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Today’s topics include cyber-security reports showing increasing data breach risks; Google simplifying virtual machine management with cloud updates; DataTorrent fortifying its streaming data management toolset; and Dropbox going public.
Last week, at least nine technology companies released reports providing broad industry context for the state of cyber-security in 2018 as well as in-depth looks into specific areas like mobility and the gap between cyber-security perceptions and reality. Among the organizations that released reports were Akamai, Cisco, RedLock, Fortinet, Trend Micro, Raytheon, Thales, Verizon and Centrify.
While the reports show that cyber-security threat volume is increasing, they also point to a number of positive things that organizations are doing to help counter threats. The Cisco Annual Cyber-Security Report, for instance, revealed that a growing number of organizations are relying on automation to improve cyber-security outcomes. Attacks are also increasing, with Akamai’s State of the Internet/Security report showing a 14 percent year-over-year gain in the number of distributed denial-of-service attacks.
Additionally, RedLock’s Cloud Security Trends report revealed that misconfigurations by organizations is another key trend that is increasing threat levels.
Google’s Compute Engine cloud platform unit has introduced new management features that the company says makes it easier for enterprises to create, clone and manage virtual machines.
One of the updates to Google Compute Engine’s so-called “instance templates” allows organizations to create virtual machine instances from existing templates. Organizations can use the capability to create VMs that are identical to the template or to modify it for specific uses. The management update also allows organizations to save the configuration of an existing VM instance to create a new template.
Google Product Manager Sophia Yang said the updates give organizations more flexibility in creating and managing VM instances. Another update is designed to enable easier configuration of multiple data disks or application disks for a virtual machine instance, allowing enterprises to set up multiple persistent disks as part of the workflow for creating virtual machine instances.
DataTorrent, one of the few data management companies that provide big data analytics by using real-time, data-in-motion stream processing, last week announced a significant update to its platform. DataTorrent RTS 3.10, its real-time streaming platform for building, deploying and operating real-time streaming data applications, now contains new features for developing fast data analytics applications.
New features in RTS 3.10 include support for online analytical processing with the Druid open-source data store, expanded support for machine learning and artificial intelligence, and Drools Workbench integration.
DataTorrent also is introducing a set of new applications focused on the financial services and retail verticals, including omni-channel payment fraud prevention, online account takeover prevention and a retail recommender.
Dropbox on Feb. 23 said publicly that it has filed for an initial public offering. After threatening to do so for more than five years, the cloud storage company secretly filed to go public in January and plans to raise $500 million to push the business forward. The listing will be led by Goldman Sachs Group and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Dropbox, founded in June 2007 and launched in 2008, has about 200,000 paying customers worldwide. Thanks to its freemium service model, Dropbox has about 500 million registered users—11 million of whom are paying or non-paying individual users.
Its private-market valuation, based on previous venture capital fundraising, is estimated at $10 billion.