Last week's announcement of Sophos and Cowbell Partnership

Sophos has partnered with Cowbell Cyber Inc. to provide businesses with an easier way to access cyber insurance. The partnership will allow our clients to directly share their security health information with Cowbell to facilitate optimal premium quotes and policies and gain access to Cowbell insurance through Sophos.

The partnership is a further step in Sophos’ journey to support its customers in the efforts to mitigate cyber risk. Specifically, Sophos endpoint customers will be able to ‘opt-in’ to share with Cowbell their endpoint security health status from the Sophos Central platform, using a secure API. The partnership will also allow Cowbell to offer its cyber insurance coverage to Sophos customers in the U.S. through the opt-in sharing of endpoint health security data.

The benefits of the partnership include easier access to cyber insurance for businesses, optimal premium quotes and policies, and the ability to share endpoint security health status with Cowbell to facilitate optimal premium quotes and policies.

Do we really need ChatGPT?

The majority of my posts this week appear to be about ChatGPT and the excitement of what this type of program addition is going to do for us, the other shoe has to drop and have us take a long look at what  the entrance of this type of applications will do to our crativity and capabilities. Nicholas Sutrich wrote an article from this viewpoint that you may want to read called:ChatGPT is everywhere these days, but do we really need it?

He makes the argument on a result of embracing this technology can't ultimately dumb us down and actually have a negative result rather than being a tool that can free you up to make you more efficient and be able to process more data in a shorter time. Hmm! I wonder what direction we will take?

SharePoint Online Gets Closer to Azure AD

We are continuing to see a trend with quite a few of our clients to replace their on site servers and moving to the cloud to share their files with others in their organizations. With the increased security being placed on this practice we are much safer than before for outside risks.

I have recently run across an article from office365itpros.com that discusses the closer integration of Azure AD B2B and SharePoint Services. It describes the need to review your Azure B2B Invitation Manager policies. This is the list that describes the allow and denial of access of domains. This is worth a quick look. I have included a quick list from their site that includes what this article contains.

Table of Contents

• ·         Azure AD B2B Collaboration and Guest Accounts for SharePoint Sharing
• ·         Rationalization Around Azure AD
• ·         Time to Review Applicable Policies
• ·         Review Guest Accounts Too

What is B2B in Azure AD? - B2B collaboration is a capability of Azure AD External Identities that lets you collaborate with users and partners outside of your organization. With B2B collaboration, an external user is invited to sign into your Azure AD organization using their own credentials.

What are the benefits of Azure B2B? - Azure AD B2B can also benefit your organization in other ways.

• ·         It's easy to invite guests and internal users quickly. ...
• ·         Guest users/collaborators can self-serve. ...
• ·         Use policies to securely share your apps and services. ...
• ·         Application and group owners can manage their own guest users. ...
• ·         Integrate with SharePoint and OneDrive.

Sophos Demonstrates How to Make ChatGPT a Cybersecurity Co-Pilot

I've already talked about Microsoft's new copilot applications and now they're working with their desktop apps, here's an article- press release from Sophos discussing GPT-3 which is the language model behind ChatGPT in how it might be an integral part of deciphering malicious activity found in their data lake. this isn't quite there yet, but this may be an integral part of being able to quickly and more precisely determine if an attack has happened and then help with the possible mitigation of the event. It's worth a quick read if you are interested in this subject.

As a hoot, let’s generate an article from Bing Chat!

In playing around with the Bing Chat program I wanted to see just what it could do. I created a request as follows: 

Bing Chat responded with parsing the request:

And the result:

Cute!

So, you want to get out ahead of this ChatGPT craze?

In this industry, we always seem to be in a learning mode. Here is another instance of new technology getting a lot of focus and me sitting here thinking about whether I want to go ahead and get on board and start learning more about it or waiting to see if it really is going to be as big as it seems that it will be based on the amount of chatter around the product.

I came across an article this morning with the title: 10 of the best ChatGPT courses you can take for free this week that provides some links to free courses that you can take. The links provide access to all video content and will at least get you started in the right direction. Good Luck!

YouTubeTV Price Increase

Having made the leap to cutting the cord a couple of years ago, I still don't regret the move.

We have seen price increases across the board now with most of the services, so it seems like a great time to reevaluate all the services that we are using, and maybe, not using.

I have acquired quite a few online digital services for my online entertainment content. I listen to quite a few audio books and I was quite lucky to be able to take advantage of my early membership with Audible to have latch on to the 5 credit per month at the 2 credit price. They don't even offer more than 2 credits anymore! This kind of membership allows me to quickly take on a new author's book series and consume it. This is not even on the table.

We also have the Kindle Unlimited service. This is probably one that we could dial back on but my wife is starting to better understand that service. So it is another one that for now we will keep but watch if it continues to be something we take advantage of.

Now back to what originally started this article! YouTubeTV. It is my core TV service so it has to stay in as well as the 4K option. With the increase in the primary and the decrease in the 4k I still have a net $2.00's savings. This is a no brainer. However, we have Hallmark Movies and I think this is going to go. my wife just like gave me confirmation. This service will be terminated. Sorry Hallmark!

Amazon Prime has to be a keeper as well. It has a couple of series that I enjoy and the other benefits of service makes it a service to keep as well.

Hulu is a strange one that we don't visit much. With YouTubeTV giving us the opportunity to record anything with unlimited storage, why would we? That is another expense that I’m having a hard time justifying.

Netflix we use a lot for comedy specials and of course movie's so I am pretty much stuck there.

Peacock is another example where special content makes you come back.

Acorn has become our go to service for our favorite TV series to watch. We just love British shows and believe it or not, this is the least expensive of all of the services. I have to keep this one, too.

Add them all up and I really still feel that we are getting good value for our money compared to what cable offers. l am still quite happy with our decision to cut cable television from our lives.

How about you?

Note: Hallmark Movies gone! Hulu is still making the cut!

A more complete look at the Microsoft Office 365 Copilot product

Microsoft 365 Copilot

The big release yesterday from microsoft was a series of videos showing a future release product called Microsoft 365 Copilot. A series of videos showing how this new AI application can help you in many of the Microsoft O365 Apps to automate the creation of documentation products from previous examples of work, documents, messages and more. The automation being presented is smooth and slick but how well is it really going to do the job for you? 

I have included a video of the it being used in a Word Document creation scenerio for you to view. Looks neat if it will really do what they are showing.

New Waze Configuration Feature

Wow, this seemed to be the big news item yesterday! For those of you driving EV cars the new Waze feature allows the app to be configured with your car model. Why is that important? With this new piece of information you will now be shown EV stations that have your car's correct EV Connector at the EV filling station. Google states that their local map editors will keep the database up to date with the correct EV connector information.

From PortableApps.com: Notepad++ Portable 8.5 (developer's text editor) Released

A new version of Notepad++ Portable has been released. It's the handy Notepad++ text editor packaged as a portable app so you can do your development on the go. It has all the same great features of Notepad++ including support for multiple languages and an extensive plugin system, but there's nothing to install. It's packaged in PortableApps.com Format so it can easily integrate with the PortableApps.com Platform. And it's open source and completely free.

Happy Pi Day!

Pi (often represented by the lower-case Greek letter π), one of the most well-known mathematical constants, is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.  For any circle, the distance around the edge is a little more than three times the distance across.

Typing π into a calculator and pressing ENTER will yield the result 3.141592654, not because this value is exact, but because a calculator’s display is often limited to 10 digits.  Pi is an irrational number (a decimal with no end and no repeating pattern) that is most often approximated with the decimal 3.14 or the fraction 22/7.

How are you going to celebrate this special day? I think I need to read a book that I have never read called Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi

Teams Adds Explicit Consent for Recorded Meetings

In January, Microsoft released a post talking about the road map for Microsoft Teams to include explicit recording consent for Teams meetings. This appears to be a policy that needs to be applied.

The Teams’ meeting window will then request an explicit consent of all participants to be recorded. Before a user gives consent the user’s audio, video and screenshare/consent- share won't be captured in the meeting recording.

The new feature is a computer-enforced version with some added intelligence. This will help to provide a more consistent experience for your company’s meetings.

This can’t be done through the Teams admin center today, so you’ll need to update Teams meeting policies with PowerShell. The policy setting is per-user and applies to the meeting organizer. After the setting is enabled in a meeting policy, any meeting organized by accounts assigned to the policy will use explicit consent for recorded meetings.

For more information on how to do this take a look at this article by Tony Redmond of Office 365 IT Pros.

Email Phishing is continuing source used by scam artists to get your money…

An interesting newsletter publication from Bloomberg supporting them scammers are impersonating Barclays, shell, and other entities in effort to steal your money going towards investments. They are reporting that thieves have walked off with $3.8 billion in reported thefts last year alone. Here's a link if you want to learn more about this method of fraud.

EOL Notice: Windows Server 2012R2 – Oct 10, 2023

Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 will end on October 10, 2023. After this date, these products will no longer receive security updates, non-security updates, bug fixes, technical support, or online technical content updates. Microsoft has migration guidance for both cloud and on-premises solutions. Jan 3, 2023

This is a good time to sit down and take a look at how you are using your current server in your network environment. We are seeing many of our smaller clients that use a server primarily as a file storage device that provides a centralized access for all of their employees and we can make a very good case for replacing the server with some of the cloud services that you may already be using, specifically with the Microsoft Office 365 environment.

We have had great success in moving some of our clients from an on premise server to SharePoint Cloud with the Office 365 licensing environment. SharePoint is available if you have Office 365 Business Basic or Business Standard licensing. We would use Azure for your authentication of your users in place of your server so that we can set up the right controls for accessing SharePoint file structure. It takes a little forethought in designing the best control but this is all part of the services that we can provide you during the migration from your on premise server to a cloud SharePoint environment.

Be sure to give PAconnect a call to give you a free evaluation of what the best solution for you would be.

Wi-Fi 6: Everything you need to know

Want an overview of the new WI-FI 6 designation and what you can expect when upgrading to the new standard? Here is an article that will help you understand what to expect.

Here is a quick list of what the upgrade provides:

• Faster transfer speeds between devices
• More throughput for connected systems
• Better performance with many connected devices
• Less device battery drain when connected

I'd take any one of these, but to take advantage of the new standard both the access point and the device connecting to it must have the new WI-Fi 6 configuration.

CRN Post:Sophos CTO Joe Levy On Surging MDR Demand And Endpoint Security Updates

Managed detection and response (MDR) ‘continues to be the fastest-growing offering in the history of Sophos as a company,’ Levy tells CRN.

Services Revolution

Since transitioning its managed threat response offering to a managed detection and response (MDR) service at the end of November, Sophos has seen strong demand that’s not expected to be slowing down anytime soon, Sophos CTO Joe Levy told CRN. The cybersecurity giant disclosed a suite of new endpoint security capabilities that will help feed into the MDR service — as well as the underlying extended detection and response (XDR) platform that helps to power the MDR. The updates include new account health check capabilities and “adaptive active adversary protection,” which offers the ability to disrupt attacks that are in progress and “buy more time for responders,” Levy said.

Ransomware on the Rise

A CSO article suggests that cyberattack tactics rise up as ransomeware payouts increase. The author goes on to describe the different modes of attack and what to look out for. Worth a read!

News: Sophos named a Leader in 2022 Gartner®️ Magic Quadrant™️ for Endpoint Protection Platforms

By Anthony Merry   news.sophos.com   March 2, 2023

We are thrilled to announce that Sophos has, once again, been named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP). This marks our 13th consecutive recognition as a Leader.

A Leader, again

We believe a key factor contributing to our continued Leader position is our relentless focus on innovation. While threats and operating environments have evolved over the last 13 reports, Sophos has continued to keep customers ahead of even the most advanced attacks.

Sophos’ services and products are powered by Sophos X-Ops, our cross-domain threat intelligence unit that brings together deep expertise across the attack environment. Armed with this deep understanding, we are able to build powerful, effective defenses against even the most advanced threats. Unparalleled ransomware protection, deep learning artificial intelligence, exploit prevention, and active adversary mitigations in our endpoint protection stop attacks cold.

Further advancing our cybersecurity leadership with the recent launch of the newly enhanced Sophos MDR service, Sophos is the first endpoint security vendor to deliver MDR across both its own product portfolio as well as customers’ existing security deployments. Sophos MDR now integrates telemetry from third-party endpoint, firewall, cloud, identity, email, and other security technologies as part of the Sophos Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, further accelerating threat detection and response.

Most trusted MDR service

Sophos MDR is the world’s most trusted MDR service, protecting more than 15,000 organizations against advanced threats that technology alone cannot stop. It addresses the growing need for flexible managed services and threat response options, meeting customers – ranging from small businesses to large corporations – where they are.

Learn more about our service and speak with our security advisers to discuss how Sophos MDR can help you.

Double recognition is a double honor

Our Gartner Magic Quadrant for EPP recognition follows Sophos being named a 2021 Gartner® Peer Insights™ Customers’ Choice for Endpoint Protection Platforms.

To us, being recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for EPP and named a Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for EPP is a tremendous honor and, we believe, testament to the quality of our protection and service we provide.

Read the full report at https://www.sophos.com/en-us/report/magic-quadrant-endpoint-protection-platforms

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Update on Recent Security Incident

Dear LastPass Customer, We are writing today to update you on our recent security incident disclosed on December 22. We have now completed an exhaustive investigation and have not seen any threat actor activity since October 26. Earlier today, we posted an update to our blog with new findings and important information, including what happened and the actions we have taken, what data was accessed, what we have done to secure LastPass, actions we are recommending customers take to protect themselves or their businesses, and what you can expect from us going forward. Given the volume of information we are sharing in the blog post, and to better assist our customers with their own incident-response efforts, we have prepared a Security Bulletin specifically for our Free, Premium, and Families consumer users to help guide you through a review of important LastPass settings designed to help secure your account by confirm best practices are being followed. Please review the Security Bulletin and make any necessary changes to your account. In sharing these additional details today and in our approach going forward, we are determined to do right by our customers and communicate more effectively. We thank you for your patience and continued support of LastPass. The Team at LastPass