October is Halloween month, and what do we watch before Halloween? Horror movies, of course! No, not the documentaries of Wiring Closets From Hell, but actual films, like the seven new ones from Netflix this year, including another sequel to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Or go old school for #13 in the Halloween series, Halloween Ends.
News from Microsoft Ignite. The Microsoft Surface family grew and improved, with the Surface Pro 9, the Surface Laptop 5, and Surface Studio 2+ (pictured). Accessories appeared as well as fresh builds of Windows 11, and Microsoft Designer and Image Creator and associated tools for the graphics crowds.
Microsoft and Cisco teamed up to certify Microsoft Teams on several Cisco meeting room devices, including Cisco Room Bar, Board Pro 55-inch and 75-inch, the Room Kit Pro, as well as Cisco’s new peripheral, Desk Camera 4K.
Once you organize your Cisco gear, try the new Microsoft Teams Premium. Built on Teams, of course, the new version makes every meeting more personal, intelligent, and secure.
Within Microsoft Teams Rooms, apply the new Microsoft Places, a connected workplace platform designed to better handle hybrid and in-person work. Teams Rooms got some spiffy new features to go along as well.
Partners have Teams tools ready, such as the new Teams-certified devices from Poly, like the G7500 video conferencing system, Poly Studio Kits for Teams Rooms, and new phones like the Poly CCX 350 and Rove wireless DECT IP phones.
Microsoft Azure users can now get CloudSpend from ManageEngine and apply clever cost management.
Speaking of Microsoft Azure, the update of IGEL OS for Windows 365 lets you instant boot into a Cloud PC and more.
Now available on the virtual shelf, Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) extends the Nutanix hybrid cloud environment to Microsoft Azure dedicated bare metal nodes.
More big news from big names. It can be tough out in the world, especially for fragile tablets. Luckily for you adventuresome souls, the new Dell Latitude 7230 Rugged Extreme Tablet packs the best stuff (12th Gen Intel Core processors up to i7) inside a tough housing.
Also from Round Rock is Dell’s Project Frontier edge operations software platform that securely scales edge operations. And the Dell PowerEdge XR4000 rugged server, which fits into tight spaces, and the expanded Dell ISV partner ecosystem to support the manufacturing edge.
Google’s Pixel line has new phones, the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, and siblings, including the first Google Pixel Watch and earbuds (all pictured).
The Google Cloud Next show saw the unveiling of Chronicle Security Operations, a cloud-born software suite to notice, tag, and address threats with speed and at scale. Ties together Chronicle’s SIEM and SOAR for an integrated user experience.
Google’s Confidential Computing portfolio got a new tool: Google Confidential Space. Now you can keep your machine learning and data analysis away from prying eyes.
But sometimes you want to work together, so the revved up Google Meet includes new experiences to create immersive connections, speaker spotlight in Slides, adaptive camera framing with AI-powered cameras from Huddly and Logitech, meeting room check in, automatic meeting transcriptions, and more.
Amazon Web Services has three new training initiatives, including one to help Ukrainians rejoin the work force. Check out IT Skills 4U, AWS re/Start Associate, and AWS Skills Center in Arlington, Va.
Security news. Proofpoint’s Targeted Attack Protection (TAP) will share intelligence on threats with Microsoft Defender starting in early 2023. But wait, there’s more! Its Supernova Behavioral Engine is now available as a free detection stack upgrade.
Not enough time to analyze every potential threat before it becomes a network-stopping infection? Check out the new Malwarebytes Managed Detection and Response (MDR), which adds humans with security expertise to provide support 24/7.
Want to grow faster? If so, investigate the new Global MSSP program from Check Point, which provides a global SOC-as-a-service with no upfront bucks needed.
Other product news. Now full of new goodies, MSP360 RMM 1.4 is out and ready, along with new support for macOS in beta.
SOCSoter added Datto’s Autotask PSA to its fleet of service integrations.
QuoteWerks and BlueStar integrated,too, allowing BlueStar partners to pull product pricing and availability into QuoteWerks in real time.
Gradient MSP did the integration dance with both CompTIA ISAO and Phin Security.
Epson’s Mobilink wireless receipt printer family now includes three new family members: Mobilink TM-P20II, Mobilink TM-P80II, and Mobilink TM-P80II Plus (pictured).
Supermicro X13 JumpStart is a new program for workload testing on 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor-based X13 systems. Develop, validate, tune, and benchmark your workloads before the hardware lands on your porch.
Hello to the Lyve Cloud Analytics Platform from Seagate, which offers pre-configured full-stack analytics code solutions to accelerate DataOps and MLOps programs.
Non-product vendor news. Raghu Ram Bongula trod the red carpet at ConnectWise to accept the chief technology officer position.
The Welcome Wagon greeted Mike Pate at Vade as he became vice president of sales, Americas.
Add another chair to the big table at the Atera Advisory Board for Charles Tomeo (pictured) of Axcient.
All hands were on deck to welcome Bryan Avdyli at Nfina as vice president of sales.
Extreme Networks beefed up its sales leadership team by promoting Paul Semak to vice president of Americas International and welcoming Pete Brant as senior vice president of U.S. sales.
It’s a double carpet of crimson at Agiloft, walked by Steve McKean to fill the vice president of global alliances role, and Joel Moerschel to handle east regional vice president of sales.
Infoblox partnered with TD SYNNEX to make its cloud-first DDI (as in DNS, DHCP, and IP address management) solutions and BloxOne threat defense tools available in the TD SYNNEX Cyber Range, a cybersecurity training facility. While they were at it, TD SYNNEX also signed up to distribute Cynet’s cybersecurity tools.
Aryaka now offers clients online training and certification through its Aryaka Certified Engineer (ACE) training. Learn all the deetz under the hood.
This week’s stats ticker:
Thought about ransomware today? According to the new 2022 SonicWall Threat Mindset Survey, 91% of organizations fear a ransomware attack. Second most feared threat is phishing and spear-phishing at 76% with encrypted malware rounding out the top three at 66%. Forty-three percent of respondents worry about state-sponsored attacks. Maybe one reason they worry is that 78% of organizations don’t patch critical vulnerabilities within 24 hours after the patch is available. And one reason for that may be that nearly half of organizations—46%—lack enough IT headcount. The flip side is that only 3% of orgs think they have more than enough headcount to tackle day-to-day security operations.
Techconsult ran the Teams Backup survey for Hornetsecurity, which found that 70% of respondents bypassed the safer Groups Chat Channel to exchange messages via User Chat. This sounds worse when you learn that 45% of backup and security vendors send confidential and sensitive information via Teams, and the total rises to 51% when discussing business-critical information. Almost half, 48%, admit they’ve sent Teams messages that shouldn’t have been sent, despite the finding that 88% had training in the use of collaboration solutions. 540 respondents from companies with at least 50 employees across all industries took part.
Scamstronaut. Scammers often go to great lengths to reel in victims. In this case, the scammer covered great distances. In Japan, a 65-year-old victim began messaging, and falling in love, with an astronaut on the International Space Station. Or so he told her.
The unnamed victim fell for the old, “I need money to visit you,” pitch, with a twist. This scammer needed money to pay for a rocket to get to Japan from space, then to pay the heavy landing fees Japan levies against rocket ships. She sent a total of around $30,000 before she figured out the scam. After all, rocket fuel is pretty expensive.
Romance scams have increased in Japan every year since 2020, but police have no plans to go to the ISS and serve a warrant.
