How to stay one step ahead of cyber attacks

Following Part 1, which explored the growing threat of cyber attacks, this article gives some pointers as to how you can best protect your organisation against malicious attacks.

Reverse engineering

One tactic successfully deployed last year by Yorkshire Bank was to beat hackers at their own game. Cyber security specialists set up ‘honeypot sites’ – dummy websites designed to attract attacks and collect data on the perpetrator. Valuable intelligence is gathered about the methods used (known as attack vectors), enabling the security specialists to reverse engineer malware and write specific ‘signature content’ (protective code) to counter attempted strikes. 

Top tips for mitigating your risk

There are several steps you can take to mitigate your risk from cyber attacks:

1.Implement security measures at every layer of your IT infrastructure – applications, network, host and base infrastructure – using tools such as web application firewall (WAF) technology, DDoS mitigation, intrusion detection sensors, deep packet forensics, anti-virus software and network monitoring services

2.Don’t make the mistake of relying on products alone to solve the problem; you also need people who can analyse the findings to build a full picture of security events being generated

3.Stay abreast of the latest vulnerabilities in order to create content that is up to date with the current threats and to be able to react more quickly to any incidents

4.Improve staff awareness of the threat – hackers can easily profile an employee via social media and craft a convincing email enticing them to click on a link, thus unwittingly exposing your entire network

5.Put escalation procedures in place for any suspect emails and ensure these are well publicised

6.Counter the chance of confidential data being compromised by a disgruntled employee by enforcing strict internal controls 

7.Invest in threat intelligence – some hacking groups become very vocal before launching an attack, therefore monitoring known social media sites can give you a heads-up

Through our partnership with cyber security specialist Alert Logic, Sungard AS offers a range of services to protect customers and help them comply with legislation such as PCI DSS. To find out more please contact us

Targeting Europe

A new study* has identified that hackers are increasingly using the region as a test bed for malicious software (‘malware’) before widespread deployment. 

During a six-month monitoring period in 2013, Europe suffered some 973,000 attacks, compared to 480,000 across Asia and 224,000 in the US. The UK is seemingly targeted for a disproportionate number of attacks relative to its size.

Regardless of the country targeted, the methods used by cyber criminals are fairly consistent across the globe. 

Leading forms of cyber attacks

The most common cyber threats in cloud hosting provider environments and data centres are:

• Web application attacks – criminals attempt to access user names and other commercially valuable information stored by finding a weakness in the web application itself
• ‘Brute force’ – a trial and error method used to decode encrypted data through exhaustive effort rather than brainpower
• Attempted reconnaissance or ‘recon’ – scanning to gather information (e.g. operating system used and open ports) to uncover vulnerabilities and lay the groundwork for a future attack
• Malware/botnet attacks – programs disguised as legitimate applications that instead inflict harm to the computer or server by performing unauthorised actions or disrupting the performance of the computer network by other means
• Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks – a multitude of compromised systems flood a single system with incoming messages, effectively forcing it to shut down and thereby denying service to legitimate users

The increasing take-up of VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) technology by companies has led to an increase in malware/botnet attacks, which more than doubled from 5% in 2012 to 11% in 2013.

DDoS attacks remain a huge problem for European businesses. Already this year we’ve seen high profile attacks of this nature on government organisations, banks, retailers, travel firms and facilities management companies. When the web is a key revenue-generating source, the cost of downtime resulting from a DDoS attack can quickly escalate to a six or seven figure sum – so it’s not a threat to be taken lightly.

In Part 2, we’ll examine what organisations can do to protect themselves against these threats.

*To receive a copy of the report, email us.

Cementos Progreso, founded in 1899, is the largest producer and distributor of cement and other construction materials in South America with more than 1,800 employees. Based in Guatemala, tumultous weather conditions mean the risk of natural disaster in the region remains high. Knowing that in the event of a major earthquake, demand for cement for rebuilding projects would soar, the company explored options to protect its business from disruption.

Business Challenge:
Guatemala-based Cementos Progreso recognised it needed a disaster recovery solution outside its earthquake-prone country to ensure operations would continue uninterrupted in the event of a natural disaster. The company was concerned a suitable solution would require a significant investment in equipment, infrastructure and support.
 
Solution:
•  Enterprise Cloud Services (ECS) with failover to a secondary site
•  Recover2Cloud
•  Disaster Recovery
 
Business Benefits:
•  High availability of applications and services with maximum recovery time (RTO) of 4 hours
•  Cost-effective, reliable solution that avoids the need for capital investment
•  Superior RTO/RPO and lower running costs than a comparable colocation alternative
•  24/7 monitoring gives peace of mind critical systems and data will always be available
•  Access to a team of availability experts to ensure a smooth recovery
•  Ability to scale and tailor the solution to exact business needs
•  Frees Cementos Progreso to focus on its core business by removing the burden of managing recovery infrastructure.

Read the full Cementos Progreso Case Study

Business Challenge:
Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) needed a responsive technology partner it could rely on to keep its complex IT infrastructure available at all times. Along with making mission-critical systems more resilient, NCL also needed the flexibility and scalability to handle seasonal business peaks.
 
Solution:
•  Managed Hosting Services.

Business Benefits:
•  Extremely resilient solution, ensuring high availability of data and services
•  Safeguards NCL’s reputation for excellent service
•  Prevents missed sales and lost revenue by eradicating downtime
•  Avoids capital expenditure incurred through expensive technology refreshes
•  Gives NCL the ability to scale up in line with business peaks
•  Low risk transition process gives NCL peace of mind
•  Freedom to focus on core business by removing burden of infrastructure management.

Read the full Norwegian Cruise Line Case Study

The JSA Group had long recognised the importance of availability to their business and realised its IT infrastructure was vulnerable to external threats. The social unrest that hit London and other major UK towns in the summer of 2011 was the catalyst to review its IT strategy and make its business more resilient.

Millions of people in Britain now work outside the PAYE system so employers and individuals look to firms like JSA for professional advice on their accountancy service needs. By offering a broad range of services for both umbrella and limited company contractors, JSA enables employers to make savings on their back office and resourcing costs while at the same time helping contractors remain compliant with HMRC guidelines.

With thousands of customers reliant on its payroll services being operational around the clock, JSA has zero tolerance for downtime.

Solution:
•  Cloud Consultancy
•  Infrastructure as a Service
•  Workplace Recovery
 
Business Benefits:
•  Ensures business as usual
•  Frees IT team to support the business
•  Preserves JSA’s reputation for reliability
•  Prevents customer defections
•  Peace of mind.

Read the full JSA Case Study

Watch the video case study

Business Challenge:
Ireland’s only government-accredited e-learning college provides post-graduate programmes for teaching professionals and others, delivering course content through online tutorials supplemented by practical classroom experience. With more than 8,000 students in 76 countries worldwide relying on Hibernia College’s award-winning blended learning programmes every year, its IT cannot fail.
 
Solution:
• Managed Multi-Tenanted Cloud Services.
 
Business Benefits:
• High levels of availability, backed by service guarantees
• Flexibility to manage sudden bursts in demand
• Resilient IT environment is a differentiator when competing for students
• Fully redundant infrastructure provides instant failover in the event of server failure
• Robust backup and recovery solution gives reassurance that no data will ever be lost
• Continuous data protection
• Supports Hibernia College’s business proposition of quality teaching and affordable fees
• Frees the in-house team to focus on application development rather than infrastructure management.

Read the full Hibernia College Case Study

Following a tender process, leading premium express delivery company City Link chose Sungard Availability Services as its  consulting and technology partner in a 3½ year, £2.5m deal to manage City Link’s cloud and managed services including its data centre.

Business Challenge:

When premium express parcel company City Link was sold by rentokil initial, it faced an immovable deadline to disengage its IT and communications infrastructure from its parent within just 12 months, after which it would incur punitive sanctions. It embarked on the search to find a technology partner able to implement a robust, resilient solution within the tight timescale imposed.

Solution:

•  Enterprise Cloud Services (ECS) with failover to a secondary site
 

•  Cloud Consulting
 

•  Data Centre Transformation
 

•  Electronic Vaulting
 

•  Colocatio Services housing those servers unsuitable for virtualisation
 

•  Telephony Infrastructure provided through a dedicated, fully managed ESX box.

Click Here to read the full case study.

New Paper Sponsored by Sungard Availability Services Highlights Alignment Between CIO and Wider C-level Roles As Critical to Long-Term Success.

London, United Kingdom: 5 June, 2014 – Sungard® Availability Services™ (Sungard AS), a leading provider of information availability through managed IT, cloud and recovery services, announced today the publishing of a paper from Joe Peppard, professor of management at the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin. It reveals the unique opportunity that digitisation has provided for chief information officers (CIOs) to elevate their position and to drive the wider business agenda within their organisations. However, it also makes clear that the CIO can be held back by a lack of engagement – or people skipping IT out altogether – across the C-suite when it comes to technology, with strategic IT alignment remaining an afterthought for many organisations.

The paper, ‘Digital Dynamics in the C-Suite: Accelerating Digitisation with the Right Conversations’, sponsored by Sungard Availability Services, the pioneer and leading provider of Information Availability services, outlines how customer interactions and experiences are increasingly shaped by technology. It also identifies major shifts whereby the role of technology in business can be truly transformative and offers CIOs guidance to help them evolve, if not accelerate, their organisations’ digital agendas through digital cross-collaboration.

Some of the highlights from the paper are:

Fostering the right conversations – the opportunity for the CIO to lead
Despite recognising the organisation-wide disruption that ICT (information communications technology) and the rise of ‘digital first’ can bring, many at the C-level may not see identifying opportunities and optimising value from IT as a shared partnership but solely the CIO’s job. While this provides a unique opportunity for the CIO to elevate their role, it also presents challenges due to the digital illiteracy of some members of the C-suite and the ambiguous nature of the CIO role.

Senior business leaders tend to view IT as secondary when it comes to the overall business strategy, meaning that decision making is often siloed and not in line with the wider business objectives. The paper also outlines that many executives – who believe they are fairly tech savvy out of the workplace through the rise of internet enabled mobile devices – can make the mistake of equating consumer IT with enterprise IT, not quite understanding the complexities of ICT’s role within the business. As a result many organisations are making a less than optimal business decision where IT is concerned.

Increasing digital literacy and the changing role of the CIO
The paper recommends some considerations for CxOs to embrace the digitisation agenda, and not delegate solely to the CIO:

• Not knowing anything about ICT is no longer a badge of honor. And just because you are not in Generation Y is no excuse
• Recognise that technology can be a potent, if not vital, competitive weapon
• Keep abreast of the capabilities of new technologies: harness the CIO’s unique position as a business leader and technologist who can deliver valuable ongoing insights
• Partner with your CIO to map out the digital transformation agenda. Work together to identify tangible ways to further embed ICT in the business
• The greatest bottom line impacts may actually come from operational improvements
• Remember, the CIO spends money on behalf of the organisation for the achievement of benefits, so the budgeting process should reflect this
• Promote partnership with the lines of business, overcome resistance to change, and drive digital literacy across the organisation.

“Achieving collaborative working relationships between the CIO and the leadership team is necessary to harness digital opportunities and to optimise the value from ICT investments. However, at the moment, not enough organisations are adopting this approach, which is hindering their growth opportunities,” comments Joe Peppard, professor of management at the European School of Management and Technology.

Peppard continues: “Conversations must be two way if they are to encourage teams to spawn ideas that are enabled and shaped by IT, as well as help the CIO better understand the wider business priorities. Harnessed in the right way, these conversations will enable the CIO to not be seen as the office of ‘No’ and to become a more integrated part of the leadership team. ”

Keith Tilley, executive vice president, EMEA & APAC, Sungard Availability Services comments: “It has become increasingly evident that aligning people, processes and business availability should be seen as a strategic driver that helps to secure tangible business outcomes. However, collaboration is still too weak, with Sungard AS’ research revealing that only 42% of UK organisations breed a culture in which interdepartmental collaboration is actively encouraged. By increasing this collaborative mind-set across the remaining 58% of organisations, they can then start having the right conversations about information and technology that mirrors itself in the corporate strategy, and in turn where the company seeks to invest in the future.”

The paper also discusses how CIOs should recognise that Shadow IT – IT spending which happens without the IT department’s knowledge – is not necessarily a bad thing. With developments like cloud computing, it is much easier for employees or departments to bypass the IT team when availing IT capability. It discusses how it is often a sign of healthy innovation and actually presents a valuable opportunity for the CIO to work more closely with different business departments to develop new capabilities.

John Cridland, director-general, CBI states: “We live in a global economy where having effective digital skills and literacy is vital for any business wishing to have that cutting, competitive edge. CIOs and wider C-level roles need to work together to ensure that technology lies at the heart of the wider business strategy. This will help businesses take full advantage of the opportunities technology provides, which will keep them agile and responsive in today’s 24/7 business world.”

You don’t need to be a business or technology expert to see that cloud based computing is having a profound effect on some our working practices. It’s hard to overestimate the significance of this culture change: just as businesses needed to evolve by the introduction of the PC or the internet, the cloud represents another decade defining shift of evolution.

A Necessary Transition

Perhaps what is most interesting is that we’re seeing business ambitions start to outstrip the technology and services on offer – cloud is still in its nascent phase but we’re already visualising increasingly ambitious ways to apply the services delivered by cloud computing technology. Practices such as remote working, accessing work data from any device and allowing access to real-time data streams are only possible with cloud computing technology. And now, with mobile web usage set to outstrip desktop this year it’s clear that cloud adoption is more vital for businesses than ever before. While this new era of remote working is ostensibly a benefit for organisations, with employees enjoying greater levels of productivity than previously, this new way of working requires a robust and flexible IT infrastructure that is underpinned with a strong secure, resilient foundation.

So what transformations can we expect to see now that cloud technology is becoming an IT essential (rather than a competitive edge)? For a start the cloud has substantial implications for every organisation’s operational efficiency. The advantages of on-demand cloud services have been talked up to the point of excess, but a reduction in IT maintenance costs, increased automation, rapid scalability, a simplified IT framework and the movement from CapEx to OpEx are all real benefits for any business. Put simply: a business can now run its entire infrastructure more efficiently and for a lower cost.

A Chance for Innovation

While each organisation is on its own cloud journey the technology is already having a big impact on the role of IT within an organisation. The nature of the cloud means IT departments can shift their focus, taking IT from being an unavoidable cost centre to being an epicentre for value creation. Through the cloud CIOs can now drive value for the organisation, developing innovative applications delivered within a Software as a Service (SaaS) framework, whether that’s to support employees or external stakeholders, (e.g. customers and partners), that will help open up previously untapped business opportunities. Cloud allows businesses to offer instant access to data and services for both employees and customers alike – something that has become increasingly essential in today’s ‘always-on’ society.

With organisations poised to invest significantly over the next three to five years in refreshing their IT infrastructure, there is a real opportunity for senior IT decision-makers to set out their stall and demonstrate the tangible benefits IT can deliver to the organisation.

Increased Flexibility, Greater Control

Amidst this revolutionary change, there are new challenges for the CIO in attempting to govern their organisation’s data flow. The increase in flexible working has transformed the CIO focus from attempting to control individual devices to monitoring how users are accessing the organisation’s data. CIOs can now manage their organisation’s entire infrastructure from a single, centralised location. This means growing a business becomes much simpler as end-users can be added to system quickly, no matter their location – with such minimal set up costs businesses can afford to be bolder when expanding into new markets

The case for cloud is starting to now be won, business are no longer asking “why cloud?” but “How do I get there?” It’s a pivotal era for IT and one where the most creative and innovative organisations, rather than their conservative counterparts, are going to thrive and emerge from this period of austerity stronger than ever.

Though for all the discussion of new working practices and innovative ways to drive value and revenue across the business, cloud adoption may come down to simple economics. Attempting to bury your head in the sand and writing cloud off as a fad is comparable to a business investing in typewriters rather than mobile devices. Ultimately, cloud based computing has come so far that you can now run entire business processes, on a resilient platform that offers unprecedented levels of availability for your enterprise, at a fraction of the previous price.

All roads lead to the cloud, some may take longer than others but isn’t it about time to check you’re on the right route for your organisation.

This article first appeared in Fresh Business Thinking 21/5/14: http://www.freshbusinessthinking.com/business_advice.php?AID=12700#.U32p0fldUgA

Now in its 14^th year of running, the Tech Excellence awards are viewed as Ireland’s “principal badge of honour in the IT Industry” and recognise the very best companies who are striving to implement the technology solutions which have a real impact on business growth.

Those nominated for the Managed Service Company of the Year award have been selected as examples of best practice within the industry, supplying their entire customer base with good-governance and best-of-breed security offerings.

At Sungard AS we are proud to be recognised alongside other leading companies in the sector. With our presence in Ireland continuing to grow, this nomination serves as an excellent recognition for the work we have done so far.

Our work with Transics – a leading fleet management solution provider – is a great example. Transics chose to run its mission critical IT out of our base in Ireland and needed a technology partner with a proven track record and a global standard of managed services. Transics was also looking for increased availability and agility of its service for existing customers while allowing the company to scale up in line with its growth plans – all of which we Sungard AS has enabled.

Finally, with our recent independence from SunGard Data Systems this award signifies industry confidence in Sungard AS’ ability to provide a world-class managed availability solution.

Here at Sungard AS Ireland we are immensely proud of the work we’ve done and the value we have and will continue to deliver for our customers in today's business world where everything is all-time.