Software Security
Palo Alto | September 22, 2023
Palo Alto Networks has announced a strategic partnership with the largest telecommunications company in Australia, Telstra.
This signifies Palo Alto Networks' commitment to delivering an expanded portfolio of cybersecurity solutions and services to meet the needs of Telstra's extensive business clientele.
The partnership strengthens the existing 10-year relationship between Palo Alto Networks and Telstra.
Palo Alto Networks, a global cybersecurity company, has announced teaming up with Telstra, Australia's largest telecommunications company, to offer an enhanced range of cybersecurity solutions and services to Telstra's business clients both in Australia and around the world.
This collaboration marks a significant milestone, as Palo Alto Networks becomes the first dedicated cybersecurity company to be recognized as a technology alliance partner for Telstra's enterprise customer segment. Telstra serves customers in over 200 countries and territories.
Telstra's technology alliance partners collaborate to create and provide comprehensive services encompassing connectivity, voice, and professional services. These services are designed to assist businesses of all sizes in addressing their challenges and capitalizing on opportunities.
Regional Vice President for Australia and New Zealand of Palo Alto Networks, Steve Manley, stated,
This new alliance with Telstra reinforces Palo Alto Networks’ position in the Australian market as the leading cyber security vendor to leading telecommunications carrier in Australia. It also reinforces our increased commitment to offering industry-leading joint solutions with one of the country’s most trusted managed service providers. Together, Palo Alto Networks and Telstra will collaborate to offer businesses with best-of-breed cyber security solutions to help keep them safe in a rapidly changing market landscape.
[Source – Web Wire]
This new partnership further solidifies the long-standing 10-year relationship between Palo Alto Networks and Telstra. It also builds upon previous agreements that expanded Telstra's SecureEdge portfolio with offerings like SecureEdge Cloud for business clients and Sovereign SecureEdge for the Australian government and agencies, both powered by Palo Alto Networks' advanced cloud-based security services.
David Burns, Enterprise Group Executive at Telstra, said,
Cyber security has become one of the top concerns among businesses worldwide, including here in Australia, and especially in the wake of a no. of high-profile cyber breaches. We’re now seeing the industrialization of cybercrime and the scale of threat continues to evolve and grow. As a result, we all need to be constantly changing, adapting, and looking at new technologies that can assist protect us and our customers’ data. As a leading provider of network, managed, and professional services, this new alliance between Telstra and Palo Alto Networks further boosts our capabilities to help customers protect their organizations and data from evolving cyber threats.
[Source – Web Wire]
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Platform Security
PR Newswire | October 26, 2023
OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX), (TSX: OTEX), today announced the Nastiest Malware of 2023, an annual ranking of the year's biggest malware threats. For six consecutive years OpenText Cybersecurity threat intelligence experts have analyzed the threat landscape to determine the most notorious malware trends. Ransomware has been rapidly ascending the ranks, with ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) now the weapon of choice for cybercriminals.
This year four new ransomware gangs, believed to be the next generation of previous big players, topped the list. Newcomer Cl0p takes the prize for this year's nastiest malware after commanding exorbitant ransom demands with its MOVEit campaign. Cl0p's efforts helped skyrocket the average ransom payment which is rapidly approaching three quarters of a million dollars. Black Cat, Akira, Royal, Black Basta also made their debut, joined by the always present, Lockbit.
A key finding this year is the RaaS business model is another win for the bad guys. Profit sharing and risk mitigation are top contributors to RaaS success along with the ability to easily evade authorities, said Muhi Majzoub, EVP and Chief Product Officer, OpenText. There is a silver lining as research shows only 29% of businesses pay ransom, an all-time low. These numbers indicate people are taking threats seriously and investing in security to be in a position where they do not need to pay ransom.
This year's list highlights the tenacity of cybercriminals as they continue to reinvent themselves, coming back stronger each time (often with new names). Their scrappy mentality allows them to go beyond the norm to find new ways to invade their target.
2023 Nastiest Malware
Cl0p, a RaaS platform, became famous following a series of cyberattacks, exploited a zero-day vulnerability in the MOVEit Transfer file software developed by Progress Software. MOVEit victims include such notable organizations as Shell, BBC, and the United States Department of Energy.
Black Cat, recognized in our 2021 Nastiest Malware report, believed to be the successor to REvil ransomware group, has built their RaaS platform on the Rust programming language. They made headlines for taking down MGM Casino Resorts.
Akira, presumed to be a descendant of Conti, primarily targets small to medium sized businesses due to the ease and turnaround time. Most notably, Akira ransomware targeted Cisco VPN products as an attack vector to breach corporate networks, steal, and eventually encrypt data.
Royal, suspected heir to Ryuk, uses Whitehat penetration testing tools to move laterally in an environment to gain control of the entire network. Helping aid in deception is their unique partial encryption approach that allows the threat actor to choose a specific percentage of data in a file to encrypt.
Lockbit 3.0, a main stain on the list and last year's winner, continues to wreak havoc. Now in its third epoch, Lockbit 3.0 is more modular and evasive than its predecessors.
Black Basta is one of the most active RaaS threat actors and is also considered to be yet another descendant of the Conti ransomware group. They have gained a reputation for targeting all types of industries indiscriminately.
To learn more about the findings of this year's Nastiest Malware analysis, visit the OpenText Cybersecurity Community, as well as tune in to our Nastiest Malware Webinar.
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Network Threat Detection
iTWire | October 30, 2023
Fortinet, the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, has announced the expansion of its Universal SASE offering to empower today’s hybrid workforce with FortiOS everywhere.
Ken Xie, founder, chairman of the board, and chief executive officer, said, The Fortinet operating system, FortiOS, is the industry’s only enterprise-grade converged operating system able to support all secure access service edge (SASE) functions, including firewall, software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), secure web gateway, encryption/decryption, cloud access security broker (CASB), data loss prevention (DLP), and zero trust network access (ZTNA), whether deployed in an appliance or cloud-delivered from Fortinet.
“This approach enables over 30 converged networking and security functions to be managed through a single console. Fourteen of these functions are accelerated when deployed on our new FortiASIC Security Processor 5-based FortiGate 120G SASE appliance.”
Expanding Fortinet Universal SASE
Single-vendor SASE provides flexible access to critical resources and applications for users and devices. However, most enterprises rely on different vendors for each SASE function, which introduces significant challenges of controlling different operating system functionality and management consoles. Fortinet Universal SASE takes traditional single-vendor SASE one step further, providing consistent policies and controls on-prem and in the cloud while delivering seamless integration across all functions and deployments to better support today’s hybrid workforce while reducing information technology (IT) overhead.
FortiOS runs the full SASE stack, including a bi-directional firewall, SD-WAN, secure web gateway, encryption/decryption, CASB, DLP, and ZTNA. It also has the flexibility to run on an appliance in accelerated mode as well as in the FortiSASE cloud, providing consistent networking, security, and policy management for every edge. This is further enhanced by FortiGuard artificial intelligence (AI)-powered security services, such as intrusion prevention system (IPS), domain name system (DNS) filtering, URL filtering, anti-malware, sandboxing, and more.
This news expands Fortinet’s investment in Universal SASE by expanding the reach of its SASE stack in three key areas of the portfolio:
Worldwide coverage of FortiSASE cloud locations
FortiSASE, built on a global, scalable cloud network, delivers the same SASE stack as FortiGate appliances through its regional FortiSASE cloud locations. To deliver the best user experience and higher service availability, Fortinet now delivers over 100 FortiSASE cloud locations globally.
Bringing accelerated SASE to the campus and branch
To bring the full SASE stack to campus and branch locations, Fortinet is announcing the new FortiGate 120G SASE appliance. Because it is powered by Fortinet’s patented security processor 5 (SP5) custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), it can accelerate many elements of the SASE stack, such as delivering three gigabits per second (Gbps) of secure sockets layer (SSL) inspection—an average of six times faster than the industry average—for visibility into encrypted traffic at scale. The following Secure Compute Rating table provides a comparison between equivalent solutions:
Flexible consumption extended to Universal SASE
FortiFlex, Fortinet’s flexible consumption program, has now been extended to Fortinet Universal SASE solutions. The entire SASE stack from Fortinet can be consumed as part of FortiFlex, whether customers want to use on-prem or FortiSASE cloud-based services. FortiFlex offers usage-based licensing across cloud, hybrid cloud, and on-premises deployments to give IT teams the flexibility to continually right-size their deployments, reduce excessive procurement cycles for new security solutions, simplify the deployment and provisioning of new services, and maximise budget and return on investment by enabling IT teams to scale down or pause services as needed.
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