Page 3 - Skype Buzz Q3 2016

2nd Quarter 2016
Solving the Application Network Disconnect
Branko Miskov
More and more of your business critical applications have moved to the cloud. You might have started with Salesforce
and slowly added more applications like Skype for Business or O ce 365. ese apps that once lived in your data centre or on your desktop are now
in the cloud. is is not only indicative of today’s environment, but also of more to come.
Since migrating to the cloud, one of the biggest challenges we’re hearing from our customers is that applications no longer behave reliably or consistently. When applications reside on your network you have a large amount of bandwidth and resources that you can control to improve performance. But once you move to the cloud you introduce a number of other factors that can potentially impede the performance of that application and adversely a ect user Quality of Experience (QX).
And once QX is impacted, employee adoption su ers. Which isn’t really surprising. Would you rather deal with dropped call a er dropped call using Skype for Business or just pick up your mobile phone? If an application doesn’t perform reliably it forces users to move to other methods or apps that will get the job done. is is one of IT’s biggest problems - ‘Shadow IT.’
Generally, when we talk about improving Quality of Experience today the focus is on tra c shaping within the network to prioritize applications
and ensure bandwidth. A lot of organizations
do this today, they create QoS policies in order to prioritize and safeguard that app by ensuring unsanctioned tra c doesn’t interfere. Which is a viable solution if the problem exists within the network, but troubleshooting applications in the cloud can be much more challenging.
THE DISCONNECT
In the IT environment there is group responsible for managing applications in the cloud and, typically, a separate group that is responsible for managing the network. When a problem occurs each group has a piece of the puzzle, but are le without a complete picture and can only see
one part of the problem. is is when the nger pointing begins and regardless of whether it is the network causing the issue, it is usually targeted as the rst source.
Enterprises are struggling to control cloud- based applications because they simply don’t have the right tools. ere is no visibility beyond the network edge. e biggest sore spot for these IT teams is having to troubleshoot the application and network separately in an attempt to pinpoint where the issue is. Is it the application or is it the network? And not only that, but how do you x it? A er you gure it all out, the time to resolve can take 3 or more hours.
CLOSING THE GAP
So what’s the secret? e key to ensuring Quality of Experience is gaining end-to-end visibility and control across the entire application path including both the network and the service. You need to be able to gather data not only from the network, but from the application itself in order to provide the same level of visibility as with in- house datacenter apps.
If you can correlate application data with network information for a complete end-to-end view of tra c, down to the device level, you will be able to pinpoint and quickly resolve issues before they adversely impact the network. n
SkypeBuzz by Telecom Reseller 3 Keeping your Lync/Skype Business Environment safe from Ransomware
by Branko Miskov, VP of Product Marketing at Exinda (www.exinda. com)
WHAT IS RANSOMWARE?
Ransomware is any type of malicious
so ware that infects a computer system restricting access in some way, demanding
that the user pay a “ransom” to remove the restriction. “Locky” is a type of Ransomware that is relatively new to the scene. “Locky”,
as an example, encrypts the users’ les using AES encryption and then demands payment through some form of digital currency service to decrypt the user les. Ransomware targets large amounts of le extensions, and even more importantly can encrypt data on unmapped network shares. Ransomware can completely change the name of your les in addition
to encrypting and moving them, making it very di cult to restore your data. As if this wasn’t enough, ransomware can also delete your Shadow Volume Copies - disallowing
David Bergquist
them to be used to restore les that have been encrypted! Nasty stu , to say the least. So how does it propagate? Ransomware is primarily distributed via emails including attachments; however, it can also be distributed via fake update popups such as Flash Flayer, Adobe Reader, or Java Runtime, when browsing web sites.
We are a Business, we are safe!
A common misconception is that this type of malware targets single users. However, businesses are commonly targeted and just as
susceptible to ransomware - if not more so. Businesses, or course, host high volumes of users which increases the chance that someone may open an e-mail containing one of these attack vectors. Furthermore, business host
and house personal computers (PC’s) and servers. Some aspects of businesses cannot function properly without computers or the data they contain. is is where ransomware takes advantage making users and businesses alike pay a fee to return to normal operations. e thought is to make the fee an amount that is feasible where the business would end up losing more if they didn’t pay to have access to their data. If precautions haven’t been taken, it only requires a single user in the organization opening an email containing one of these
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by, UC Engineer at Enabling Technologies Corp. (www. enablingtechcorp.com)