect™//DRaaS, a unique Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solution, new energy efficiency guarantees for its Evergreen® portfolio, and scalable AI-powered storage services via its Pure1® management platform to global enterprises. With the introduction of consumption-based disaster recovery via Pure Protect, a unique data resilience scoring system via Pure1, and updates to Evergreen subscriptions that include a new Paid Power and Rack commitment, Pure Storage enables enterprises to adopt a complete, end-to-end storage strategy that assures data resilience, reduces labor costs, accelerates sustainability initiatives, and delivers unrivaled TCO benefits. Industry Significance The rate of devastating ransomware attacks and the increasing frequency of natural disasters are upending business continuity more often each day. While many organizations recognize the importance of a disaster recovery (DR) plan, current DR solutions on the market are complex, expensive, and disruptive. Likewise, the current energy crisis, new environmental regulations, and ethical imperatives to improve corporate sustainability have led companies to set ambitious net-zero goals, but reckoning with the typical data center's power demands has remained challenging. And with digitization at scale and data proliferation and fragmentation, end-to-end operations management further aggravates the skill and budget shortages for IT. Today's introduction of Pure Protect //DRaaS and updates to the Pure Storage Evergreen portfolio not only address these critical industry pain points, but also set new milestones for customer-centricity with compelling guarantees. News Highlights Assured Data Resilience: Pure Storage enables enterprises everywhere to maximize data protection with a complete, multi-layered data resilience strategy built from the ground up. With intrinsic data protection built into its Evergreen architecture via ActiveDR™, ActiveCluster™, and SafeMode™ Snapshot capabilities, Pure Storage has now expanded data resilience with new trusted operations capabilities and a new disaster recovery service: Pure Protect //DRaaS, a new consumption-based Disaster Recovery as-a-Service solution, drastically reduces complexity, cost, recovery time, and business disruption in the wake of disasters and cyber disruptions. Organizations now have clean environments with multiple restore points to recover clean copies of their on-premises vSphere data, to native AWS EC2, no matter what underlying storage infrastructure it is, while ensuring data centers remain isolated for investigation. Data Resilience Score, within the Pure1 Data Protection Assessment, underscores Pure Storage's trusted operations by providing better transparency in the adoption of Pure Storage and industry-leading data protection and backup partner technologies, while offering the ability to assess entire fleet configurations against leading practices. Zero Data Loss Guarantee, across the Evergreen portfolio, provides peace of mind that customers data will not be lost due to Pure Storage hardware or software issues. In the rare case of any data corruption, Pure Storage assures data protection with advanced data recovery services for any hardware or software product-related incidents, at no cost. Enhanced Service Experience, Everywhere: With Pure Storage's AI-powered asset and lifecycle management services and policy-based automation, customers can achieve operational excellence, anywhere and on any scale. Asset Management and Genealogy allows customers and Pure Storage to jointly optimize Labor costs to run and operate storage. Customers get full transparency to manage Evergreen assets, contracts, subscriptions, and lifecycle, and get visibility into capacity, energy, and rack space usage. Customers can also view how each asset or subscription has evolved over time, including software updates, ramps, expansions, and renewals, and gain insight into upcoming lifecycle events such as EOL, upgrades, or contract expiration. Subscription Lifecycle Operations: Customers now benefit from a subscription viewer to understand when subscriptions require attention and renewal, predictive tracking of capacity utilization with actionable alerts to optimize reserve commit vs on-demand consumption, and new SLA indicators to track how well Pure Storage is meeting performance and efficiency SLAs. Customers can plan for future demand, trigger in-app workflows to request quotes, or use the new Pure1 Marketplace for a simplified subscription shopping experience. Partners can take advantage of these capabilities via APIs and early notifications of lifecycle events (EOL, renewal) to deliver seamless procurement experiences to joint customers. Policy-driven Upgrades take the guesswork out of choosing the right Purity release and simplify fleet management. They help customers strike the right balance between frequent upgrades and maintaining a secure and supported storage environment based on their organization's goals. Pure1 Mobile App enables customers to get insights and alerts even on the go as well as manage cases and get the latest information and news from Pure anywhere in the world. Guaranteed Energy Efficiency While Saving Money: With the only Paid Power and Rack Space commitment in the enterprise Storage as-a-Service market, and unique energy, density, and upgrade guarantees, Pure Storage is not only committed to providing the most sustainable storage solutions in the industry, but is also determined to make being green easier and more affordable for global customers. About Pure Storage Pure Storage uncomplicates data storage, forever. Pure delivers a cloud experience that empowers every organization to get the most from their data while reducing the complexity and expense of managing the infrastructure behind it. Pure's commitment to providing true storage as-a-service gives customers the agility to meet changing data needs at speed and scale, whether they are deploying traditional workloads, modern applications, containers, or more. Pure believes it can make a significant impact in reducing data center emissions worldwide through its environmental sustainability efforts, including designing products and solutions that enable customers to reduce their carbon and energy footprint. And with the highest Net Promoter Score in the industry, Pure's ever-expanding list of customers are among the happiest in the world.

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Virtual Desktop Tools, Desktop

Epson Announces New Ultra Compact Desktop Solutions Offering Document Management Perfect for Remote and Hybrid Workers

PR Newswire | September 26, 2023

Epson, the best-selling retail scanner brand in North America,1 today announced three new compact and lightweight document scanning solutions – the WorkForce® ES-C220, ES-C320W, and ES-C380W. Featuring an intuitive design and exceptional flexibility, these modern scanners boast a new footprint that saves 60 percent of desk space,2 ideal for tight spaces. Designed for fast and easy document management, the ES-C320W and ES-C380W offer comprehensive wireless scanning to smartphones, tablets, computers, and the cloud,3 enabling small business owners, hybrid employees and busy professionals to work efficiently and streamline tasks. "With the work environment shifting to a hybrid and remote workforce, compact and lightweight solutions that easily integrate into home offices and tight workspaces are essential for today's workflow needs," said Carrie Fox, director of product marketing, Scanners, Epson America. "Professionals and consumers alike can easily conquer clutter and reclaim office space with the new compact WorkForce scanners, designed for productivity and peace of mind. These unique and flexible solutions offer single step scanning, organizing software and a vertical paper path to help customers accomplish more and streamline active workdays." These high-performance workhorse scanners offer features to keep home offices and business organized. The ultra-compact solutions deliver fast speeds with an innovative, space-saving design and vertical scan path that saves 60 percent of desk space2, making it easy to place virtually anywhere, even when space is limited. With two-sided scanning, and a 20-sheet Auto Document Feeder, the new scanners can efficiently handle stacks of paper in one fast pass at speeds up to 30 ppm/60 ipm.4 Intelligent image adjustments such as automatic cropping and paper skew correction help ensure amazing image quality with each scan. The flexible scan path provides remarkable versatility and the ability to scan most document types, from standard paper to invoices, greeting cards, business cards, and passports.5 Touting robust software, all three scanners include Epson ScanSmart® Software6 allowing users to preview, email and upload scans as well as save valuable time with automatic file name suggestion for streamlined file management and OCR. To enhance workflow efficiency, the WorkForce ES-C380W includes ScanWay® for scanning directly to a USB drive,7 mobile device3 or upload to popular cloud storage services7 Dropbox®, Evernote®, Google Drive™ and OneDrive® using the scanner's bright 2.4" LCD touchscreen, no computer needed. About Epson Epson is a global technology leader whose philosophy of efficient, compact and precise innovation enriches lives and helps create a better world. The company is focused on solving societal issues through innovations in home and office printing, commercial and industrial printing, manufacturing, visual and lifestyle. Epson's goal is to become carbon negative and eliminate use of exhaustible underground resources such as oil and metal by 2050.

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VPN

Automox Announces Immediate and Secure Actions at Scale to Keep IT Fast and Compliant

globenewswire | September 21, 2023

Automox, the leader in AI-powered IT automation, is proud to announce two new capabilities, FixNow and PowerShell Signing. Combined, these new features further extend Automox’s industry-leading automation, speed, and security to enable organizations to act immediately to enforce and audit configuration, remediate vulnerabilities, install or remove software, query devices, and more. According to a 2019 IT Outage Impact Study, human error was the #1 cause of IT outages in the United States and Canada, and the #3 cause globally. Using FixNow for immediate testing and validation enables IT professionals to confidently automate configuration changes at scale and to minimize the potential for human error. FixNow runs Automox WorkletsTM immediately at scale across IT environments without a VPN or servers. With a catalog of over 300 automations that span Windows, macOS, and Linux systems, FixNow runs securely in real-time on the devices you choose. Early-access Automox customers are already confirming the value of FixNow. Matthew Rehm, Director of Information Systems at Methodist Theological School in Ohio said, “[FixNow] made updating some machines so much easier than having to schedule.” And David Thomson, IT Manager, St Andrew's First Aid in the UK said, “I use FixNow when evaluating new Worklets. The capability to execute instantly allows me to see instant results without cluttering up my existing policies.” “The value of immediate and secure action at scale cannot be overstated. We know time is of the essence, and FixNow lets our users remediate fast,” said Tim Lucas, CEO of Automox. “FixNow is the fastest and most secure way to audit and fix hundreds or even thousands of devices immediately.” According to a 2020 study by Cisco, PowerShell accounted for more than 33% of critical threats detected on endpoints. Automox PowerShell Signing will ensure script integrity and adherence to security best practices by enabling remote or all script signing to further reduce potential attack surfaces. Whether you automate or immediately execute PowerShell with FixNow, tasks like configuration, software deployment, and patching will be signed. To ensure the integrity of scripts from Automox and enable IT teams to adhere to security best practices, all PowerShell commands and automations will be self-signed by Automox. Once enabled, organizations can enhance their security posture by disallowing unsigned and potentially malicious PowerShell from running in their environment. “All Automox customers will be able to opt-in to sign every PowerShell command sent through Automox, so they can be confident that critical endpoint management tasks like configuration updates were unchanged in transit to managed devices,” said Jason Kikta, Automox CISO. “This is a major advance in security for IT teams. Dual-use and fileless PowerShell scripts comprise nearly half of the critical security threats on endpoints.” FixNow is available to Automox customers today as a free preview, Secure Signing will be made available to all Automox customers shortly. About Automox Automox is the IT automation platform for modern organizations. It makes it easy to keep Windows, macOS, and Linux endpoints patched, configured, controlled, and secured – without servers or VPNs. Using AI-powered automation, IT professionals can fix critical vulnerabilities faster, slash cost and complexity, and win back hours in their days. Join thousands of companies transforming IT operations into a strategic business driver with Automox.

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