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July 2015

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The Department of Now vs. The Department of No: Improving Workplace Culture

By NewsNo Comments

By Ashley Leonard, President & CEO of Verismic Software

In the short span of a decade, innovative electronic devices such as laptops, tablets, smart phones and internet engagement channels have made an indelible impact on everyday life, revolutionizing the means and speed in which people communicate, socialize and purchase goods and services. Combining the personal and business use of high-tech devices and applications, however, is a more recent phenomenon that’s blazing an irreversible trail.

While this growing movement of versatile devices in the workplace provides flexibility and offers a wide range of options to increase employee productivity, it puts the modus operandi of back-office technology in peril, leaving IT departments precariously teetering on the edge of falling from hero to zero.

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Culture vs. Technology: The Chicken and the Egg

While some argue that corporate cultures are shaped by the influence of developing technologies, I find merit in reports stating that technology evolves much more quickly than most robust cultures. In fact, technologies can be seen as a reflection of existing workplace cultures where each advancement is developed to meet a need that challenges teams.

For example, a new cell phone app sidesteps corporate HR departments and publicly shares information on local venues to provide corporate team-building activities. Employees from numerous companies throughout the community find the app, share postings on it and select diverse activities to discuss with their management. What they select might depend upon the nature of a particular company’s culture. For example, a sporting goods company may hire more active employees who seek out physically demanding activities while a high-tech company could find its employees prefer an indoor venue offering group problem-solving games.

However, an issue of security arises when each of these companies are inundated with emails and online sharing of a site that has not been vetted for data privacy. If IT were to attempt to circumvent the use of such developing technologies, additional challenges present themselves when recognizing that these are more than just blind technical developments, they are reflections of the needs and interests of the company population. Such black-hole circumvention will bring with it increased security at a price: Transgressing upon the developing technologies fuel the lifeblood of the company — the people working there.

Read the full article at tmc.net.

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Microsoft releases out-of-band patch for Windows zero-day

By News, Patch ManagementNo Comments
A Windows zero-day affecting a wide swath of Microsoft products has been found in the Hacking Team data leak and Microsoft has released an out-of-band patch to fix the vulnerability.

Microsoft has released a rare, out-of-band patch to resolve a Windows zero-day vulnerability that could allow for privilege escalation or remote code execution.

MS15-078 has been added to the list of patches released as part of last week’s Patch Tuesday. The vulnerability is found in how the Windows Adobe Type Manager Library handles OpenType fonts and can be exploited with a specially crafted document or by luring a victim to a malicious web site.

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The patch has been released for all supported versions of Windows. However, Mooney Li, threat analyst for Trend Micro Inc., noted in a blog post that “the fixes in this bulletin supersede those in MS15-077, which included Windows Server 2003 — which is not a part of this patch. Therefore, it is likely that the now-unsupported server OS is also at risk.”

According to Robert Brown, director of services at Verismic Software Inc., “There are already reports coming in that this vulnerability is being actively exploited, so IT managers should be designing their repair strategy as their highest priority.”

“What will probably give the IT manager the largest headache is that this update requires a reboot in order to become effective,” Brown said. “For large, disperse environments, the reboot can be the hardest thing to achieve without receiving negative perception from users – and even with the patch installed, unless you reboot, you are still exposed, so a forced reboot is critical.”

Read the full article at searchsecurity.techtarget.com

Farewell to Flash: July’s Patch Tuesday Updates

By News, Patch Management, Patch TuesdayNo Comments

Zero Day (0-Day) – Adobe released yet another zero day update for their Flash plugin today. This is more serious than last month since Mozilla is ready to stop supporting Flash. As Mark Schmidt, head of Firefox Support, announced earlier today: “All versions of Flash are now blocked by default in Firefox.” He also said, “Nothing relies on Flash as much as malware.” Could this be the beginning of the end for the Flash plugin.

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You will also notice this month includes last month’s pulled patch “MS15-058.” Due to the heightened exposure of this vulnerability and despite its Important rating, increased testing should be conducted before deploying. After all, we don’t know why it was really pulled from June’s release.

A big thing on this month’s Microsoft release is the end-of-life for Windows Server 2003. After this month, it is not guaranteed any further security updates will be available. We encourage our customers to verify their environment is safe as possible by either ensuring all servers are patched or migrating to a supported server operating system.

All content from the following table will be added into Syxsense shortly. We recommend our clients consider the following updates for their remediation cycle this month: MS15-058, MS15-067, MS15-065, MS15-066, MS15-069 and MS15-070 by combining the vendor severity, the independent CVSS score and their current exposure. The most important update in this release is MS15-067 due to the CVSS score of 10. This is the highest and the most likely to impact our customers.

The CVSS scores range from 0 to 10. Vulnerabilities with a base score in the range 7.0-10.0 are High, those in the range 4.0-6.9 as Medium, and 0-3.9 as Low.

Patch Number

Executive Summary

Vulnerability Type

Vendor Severity

CVSS Score

MS15-058

Vulnerabilities in SQL Server Could Allow Remote Code Execution (3065718)

This security update resolves vulnerabilities in Microsoft SQL Server. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if an authenticated attacker runs a specially crafted query that is designed to execute a virtual function from a wrong address, leading to a function call to uninitialized memory. To exploit this vulnerability an attacker would need permissions to create or modify a database.

Remote Code Execution

Important

8.5

MS15-065

Security Update for Internet Explorer (3076321)

This security update resolves vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The most severe of the vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted webpage using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the current user. Customers whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than those who operate with administrative user rights.

Remote Code Execution

Critical

9.3

MS15-066

Vulnerability in VBScript Scripting Engine Could Allow Remote Code Execution (3072604)

This security update resolves a vulnerability in the VBScript scripting engine in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user visits a specially crafted website. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. If the current user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.

Remote Code Execution

Critical

9.3

MS15-067

Vulnerability in RDP Could Allow Remote Code Execution (3073094)

This security update resolves a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an attacker sends a specially crafted sequence of packets to a targeted system with Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) enabled. By default, RDP is not enabled on any Windows operating system. Systems that do not have RDP enabled are not at risk.

Remote Code Execution

Critical

10

MS15-068

Vulnerabilities in Windows Hyper-V Could Allow Remote Code Execution (3072000)

This security update resolves vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution in a host context if a specially crafted application is run by an authenticated and privileged user on a guest virtual machine hosted by Hyper-V. An attacker must have valid logon credentials for a guest virtual machine to exploit this vulnerability.

Remote Code Execution

Critical

7.7

MS15-069

Vulnerabilities in Windows Could Allow Remote Code Execution (3072631)

This security update resolves vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerabilities could allow Remote Code Execution if an attacker first places a specially crafted dynamic link library (DLL) file in the target user’s current working directory and then convinces the user to open an RTF file or to launch a program that is designed to load a trusted DLL file but instead loads the attacker’s specially crafted DLL file. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerabilities could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.

Remote Code Execution

Important

9.3

MS15-070

Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Could Allow Remote Code Execution (3072620)

This security update resolves vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office. The most severe of the vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Microsoft Office file. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerabilities could run arbitrary code in the context of the current user. Customers whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than those who operate with administrative user rights.

Remote Code Execution

Important

9.3

MS15-071

Vulnerability in Netlogon Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (3068457)

This security update resolves a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow elevation of privilege if an attacker with access to a primary domain controller (PDC) on a target network runs a specially crafted application to establish a secure channel to the PDC as a backup domain controller (BDC).

Elevation of Privilege

Important

4.1

MS15-072

Vulnerability in Windows Graphics Component Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (3069392)

This security update resolves a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow elevation of privilege if Windows Graphics component fails to properly process bitmap conversions. An authenticated attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could elevate privileges on a targeted system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full administrative rights. An attacker must first log on to the system to exploit this vulnerability.

Elevation of Privilege

Important

7.2

MS15-073

Vulnerability in Windows Kernel-Mode Driver Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (3070102)

This security update resolves vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerabilities could allow elevation of privilege if an attacker logs on to an affected system and runs a specially crafted application.

Elevation of Privilege

Important

7.2

MS15-074

Vulnerability in Windows Installer Service Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (3072630)

This security update resolves a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow elevation of privilege if the Windows Installer service improperly runs custom action scripts. An attacker must first compromise a user who is logged on to the target system to exploit the vulnerability. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full administrative rights.

Elevation of Privilege

Important

6.2

MS15-075

Vulnerabilities in OLE Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (3072633)

This security update resolves vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerabilities could allow elevation of privilege if used in conjunction with another vulnerability that allows arbitrary code to be run through Internet Explorer. Once the other vulnerability has been exploited, an attacker could then exploit the vulnerabilities addressed in this bulletin to cause arbitrary code to run at a medium integrity level.

Elevation of Privilege

Important

4.3

MS15-076

Vulnerability in Windows Remote Procedure Call Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (3067505)

This security update resolves a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability, which exists in Windows Remote Procedure Call (RPC) authentication, could allow elevation of privilege if an attacker logs on to an affected system and runs a specially crafted application. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of the affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.

Elevation of Privilege

Important

6.5

MS15-077

Vulnerability in ATM Font Driver Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (3077657)

This security update resolves a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow elevation of privilege if an attacker logs on to a target system and runs a specially crafted application. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could execute arbitrary code and take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.

Elevation of Privilege

Important

4.3

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Verismic Case Study: The Benefits of Syxsense

By NewsNo Comments

This post was recently featured on IT Channel Expert.

In this case study, Verismic details how UK-based managed services provider Plan B overcame the task of managing the IT environment for an oil and gas shipping and logistics firm.

After extensive research, Plan B chose Verismic’s Syxsense , which uses a unique agent-less tool that provides management over systems based on a network or connected via Virtual Private Network (VPN). Deployed and operated entirely from the cloud, the tool requires no server installation or configuration.

Find out how CMS benefited Plan B by downloading the case study below.

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Verismic Launches Risk-Reducing Patch Management Service to Secure Enterprise Environments

By News, Patch ManagementNo Comments

ALISO VIEJO, Calif.–(Marketwired – Jul 8, 2015) – Verismic, a global provider of IT management solutions delivered from the cloud, announces its new Patch Management Service as part of its award-winning agentless endpoint management tool, Syxsense, which will strengthen Verismic’s IT managed services offerings. Fast-moving threats and increasingly complex computing environments all contribute to the need for updated systems. Verismic’s Patch Management Service will provide immediate detection and remediation for Windows and third-party software updates.

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Keeping systems up-to-date with the latest patches is a critical and endless function of an already over-burdened IT department, but missing just one endpoint patch can leave an enterprise’s entire network at risk. In fact, the number one target of cyber criminals is unpatched vulnerabilities. Verismic’s Patch Management service helps companies protect their endpoints and comply with PCI/HIPAA requirements by determining which unsecured devices and missing patches present the most network liability and delivering a strategy to minimize risk. Finally, Patch Management can even expedite deploying patches to reduce or prevent “Zero Day Attacks” that expose undisclosed or unpatched endpoints before or on the same day a patch is expected to deploy.

“The Verismic team has discovered more than 200 crucial patch updates to be missing within a single network environment on many occasions,” says Verismic president and CEO, Ashley Leonard. “The strategic process we’ve developed for Patch Management will save our customers time, money and resources while ensuring an updated and secure enterprise environment.”

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Is BYOD DOA? Not for MSPs

By Managed Service Providers, NewsNo Comments

by Ashley Leonard, president and CEO of Verismic

Driven by the introduction of new technology and the desire to increase employee productivity, employers are embracing Bring Your Own Device [BYOD] policies. 2016, Gartner expects 38% of companies to stop providing devices to workers. Whether in the office, at home or working remotely, BYOD allows for effortless device connectivity and exchange of data and information anywhere, anytime.

The benefits are clear for companies; increased flexibility and productivity for staff, and increased profitability for the business. Employees gain privileges in mobility and freedom to choose from a wide range of devices and applications. Over 70% of mobile professionals will conduct their work on personal smart devices by 2018, according to Forrester Research. For MSPs, the opportunities are growing significantly.

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While there are benefits to employees using personal devices, organisations are experiencing numerous challenges. The complexity of managing multiple-platform devices obscures the movement’s benefits, forcing companies to weigh the costs of providing secure access to a corporate network and implementing measures to avoid potential hazards.

The real inhibitor for uptake is not necessarily the security implications of applying a BYOD solution or policy. It’s about balancing costs between increased flexibility versus the management and control of personally owned devices.

Read the full article at microscope.uk

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Verismic Wins Gold And Silver In Network Products Guide Prestigious 2015 IT World Awards

By Awards, NewsNo Comments
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Global Software Company Receives IT Industry’s Highest Awards for Innovative Cloud-based Software Solutions

ALISO VIEJO, Calif. (July 1, 2015)Verismic, a global provider of IT management solutions delivered from the cloud, is proud to announce it has been named Gold Winner for Most Innovative IT Software in the 10th Annual IT World Awards by Network Products Guide, the industry’s leading technology research and advisory guide. In addition to receiving the highest honor for its innovative Syxsense —a cloud-based, multi-tenant solution revolutionizing the way IT professionals engage in

endpoint device management—Verismic was also awarded Silver in both the Asset Management and Best IT Company of the Year categories. Announced June 29th in San Francisco, these coveted industry accolades are considered the world’s premier information technology awards honoring achievements in every facet of the IT industry.

“Such high recognition from Network Products Guide is a true accomplishment,” says Verismic President and CEO Ashley Leonard, the technology entrepreneur behind groundbreaking solutions that have garnered prestigious recognition and numerous awards since the company’s founding in 2012. “It is especially flattering to have Verismic’s CMS recognized in these prestigious software categories less than one year after its launch.”

In a few short years, Verismic has grown tremendously, forging meaningful relationships with like-minded partners—from MSPs and IT support teams to law enforcement agencies and school districts—all of whom share a commitment to excellence. With highly reputed products like CMS, which requires only a web browser to deploy and can easily and quickly scale up to as many as 30,000 endpoints within an enterprise, clients throughout the U.S., Europe, Brazil and Australia are praising Verismic for its cutting-edge solutions and outstanding customer service.

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“In addition to providing our customers with award-winning solutions to help achieve mission-critical goals and objectives, Verismic takes great pride in pioneering cost-effective approaches to enhancing enterprise security and reducing energy consumption,” says Leonard, whose organization also developed and launched the revolutionary remote Power Manager software. “Awards like these from Network Products Guide encourage us to confidently move forward and conscientiously innovate for the greater good.”

For more information about Verismic’s innovative and award-winning Syxsense, visit www.syxsense.com.

ABOUT VERISMIC: Verismic Software, Inc. is a global industry leader providing cloud-based IT management technology and green solutions focused on enabling greater efficiency, cost-savings and security control for users, all while engaging in endpoint management. Headquartered in Aliso Viejo, Calif., Verismic is a growing and dynamic organization with offices in four countries and 12 partners in nine countries. Over the past two years, Verismic has worked with more than 150 companies ranging from 30 to 35,000 endpoints delivering a variety of solutions for organizations of all sizes as well as managed service providers (MSPs). Verismic’s software portfolio includes the first-of-its-kind agentless, Syxsense ; Power Manager; Software Packaging and Password Reset. For more information, visit www.verismic.com.