Volume III, Issue 8 (August, 2017)

News & Notes

Join us to celebrate 15 years of TRUE IT Solutions on
Thursday, October 12th, 2017 from 3:00 to 10:00 p.m.

Join us Thursday, Oct 12, 2017, at Pinstripes-Edina for an afternoon of technical sessions, and an evening of fun, including casino games, bocce ball, bowling, great food and drinks, and awesome prize giveaways. From 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. will be technical sessions with Corey Nachreiner and Ryan Orsi of WatchGuard, and Tony Klein and Mike Bentle of Cisco.

A social hour will be held from 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., and from 6:00 – 10:00 p.m. we will be hosting a casino night, along with bocce ball and bowling.

To sign up, please email events@veruscorp.com and indicate whether you plan to attend the technical sessions from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., the party from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., or both.

For more information, visit here.

 

 

Thank you to our sponsors for helping us make this a spectacular experience for you.

PLATINUM SPONSOR

GOLD SPONSOR

 

 

 

A Few Spots Still Remain for Aug. 31 Advanced Firebox Training

Verus invites you to join us and WatchGuard’s Ryan Poutre on Thursday, August 31, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. for a complimentary Firebox Advanced Training course!

The course curriculum includes a detailed look at Firebox’s new networking and management features.

Agenda

Advanced Training

• Configuration and Management Basics
• Services: Gateway Anti-Virus | Intrusion Prevention Service | Application Control | Reputation Enabled Defense | WebBlocker | Logging and Reporting Server | VLAN | Access Points
• Dimension Command
• Threat Detection and Response (TDR)

A free continental breakfast will be provided.

To register, please email events@veruscorp.com with the subject “Firebox Training,” or call Steve Clem at 763.354.2266 with any questions.

For more information visit here.

 

Survey Winners Announced for April through July 2017

In a continued effort to improve our customer service and technical skills at Verus, we are announcing the winners of our monthly Customer Survey drawing for the last few months.

Each month, Verus does a random drawing of all customers who filled out the customer satisfaction survey in that month, and the winner receives a prize worth $50 – whether that’s a drone, a personal firewall, a gift card to a local business – the prizes will change each month to keep people interested.

April 2017 – Erik Peterson of Rainey Roads.

May 2017 – Chad Wicklund, Parsons Electric.

June 2017 – Chelsea Meyer, Metro OBGYN

July 2017 – Gary Trudeau, Hines.

 

Verus Company Picnic a smashing success!

Verus employees gathered at the Rice Creek Chain of Lakes park on Friday, August 4th. In addition to perfect weather and great food, everyone enjoyed the opportunity to sport some new Verus swag and play some bean bag toss on our new Verus boards. Even the next generation of Verus employees joined in the fun.

 

 

 

 

I Didn’t Know You Did That!

Patch Management: The Oft Forgotten Layer of Security for your Network

On the heels of WannaCry and Petya ransomware, there’s suddenly a lot more discussion of patch management and how it works into a company’s overall security strategy.

Put simply, patch management is something that many companies overlook, either due to time constraints or cost. But realistically, it’s the first defense to such attacks. Cyber criminals look for the exploits and flaws in an operating system or software, and patch management is the first step to prevent these holes in the system from being exposed.

The other issue with patch management is focusing only on the servers, and not the workstations. If the workstation isn’t patched, something as simple as a thumb drive with ransomware code on it can take down your network and its data.

While Microsoft offers a free software to help with patch management, the one used by many companies, WSUS 3.2, is near end of life, and is only being sustained through 2020 to give companies time to upgrade their networks to Windows Server 2016.

Verus offers patch management to our customers, involving licensing a software agent on every workstation and server. If you don’t want to be in the business of patch management, and don’t want to use out-of-date free software to do it, then you can rely on Verus for this service.

To find out more about Verus patch management, contact us today at sales@veruscorp.com or call 763.354.2200.

 

 

Industry News

Tegile is Named Visionary in the Gartner Magic
Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays for the Third Year in a Row

Tegile Systems, the leading provider of flash-driven storage arrays for databases, virtualized server and virtual desktop environments, today announced it was designated in the Visionary quadrant of the July 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays report. This marks the third consecutive year Gartner has named Tegile as a Visionary in this report. Tegile’s ability to offer interoperability, flexibility of options, and a cloud infrastructure solution with IntelliFlash Cloud Platform, has led Gartner to recognize Tegile arrays as “the most extensive in the market.” Gartner also notes the company’s “highly compact arrays which make Tegile one of the few unified SSA offerings.” Gartner concludes by highlighting Tegile’s extremely high customer satisfaction as a strength. To this end, Tegile offers its customers competitive five-year SSD reliability, IntelliCare support and 99.999% availability guarantees.

Arris’ $800 Million Brocade/Ruckus Purchase Hits Detour

Arris International said its confident that its $800 million purchase from Brocade of Ruckus Wireless and the ICX switch business will eventually go through, despite an unexpected regulatory hurdle. The Arris purchase, announced in February, was contingent on the closure of Brocade’s acquisition of Broadcom, which was announced in November and executed to close at the end of July. But in an 8-K filing to the SEC made earlier this week (originally reported on by Multichannel News), Brocade said that it had jointly agreed with Broadcom to refile their regulatory application with the Committee on Foreign Investment in order to build more time into the process. Once the agency accepts the new, jointly filed notice, it will take 30 days to review it. This will be followed by a 45-day investigation period. “Brocade and Broadcom have been and will continue to be actively engaged with CFIUS during its review of the proposed acquisition,” Brocade said in its 8-K filing. “There can be no assurances, however, that CFIUS will ultimately agree that the parties may proceed with the proposed acquisition.”

WatchGuard Technologies Acquires Datablink and
Adds Advanced Authentication to SMB Security Portfolio

WatchGuard® Technologies, a leader in advanced network security solutions, announced on Tuesday, August 8, 2017, that it has closed the acquisition of Datablink, a leading provider of advanced authentication solutions. This acquisition extends WatchGuard’s security portfolio beyond network and wireless security, enabling the company to deliver advanced authentication to small to midsize businesses (SMB) and distributed enterprises. According to the 2016 Data Breach Investigations Report, 63 percent of confirmed data breaches involved leveraging weak default or stolen passwords, proving that multi-factor authentication is a critical component to any organization’s overall approach to data security. Unfortunately, cost and complexity has kept this technology out of reach for most SMB and mid-market organizations. WatchGuard has a proven track record breaking down that barrier across multiple security markets –network security, advanced threat detection and response, and wireless security. Advanced authentication is next. “Our vision has always been to make high-end enterprise-grade security accessible to everyone, regardless of company size or technical capabilities. Until now, the only barrier standing between the SMB market and mass adoption of authentication technology has been accessibility,” said Prakash Panjwani, CEO of WatchGuard. “We’re excited to expand our portfolio and believe when we launch the new cloud-based authentication service next year, we’ll be hitting the market at the perfect time.”

 

Food for Thought

Quick and easy twist on Turkey Melt – Waffle Iron Turkey Melt Panini

Serves 4 (serving size: 1 sandwich)

Ingredients

• 4 center-cut bacon slices
• 3 tablespoons canola mayonnaise
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 8 (1-ounce) slices whole-grain or whole-wheat bread
• 8 ounces unsalted sliced deli turkey (such as Boar’s Head)
• 8 (1/8-inch-thick) slices tart apple (such as Granny Smith)
• 4 (1-ounce) slices reduced-fat colby-Jack cheese
• Cooking spray

 

 

Good Medicine