Tag Archive for: Centralized

As Bellone seeks ‘centralized’ computer network, other Suffolk officials call for autonomy

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As Suffolk moves to put a crippling ransomware attack behind it, County Executive Steve Bellone is touting a newly centralized infrastructure as the core of his efforts to secure disparate county networks.

“Never again will the county information technology security team be in a position to ask someone to fix a security concern because they don’t have the credentials to access systems themselves,” Bellone said.

But as Bellone moves to implement the long-planned vision, some other elected county officials, citing the impacts of the ransomware lockdowns and concerns about confidentiality, are pushing for even greater levels of security autonomy. The Sept. 8 cyberattack shut down a broad cross-section of county services for several months.

“We’re getting the hell out of there completely,” Suffolk Comptroller John Kennedy said of the county’s network. By the second week of March, Kennedy said he expects to have his office’s audit software application onto a remotely hosted cloud-based system that will be “completely off any county hardware or servers.”

WHAT TO KNOW

  • A newly centralized infrastructure is the core of County Executive Steve Bellone’s efforts to secure disparate Suffolk networks.
  • Other elected county officials, citing concerns about confidentiality, are pushing for even greater levels of security autonomy.
  • The consultant helping Suffolk search for its first chief information security officer said the county’s “siloed” structure of networks is one of its biggest challenges.

The structure of the network presents it with long-recognized challenges, with the county’s main Department of Information Technology controlled by the Bellone administration and sub-networks with varying levels of autonomy and responsibility, including separate IT staffs, and under elected officials such as the county clerk and sheriff.

Experts said that “siloed” approach can leave the county more vulnerable to attack and more of a challenge to get cyber insurance. But political realities leave others concerned that ceding too much control to the county executive could expose sensitive information to political foes.

Security dome over disparate systems

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Elastic Announces the Launch and General Availability of Limitless XDR in Elastic Security, General Availability of Elastic Agent, and Centralized Management of Elastic Enterprise Search | Business

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Aug 3, 2021–

Elastic (NYSE: ESTC) (“Elastic”), the company behind Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack, today announced new capabilities and enhancements across its Elastic Enterprise Search, Observability, and Security solutions, which are built in a single platform – the Elastic Stack.

New capabilities include the general availability of Elastic Agent, a single, unified agent that simplifies the management and monitoring of data from a growing volume of diverse sources, centrally managed in Fleet to give users broad visibility and control over their environments.

With Elastic Agent, Elastic Security users benefit from integrated ransomware and malware prevention, as well as remediation capabilities directly from the endpoint. Elastic Observability users gain better visibility across their applications and infrastructure, as well as secure, centralized agent management.

Elastic announces the launch and general availability of the industry’s first free and open Limitless Extended Detection and Response (XDR). Part of Elastic Security, Elastic Limitless XDR modernizes security operations by unifying the capabilities of security information and event management (SIEM), security analytics, and endpoint security on one platform.

Additionally, Elastic Enterprise Search can now be centrally managed in Kibana, the single management interface across all Elastic solutions.

Other key updates across the Elastic Stack, Elastic Cloud, and solutions include:

Elastic Stack and Elastic Cloud

Elastic announces the general availability of Elastic Agent with centralized management in Elastic Fleet. First released in beta in 7.9 and now generally available in 7.14, Elastic Agent serves as a single unified agent to make it simple for customers and users to onboard and manage new data sources fast, while also protecting their endpoints from cyber security threats. Elastic Agent is an Elastic Stack capability that delivers value to users across Elastic Security and Elastic Observability solutions.

Elastic also announces that support for Microsoft Azure Private Link is now generally available. Customers can now privately and…

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