Sean Michael Kerner

The security of USB-based connections and devices is taking a step forward, with the official launch of the USB Type-C Authentication Program on Jan. 2 USB devices have become ubiquitous in modern computing, and in recent years USB Type-C has been introduced on leading notebooks, smartphones and other connected devices because it enables faster data […]

As 2018 draws to a close, it’s a good time to reflect on the year that was in cyber-security to learn from past mistakes and identify trends that will likely continue into the new year. 2018 saw no shortage of major breaches, new critical vulnerabilities and policy changes that enterprise IT organizations will still be […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is out with the final version of its Risk Management Framework (RMF) 2.0 update, providing organizations with new detailed insight into how to define and manage risk. RMF 2.0 was officially released on Dec. 20 and follows seven months of consultation and comments. RMF 2.0 is formally titled […]

Distributed denial of service, commonly referred to by the acronym DDoS, represents a serious threat to enterprises of all sizes. In a DDoS attack, a large volume of traffic is directed against a target, overwhelming system resources and in effect denying anyone else access or service to the system. While organizations can and should take […]

Users of Microsoft’s Windows operating system have grown accustomed to a regular, predictable cadence for patches—on the first Tuesday of every month. On Dec. 19, Microsoft broke that cadence with an emergency out-of-band update for its Internet Explorer (IE) web browser. The reason is simple: Attackers are actively exploiting a zero-day vulnerability, putting millions of […]

Pivotal is releasing version 2.4 of its Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) platform on Dec. 20, providing organizations with a host of new capabilities to manage and deploy cloud-native applications. PCF is Pivotal’s commercial distribution, based on the open-source Cloud Foundry project, which provides platform-as-a-service (PaaS) capabilities for applications. In the PCF 2.4 update, Pivotal is […]

At the core of the modern cloud-native application movement is an open-source technology that is perhaps not as well-known as it should be. That technology is the open-source etcd project, which provides a distributed key value store that is used by all the major public cloud providers and is at the core of the Kubernetes […]

A key to having better security is having an understanding of what in fact is not secure and what activities can lead to risk. When it comes to cyber-security, a study released on Dec. 19 by Symantec’s Norton LifeLock found that there are many myths that American believe that simply are not factually accurate. Among […]

Fast food restaurants are not typically considered as being places where the latest trends in IT and cloud computing can be found, but that’s what’s happening at fast food restaurant chain Chick-fil-A. Edge computing, the idea of having cloud-native resources at the edge of a network, is an emerging concept in IT, and it’s having […]

Security firm KnowBe4 announced its new PhishER offering on Dec. 18, providing organizations with a new way to analyze and manage suspected phishing emails. PhishER is positioned by KnowBe4 as being a security orchestration automation and response (SOAR) platform for email security and phishing threats. Phishing is an all too common occurrence where an attacker […]

Breaches occur on an-all-too-frequent basis, but what is often never reported are the breaches that don’t happen, thanks to organizations taking rapid, proactive measures. One such incident was outlined by Shopify at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2018 last week. Thanks to a bug bounty program and the support of its vendor partner Google, Shopify was […]

Cloud security services startup Avanan announced on Dec. 17 that it has raised $25 million in a Series B round of funding that will help the company expand its capabilities. Avanan is in the business of providing enterprises with security for cloud-based email and collaboration services. The company’s platform provides both a marketplace that enables […]