Cloud IT Week in Review: Ransomware, Kapersky, Intermedia, More

By Rory J. Thompson
Web Editor

IT and the Cloud were once again in the news this past week, and we have the highlights in your Week in Review.

The topic of ‘ransomware’ leads us off this week, as it’s been on everyone’s minds. Hospitals are prime targets for ransomware due to the type of information they deal with on a daily basis. Patient information, health history, payment information, Social Security numbers – all of these are hot ticket pieces of data that are perfect for identity theft and other types of cyber crime. Criminals are not only locking up this data; they’re holding it for ransom. It wasn’t that long ago that UMass Memorial Medical Center was the victim of ransomware. One email provided a gateway for malicious code – a code that found its way into several computers – locking up dozens of files, all of which were inaccessible unless a “hefty” bounty was paid up. And there’s more to this sordid tale; click HERE for details.

In related news, according to the Kapersky Security Bulletin for 2015, ransomware programs were detected on 753,684 computers of unique users; 179,209 computers were targeted by encryption ransomware. Security Magazine said the number of ransomware attacks is predicted to increase in 2016. More than four million samples of ransomware were identified in the second quarter of 2015, indicating an upward trend, as in the third quarter of 2013, fewer than 1.5 million samples were analyzed. In a nutshell, it’s not going away anytime soon, so the more you know, the better you can protect yourself or your business. Educate yourself HERE.

Elsewhere it was noted that as a channel partner, adopting a cloud services model creates significant opportunities for winning new business. Cloud services enable partners to serve customers beyond those that reside in close proximity to their physical location(s) because on-site infrastructure maintenance is no longer needed. And over time, building up an install base consisting of high-margin, recurring revenue offers partners the ability to scale costs with revenue, increase lifetime customer value and generate more predictable revenue streams. Intermedia’s (News - Alert) Senior Director of marketing, Jon Borgese, gets into the details in a blog post summarized HERE.

And you can click HERE to see even more Cloud IT news as it happens.