Tag: sterlingit

IPAM, DNS Sec, DHCP by Bluecat – IP Management from a central point

Posted on by Mark Pace

SterlingIT-BlueCat-Logo-Colour-400px

With more and more devices being introduced into networks, such as IPCams, watches, mobile devices, fingerprint readers and much more, management of this will be a nightmare, if not already. How will you manage this in a couple of years, especially with the introduction of IPv6 ?

Flexible, open and adaptive solutions to manage your complex enterprise network

Many companies are managing their IP ranges and information in spreadsheets shared across offices, states and countries. With the possibility of conflicts and mismanagement of these, there has to be an easy way… well there is!

Introducing Bluecat Networks IPAM (IP Address Management).

Sterling IT and Bluecat working together, have solutions to assist. As a central control point, IPAM provides an authoritative source for information about the network, providing valuable insight to enable informed management and security decisions for the enterprise. This strategic insight and rich integration with core network services allows you to drive more reliable service delivery, enable greater agility, improve security and lower the manual effort involved in administration. With BlueCat IPAM, you will be better equipped to take advantage of emerging technologies, driving innovation and success for your organization’s business initiatives.

Contact Sterling IT to organise a free 30 day trial of the application

Comes in a physical or virtual appliance for HyperV or VMWare

How do you manage your IP addresses over multiple sites and/or thousands of connected devices?

Cryptolocker attack but removed and all data recovered with zero data loss

Posted on by Mark Pace

Attack of one of the worst Trojans around.

Last week, for the very first time, one of Sterling IT’s customers was attacked with Cryptolocker virus.

When we had the alert, and then found client couldn’t access files, we thought it was just a corruption. Upon inspection, most files were renamed with .encrypted at the end and a HTML file explaining to pay a ransom to recover all the emails.

Sterling IT went into Disaster Recovery Mode (SITDR) and we were able to save the client from any data loss (even though EVERY file on 1x user PC plus most shares on the server were affected, as this user was in management and accounts security groups and shares). Using Shadow Protect and our monitoring systems, we were able to lock down the network, recover all files from DR backups and get the client back up and running.

It was first noticed because of Dropbox. As this company uses Dropbox for some business applications, and the infected user also had Dropbox access, ALL FILES were deleted. The only savior was one of the PCs was locally backed up which the files were recovered from there.  (we recommend using private sharing apps with Synology , synocloud,  rather than Dropbox as you have full control and is PRIVATE CLOUD).

How did this all happen?

Simple, opening an email with the Trojan. You might also ask about protection mechanisms we have.

First and foremost, the client recently moved to Microsoft Office 365. We would have thought that Microsoft anti-spam and antivirus would have maybe picked this up as first defense, but obviously didn’t. The second defense was a Fortigate firewall with antivirus scanning – been a great defense in general. And thirdly, antivirus and firewall on desktop.

Even with ALL these defenses, the Trojan still go through.

We have many clients sending us emails daily asking IS THIS SAFE? This is what we are here for, to help and protect our clients. Its FREE and QUICK!

REMEMBER :
PLEASE DO NOT CLICK ON EMAILS YOU DON’T KNOW OR/AND NOT EXPECTING.
IF UNSURE CONTACT STERLING IT.

New Australian Privacy Act 2014 and how will it affect many

Posted on by Mark Pace

The amendments to the Act are scheduled to come into force on 12 March and will enforce tougher security and privacy requirements on all organisations with an annual turnover of more than $3 million, along with government agencies.

Notable in the changes is the requirement for businesses to go beyond check box compliance where security tools were merely switched on without regard to proper configuration and monitoring; Federal Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim has stated organisations that fail to detect a breach will fall foul of the amended Act and risk penalty through the courts.

Exactly how far the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) would require organisations to go in purchasing, configuring and monitoring systems is described only as reasonable steps. (pdf Download from Govt Site)

The Privacy Commissioner could impose financial penalties of $1.7 million on serious or repeatedly breached organisations and could compel them to notify national or state newspapers.

CRN spoke to dozens of security and IT managers and engineers, under condition of anonymity. The lack of clarity around the requirement of reasonable steps was a consistent theme.

Only chief security officers at some of the largest Australian organisations claimed the reforms would mean little to them, given their existing strict compliance requirements and large security budgets.

Matt Ramsay, APAC regional director of security vendor Centrify, warned organisations that the uncertainty of the Act was similar to the US Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) legislation enacted in 2002 to shore up the accuracy of financial reporting.

“While SOX has raised the compliance bar for corporate reporting, it has had the unintended impact of creating a lot of uncertainty because of its lack of precision,” Ramsay said in a statement.

“SOX compliance costs and complexity have run out of control in the US during the past decade. The SOX legislation is prescriptive without being descriptive: It tells you to jump, but not how high. As a result, US corporations need to jump a very high bar indeed to avoid the threat of non-compliance.”

Robson urged caution about conflating the experience of SOX in the US with the new requirements of the Privacy Act.

“The most helpful approach that Privacy Act and security specialists can take in relation to assisting organisations with their new Privacy Act requirements is to provide a sober assessment of what could be reasonably expected of them,” he said.

Source: Darren Pauli CRN 28.1.14