2 December 2021 - Security Buyer Magazine

NCSC 2021 Annual Review

NCSC has announced its 2021 Annual Review, which marks the culmination of the 5 year National Cyber Security Strategy and the new National Cyber Strategy (NCS) that will focus on a ‘whole of society approach to cyber’. Highlights of the report include: NCSC dealt with a record number of cyber incidents in 2021 Ransomware is the most significant cyber threat facing the UK this year 20% of attacks NCSC dealt with were linked to healthcare. 4.4 billion potentially harmful interactions blocked for staff in the health sector, NHS and vaccine production by PDNS. There were 12.2 million blocks against Covid-19 phishing specific domains by PDNS SolarWinds, one of the world’s most popular IT system management platforms, was one of the most significant incidents of the year, when it was breached by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service How China evolves in the next decade will probably be the single biggest driver of the UK’s future cyber security A key part of NCSC’s Active Cyber Defence was its Protective DNS Service (PDNS), which is delivered by Nominet. David Carroll, MD of Nominet Cyber comments: “As NCSC announces its 2021 Annual Review, we are reminded that the past year has not only been a challenge in the physical world, but there has been an ongoing battle across digital lines too. NCSC dealt with a record number of incidents this year and saw ransomware become the most significant cyber threat facing the UK. We have been told explicitly about the threat emanating from Russia and warned of China’s interest in UK commercial secrets. What’s more, with the financial impact of attacks being as much as £442m in the case of the Irish Health Service Executive, we also face a very real threat from cyber economically. “For our part at Nominet, we’re proud to deliver PDNS for the UK. It has protected vital public services at a critical juncture of heightened threat and exposure. PDNS played an active role in the response to one of the most significant security incidents of 2021, SolarWinds, when it was breached by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. It protected the NHS, healthcare and vaccine providers from accessing malicious domains 4.4 billion times and generated 12.2 million blocks against Covid-19 phishing specific domains. No mean feat. “The road ahead presents significant challenges, but the UK has made great progress with the single authority model, and with the NCSC’s Active Cyber Defence measures in particular. PDNS can disrupt ransomware that makes it through the first lines of defence. It prevents it from operating by blocking connections to known ransomware domains. This simple and effective capability will remain critical as attackers adapt their tools, techniques and processes over time. Collaborative efforts like PDNS involve governments, the cyber security industry and end-users, to deliver benefit at national scale. We fully support this ‘whole of society’ approach to cyber security and look forward to the role Protective DNS plays within it for years to come.” Media contact Rebecca Morpeth Spayne, Editor, Security Portfolio Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 922 Email: editor@securitybuyer.com

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Mobile data traffic increased almost 300-fold

Middle East News Desk / Editor

Ericsson global insights reveal an almost 300-fold increase in mobile data traffic since 2011 – the year in which Ericsson Mobility Report was first published. The findings, based on current and historical network data, are included in the special ten-year edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report November 2021. The report looks back at some of the key trends and events that have shaped the last decade, as well as revealing the latest forecasts toward 2027. The premise that 5G will become the fastest deployed mobile generation to date has been enhanced with an updated estimate of close to 660 million 5G subscriptions by the end of this year. The increase is due to stronger than expected demand in China and North America, driven in part by decreasing prices of 5G devices. There was also a net addition of 98 million 5G subscriptions globally in Q3 2021, compared to 48 million new 4G subscriptions. At the end of 2021, it is estimated that 5G networks will cover more than two billion people. According to the latest forecasts, 5G is on track to become the dominant mobile access technology, based on subscriptions globally, by 2027. 5G is also expected to account for around 50% of all mobile subscriptions worldwide – covering 75% of the world’s population and carrying 62% of the global smartphone traffic by 2027. Fredrik Jejdling, Executive Vice President and Head of Networks, Ericsson, said “Mobile communication has had an incredible impact on society and business over the last ten years. When we look ahead to 2027, mobile networks will be more integral than ever to how we interact, live and work. Our latest Ericsson Mobility Report shows that the pace of change is accelerating, with technology playing a crucial role.” Since 2011, the deployment of 4G LTE networks has been pivotal in generating 5.5 billion new smartphone connections worldwide, contributing to the market availability of more than 20,000 different 4G device models. This report indicates a much earlier technology lifecycle of 5G devices, with 5G handsets today accounting for 23% of global volumes, compared to 8% of 4G handsets at the corresponding point in its lifecycle. This is helping to fuel an exponential growth of mobile data traffic. Mobile network data traffic was up 42%, year-on-year, in Q3 2021 accounting for approximately 78 exabytes (EB), including traffic generated by Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) services. In Q3 alone, mobile data traffic was more than all mobile traffic ever generated up until the end of 2016. New forecasts reveal that total mobile network data traffic is likely to reach 370EB by the end of 2027 The report also reveals that the nature of mobile connections is changing rapidly, contributing to the ongoing rise in mobile data traffic. Broadband IoT has now surpassed 2G/3G as the segment that connects the largest share of IoT applications. It is expected to account for 47% of all cellular IoT connections by the end of 2021, compared to 37% for 2G/3G and 16% for Massive IoT technologies (NB-IoT and Cat-M). New forecasts reaffirm the rapid acceleration of massive IoT deployments in coming years, spanning use cases such as e-health wearables, logistical asset tracking, environmental monitoring and smart meters, and smart manufacturing tracking and monitoring devices. Massive IoT deployments are forecast to account for 51% of all cellular IoT connections by 2027. In the same forecast period, FWA connections are forecast to grow almost threefold – from 88 million by the end of 2021, to around 230 million in 2027. Almost half of these connections are expected to be carried over 5G networks. The ten-year anniversary edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report includes four feature articles: Building 5G infrastructure for the digital future, together with Far EasTone Network build-out to boost digitalisation, together with stc Time-to-content: Benchmarking network performance Building sustainable networks Media contact Rebecca Morpeth Spayne, Editor, Security Portfolio Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 920 Email: editor@securitymiddleeast.com

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Arcserve partners with Google Cloud

UK News Desk / Rebecca Morpeth-Spayne

Company offers UK customers advanced data backup, protection, and recovery benefits with Google Cloud global scale, elasticity, and data security Arcserve announced a partnership with Google Cloud Platform. The Arcserve Cloud Services solution has been explicitly architected to take advantage of the power of Google Cloud. Arcserve Cloud Services, acclaimed for its recovery capabilities, including one-click orchestrated recovery, is now available from GCP. This enables UK customers to benefit from improved business continuity planning with distributed, secure infrastructure needed to meet IT and business requirements for disaster recovery, all while maintaining data sovereignty in-country. The availability of Arcserve Cloud Services on the Google Cloud Platform follows months of collaboration between the two companies. The solution is architected and fine-tuned to optimise the benefits of advanced cloud data management, protection, and recovery cloud services with Google Cloud infrastructure for speed, elasticity, and scale. Customers will realise significant advantages in data security with Arcserve’s purpose-built, advanced DRaaS delivering orchestrated failover for complete business continuity, plus the operational efficiency, data security, elasticity, and scalability of Google Cloud and its hyper-scale data centres. Customers benefit from: ● Enterprise-grade protection: Arcserve Cloud Services solution enables organisations to meet their business continuity and disaster recovery readiness objectives by allowing them to spin up their entire infrastructure in a single click with its pre-staged orchestration to virtualise machines in the cloud. It leverages Google Cloud to speed replication rates and instantly restore data remotely, allowing IT organizations to meet stringent RPO/RTO requirements. ● Simple, powerful customisation, and management: Customers will continue to benefit from Arcserve’s simple self-service portal that puts them in control of their data. The portal gives Solution Providers and customers one-stop access to highly customisable and easy-to-manage cloud-based disaster recovery with 24/7 monitoring to ensure RPO and RTOs are always met. ● Consumption-driven billing: Arcserve Cloud Services solution offers consumption-driven billing that is fully integrated with the Google Cloud Marketplace. Said Shridar Subramanian, CMO at Arcserve said, “Our partners and customers are going to be extremely excited with this addition to Arcserve’s ongoing hybrid data center strategy. It not only provides greater scale, elasticity, compliance, and data security options, it also changes the economics of data recovery, making cloud-based DRaaS significantly more attractive than in-house implementations.” To stay up to date on the latest, trends, innovations, people news and company updates within the global security market please register to receive our newsletter here. Media contact Rebecca Morpeth Spayne, Editor, Security Portfolio Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 922 Email: editor@securitybuyer.com

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RightCrowd names new Chief Technology Officer

Middle East News Desk / Editor

RightCrowd, a provider of safety, security and compliance solutions, announced that Bryan Jones has joined the company as Chief Technology Officer, a new position based in Europe. Jones joins RightCrowd following 17 years with Honeywell holding several leadership positions, the most recent being Chief of Staff to Honeywell’s Connected Enterprise CTO. “I have been working with the RightCrowd team for more than 10 years and know this is world-class software that makes a dramatic difference to the ability of a company to manage the security and safety of their workforce,” said Jones. He added, “this is a leading product that is capable of combining a person’s identity, their status (health, training, drug test results, etc.) and their IT/HR information together with a physical security system to enforce whether an individual is authorised to be in a specific location. Other products can do some of these things, but in my experience, I’ve not found anything doing it as well as RightCrowd.” Peter Hill, RightCrowd CEO said, “We are delighted that Bryan has chosen to join RightCrowd. Bryan holds world-class domain expertise having held senior technical roles with Honeywell and holds numerous patents internationally. He will work closely with our customers, and product and technical teams to align our offerings with the expanding market opportunities. Bryan strengthens the RightCrowd senior management team as an experienced Fortune 500 senior technical leader with proven success.” Hill expanded, “this is the third key international executive appointment since June 2021, as we continue to execute our strategy as outlined at the time of the capital raise in March 2021.” Jones points to the Company’s established client base that includes nine of the world’s top 100 companies, and partnerships such as the Cyber Security partnership with Griffith University in Australia as key determining factors for him. “It was an easy decision for me to join RightCrowd, I believe I can add significant value as the business grows and matures. Its leadership, product and team are agile and RightCrowd is ready to scale,” he affirmed. Jones has held several leadership positions at Honeywell. In addition to his last position, he had served as Chief of Staff to the CTO for the Honeywell Connected Enterprise division. Prior to that, he was Honeywell’s HBS Europe Technology Leader; Honeywell HBS Global Technical Director and Senior Software Development Manager. Media contact Rebecca Morpeth Spayne, Editor, Security Portfolio Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 920 Email: editor@securitymiddleeast.com

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Netwrix SbPAM 3.5 now covers Azure AD

UK News Desk / Rebecca Morpeth-Spayne

Netwrix, a cybersecurity vendor, announced the release of Netwrix SbPAM 3.5. This solution simplifies how customers secure, control, manage and monitor privilege usage by eliminating standing privileged accounts. The newest version offers support for more platforms as well as a bevy of additional features. With the key new capabilities in Netwrix SbPAM 3.5, organisations can: Protect their cloud environment by eliminating standing privileged accounts in Azure AD, thereby improving control over admin activity and reducing administrative burden Reduce network attack surface with on-demand privileged accounts for Cisco devices, which minimise the risk of privilege abuse and enable easier management of privilege Secure critical data that resides in AD-integrated web applications and take control of shared access to web resources Minimise security and business risks by removing superusers and instead with providing task-based, temporary privileged access for Linux Other enhancements enable organisations to: Disable remote desktop protocol (RDP) after each admin session to block ransomware and other cyberattacks and avoid unauthorised RDP connections Detect security threats resulting from changes to critical files during privileged sessions to strengthen threat detection and investigation and minimise the chance of business disruptions Detect threats, streamline investigations, and prove compliance by sending logs of privileged activity to SIEM solutions “Netwrix SbPAM is so simple to install and get running that we could not have solved our privileged account management problem without it. With Netwrix SbPAM we implemented privileged access management for our critical systems in days instead of months and it seamlessly integrated with our current systems and security controls,” said Craig Larsen, Information Systems Administrator at Eastern Carver County Schools. “Compromise or misuse of admin accounts remains one of the top causes of data breaches and business disruptions today. Organisations, regardless of vertical or size, need to improve privileged access management to minimise these risks — but they are often concerned by the high cost and complexity of deployment,” said Steve Dickson, CEO at Netwrix. “Netwrix SbPAM solves this dilemma. It’s simple and efficient design helps organisations dramatically improve security, yet it is easy to implement and offers a remarkably fast time to value.” Netwrix SbPAM enables organisations to minimise their attack surface by eliminating standing privileged accounts. By granting admins just enough privilege to complete a given task and removing that privilege immediately afterwards, organisations can dramatically reduce the risk of data breaches, business disruptions and compliance failures. Plus, easy deployment and implementation means faster time to value than traditional solutions. Customers can even keep using their current tools, such as Remote Desktop Connection Manager or a password vault, but make them more secure by integrating them with Netwrix SbPAM. Media contact Rebecca Morpeth Spayne, Editor, Security Portfolio Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 922 Email: editor@securitybuyer.com

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