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NETWORK NEWS - MOVES, ADDS AND CHANGES
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The term hybrid IT has enjoyed
increasing reference recently.
Essentially this acknowledges the
trend for organisations to select their
technology and deployment models from
the evolving panoply of options that best
suits their operational needs. This is
backed up by recently commissioned
research from Dimension Data, which
found that "Hybrid IT is becoming a
standard enterprise model."
Commenting, Dimension Data CEO
Jason Goodall adds, "With data and
processes shifting across multiple cloud
and non-cloud environments, a new
approach to management is called for.
IT managers are under pressure to seek
new ways to manage and secure multiple
IT environments… Automation is
important because it helps reduce operating
costs, as well as the pain caused
by the growing complexity… It is simply
no longer appropriate or cost-effective
for these tasks to be done manually."
Gartner has opined that in 2017 marketing
departments will spend more on
technology than IT teams. In a report
from Spiceworks however, it is claimed
that the role of IT pros in the purchasing
process is as important as ever.
Commenting, John Webb from
Spiceworks says, "Although IT professionals
don't always hold the purse
strings for technology purchases, it's
clear they're often the most influential
people in the decision making process.
Marketers must take into consideration
their technology category, buyer stage
and product type when deciding where
to focus… but their efforts will likely be
unsuccessful if they choose to bypass the
IT decision maker."
According to the recently released
2017 Thales Data Threat Report from
Thales e-Security almost two thirds of
businesses that are using sensitive data
in advanced technology environments
such as cloud, SaaS, IoT and containers
may not have the appropriate data security
in place. The report, conducted in
conjunction with 451 Research, reveals
that organisations are under pressure to
digitise and quickly adopt advanced
technologies to transform their business,
yet they are only worrying about the
security of data later.
Commenting on the findings Garrett
Bekker, principal analyst at 451
Research said, "Most major cloud
providers have larger staffs of highly
trained security professionals than any
enterprise, and their scalability and
redundancy can provide protection from
the kinds of DDoS attacks that can
plague on-premise workloads. Perhaps
as a result of the recognition of these
public cloud security realities, security
concerns overall for public cloud are
waning."
Public sector adoption of IT has always
appeared to be different to the private
sector. But when it comes to cybercrime,
it must keep up. Recent NHS attacks
demonstrate the vulnerability of the public
sector to cybercrime says Secure
Cloudlink, who argues that no organisation
is immune to a data breach. Public
sector organisations must be endlessly
diligent and maintain strict control over
their digital information assets due to the
highly sensitive nature of the data
involved.
Dave Worrall, CTO at Secure
Cloudlink explains, "There is a mass
market for stolen data and the public
sector in particular is vulnerable. We
[have] demonstrated that the security
hygiene of the majority of local authorities
in London is not up to scratch.
Despite the clear and present danger
and with cybercrime starting to creep
higher up on the government's agenda,
the public sector is still failing to fully
grasp the scale of the threat on its
doorstep."
However this is not a reason for private
sector organisations to rejoice.
Commenting on its M-Trends report,
FireEye says that it is taking organisations
in EMEA 106 days - the dwell time
- to deal with attacks. But Stuart
McKenzie, Vice President of Mandiant at
FireEye points out, "In 2016 we saw
cyber-attacks spread widely… By looking
at the dropping levels of dwell time we
can see that organisations are improving,
but there is still much to do." NC
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MARCH/APRIL 2017 NETWORKcomputing 7