By Leon Gettler >>

WHEN the Morrison Government unveiled its COVID-19 $189 billion stimulus package to keep Australians in work and businesses in businesses, there was a lot of public interest. And confusion.

Many didn’t know what exactly the package was offering them, how it could help them and where to find it.

Troy Roennfeldt and his team from the digital agency Increaseo had lost a lot of business thanks to COVID-19.  So in their downtime, they set up a website named Stimulus Package to help to arm all Australians with information regarding the recently implemented Stimulus Packages.

It enabled individuals and businesses to locate and easily sort through all applicable support packages offered by the Federal and State Governments to help ease financial pressures and better navigate the tough times ahead.

Mr Roennfeldt said the site collates all the packages at the state and federal level. The idea for it came when he was combing through all the information and “couldn’t find it in one spot where it was needed.” 

FUSION OF CONFUSION

While the government information packages have improved, it was very difficult back in March finding the right information. One had to piece it together from various news reports and the government websites were then sparse on information.

“Once I realised it was a bit hard, I was ticking over in my head one evening while I was working through things and I started looking through different domain names and realised stimuluspackage.com.au was available,” Mr Roennfeldt told Talking Business.

“I registered that, thought about it for another day or two and got my team working on developing it out.

“We had some capacity as we had lost a number of projects in the preceding days with some clients who were in the events space and the catering space. Their businesses had pretty much imploded so all work we had with them was put on hold.

“So we used that downtime to get our developers and content guys on to fleshing the site out.”

He said the firm had four or five of its team members working on it.

Mr Roennfeldt said the site could potentially become even more informative if it could drill into what was on offer in various local government areas and post codes.

“However, the amount of work involved in that is something we don’t have the capacity to put all that out considering we’re doing it for nothing,” he said.

He said there is now an ongoing process of keeping the stimulus package content up to date.

With JobKeeper still being a work in progress, the team will add new information to keep it updated.

FIT FOR THE TIMES

Mr Roennfeldt said the response to Stimulus Package had been really good, with many people signing up for newsletters and updates.

“I’m sure there’s probably going to be future stimulus package announcements in the coming weeks or months and we’ll keep that updated and shoot out updates to people who are registered on the site,” he said.

Mr Roennfeldt said the website also offered support services in areas such as mental health and accommodation for people looking for help. It also included information from businesses offering products for free, like productivity tools.

The site also had content from accountants and lawyers and financial advisers.

It’s become very much a community exercise and Mr Roennfeldt said if businesses, lawyers, accountants and financial advisers wanted to send in more material, they should get in touch with him at Increaseo.

Mr Roennfeldt expects the website will be running for more months to come as the government brings in more packages and changes schemes like JobKeeper and JobSeeker.

www.stimuluspackage.com.au

www.increaseo.com

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness.  

OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY security has come into sharp focus in recent months. Digital security experts warn that it is an aspect of business in transition as legacy operational technologies are morphed into internet connected systems.

Advisory group Forescout’s senior director for systems engineering across the Asia Pacific and Japan region, Steve Hunter, said the operational technology (OT) security market was officially in transition. He said acquisitions are accelerating, venture capital investment is slowing, and strategic partnerships are becoming critically important.

He said OT systems themselves were also in a transitional state, as traditional, isolated legacy systems turn into fully IP-connected, cyber-physical systems. Forescout research showed that to stay relevant in the OT world, the cybersecurity market had to evolve alongside these systems.

“IT and OT networks are founded on different and often conflicting priorities, making IT-OT security challenging for businesses,” Mr Hunter said. “Only when the needs of both environments are thoroughly understood can digital convergence be successful.” 

He said Gartner’s 2019 report, Market Guide for Operational Technology Security, confirmed that by the end of 2023, organisations would need to adjust their OT security solutions, because 60 percent of today’s point solution OT security providers would have been rebranded, repositioned or bought – or may have disappeared.

Mr Hunter said while this scenario may cause anxiety for OT security stakeholders, businesses can implement strategies to help prepare for the imminent changes in the OT security market.

Mr Hunter said Forescout has developed four tips to help businesses future proof their OT security strategy:

1.        Proactively identify, classify and monitor OT network assets
The first step to managing cyber and operational risk for any OT system is to figure out what’s in it. Almost every security framework, including NIST CSF, NERC CIP and CIS Critical Security Controls, requires identifying and classifying hardware as a prerequisite. If businesses haven’t implemented some form of real-time OT asset inventory tracking, they should make it a priority for 2020.

OT systems are rapidly morphing into cyber-physical systems that are connected to vast corporate and operational networks via the internet. Not only does this expose them to new internet-based threats, but it also increases the potential for misconfiguration and malfunction of these assets. More moving parts plus more connections equals a higher risk of operational problems.

Proactively identifying, classifying and monitoring OT network assets can help businesses discover what risks they face in the present, and also plan to reduce future risks. Not only will cyber threats like malware be a risk, but businesses will also be able to confirm whether assets in a cyber-physical system are performing as they should and take steps to remediate any issues before they cause downtime.

Implementing an OT network monitoring technology is one of the fastest ways to create and monitor an accurate asset inventory. Businesses should look for a mature vendor with an extensive library of built-in checks for OT-specific cyber and operational threats developed from experience in the field.

2.        Align IT and OT teams to execute integrated cybersecurity initiatives
With IT-OT convergence gaining more traction, businesses need to implement a strong cybersecurity program while also maintaining the top priority of availability for OT systems. For this to succeed, many elements must align, and teams must seamlessly integrate. There are certain areas where IT is the expert and other areas where OT is the expert, and both teams need to align, working towards a common goal.

To promote an alignment initiative, businesses must clearly define roles and common goals, designating subject matter experts, and conducting cross-training. Additionally, empowering teams with mature platform security solutions that have strong cross-functional capabilities can greatly streamline security activities and improve team cohesion.

3.        Use proof-of-value (PoV) requirements that will accurately assess a vendor’s suitability
When undertaking any security PoV, all relevant teams, including security, engineering and operations, should be consulted for input. Ensuring that solution requirements meet everyone’s needs is vital to the success of any OT security investment.

Elements to consider include how a vendor is collecting OT data, the strength of a vendor’s threat intelligence database, and how comprehensive their orchestration and integration capabilities are.

Whatever PoV requirements businesses decide to include, the most important thing is to ensure that they accurately assess a vendor’s maturity and suitability for the business, as well as try to weed out companies that won’t be around in two or three years.

4.        Align with emerging market dynamics by reassessing the OT security vendor landscape
Acquisitions and partnerships in OT security products are accelerating, making the market landscape more volatile. As this market matures, narrow-scope point solutions will be challenged by vendors offering organisation-wide platforms that traverse IT, OT, Internet of Things (IoT), and the cloud, according to Gartner’s Market Guide for Operational Technology Security report. This year is an ideal time to evaluate the current security suite to understand which tools are providing the most value and whether any of the organisation’s current vendors are at risk of becoming obsolete or going out of business.

Mr Hunter said, “The future of the OT security market is uncertain; however, by staying up to date on emerging technologies and understanding how IT and OT networks interoperate, organisations can holistically manage risks to their organisational OT infrastructure.”

www.forescout.com

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By Leon Gettler >>

ONE OF the biggest issues facing Zoom is ‘Zoombombing’. That’s when uninvited intruders break into and disrupt the meeting.

They jump into public Zoom calls and use the platform’s screen-sharing feature to project graphic content to unwitting conference participants, forcing hosts to shut down their events. Zoombombers often hurl racial slurs or profanity, or share pornography and other offensive imagery, or try to add malware to Zoom users’ computers.

Zoombombing has become a huge security and privacy issue as use of the Zoom platform surges due to an increase in coronavirus-related remote working.

Chuck White, the chief technology officer for Fornetix, the advanced encryption key management company based in Maryland USA, said it come down to digital hygiene, cyber defence and making sure the door is locked to unwanted attendees. 

He concedes a lot of it is new to people using Zoom. As he sees it, they have a lot to learn.

“That’s one area where people who aren’t used to running web conferences … you have lot of people online who are not used to operating this way and I think some of it is a lack of experience,” Mr White told Talking Business.

“You used to keep your front door unlocked. So from a Zoombombing perspective, there are drives of people coming online using Zoom to collaborate and not taking appropriate steps to lock the door.

“A lot of it is a community who would not think a tool like Zoom could be abused this way.”

LOCK THAT ZOOM DOOR

Mr White said Zoom users should take a number of steps to ensure the door remains locked.

First and foremost is to make meeting private. He cited one example of people taking about the Zoom conference coming up and even putting a link.

Facebook is not the most private platform in the world. The same applies for those who put details about the Zoom meeting on a website.

Other security steps are to schedule the meeting and to invite attendees with email. The meeting should also have a password.

If a Zoombomber does enter the meeting, it is important to limit screen sharing and use of video.

Another good idea is to have someone monitoring the meeting to make sure everything is going to plan and who can remove the intruder. If all else fails, shut down the meeting.

UNDERSTAND CYBER DEFENCE

The issue is whether employees on remote teams understand cyber defence when they are not trained to use it.

“When it comes to someone who doesn’t work in this day in and day out, you’d want to teach them three to four things: keep it private, have a chaperone, kick people out and if you lose control, kill the meeting,” Mr White said.

As a former army officer, he said it is always a case of keeping it “infantry proof” and these are exactly the instructions handed down to his team at Fornetix,

“That cyber hygiene is critical because attackers will take advantage of people making mistakes,” Mr White said.

“If you can train for that appropriate posture where it becomes second nature, freedom through discipline, to prevent these things from happening, you’re going to make it much more difficult for an attacker to take advantage of a populace that’s vulnerable.”

www.fornetix.com

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness. 

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ENTERPRISE cloud computing group Nutanix has  announced a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) service to help promote remote work adoption among Australian and New Zealand organisations.

Nutanix FastTrack for VDI brings together Nutanix HCI and software with selected partners to accelerate and optimise a full VDI service in just a few weeks.

Building VDI environments to effectively maintain core business and technical operations usually takes up to a few months but Nutanix FastTrack for VDI can reduce that to a matter of weeks. 

The announcement comes as research shows 77 percent of Austalian and New Zealand (ANZ) workers are currently working from home, with a third reporting they feel less productive since they started. As the nations’ businesses continue to battle the impact of COVID-19, many are struggling to enable their workforces to operate and function remotely while still maintaining access to the same tools and applications they require to be productive and efficient.

For companies that have adopted remote working, one of the biggest challenges stems from their existing IT infrastructure: which has often been found unable to maintain operations during the  unanticipated demand surges.

"Nutanix is making every effort to help ensure that ANZ enterprises have quick and easy access to the right solutions and technology to keep their staff engaged, efficient and productive,” Nutanix ANZ managing director Lee Thompson said.

Nutanix FastTrack for VDI helps to address these challenges while supporting local businesses to continue their DX journey in these times of uncertainty. It allows remote access to critical business applications, even via BYOD devices, and strict security policies can be implemented and managed through its simple management console. 

The performance and speed of Nutanix VDI solutions is also well documented: it has a large, existing customer base and its influence continues to expand as a wide range of industry sectors, educational institutions and local governments rapidly embrace its technologies.

“As businesses look towards enabling a more permanent work from anywhere model, Nutanix will be there to help accelerate and smooth their journey to the cloud," Mr Thompson said.

"FastTrack for VDI’ is designed to support companies rapidly deploying a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution."

Mr Thompson said Nutanix FastTrack for VDI allows organisations to reduce the time required to onboard thousands of remote employees. He said the offer includes services to set up and provision of desktops in under five business days for predefined Nutanix configurations.

This will help enterprises provide secure access with minimal interruptions to business apps and desktops employees want while maintaining the security and control businesses need.

Mr Thompson said customers would be able to leverage existing hardware, select predefined Nutanix hardware or leverage managed cloud infrastructure from managed service provider (MSP) partners such as CompNow.

"The simplicity and flexibility of the Nutanix infrastructure makes deployment easier, enabling the company to expedite delivery service," he said.

www.nutanix.com

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