Fans of a certain age, or those who watch the all-rerun over the air broadcast channels at Grammy’s, know the meme of Lt. Columbo saying, “Just one more thing.” It appears Mother Nature is a fan, but in this case, “one more thing” means another bomb cyclone! Those on the Atlantic side of the country should stay in and enjoy these warm newsbits with some hot chocolate.
Apple gadget news. The M1 chip is the real news from Apple, since it’s all over the product lines, including the most powerful and versatile iPad Air ever (pictured). 5G on cellular models, Wi-Fi 6, faster USB-C port, and a 16-core Neural Engine to power machine learning functions that support many of the apps using the ultra-wide 12 MP front camera with Center Stage.
The iPhone 13 family gets new colors, adding green and alpine green finishes.
If the iPhone 13 models are too big, wrap your hand around the new iPhone SE model, with a 4.7 inch display. The Home button and Touch ID returns, the A15 Bionic chip with a 6-core CPU does the work, and the starting price of $429 for the 64 GB model aims at a big selling point of the Android competition, affordability.
Also returning? A desktop computer in the form of the new Mac Studio, powered by the new M1 Ultra. Designed for the “creator” crowd, especially with the new Studio Display and a 5K Retina screen. Lots faster but not much bigger than two stacked Mac Minis.
Catch that M1 “Ultra” mention? The new chip includes the UltraFusion Architecture that connects the die of two M1 Max processors, bypassing the performance loss of linking processors across the motherboard. The 20-core CPU, made of 16 high-performance and four high-efficiency cores, delivers a claimed 90% higher multi-threaded performance than competing 16-core PC desktop chips, and it does so drawing 100 fewer watts.
News from another tech heavyweight. The Google Cloud will fold in Mandiant once the approximately $5.4 billion acquisition of the dynamic cyber defense response company is complete. More advisory services, threat detection, validation, and managed defense are on the roadmap.
Worried about cloud security? Google Cloud announced the public preview of account defender, a new feature built into reCAPTCHA Enterprise that compares a sign-in attempt to the account owner’s typical behavior.
Other product news. NinjaOne moved Ninja Ticketing (pictured) from beta into general availability. Partners can navigate to the integration section and click “Ticketing,” to get quick access to endpoint details in the ticket, along with remediation tools and more.
Palo Alto Networks announced Prisma Cloud Supply Chain Security for a view of vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in the software supply chain with a full stack, full lifecycle approach.
Hello to new modules Vulnerability Assessment and a preview of Patch Management for the Nebula cloud-native endpoint protection platform from Malwarebytes.
Have customers complaining about workloads bogging down their old workstations? Check out the new AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 WX-Series workstation processors, like the 64-core, 128-thread Threadripper PRO 5995WX.
Those in the federal vertical might check out the Pexip Microsoft Teams Cloud Video Interop (CVIO) tool available for Microsoft’s Government Community Cloud High.
Non-product vendor news. IT By Design partnered with the MSP Growth Coalition, and its co-founder CEO Juan Fernandez (pictured) now serves as Brand Ambassador for Build IT’s education division.
Over at MSP360, the newcomer to the office is Alexandra Courson, now in as vice president of sales.
The rare four-lane red carpet in front of Cybrary welcomed four new executives. Chief Technology Officer Rob Usey, Chief Financial Officer Charlie Booth, Vice President of Marketing Mary Fad, and Vice President of People Tonya Butler all may need help finding the breakroom.
Fortinet and Orange Business Services tightened their team-up by integrating Fortinet’s security-driven networking tech into the Orange telco cloud infrastructure. Better SASE and more.
HelpSystems will acquire Alert Logic to add the latter’s MDR solution to the former’s cybersecurity and automation software.
Dynabook America (formerly Toshiba PC Company) signed with D&H Distributing to distributed its Portege, Tecra, and Satellite Pro brands in the U.S.
Already a global AWS Advanced Consulting Partner and AWS Distributor, Ingram Micro Cloud achieved AWS DevOps Competency status.
Avnet Integrated advanced up to Dell Technologies’ Titanium level partner tier.
InteractiveTel acquired the assets of Marcom Technologies. All 34 Marcom employees will help InteractiveTel expand into the automotive dealership vertical.
Now that they’ve reached Microsoft Azure IP Co-Sell status, IGEL VDI and DaaS can be sold by Microsoft resellers globally.
This week’s stats ticker:
MSPs need to batten down the hatches, because according to State of the Market: The New Threat Landscape, a report commissioned by N-able, MSPs are overtaking their customers as a primary target for cybercriminals. Of the 500 participants in the U.S. and Europe, 90% suffered a successful cyberattack in the past 18 months. 82% of MSPs have seen attacks on customers rise, although not quite as much with 14 attacks prevented per month. Hey, barefoot shoemakers, only 40% of MSPs are using two-factor authentication even though they offer it to all their customers. While DDoS and ransomware attacks are rising, phishing remains the top attack. Over half of breached MSPs fought financial loss and business disruption, 46% lost business, 45% took a hit to their reputation, and 28% saw their customers suffer a loss of trust.
Ivanti’s Everywhere Workplace study surveyed over 6,100 office workers and IT professionals to discover what employees thought about the past, present, and future of work. First off, 71% would prefer working from anywhere to a promotion, although 10% reported a negative effect on their mental health. 70% of IT women reported negative effects from remote work, but only 30% of men said the same. Losing personal connection with coworkers bothered 9%, while 6% felt expected to work longer hours than when in the office. Looking forward, 42% of employees prefer a hybrid model of work, up 5% since the last study. 30% want to work from home permanently. To help, 32% of IT pros want the service desk to be modernized.
Just one more crazy thing. Haven’t we had enough surprises the last couple of years? Seen all the disasters and lockdowns and snowstorms you want? Ready to sit in the backyard and relax?
Not so fast: if you’re in Georgia or the Southeast moving up the East Coast, you need to keep an eye out for three-inch long parachuting spiders, specifically, the Joro Spider from Japan.
Colorful and officially not dangerous to people because their fangs can’t easily penetrate human skin, we’re still talking about three inch, bright yellow and red spiders. No thank you.
