Sean Michael Kerner

The OpenStack Foundation announced a new effort called Kata Containers on Dec. 5, in a bid to help organizations deploy and run containers more securely in the cloud. The Kata Containers project will be run as a separate project from the main OpenStack cloud platform, with its own governance and project direction. At the core […]

PayPal Holdings revealed on Dec. 1 that its TIO Networks payment processing service was the victim of a data breach, impacting 1.6 million customers. Paypal acquired TIO in July 2017 for $238 million to help bolster its electronic payment portfolio. It’s not clear at this point, if TIO was breached prior to the Paypal acquisition. […]

The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Dec. 1 that former National Security Agency developer Nghia Hoang Pho pleaded guilty to charges that he took classified information to his home. Russian operatives allegedly subsequently hacked Pho, gaining access to the secret information stored on his computer. Pho worked for the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) […]

AWS Unveils Slew of New Cloud Services at re:Invent 2017 At its 2017 re:Invent conference, which ran from Nov. 27 to Dec. 1 in Las Vegas, Amazon Web Services announced a series of new services that expand its cloud offerings. At this year’s event, there was a particularly strong focus on machine learning services, with […]

Cloud security is top of mind for many in IT today, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) CTO Werner Vogels. During his keynote address Nov. 30 at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Vogels detailed multiple security best practices that help to enable a well-architected cloud architecture. “Protecting your customer should be your No. 1 […]

Eight Cyber-Security Vendors Raise New Funding in November 2017 It’s been a banner year for cyber-security vendors raising venture capital in 2017. It’s a trend that continued in November, though the month lacked some of the large 100M+ funding rounds chalked up earlier in the year. In November, investors poured money into a various types […]

The open-source WordPress blogging and content management system (CMS) 4.9.1 update was released on Nov. 29, providing users with security and bug fix improvements. WordPress is one of the most widely deployed CMS technologies on the internet today, powering 25 percent or more of all websites, according to some estimates. The security enhancements included in […]

Amazon Web Services kicked off its annual re:Invent conference on Nov. 28 announcing the new GuardDuty managed threat detection service. The GuardDuty service is enabled via the AWS Management Console that helps cloud users to manage their deployments. The GuardDuty system analyzes API calls made to running virtual resources in a customer’s account, to help […]

Akamai Finds Web App Attacks Increased in Q3 2017 Akamai released its third quarter 2017 State of the Internet/Security report on Nov. 28, providing new statistics on the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and web application attack landscape. The 24-page report revealed a 48 percent year-over-year increase in the number of web application security attacks. […]

Apple is working on a patch for a newly reported password security issued that was first publicly reported by a security researcher in a Twitter message on Nov. 28. “Dear @AppleSupport, we noticed a *HUGE* security issue at MacOS High Sierra,” security researchers Lemi Orhan Ergin wrote. “Anyone can login as “root” with empty password […]

Security vendor Barracuda Network announced on Nov. 27 that it has agreed to be acquired by private equity investment firm Thoma Bravo in cash deal valued at $1.6 billion. Under the terms of the deal, Thoma Bravo will pay Barracuda Networks shareholders $27.55 per common share, representing a 22.5 percent premium over the company’s 10-day […]

McAfee announced on Nov. 27 that it is acquiring privately-held security startup Skyhigh Networks. Financial terms of the deal are not being publicly disclosed. Skyhigh Networks was founded in 2011 as a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) technology vendor providing access control and visibility for cloud application usage. To date, Skyhigh has raised about $106 […]