Did you enjoy the first week of 2023’s fourth quarter? Traditionally the final quarter of the year produces the most sales, the most TV viewing (are you ready for some football?), the most charitable donations, and the most major holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas). Ready, set, sprint to 2024!
News from IT By Design. At the Build IT Live annual event in Orlando, IT By Design rolled out “Talent Pods” for partners. Overseas teams, trained by IT By Design, on a transparent cost-plus basis offer services, along with expanded one-stop NOC support and training opportunities.
Adding to existing partners like N-able and Barracuda, the new IT By Design Marketplace includes HacWare, IT Glue, Liongard, MSPbots, and Pia.
IT By Design CEO Sunny Kaila’s new book, shared with MSPs at the meeting, outlines his start as a taxi driver and growth to CEO, and is titled Talentpreneurship.
News from HP. The first-ever HP Imagine event celebrated the company’s latest products (like the HP Spectre Foldable PC, pictured) and services from its Personal Systems, Printing Systems, and Workforce Solution lines. More than 20 new devices and services were introduced.
Focusing more on the “S” in SMB, HP also announced the HP OfficeJet Pro portfolio built with up to 45% recycled plastic, more sustainable ink cartridge options producing more pages per cartridge, and forest protection and restoration programs.
Security news. Blackpoint Cyber expanded its Cloud Response MDR service to cover Google Workspace in addition to Microsoft 365. It also Blackpoint Cyber joined the Pax8 Marketplace.
Team up! Liongard and Cork did so to offer Liongard partners Cork’s warranty offering.
Bitdefender unveiled Threat Intelligence to help MSPs and MSSPs improve threat intelligence and dynamic malware analysis in their operations.
Keeper Security’s report Cybersecurity Disasters Survey: Incident Reporting & Disclosure found 40% of organizations experienced a cybersecurity incident, but 48% didn’t report the attack to authorities and 41% of incidents were not disclosed to company leadership. Oops.
SonicWall welcomed Christine Bartlett as senior vice president and chief marketing officer.
Maybe if we teach young kids about cybersecurity they’ll grow into adults who appreciate and follow security rules. That’s the hope of KnowBe4 and its new “Hack-A-Cat” cybersecurity game on Roblox. It’s cat and mouse, but the mice use real hacking tactics.
SentinelOne’s Singularity DataLake is now available through the FedRAMP Authorization Program.
Team Up! Nodeware will be folded into the vCIOToolbox, thanks to a partnership between IGI CyberLabs and vCIOToolbox.
At DattoCon, Seceon touted its aiXDR-Pmax plan, which enables partners to detect, protect, and remediate exploits using AI, ML, and dynamic threat models.
ManageEngine launched Identity360, a cloud-native IAM tool.
IoT news. Parks Associates looks at how insurance companies and smart home technology can save billions of dollars by surveying over 8,000 internet households in the U.S. looking at how security companies are partnering with insurance providers.
Those who use Raspberry Pi SBC to power IoT projects will enjoy this unboxing video of the new Raspberry Pi 5 by our friends at Hackster.io.
Forbes describes how the IoT is becoming the Economy of Things (EoT) as devices exchange not just data but also value, such as an electric vehicle paying for a charging station using blockchain platforms on a digital backbone.
The Internet of Things Federal Working Group (IoTFWG) from NIST quietly chugs along and outlined a few key strategies for public-private coordination. You know, cooperative R&D, Federal technology’s transferability, grants, and more.
This issue’s IoT security brief comes from Geeky Gadgets.
Wish you could provision SIMs remotely? Sony Semiconductor Israel and G+D have a solution to do exactly that with iSIMs, or the integrated Universal Integrated Circuit Card (iUICC).
Other product news. Team up! This time, Arcserve and Wasabi Technology shook hands, and the unified data solution option is available exclusively through Climb Distribution.
Don’t reinvent the wheel, or at least the most common RPA scripts, when you can get 50 per-built automations from Rewst.
The new Lenovo ThinkCentre M90a Pro Gen 4 (pictured), a modern all-in-one business desktop, includes a webcam for hybrid/remote users, and a way-cool pivot to flip the 27 inch screen into portrait mode.
Atera’s deep integration with Microsoft Azure Open AI promises to cut IT team ticket response from an hour to seconds.
LogicMonitor released Dexda to bridge the AIOps gap.
Linksys wove its Cognitive Security technology into the coming-soon group of Designed Series products for Wi-Fi 6 home networking.
Zyxel Networks added Wi-Fi 6-enabled security firewalls into its USG FLEX 100 firewall series, all compatible with its Nebula Cloud Networking.
Need some more power for your edge AI projects, especially for telco applications? Check out the All-in-One Open RAN system, the new Supermicro X13 Edge server.
Non-product vendor news. It’s a tandem red carpet / new business card event at GoTo. New Vice President, User Experience (UX) Ruth Frank (pictured) joins as Damon Covey’s new biz cards bear the title of chief product officer.
Procure IT picked Managing Partner Jordan Solender to lead the development of its Customer Experience platform.
Dynamic Lifecycle Innovations will now be available through TD SYNNEX. But wait, there’s more! TD SYNNEX will also offer Spin.AI’s SpinOne.
The financing division of TD SYNNEX just added Amplify, a new short-term credit program for U.S. customers with improved flexibility.
From October 1 to December 21, Zyxel will offer its Connect & Protect Plus (CNP+) security service with a free, three year license to buyers of its NWA110AX 802.11ax access point.
This week’s stats ticker:
TD SYNNEX released its second annual Direction of Technology Report, and AI dominated this edition. One could say AI exploded, since the number of partners offering some type of solution powered by AI/ML jumped 652% in one year. Other areas with high growth include cloud, AI and IoT, cybersecurity, and hyperscale infrastructure. Security topped the list, followed closely by networking, servers and storage, and hybrid cloud. Security matched the top business skill needed with over a third of respondents putting it first, tied by the same number putting managed services at their top. In addition, 73% of IT spending will be partner delivered in 2023, with cybersecurity again leading by being partner-delivered 91.5% of the time.
Ivanti’s Hidden Threats, part of its Cybersecurity Report. discovered that millennial and Gen Z office workers are more likely to have unsafe cybersecurity habits when compared with Gen X and older (40 years old plus). 36% of the younger office workers use the same passwords on multiple devices, compared to 28% of older workers. Young workers shared work devices with family or friends (34% vs 19%), used a birthdate in their password (34% vs 19%), and clicked on a phishing link more often when targeted (13% vs 8%).
The latest Internet Security Report from WatchGuard Technologies paints a depressing picture as endpoint malware volumes increase despite the time and money already spent on protection. During a rise in double-extortion attacks, 95% of malware now arrives encrypted since many organizations don’t test their SSL/TLS traffic. When inspecting malware over encrypted connections, the share of evasive detections reached 66%. Double-extortion attacks from ransomware groups increased 72% quarter over quarter. No surprise, cybercriminals continue to target older software vulnerabilities, and threat actors increasingly leverage Windows living off-the-land binaries to deliver malware. Worse, attackers change attacks at different times of the year.
New research by Auvik and Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) revealed that the ongoing shift to hybrid and remote work environments resulted in key changes to the roles and practices of network administrators. 73% of network operations teams reported an increase in workloads thanks to the shift from traditional office-based work environments. Top challenges include poor home Wi-Fi setups, distance from applications, and poor ISP quality. Even in the office, 90% of respondents reported they were forced to upgrade Wi-Fi network to handle increased office mobility requirements.
Parachutin’ granny. It’s one thing to be shown up by youngsters, but Dorothy Hoffner takes insult to ego to a new, 10,000 foot level. Chicago-native Dorothy took her second sky dive this week. Why is that a big deal? Dorothy first jumped out of a perfectly good airplane four years ago to honor her 100th birthday.
Yes, for her 104th birthday, Dorothy jumped out of another airplane. Setting a new world record, she did another tandem parachute jump from 10,000 feet. Skydive Chicago is working with Guinness to certify her record and take it away from whippersnapper Rut Larson from Sweden. Darn kids!
Photo: Daniel Wilsey High Flight
