WekaIO achieves AWS Storage Competency Status for primary storage to deliver HPC storage offerings in the cloud

WekaIO, vendor of high-performance, scalable file storage for data intensive applications, announced Thursday that it has achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Storage Competency status for primary storage. This designation recognizes that WekaIO’s proven cloud-scale, parallel file system capabilities can help customers achieve their high-performance computing (HPC) goals on AWS.

Achieving the AWS Storage Competency differentiates WekaIO as an AWS Partner Network (APN) member that possesses deep domain expertise in storage solutions on AWS and have developed innovative technology and solutions that leverage AWS services.

WekaIO has established itself as a provider of high performance parallel file storage software that seamlessly integrates with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) object storage. Customers, like TRE ALTAMIRA and Untold Studios, have chosen WekaIO for its enterprise grade stability and features to run their high-performance workloads on AWS.

AWS is enabling scalable, flexible, and cost-effective HPC solutions from startups to global enterprises. To support the seamless integration and deployment of these solutions, AWS established the AWS Competency Program to help customers identify Consulting and Technology APN Partners with deep storage industry experience and expertise.

“Achieving AWS Storage Competency status marks an important milestone in WekaIO’s continued focus and commitment with innovation in enabling HPC workloads on AWS,” said Liran Zvibel, Co-Founder and CEO of WekaIO. “Matrix is one of the fastest parallel file systems, and suited for workloads that are data intensive, latency-sensitive, and running at massive scale, like AI and machine learning. Our customers using Matrix on AWS are looking for comparable performance to on-premises, with the ability to leverage AWS.”

“The elasticity of WekaIO Matrix on AWS has solved the challenge of keeping up with fast-growing resource constraints,” said Alessandro Menegaz, IT Manager at TRE ALTAMIRA. “The improvements we got in terms of performance and costs savings have been high impact to our business.”

Mellanox Technologies appoints Doug Ahrens as its chief financial officer

Mellanox Technologies, supplier of high-performance, end-to-end smart interconnect solutions for data center servers and storage systems, announced Wednesday appointment of Doug Ahrens as senior vice president and chief financial officer, effective Jan. 2, 2019.

Ahrens will have overall responsibility for worldwide financial operations and strategy including planning and analysis, accounting, compliance, financial reporting and investor relations. He has extensive financial and operational experience in the technology industry, and joins Mellanox from GlobalLogic, where he served as chief financial officer.

Prior to that Ahrens served as chief financial officer of Applied Micro Circuits. His career demonstrates a strong track record of increasing financial managerial responsibilities at semiconductor companies including Maxim and Intel. He started his career as an environmental engineer at Chevron Corporation.

Ahrens holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from UC San Diego, an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and an active CPA license.

“I am pleased to have Doug join Mellanox as our CFO to further strengthen our leadership team,” said Eyal Waldman, Mellanox Technologies president and CEO. “Doug brings more than 20 years of semiconductor and technology industry experience, which along with his extensive financial leadership in both publicly and privately held companies make him ideally suited to lead our continued financial growth and profitability.”

C3 acquires Internet Service Provider EtherneXt to continue service expansion

Cloud Computing Concepts, provider of technology and communications services to small, medium, and enterprise businesses nationwide, announced on Wednesday that it has acquired EtherneXt.

Founded in 2002, EtherneXt has been providing internet connectivity, co-location, and managed services to a diverse base of customers throughout North America.

C3 is a technology and communications services provider to small, medium and enterprise businesses nationwide. Its combination of cloud-based technologies and expert onsite and remote support substantially reduces both IT-related capital investments and ongoing management costs.

C3’s approach increases stability, tightens security, enhances employee mobility, and ensures business continuity in the event of a disaster. CFOs benefit from C3’s fixed cost approach, while owners and CEOs benefit from the single point of contact for all of their telecommunications and technology needs.

This transaction was completed on Nov. 2, 2018 and C3 has retained the services of Bill Desjardins as a consultant to assist with a smooth transition.

C3 will be providing special introductory pricing through Mar, 31, 2019 for new services ordered by existing EtherneXt clients.

“We are excited to welcome the clients of EtherneXt to the C3 Family,” commented Rick Mancinelli, CEO of C3. “We will build upon the personalized service that EtherneXt has provided its clients for more than 15 years by providing access to a much broader product portfolio, a deeper engineering team, 24x7 bilingual help desk, and additional co-location options in New York, Cleveland, and Las Vegas.”

“I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the many EtherneXt customers over the years,” commented EtherneXt CEO Bill Desjardins. “I have spent a significant amount of time working with C3 prior to this transaction and would like to emphasize that C3 has earned my utmost respect for their technical capabilities, ethics, and platform services. You are in good hands!”

DataLocker debuts PortBlocker for SafeConsole to ensure that no unauthorized data leaves organization on USB storage devices

DataLocker announced on Thursday PortBlocker, an endpoint protection agent that limits USB mass storage devices used on a user’s workstation. It is a straightforward approach to prevent data breaches while also keeping malware out of the workstation. Integrated with SafeConsole central management platform for encrypted devices and endpoints, PortBlocker is easy to deploy and remotely manage.

PortBlocker is installed on workstations to ensure only whitelisted devices may be mounted as USB mass storage devices. This blocks usage of unsecured and unaudited USB mass storage devices and ensures that those infected with malware cannot infect the workstation or network.

PortBlocker also logs USB activity and reports back to the SafeConsole management server for auditing. Managing PortBlocker with SafeConsole allows administrators to control which devices are allowed or blocked, set policies for different groups, and see audit logs and activity.

PortBlocker delivers endpoint port control by whitelisting USB storage devices by VID, PID, and serial number through SafeConsole; devices can be automatically blocked when the workstation is outside of the geolocation requirements, including IP Address, Country or ISP; policies are applied based on the workstation location in Active Directory.

Individual policy can be created down to the workstation level, if needed.

Administrators can remotely Allow All and Block All devices through SafeConsole. Events including when a device is blocked, an endpoint is registered, exactly when the ‘allow all’ devices policy is changed, etc., are reported to SafeConsole in the Device Audit Logs. PortBlocker automatically receives policy updates from SafeConsole; deploys PortBlocker to multiple workstations with little user interaction, and uses PortBlocker in secure network environments without special configurations.

PortBlocker can filter USB mass storage, MTP, and PTP devices. Common USB-connected peripherals known to use the USB mass-storage device class include USB flash drives, USB external hard drives, MP3 players, digital cameras, media card readers, and smartphones.

Other devices, such as USB mice and keyboards, are always allowed.

“PortBlocker represents the next step in the evolution of DataLocker as a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solution for removable storage. It allows organizations to ensure that the only devices used to copy files in its environment are approved, secured and audited. Its integration with SafeConsole, the leading central management solution for encrypted storage, makes locking down your USB ports simple and hassle free,” said Jay Kim, CEO, DataLocker.

Iron Mountain acquires Lane Archive Technologies to expand its operational presence in the Philippines

Iron Mountain Inc., vendor of storage and information management services, announced on Tuesday acquisition of Lane Archive Technologies in the Philippines, expanding the company's presence in the country. 

The acquisition will add eight facilities in Manila, Davao and Cebu to Iron Mountain's existing Philippine operations, delivering records management, data management, document management and secure destruction to nearly 1,000 customers.

Iron Mountain stores and protects billions of valued assets, including critical business information, highly sensitive data, and cultural and historical artifacts. Providing solutions that include information management, digital transformation, secure storage,  secure destruction, as well as data centers, cloud services and art storage and logistics, Iron Mountain helps customers lower cost and risk, comply with regulations, recover from disaster, and enable a more digital way of working.

Founded in 1987, Lane Archive Technologies offers records and data management services, along with document management and secure destruction, to its customer base throughout the Philippines. Based in Manila, Lane has operations throughout the country and delivers information management services to a variety of customers.

"The acquisition of Lane Archive Technologies is a key milestone for our Philippines business, significantly expanding our operations in Manila and adding talented members of the Lane team," said Peter Hwang, managing director, Iron Mountain Asia. "With operations in the country's major business and commercial centers, we are adding scale and availability for our local and regional business, as well as our international customers with operations in the Philippines. This strengthens our in country presence while building upon the high levels of service that our customers expect for their information management needs."

"The acquisition of Lane Archive Technologies continues our strategy of expanding our presence in markets like the Philippines, where the move to digital transformation, coupled with the opportunity for records and information management outsourcing, is significant and growing," said Ernest Cloutier, executive vice president and general manager, International for Iron Mountain. "In these markets, our blend of expertise and technology relationships positions us to take advantage of those opportunities through the acquisition of leading local service providers that share our commitment to the highest levels of service delivery, security and trust. We can support our local and global customers while enhancing returns as we integrate these companies into our regional business, and ensuring we can capitalize on these trends."

Juniper Research predicts that retailers will lose $130 billion globally in card-not-present digital fraud in the coming five years

A new study from Juniper Research has found that retailers are set to lose some US$130 billion in digital CNP (Card-not-Present) fraud between 2018 and 2023. It highlighted that increasingly complex approaches by fraudsters, alongside retailers’ inertia in adapting to new fraud prevention requirements, would be key factors behind the increases in fraud transaction value.

Juniper’s new research, Online Payment Fraud: Emerging Threats, Segment Analysis & Market Forecasts 2018-2023, claimed that as cybercriminals seek to monetise their knowledge to a wider, less tech-savvy audience, complex cross-channel fraud will become the ‘new normal’, with retailers ill-prepared to fight it.

The report provides a deep-dive analysis of how the changing digital payments landscape, alongside key shifts in fraudster behaviour, is creating new challenges and opportunities for fraud prevention service providers.

The research report covers major payment service dynamics, such as PSD2 (the EU’s revised payment services directive), API-driven banking, 3-D Secure 2.0 and Instant Payment schemes alongside a comprehensive analysis of digital payment segment trends and fraud outlook in terms of digital banking, remote physical goods purchases remote digital goods purchases, digital money transfer, air ticketing, and fraud detection and prevention strategies.

“A layered FDP solution naturally helps directly preventing fraud, but it also offers major gains in terms of recovering potentially lost revenue through false positives. This is something about which retailers remain undereducated, and has allowed fraudsters to capitalise on relatively low FDP spend,” explained research author Steffen Sorrell.

The report found that eCommerce merchants remain, to a large extent, focused on assessing fraud risk at the point of transaction. As such, analysis in terms of session and behavioural monitoring, or validating the identity of a user to assess fraud risk before any transaction, is lacking. Juniper cited industry perception of FDP (Fraud Detection & Prevention) as one of the reasons behind this, with FDP seen as a high-cost tool used only to prevent fraud.

Juniper found that the perception of FDP return on investment on the part of retailers is, in turn, hampering global FDP spend growth. Juniper anticipates that digital payment players will spend $9.6 billion annually on FDP solutions in 2023, although the bulk of growth over the forecast period is likely to be driven by financial institutions and payment service providers.

This is due to awareness of FDP benefits, as well as a requirement to deal with challenges such as open banking systems and instant payment mechanisms.

Nokia appoints Sandra Motley as president of its fixed networks business group

Nokia named Sandra D. Motley as president of its fixed networks business group effective Jan. 1, and she will report to Nokia President and CEO Rajeev Suri.

Motley succeeds Federico Guillén, who as previously announced has been named president of customer operations, EMEA & APAC effective

Tuesday.

Motley is a seasoned telecommunications professional with leadership experience spanning business development, sales, marketing, research, product development, portfolio management and strategy.  

Motley holds MS and BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from S.U.N.Y. at Buffalo and received an MBA in Finance from Fairleigh Dickinson University. She started her career at AT&T Bell Laboratories, held a range of R&D and sales leadership positions at Alcatel-Lucent in both fixed and wireless businesses, and then joined Nokia in 2016.

At Alcatel-Lucent, her roles included leading sales for U.S. wireless accounts and serving as Chief Operating Officer (COO) for that company's wireless business, where she was responsible for R&D, Quality and Operational functions. After becoming part of Nokia, Motley oversaw end-to-end solutions for the North America market, and most recently, she has held the role of COO for the Fixed Networks business group.

"Sandy is an exceptional leader with comprehensive executive management background across global business functions, and she brings business acumen, strong customer relationship skills, and proven success in leading cross-functional teams to deliver on challenging business and operational objectives. I am pleased that she has accepted this role," said Nokia President and Chief Executive Officer Rajeev Suri.