The January 2024 Edition

Welcome back and a Happy New Year to all of The Edge7 Networker's readers. We have reached the end of January...finally! January can seem like a long month - but it's also a month for planning & implementing new strategies for the year ahead. As we take a look back at January 2024, some familiar themes we saw last year are still popping up - AI; SASE; new compliance & regulatory statutes. Cybersecurity is still the key focus for many businesses, IT professionals and IT vendors with making sure users, data, networks and applications are protected to the highest level against the ever-evolving threat landscape.

With that being said, let's take a look at what was happening in January 2024:

1. Statistic of the Month

Four-in-ten employees sacked over email security breaches as firms tackle “truly staggering” increase in attacks?

Research from cyber security firm Egress found that 94% of organisations globally have experienced a serious email security incident in the past 12 months.

"58% of organizations have experienced account takeover incidents in the last 12 months, and 79% of these started with a phishing email that harvested an employee’s credentials, so it’s no wonder that phishing attacks and compromised accounts are causing concern for our cyber security leaders.“

It seems bosses are now beginning to take a tougher stance on employees caught out by phishing attacks, the study found.

In a staggering finding, just over half of employees caught out by phishing attacks were disciplined over the last year, Egress said, while four-in-ten were fired. Around one-quarter left their roles voluntarily after falling victim to a phishing attack. In outbound email incidents, two thirds of those affected were disciplined, let go, or chose to leave the organisation.

Guess for some businesses it really was a layer 8 problem....

2. Tip of the Month

Incident Response. When it comes to cybersecurity incidents in the recent years, there has been a shift from an 'I hope it doesn't happen to us' attitude; to an 'It's not a matter of if, but when' outlook. And it's the right way to think!?

With AI and cybersecurity solutions storming the market, tools and technology are providing greater insights & data into networks than ever before. Sometimes, too much data. Teams are often swamped with alerts.??

Automated incident response tools aim to find and show SOC teams only relevant, actionable alerts, suppressing those that correlate to benign activity. The technology can also use automated,?policy-based playbooks?to resolve common, lower-risk incidents and suggest operator next steps for higher-risk?cyberthreats.?

Getting to an automated incident reponse can be a journey, especially for those on a zero trust roadmap. ?

Our top tip when it comes to incident response is to have a plan.

Edge7 Networks offer a variety of solutions and services from our SOC ranging from Security Managed Services to an Incident Response Service depending on the level of support you require. We can manage it all for you, or if keeping it in-house is your preferred method, we're only a call away if an incident occurs.??

Our incident response services allows you to leverage our SOC to investigate, remediate and take action against an incident as it occurs.??

Read more about incident response automation: What it is and how it works in the TechTarget guide below:

3. Quote of the Month

Ireland's AI Advisory Council met for the first time in January.

The group was established to provide independent expert advice to the Government on artificial intelligence policy, with a specific focus on building public trust and promoting the development of trustworthy, person-centred AI.

Its first role will be providing expert guidance, insights and recommendations in response to specific requests from the Government.

Its second role will be developing and delivering its own workplan of advice on issues in artificial intelligence policy.

The AI Advisory Council will support the delivery of this as an agile sounding board for Government on harnessing these rapidly developing technologies for the common good

AI certainly isn't going anywhere and one of the biggest concerns to come out of the emergence of AI into the market last year was the lack of regulation and guidance on the use of and protection against AI. AI has been described as the good, the bad and the ugly, depending on the conversation, and rightly so. We look forward to seeing what comes from the AI Advisory Council in the time to come.

4. Article of the Month

You may have seen the news earlier this month that HPE plans to acquire Juniper Networks – an exciting announcement as a HPE Aruba Networking partner and SD-WAN enthusiasts. How it will play out and merge together will be very interesting to watch.??

Juniper CEO notes “This combination will supercharge our offerings in AI-native networking. Together, we will accelerate innovation at every layer: compute, storage and networking; silicon, systems and software; campus and branch; data centre; and the wide area network."

Read more about it here:

5. Video of the Month

Speaking of being SD-WAN enthusiasts; the Aruba EdgeConnect team have another great lightboard video out taking a look at automating EdgeConnect SD-WAN with APIs.??

If SD-WAN or EdgeConnect is of interest, Aruba Networking's lightboard series comes highly recommended from the Edge7 team:

Access the full playlist here:

6. Downloadable of the Month

SASE & SSE were the most asked about solutions in 2023. IT leaders wanted to learn more about what they are; how networking and security technologies combine within the solutions; how to implement SASE/SSE; what platform would be best for their business - and much more.

To help answer some of these questions, the Edge7 Networks team put together a digital document room full of article links, eBooks, guides and whitepapers around our SASE/SSE offerings.

Take a look around and access some light bedtime reading on all things SASE & SSE below:

7. Event of the Month

Edge7 Networks have an exciting event coming up in Q1 taking place in London alongside HPE Aruba Networking.

Aruba Networking has undergone some exciting acquisitions and changes in recent years and as proud partners, Edge7 Networks are aking a deep-dive into some of the innovative solutions they have to offer.?

From EdgeConnect SD-WAN & Unified SASE to the new advancements made to Aruba Central, this is an unmissable event to discover how you can accelerate your edge to cloud networking journey.?

If interested, please get in touch with the Edge7 Networks team for more information.