With remote work being the new normal thanks to the ongoing pandemic, enterprises are facing the dilemma of how to update and secure all their network endpoints while managing devices efficiently. Many businesses have adapted their operations to a remote work model. As a result, the increase in individuals working from home has put pressure on IT staff, the infrastructure, and security operations absorbing the extra burden.

The current sudden and forced work-from-home (WFH) situation has caught many organizations unawares. In fact, many are unprepared or underprepared when it comes to arming themselves with the right tools for a remote work model, leading to an increase in network vulnerability as users access data remotely. Employee productivity has also become a major concern among employers. Taking all of this into account, ManageEngine has decided to make AD360 free for organizations around the world.

When businesses have a high number of computers, getting all of them turned on manually can be a herculean task for any network admin. This can lead to organizations keeping their computers on even when not in use. Of course, this approach is not ideal, as electricity bills would skyrocket in result. That said, there are legitimate reasons for a network admin to leave a machine running after business hours (e.g., system maintenance or configuration management).

Vulnerability Manager Plus is ManageEngine’s enterprise security program that empowers system administrators with an essential set of tools for managing and mitigating threats and vulnerabilities across systems in IT infrastructure. This security solution features specialized tools that help enterprises improve their overall security posture. Some of its unique tools include its integrated patch management module, security configuration management, and prioritization of vulnerabilities.

Applications built on the Node.js platform, an event-driven I/O server-side JavaScript environment based on Google Chrome’s V8 engine, are known as Node.js applications. Since both the server-side and the client-side are written in JavaScript, Node.js facilitates easier and faster implementation of codes, and processes requests quickly and simultaneously; this is greatly beneficial for building real-time applications, especially chat and streaming applications.

Businesses around the world have been forced to adopt remote working policies in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. In just two months, a vast number of employees around the world shifted to a work-from-home environment. Although some businesses already had many of their IT operations available on the cloud before the pandemic—with the help of cloud-hosted email and collaboration suites such as Office 365—no one expected such a sudden and widespread transition into teleworking.

PostgreSQL offers flexibility on how data is stored and compared in a relational database. This is why it’s so popular among enterprises as a solution for their database requirements. Although PostgreSQL is quite reliable, database problems are inevitable, especially in large-scale environments. Ignoring these problems could result in a plunge in the productivity of your business.

When organizations shift to a work-from-home environment, identity and access management (IAM) takes center stage. Organizations with remote workforces must fortify their IAM policies and tools for a better user experience to ensure productivity, while also handling all the security challenges remote work presents to ensure data and system security. One of the biggest risks an organization faces when its workforce goes remote is unnecessary and unauthorized access to organizational data.

IT departments have experienced numerous changes in the way they manage and control user devices. Starting with the traditional CRT monitor-based computers, to modern smartphones, technological developments have been remarkable. Additionally, with the COVID-19 pandemic, employees are restricted to work from home, making the IT administration routines challenging for system administrators.

Among the updates that we ignore most are driver updates, and sometimes for good reason. There have been plenty of cases wherein a driver update caused more harm than good. This could be due to two reasons. One, the user blindly clicked the update without taking a minute to read what the update actually achieves, or two, the user was not equipped to understand what the update achieves. Whatever the reason, one thing is clear: we cannot leave the cybersecurity of an organization up to chance.

The onslaught of the novel COVID-19 has caught businesses off guard, sending many of them into a tailspin. To survive this, most businesses are considering the idea of remote work, and some have already implemented work from home policies. Under these circumstances, a virtual private network (VPN) is an organization’s best bet for providing access to business-critical services remotely and to avert operational disasters.

This is the final blog of our three-part blog series on living-off-the-land (LOTL) attacks. If you missed last week’s blog, you can read it here. LOTL attacks are also known as “malware-free” attacks because your own tools are used against you, either to hide malicious activities under a legitimate system process, or to leverage genuine system activities for malicious purposes.

On April 7, 2020, the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) released a notice confirming that two of its websites, SFOConnect.com and SFOConstruction.com, were targets of a cyberattack in March 2020. The attack has been attributed to a hacker group that was attempting to steal the Windows logins of the airport’s employees. When we hear news about cyberattacks, a few typical, yet crucial questions spring to mind: How did the attackers perform the cyberattack?

One of the primary concerns of IT admins when employees start working remotely is authenticating users. How can employees securely log in to their accounts while working remotely? What happens if users get locked out of their accounts? These are some of the questions that organizations are asking themselves when implementing work-from-home policies.

In the previous blog of this series, we discussed how monitoring SQL Server activities helps secure databases. The database security can further be reinforced by carefully configuring the authentication and authorization mechanisms for database accesses. In this blog, we’ll briefly explain the various authorization and authentication mechanisms of SQL Server and some best practices you can follow.

Over the past several years, telecommuting, or remote work, has gained significant traction across a wide variety of industries. According to a recent survey conducted by OWL Labs, 48 percent of employees worked from home at least once a week in 2019, and 34 percent were even willing to take a pay cut in order to work remotely.

In the digital era, most enterprises use a web platform to reach potential customers and showcase the products or solutions they offer. Websites have become extremely popular as a medium of establishing a brand image, and they contribute in making a major share of revenue. Well-planned websites can capture the attention of the target audience, increasing the probability of them turning into valuable, paying customers.

Five worthy reads is a regular column on five noteworthy items we’ve discovered while researching trending and timeless topics. This week, we delve into how organizations are increasingly adopting a remote work model, and how they can equip themselves to build a synchronized virtual workspace. In the wake of COVID-19 and the subsequent mandates to stay at home, many organizations have implemented a remote work environment in order to maintain business operations.

We’re back with part two of our three-part blog series on living-off-the-land attacks. If you missed part one, you can read it here. In a nutshell, living-off-the-land (LOTL) refers to a type of attack where the attacker uses the tools and features that already exist in the target environment to carry out malicious activities. The concept of LOTL is not new, but LOTL and file-less attacks have been gaining popularity over the last few months.

MS SQL, Microsoft’s relational database management system (RDBMS), is known for its broad spectrum of capabilities such as transaction processing, business intelligence, and analytics. This is why most businesses trust and invest in SQL for their data storage and access needs. What are the benefits of monitoring SQL servers? Applications Manager offers proactive SQL server monitoring.

Businesses are shifting their operations to a remote work model in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown. While this enables business to generally continue as normal, there has also been a rise in cyberattacks because of this shift as reported by national cybersecurity agency CERT-In. Security experts have also predicted a 30-40 percent hike in cyberattacks due to increased remote working.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, also known as HIPAA, is a compliance standard that was implemented after all health-related information was digitized. The crux of the act is to ensure that all sensitive electronic protected health information (ePHI) has restricted, secure access. Various aspects of your network determine your compliance with HIPAA standards. Let’s discuss some of these important components in detail.

Just recently, the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a global pandemic. This decision brought with it several health and safety measures, and normal life came to a halt in many countries. This resulted in many organizations around the world adopting telecommuting methods to prevent the spread of COVID-19. While people are adjusting to the sudden changes in the way they work, cybercriminals are using this opportunity to exploit new vulnerabilities the work-from-home environment presents.

Often, when companies are new to Amazon Web Services (AWS), they aren’t focused much on the cost. They’re more likely fixated on taking advantage of the scalability and flexibility offered by the cloud. As a company’s AWS cloud infrastructure grows, it will find that its cloud costs grow as well. As the number of AWS accounts increases over time, there’s a higher chance of overspending on unnecessary cloud resources.

With a huge number of employees around the globe working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, delivering uninterrupted business services to customers has become a major challenge. This requires strict monitoring of all critical business applications in order to accommodate an increased amount of requests, which can cause a critical downtime if not monitored appropriately.

Five worthy reads is a regular column on five noteworthy items we’ve discovered while researching trending and timeless topics. This week, we highlight the importance of creating and enforcing a solid cybersecurity strategy for employees who work remotely.

Over 44 records are stolen per second every day due to data breaches, and according to the Risk Based Security Research report published in 2019, databases are the top most targeted assets for malicious actors to exploit organizations’ confidential data. Often, organizations don’t realize their databases have been compromised for months. Once sensitive data is leaked, the damage can’t be undone.

The cybersecurity threat landscape is quickly changing. Administrators have become more cautious when it comes to security and governing access, end users have become tech-savvy and security-aware, and attackers have also raised their game. Living-off-the-land attacks, or LOTL, is one clear trend today, with attackers exploiting preinstalled features and default tools built into system.

USB devices are undeniably valuable, but they can be dangerous. On one hand, they are useful in transporting enterprise-critical data, but on the other, they can wreak havoc if misplaced, corrupted due to a human or hardware-related error, or stolen. It’s no wonder some companies forbid the use of USB devices altogether.

While the recent pandemic has removed much of the traffic from the roads, it has led to an unusual increase in traffic on the internet. Online services are reporting a huge increase in the number of visitors and requests, making it tough to keep up with seamless service delivery. While service providers and experts say the internet can hold up for now, organizations are already implementing measures to prevent network congestion and interruptions in service during the continuing pandemic.

By now, we’re all fairly aware that the ongoing crisis has changed the way people work. Businesses around the globe have adopted the remote working model. Many jobs today are compatible with remote working, with business-critical applications readily accessible through the internet. However, not all applications deployed in an organization are available through the internet. Some of them are available only on the business’ LAN due to security concerns.

Coronavirus has disrupted daily life for so many around the world in a shockingly short span of time. Lifestyles have shifted. A new normal, albeit a panic-stricken one, has set in. One-third of the global population is under lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus. Many organizations have adopted temporary work-from-home measures to keep themselves up and running.

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt are powerful emotions, and time and again, hackers attempt to leverage these for their own gain. As the coronavirus develops into a worldwide pandemic, hackers are taking advantage of the fear many of us feel to spread malware. We’re seeing an abundance of coronavirus-themed phishing, business email compromise (BEC), malware, and ransomware attacks targeting different industries, especially in the health sector.