The official Shavlik Technologies blog where our employees share their views on the market, industry trends and where we highlight company and product announcements.
Well, this is new. Yesterday, Lulz Security and Anonymous, two of the premiere hacking groups, have announced that they are teaming up in an effort they are calling “Operation: Anti-Security” or “AntiSec” for short. (For all of you that follow news on twitter the hashtag #AntiSec will be the one of note).
To quote yesterday’s release by LulzSec (http://pastebin.com/9KyA0E5v):
Welcome to Operation Anti-Security (#AntiSec) – we encourage any vessel, large or small, to open fire on any government or agency that crosses their path. We fully endorse the flaunting of the word “AntiSec” on any government website defacement or …
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One of the best front lines of defense for the computers on corporate network (or computers for home users) is antivirus software. However, not all antivirus solutions are created equally, and antivirus vendors are challenged with trying to keep the operating footprint small and still catch the viruses, threats and malware.
Some other key things to look for in an antivirus solution is the ability to detect on behavior analytics. This can be referred to as “heuristics” but it allows for additional detection beyond signature recognition. Signature recognition provides a very solid methodology in detection but, if an exact match is …
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As most of you have heard by now, Shavlik announced on Monday that we are being acquired by VMware. This announcement coincided with Microsoft’s TechEd conference in Atlanta and all week we’ve been inundated with questions about what this means for our SCUPdates™ product. The answer is yes: we will continue to sell and support SCUPdates.
SCUPdates delivers what Microsoft doesn’t: a way to leverage a single SCCM workflow for deploying updates for both Microsoft and, perhaps more importantly, non-Microsoft applications. SCUPdates allows you to leave researching and creating patch data to Shavlik – we’ve been doing it …
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I am happy to announce that VMware has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Shavlik Technologies. Our two companies have a long-term relationship built upon VMware GO™ (www.vmwarego.com), our joint SaaS based IT Management solution. VMware GO assists SMBs with rapid deployment and management of VMware vSphere, the VMware Hypervisor and general IT management of both physical and virtual computers. VMware GO has attracted over 200,000 registered users creating more than 20,000 VMware Hypervisors and 120,000 Virtual machines.
Shavlik and VMware share a vision of IT Management for now and the future. A vision of delivering solid, easy to use …
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Let’s say for a moment that I was a hacker and I wanted to gain access to information about a large corporation’s customer base. The path that lies in front of me is relatively clear, I want to find the easiest way to gain access to the information without arousing suspicion and try to penetrate the security around it in a manner that doesn’t implicate me if the breach should be identified. Simple enough, isn’t it?
Now that I’ve plotted my “how” I want to get the information and defined my “what” I want to get, I now turn my attention …
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As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Shavlik’s solutions enhance the Microsoft platform to simplify IT management. One of the biggest threats and challenges that we are seeing today in our customers’ environment is managing non-Microsoft (third party) patches. Microsoft’s products are not the only ones at risk. In fact, third party applications such as Adobe, Apple, and Google are now the leading cause of most vulnerabilities on the network.
If you are attending Microsoft TechEd in Atlanta next week, please stop by and say hello at the Shavlik booth #1910 and enter your name for a chance to win an Xbox …
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Microsoft has released their advanced notification for the May 2011 edition of Patch Tuesday. This Patch Tuesday marks a "light" Patch Tuesday as expected. Microsoft’s release cadence for security bulletins are typically heavy months followed by light months. With this month’s release, administrators can take a big sigh of relief after a record-breaking April Patch Tuesday. In April, Microsoft released 17 bulletins addressing 64 vulnerabilities. Both numbers were a record for a single Microsoft release.
For the May 2011 Patch Tuesday, Microsoft is planning to release 2 security bulletins addressing 3 vulnerabilities.
Security Bulletin Breakdown:
2 Security Bulletins
1 Security Bulletin rated …
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In today’s office environment, using Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) for patch management is simply not enough to bolster network security. Microsoft applications are not the only ones at risk. Third-party applications—such as Adobe, Apple or Google—are the cause of most current vulnerabilities. As a result, organizations are forced to dedicate additional resources to ensure comprehensive coverage.
Consider the experience of Ed Bruce, the sole member of HarborOne Credit Union’s IT department who was responsible for patching 475 PCs and 125 servers across 15 New England region offices. Knowing the risks his company faced from improperly patched client-side applications, he …
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The other day, I was speaking with a customer who described this last Patch Tuesday which turned into a week of patching as a “lovely Holiday gift,” and he can’t wait to see what’s in store for next week’s Patch Tuesday. – I got a good laugh out of it even though I realized the pain that this gentleman had been put through. Over the weekend, I had a moment of creativity where I decided to let his comment shape my blog for the week. I know, I know… it’s May, but the holiday comment brought me back to the holiday …
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If you think about your computer’s password like a toothbrush — you must use it every day but don’t share it with anybody else. Then compare your antivirus software to deodorant. Everybody should use it. Period.
The Internet continues to be infiltrated daily with newly introduced and existing spyware, malware, bots, rootkits and worms that are not being cleaned up. Today’s top threats continue to prove this point. Stats report that the top threats being exploited this month are:
Backdoor.Tidserv
This was initially detected in 2008 as a Trojan that uses an advanced rootkit to hide itself. The current variant is infecting …
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