Portshift syncs Kubernetes policies to container vulnerabilities in CI/CD pipelines for remediation

Portshift announces its new capability that delivers runtime policies for vulnerability remediation, allowing more secure workload communications. Portshift’s risk mitigation engine  connects Kubernetes network policies with discovered vulnerabilities in production workloads, allowing to mitigate the risk potential of vulnerable containers till its replacement with new version that remove the vulnerable component.

With Portshift, the company has taken DevSecOps to the next level with a platform that connects identified vulnerabilities with the identity of the workload, providing a measured balance that prevents workload communications based on the risk level and the potential threat to certain applications.

The technology has the ability to block traffic based on the vulnerability level discovered, providing a single picture for complete visualization of these processes during runtime. This provides protection that is matched to the DevOps applications in production.

According to a 2019 Gartner report, “Security can’t be an afterthought. It needs to be embedded in the DevOps process, which Gartner refers to as “DevSecOps…Integrate an image-scanning process to prevent vulnerabilities as part of an enterprise’s continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) process, where applications are scanned during the build and run phases of the software development life cycle.”

Portshift mitigates vulnerabilities with greater sophistication. Available as part of the company’s identity-based cloud native workload security and risk management platform, the technology ensures that Kubernetes environments are protected from development to runtime. With Portshift, app security is simplified and speeded-up by replacing multiple fragmented firewalls, security groups, and ACLs with automated identity-based workload security that is decoupled from the network infrastructure.

When unknown, and possibly malicious workloads are detected, they are quickly identified and rapidly removed using Portshift’s innovative DevOps security platform. The company’s workload management processes offer an alternative to the use of IP addresses, ports and firewalls to secure the network perimeter as it addresses the unique security requirements of cloud-native microservices running in containers both inside and outside of the network perimeter.

“With the availability of this identity-based approach, we are actively collaborating with industry leading vulnerability scanning providers including Twistlock, Aqua and Clair to move the industry forward,“ said Zohar Kaufman, co-founder and VP, R&D for Portshift. “Having Portshift’s information-rich view of containers in real time will be exceedingly important in 2020 as more determined hackers continue their efforts to attack earlier in the development process in order to exploit vulnerabilities before they are addressed by DevSecOps.“

Optiv Security expects election hacking, ‘hybrid threat actors’ to top the list of 2020 cyber threats

Optiv Security announced its cybersecurity industry predictions for 2020 and beyond. A focus on privacy, evolving threat actors, pervasive deepfake videos, and increased election interference are among the issues Optiv sees taking on greater importance in the New Year.

Optiv expects the most common issues that the industry may face in 2020 include hybrid threat actors may become more commonplace. Optiv’s 2019 Cyber Threat Intelligence Estimate (CTIE) found a growing number of “hybrid threat actors.” These are attackers who impersonate one type of adversary to disguise their true intentions (for example, a nation state imitating a generic hacker targeting a customer database, when its true aim is to steal intellectual property). 

Optiv believes a possible increase in the number of adversaries to adopt this technique and launch “imposter” attacks to obfuscate their true intentions, adding yet another layer of complexity to threat hunting and incident response.

Apple’s “privacy as a human right” campaign should cause others to follow. As the world’s foremost technology organization going all-in on privacy will shift the competitive landscape, security and privacy could become a competitive differentiator for companies that follow Apple’s lead and grab “first mover” status in their markets. Laggards may risk meeting the unseemly fate of past organizations that failed to embrace important technology paradigms such as internet, cloud, and mobile computing.

Election misinformation campaigns could proliferate. The effectiveness of the Russian misinformation campaign of 2016 increases the possibility of increased copycat attacks for the 2020 election. These attacks could come from nation states as well as domestic groups supporting rival U.S. politicians. This activity threatens to trigger a major public/private response to the online misinformation problem.

Optive expects to see the first cases of deepfakes used to manipulate stock prices. There has been much publicity around the potential to impact elections using deepfakes (AI-doctored videos that enable individuals to make it appear people said things they never said). However, not enough attention has been paid to how cybercriminals can make money using deepfakes against businesses. 

This might change in 2020, as it’s possible we will see the first deepfake attacks designed to impact stock prices, by having CEOs, financial analysts, Federal Reserve leaders or other powerful economic figures make phony statements that will cause stock market movements. Cybercriminals would use these videos to make quick fortunes in the market.

There should be widespread realignment of IT and security organizations. As boards view cybersecurity as a peer-level risk to traditional enterprise risks, such as lawsuits and product recalls, more CISOs should become peers of CIOs and other executives, rather than direct or indirect reports. This would cause a realignment of the IT and security organizations to eliminate conflicts and encourage collaboration. 

The most critical of these will be the continued expansion of DevSecOps, in which security is fully integrated into the application development process; and patch management, which will move from being divided between security and IT (security finds vulnerabilities, IT patches them), to becoming a unified process with a single point of accountability.

Cybersecurity basics may continue to vex consumers and enterprise organizations.Whether insufficient passwords, lack of education and training around phising attacks, or simple upkeep and compliance, the tiny details of cybersecurity will continue to be the cause of a vast portion of compromises if left unaccounted for. Simple passwords (those without special characters or are extremely obvious, such as “password123”) only take minutes to crack by professional hackers and can be done inexpensively.

“As we look beyond 2019 and into 2020, we have a solid idea of what threats the industry is facing, and not just ransomware and phishing attacks, but new, hard-to-combat threats,” said Anthony Diaz, Division Vice President, Emerging Services at Optiv. “As is always the case, us ‘good guys’ are forced to play catch up with bad actors, who constantly remain a step ahead. There is much IT and business leaders must be aware of when it comes to cybersecurity, as the pace of change is quite high. That is why we recommend cybersecurity programs focus on proactive risk mitigation and build out from there. This ensures your organization is actively looking for, combating, and identifying threats before they can cause damage.”

DXC Technology unveils managed multi-cloud services powered by VMware across cloud environments

DXC Technology launched a multi-cloud orchestration, automation and governance solution that transforms managed services delivery across any cloud.

DXC Managed Multi-Cloud Services powered by VMware provides consistent service management at scale and enables clients to maximize investments in VMware for a significant multi-cloud competitive advantage. The new cloud solution was announced here at VMworld Europe.

DXC Managed Multi-Cloud Services powered by VMware accelerates time to market, automates managed services and asset delivery, and helps optimize costs. The new solution delivers software defined networking and enables DevSecOps — all with intrinsic security and governance using IaC across multiple clouds via blueprinting, deployment pipelines, and policies.

“Multiple clouds are the new reality, but managing those cloud environments can be complicated,” said Eugene O’Callaghan, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud and Platform Services, DXC. “DXC Managed Multi-Cloud Services powered by VMware offers a holistic cloud management solution to speed up the pace of digital change in hybrid cloud environments, optimize workloads for cloud and traditional IT, and deploy the right workload on the right platform.”

DXC Managed Multi-Cloud Services powered by VMware eliminates the need for extensive integration throughout the IT landscape to provide a consistent management and operational experience across VMware Cloud providers. Leveraging VMware vRealize Automation Cloud, the offering builds upon a proven management stack to deliver managed services on current and future multi-cloud architectures.

“DXC and VMware have a shared history of driving IT transformation and growth,” said Susan Nash, senior vice president, Strategic Corporate Alliances, VMware. “By combining VMware’s hybrid cloud offerings with DXC cloud services and industry expertise, DXC Managed Multi-Cloud Services powered by VMware gives IT the ability to rapidly deploy a universal management experience across all cloud environments, facilitating a common security, governance and compliance framework that can help minimize risk while accelerating cloud adoption.”

According to IDC, by 2024, some 90 percent of Global 1000 organizations will have multi-cloud management strategies that include integrated tools across public and private clouds. DXC Managed Multi-Cloud Services powered by VMware provides a universal cloud management platform that offers self-service, automation, and continuous delivery of IT services via an infrastructure-as-code (IaC) model.

DXC Managed Multi-Cloud Services powered by VMware is integrated with DXC Bionix and Platform DXC, the company’s next-generation delivery platform.