Microsoft is trying to get rid of that sticky note that you see taped to everyone’s office monitor. You know, the one with the password on it. The one with all of the old passwords crossed off one by one, each one subtly different from the last — an exclamation point turning into an ampersand, a one into a two.
Enterprises have really done this to themselves. The passwords that most organizations require — which have to be complex, with long strings of numbers and specially cased phrases with some (but not all! heavens no, not the one you want) symbols — are difficult to remember. There’s no hope except to write them down. Then you have to reset them every so often. Then they get recycled. And on and on the cycle goes.
The fax — that 1940s technology that exploded in the 1980s and operates by copying an image and transmitting it through squeaks and squawks over a phone line — is still used by a large majority of healthcare providers, insurance payers, and pharmacies.
And it’s simply not going away anytime soon.
As recently as 2019, seven in 10 hospitals were still relying on fax machines and phone lines to transfer and retrieve patient records or order prescriptions, according to the latest figures from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). The agency believes there’s been progress since then, but maintains that fax machines remain the most prevalent form of communication for transmitting care records and prescriptions.
In April, 2021, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins announced he would let all 75,000 employees work remotely indefinitely, even after the COVID-19 pandemic ended. The company had seen no drop in productivity by allowing employees to work from home and expected to save money by not fully staffing offices. When and how often employees should come into the office would be up to their managers, who abide by a flexible hybrid policy.
But that shift brought technology challenges most companies are by now familiar with: how do you secure networks when the employee’s home is essentially a branch office? How do you create company culture from afar? And, how do you retain employees at a time when IT talent is in historically high demand.
Microsoft has launched the general availability of Microsoft Intune Suite, a consolidation of its endpoint management and security solutions to streamline protection for cloud-connected and on-premises endpoints.
The consolidation is aimed to serve as a single vendor for all endpoint security needs for the customers to have single analytics, rather than multiple disparate datasets, with a consistent visibility to potential vulnerabilities and anomalies, according to a company blog post.
Along with end-to-end encryption for iCloud, Apple’s cloud storage and computing platform, the company announced iMessage Contact Key Verification, allowing users to verify they are communicating only with whom they intend.
Apple also announced hardware Security Keys for Apple ID, giving users the choice to require two-factor authentication to sign into their Apple ID account. (Hardware security keys use devices, such as USB thumb drives or near-field communication (NFC) dongles, to enable access to a service or application.)
Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2022 09:43:00 -0700
Announced at WWDC 2022, Managed Device Attestation protection shows that Apple is adjusting device security protections to adapt to an increasingly distributed age.
Secure the endpoints, not the end times
This adjustment reflects a reality shift. Work doesn’t happen on specific servers or behind defined firewalls today. VPN access can differ across teams. And yet, in a workplace defined by multiple remote devices (endpoints), the security threat is greater than ever.
Managed Device Attestation works to create a second boundary of trust around which device management solutions can work to protect against attack.
Jamf has announced a series of significant updates to Jamf Protect, introducing a unique set of technologies designed to make enterprise devices more secure while also identifying and responding to incoming endpoint threats. The company also introduced, Jamf Trust, which aims to make this kind of security simple to use. (The latter is also available for Android and Windows.)
What’s new in Jamf Protect?
The big news for Mac security, Jamf Protect, now offers a comprehensive endpoint and network security solution, supplementing its existing protections with new tools for: