Yesterday was a big day for Pure Storage. As you may have seen from the live blog coverage on GestaltIT.com, Pure launched a couple of new offerings that encompass their vision for the future of storage. Also happening this week, the FCC announced that they will be starting a program worth up to $1.9 billion to help remove networking equipment from Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE. We discuss these stories and more on this week’s Rundown.
Exchange AutoDiscover Bug Leaks Domain Credentials
Microsoft has found itself in the news again this week thanks to a bug in Exchange. The AutoDiscover feature that allows users to automatically configure their email client based on their domain name was discovered to have a design flaw that caused the client mail program to fail to a top-level domain looking for information. Guardicore AVP Amit Serper registered some of these AutoDiscover domain names and set up honeypots to see how much information was being leaked. Over the course of 4 months 372,000 command credentials were collected and almost 100,000 application credentials were found. As soon as the news hit the Internet Microsoft started registering the remaining domain names and issued a statement that this was a known design limitation. Did Microsoft get caught out on this one?
Fabs Find Fellows Few and Far For Factory Functions
It would appear that the latest issue to complicate the global chip shortage is a lack of labor. According to a report from IPC, 80% of manufacturers are reporting that they are having trouble finding qualified workers for their fabs.Labor costs are up and it is making it difficult for the manufacturers to pay wages that are needed to bring in workers. Those rising costs are also being passed along to their customers, who will most likely increase their prices as well instead of accepting a shrinking profit margin. The report doesn’t see any significant changes coming in the market over the next six months, with lead times likely to continue increasing.
Progress to Acquire Kemp for $258 million
Application Delivery company Kemp has announced that they are being acquired by Progress. The company which also has What’s Up Gold, Chef, and other components, says that Kemp will continue to help their focus on DevOps solutions. Kemp has presented at a number of Tech Field Day events in the past and has shown aptitude in the applications and security space. Kemp has over 100,000 deployments of their virtual load balancing software around the globe and has ben integrating their acquisition of Flowmon into the product line over the past year.
Nutanix and Citrix Partner on VDI
Nutanix and Citrix have announced a new partnership focused on making VDI deployments easy. Nutanix will be running the Citrix software on their HCI-based Cloud Platform service. The idea is to offer a desktop-as-a-service solution to compnaies that are trying to roll out Citrix environments to users around the globe in an era of working from anywhere. The move is likely a counter to recent efforts by VMware to increase adoption of Horizon their VDI desktop solution. Stephen, is this a good move for the tech giants?
Government Warns of Rising Conti Attacks
Batten down the hatches because Conti isn’t going away any time soon. The FBI, CISA, and NSA are all sounding the alarm that Conti is a growing threat. They’ve tracked over 400 attacks related to this particular strain of evil. The malware is operated by a Russian-based organization named Wizard Spider and seems to be very focused on hitting healthcare organizations.
Guardicore Gets Picked up by Akamai
Hot off the story above of Guardicore’s disclosure of the AutoDiscovery bug comes news that the cybersecurity company is getting picked up by Akamai. The reported amount of the acquisition is $600 million, which would make it the second largest cybersecurity exit in Israel to date. The company has been around since 2013 and pivoted from offensive security to zero trust architecture and malware prevention. CEO Pavel Gurvich is excited by the move and looks forward to the results he and his executive team can get inside the content giant.
Pure Storage Launches Pure Fusion and Portworx Data Services
Yesterday was a big day for Pure Storage. As you may have seen from the live blog coverage on GestaltIT.com, Pure launched a couple of new offerings that encompass their vision for the future of storage. The first was Pure Fusion, a self-service Storage-as-Code platform designed for cloud consumers. The next offering was Portworx Data Services, An integration of their Portworx acquisition designed to help with Day 2 operations and other important software infrastructure in your environment. All of these announcements are big on the software side of things, which flies in the face of what Pure has typically been known for providing on the hardware side. Is this shift a signal that software is eating the storage world?
FCC to Fund Huawei and ZTE Rip and Replace
The FCC announced this week that they will be starting a program worth up to $1.9 billion to help remove networking equipment from Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE. The guidelines state that carriers with fewer than 10 million customers including schools, libraries and healthcare organizations, can apply to have their costs for remove and replacement of the equipment reimbursed. The program only affects costs incurred between April 2018 and June 2020. The fund is designed to help offset the outcry from companies that have been caught in the middle of the dispute between the telecom companies and the US government, which has designated the companies as national security threats and halted sales of their equipment. Those wishing to apply for the funds have until January 14, 2022. Is this going to help ease the pain of ripping out relatively new equipment? And does this also mean there won’t be any going back on the decision any time soon?
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