According to Lucidworks, the combined solutions deliver a hyper-modern search experience where users get highly personalized, relevant, dynamic, real-time experiences that drive better key outcomes for businesses.

The joint partner solutions will offer accelerated relevance and user experience in:

• Use Case: Merchandising, customer service, B2B and B2C commerce, call center, conversational AI /chat, and enterprise workplace applications
• Vertical-based solutions: Financial services, travel and hospitality, telecommunications and media

“Advancements in large language models and conversational AI have created a new set of opportunities to optimize the customer experience,” said Carrie Tharp, VP of strategic industries at Google Cloud, in a statement. “As a longtime partner, Lucidworks is well-positioned to provide the guardrails, security measures and support enterprises need to get lasting value from conversational AI tools.”

With Lucidworks, Google Cloud customers gain additional ways to utilize Google Cloud spend through an expanded array of joint solutions available on the Google Cloud Marketplace, including Lucidworks Fusion. Companies can expect a fast time-to-value, better in-the-moment personalization, improved average order value (AOV), better margin and sell-through, and improved gross margin return on investment inventory (GMROI), says the company.

“It takes expertise, and modern technology, and integrated AI to deliver an exceptional experience—what we call ‘hyper-modern’,” said Mike Sinoway, CEO, Lucidworks, in a statement. “Today’s buyers and employees are smart, selective, and expect a lot. Brands need to make search their superpower. Our ongoing partnership with Google Cloud means we can deliver complementary search and browse solutions for every part of the customer journey.”

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Built on the backbone of the Google Cloud network, the cloud-delivered Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) 2.0 solution enables all users to work securely from anywhere regardless of device type. With Prisma Access, customers get ZTNA 2.0 security for all devices, branch offices and applications. BeyondCorp Enterprise Essentials enables secure access to applications and resources for unmanaged devices. Combined threat intelligence and machine learning automatically detects and remediates threats to users, applications or enterprise data.

“Legacy VPN and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) 1.0 solutions provide access to users that is too broad and lacks continuous security inspection, putting cloud-first and hybrid organizations at risk,” said Kumar Ramchandran, SVP, products for Palo Alto Networks, in a statement. “ZTNA 2.0 by Palo Alto Networks secures the modern hybrid enterprise. This partnership will allow organizations to benefit from the performance, scale and reliability offered by Google Cloud’s global network, coupled with the security expertise of Palo Alto Networks.”

Prisma Access from Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access platform helps transform networking and security to deliver a zero trust architecture that supports both managed and unmanaged devices while delivering consistent protections across the entire enterprise. According to Palo Alto Networks, as the industry’s only ZTNA 2.0 solution, it provides deep and ongoing inspection of all application traffic, even for allowed connections to prevent all threats, including zero-day threats, providing secure access for data centers, branch offices and mobile users. Prisma Access is built on Google’s global backbone to secure enterprises at cloud scale.

BeyondCorp Enterprise from Google Cloud

BeyondCorp Enterprise is based on Google’s years of experience with zero trust and provides organizations with a seamless and secure experience for anyone who needs to access applications, cloud resources, and private data hosted on Google Cloud, in third-party clouds, or on-premises. BeyondCorp Enterprise leverages Chrome to provide a secure enterprise browsing solution where agents cannot be installed on devices, providing a simple, yet secure zero trust approach for unmanaged devices.

The post Google Cloud & Palo Alto Networks Team Up to Protect Distributed Workforce appeared first on My TechDecisions.

BlackByte ransomware group disables security products

Cybersecurity firm Sophos has released a new report that details how threat actors behind the BlackByte ransomware gang uses a sophisticated technique to bypass security products by abusing a known vulnerability in the legitimate vulnerable driver RTCore64.sys. This includes disabling over 1,000 drivers on which security products rely to provide protection.

The technique is growing in popularity, with at least two other known reports of threat actors using vulnerable drivers to kill antivirus and other software to bypass security products and deploy ransomware.

Read Sophos’ blog for more information.

Google to provide U.S. Army with Workspace

Google announced a new partnership with the U.S. Army that will see the company’s Public Sector division provide up to 250,000 personnel with the Google Workspace suite of productivity and collaboration solutions. This comes after the launch of Google Public Sector in June, which is focused on helping U.S. public sector entities in federal, state and local governments accelerate their digital transformations.

Read more about Google’s partnership with the U.S. Army and Google Public Sector here.

Infrastructure automation growth on the horizon

Gartner analysts predict that 85% of infrastructure and operations leaders currently without any full automation expect to become more automated within the next three years, and 70% of organizations will implement structured automation to deliver flexibility and efficiency by 2025.

The research and analysis firm’s survey found that automation is most used in application deployment, workload automation and end-user device deployment. However, just 22% are automating patching and vulnerability remediation despite 70% of those who are automating those functions find it impactful for the business.

Read more about Gartner’s survey of infrastructure and operations automation here.

These are the vulnerabilities Chinese hackers are exploiting

If your organization is at risk for targeted cyberattacks from Chinese-backed entities, you should review the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) list of top vulnerabilities being actively exploited by China state-sponsored hacking groups. The list of 20 vulnerabilities includes just bugs published from 2019 and on, and feature some of the most well-known bugs in recent memory.

The list includes the Log4j bug discovered at the end of last year, along with vulnerabilities from popular vendors such as Microsoft, Atlassian, VMware, Cisco and more.

Read CISA’s advisory for more information.

Google Cloud, HCLTech expand partnership to accelerate digital transformations

HCLTech and Google Cloud are expanding their partnership to scale HCLTech’s capacity to support digital transformation and deliver migration, system modernization and professional services for enterprise customers. The expanded relationship includes two new offerings: the new Google Cloud Global Migration and Modernization Factory ad the HCLTech Cloud Acceleration Team that both aim to help customers gain value from their cloud investments sooner.

Learn more about the Google Cloud, HCLTech partnership here.

The post This Week in IT: Sneaky Ransomware; Google, Army Partnership; Digital Transformation; Chinese Hackers appeared first on My TechDecisions.

WiFi can deliver inconsistent performance when it comes to latency and bandwidth, which impacts its ability to deliver the quality of service organizations need for real-time applications like video monitoring and robotic manufacturing.

Large entertainment venues, for example, oftentimes have inconsistent WiFi due to a large number of connected sensors and IoT devices.

Private networks allow organization’s to introduce local private cellular networks to complement existing WiFi and public cellular connectivity. Enterprises have begun experimenting with private networks, but operating and scaling them presents challenge, says Google Cloud. With GDC Edge’s private network solutions, customers can adopt turnkey, private network solutions.

GDC Edge has access to Google Cloud services and is backed by Google’s security best practices. By building on a mature, cloud-native management experience, powered by Anthos, enterprises can benefit from a consistent developer and operational model across the entire IT estate.

Customers can run private networks including virtualized RAN for connectivity and edge applications in a single solution.

Google has partnered with several communication service providers for this offering. Partners include Betacom, Boingo, Celona, Grown Castle and Kajeet.

The post Google Adds Private Networking Solutions to Portfolio appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Google says the Chrome Enterprise Connectors Framework will help protect users when they navigate to a known malicious site, download or upload a file containing known malware, reuse corporate passwords on non-approved sites and change corporate passwords after using them on non-approved sites.

These integrations are set and configured through the Chrome browser cloud manager, accessible through the Google Admin console.

Once in the admin console, IT teams can configure security events reporting to view them directly in the audit log of the console.

Google Workspace

Using the Google Admin console, IT can enroll Google Chrome browser and get detailed information about browser deployment. IT admins can set policies, manage extensions and more. The Chrome management policies can be set to work alongside any user-based policies that may be in place through Workspace.

Once admins have enabled security events reporting, they then can view the reporting events with audit logs. Premium Google space customers, including those on the enterprise plus or education plus plans, can use the Workspace security investigation tool to identify, triage and act on potential security threats.

Google Cloud BeyondCorp Enterprise Essentials

Google also launched Cloud BeyondCorp Enterprise Essentials to provide organizations an easier way to begin their zero trust journey, adding an additional security layer to the workforce by providing key threat and data protection capabilities.

According to Google, the feature filters and blocks harmful URLs in real-time, identify phishing sites, stop downloads and transfers of malicious content, prevent the loss of sensitive data, prohibiting pasting of protected content and enforcing data protection policies.

For more information, visit the Google Cloud blog.

The post Google Adds Security Integrations in Chrome; Cloud Enterprise Connectors Framework appeared first on My TechDecisions.

The survey polled 2,600 Americans workers, including 600 workers from the Washington, D.C. metro area, and 338 workers employed by federal, state or local governments across the U.S.

The majority of government employees reported being “very concerned” about cyberattacks striking their employers in the coming years. At least one-third of the government employees in the D.C. metro area say they have experienced a disruption at work because of a cyberattack. At least 40% said the likelihood their organization would be a victim of a cyberattack was very likely.

At least 80% of respondents said that recent attacks have them concerned about their personal data, privacy and that of their family members.

Those in the Washington, D.C. area, were consistently higher than the national average, according to the study. The most likely culprit for the concern about cyberattacks is that many of the respondents reported experiencing a cyberattack at work. Meanwhile, nationally, one in 10 workers have experienced disruptions from cyberattack at work. For those in the Washington, D.C. area, the number increased to nearly one in three— three times higher than the national average.

At least 84% of the Washington, D.C., metro area government employees primarily use Microsoft products at work, including Word, Outlook, Teams in One Drive.

“This reliance on a single software suite might suggest that these products are safe and secure, but the Public Opinion Strategies survey found that more than half of all respondents said that the government’s reliance on these Microsoft products actually made the federal government more vulnerable to hacking or cyberattacks.,” writes Jeanette Manfra, senior director, global risk and compliance in a blog post.

Why Government Organizations Choose Microsoft 

When asked why employees use Microsoft services, around half said that the reason their employer continues to choose legacy, incumbent vendors was more about not wanting to change than not wanting the most effective tools for the job. Among those who used Microsoft at work, 43% believe there are other products and services that would allow them to do their job better, according to the study.

This may lead to workers to adopt shadow IT. The survey found that 35% of Washington D.C. metro government workers have used shadow IT to get their jobs done. Among workers aged 20 to 34, that number jumps to 41%.

Listen: My TechDecisions Podcast Episode 156: Preventing Shadow IT

With so many survey respondents reporting that they were dissatisfied with their legacy IT solutions, it may be time for the government to rethink its approach to procurement.

In a separate research survey from Omdia in December 2021, 250 people responsible for technology purchasing decisions in federal, state and local government said that government technology procurement practices often are more about making things easier for IT versus choosing what employees feel would be the best solution, and only 27% of officials surveyed in that research cited user demand as a factor affecting their purchasing decisions.

There’s an overreliance on legacy solutions despite a track record of cybersecurity vulnerabilities and poor user perception.

“The survey results show a lack of sophistication with legacy software, with more than 50% of government workers nationally responding that there are other products and services that could help them do their jobs better,” writes Manfra.

The post Google: Government Employees Echo Concerns About Cyberattacks on Legacy Systems appeared first on My TechDecisions.

The update includes new product options and capabilities to help ensure better product fit for businesses using Google’s cloud across a wider array of workloads. Google says the updates are also designed to better align with how other leading cloud providers charge for similar products.

The changes in Google Cloud pricing will result in some pricing increases for some customers, depending on what they use and how they use it. Meanwhile, some new options could lower some customers’ bills, Google says. These new prices will go into effect on Oct. 1, so customers have some time to budget appropriately.

Google says cloud storage, networking, security and persistent disk are all impacted by the reshuffling of offerings and pricing.

In a blog, Sachin Gupta, vice president and general manager of Google Cloud Infrastructure, says the impact of pricing changes depends on use cases and usage.

“While some customers may see an increase in their bills, we’re also introducing new options for some services to better align with usage, which could lower some customers’ bills,” Gupta writes. “In fact, many customers will be able to adapt their portfolios and usage to decrease costs. We’re working directly with customers to help them understand which changes may impact them.”

For example, cloud storage will largely increase across the board, with increases ranging from 10% to 50%, depending upon the type of storage and region. However, archive storage pricing will decrease by as much as 44% in some regions. Google says it is introducing a “lower-cost archive snapshot option” planned for the second half of this year for Persistent Disk customers who have infrequent data access needs or are backing up data, which explains the Archive Storage decreases.

Google Cloud’s Operations pricing will also increase, with some storage classes seeing prices per 10,000 operations more than double.

The company will begin charging customers using Google’s load balancing product for outbound traffic data processing in addition to inbound, charging between $0.008 – $0.012 per GB, based on region.

The company will also turn on billing for Network Topology. Google released a pricing chart for this, with the company charging $0.15 for a Google Cloud customer that runs more than 20 connectivity tests per month.

Meanwhile, total computer engine virtual machine instance resource hours will be $.0011 per month, so an organization running 100 VM instances all day in a single month would cost $80.30.

Performance Dashboard will be included with that offering at no additional cost, Google says.

Google will also start charging for uptime check, for which it has added new capabilities and functionality, including private uptime check.

For a full breakdown on the new pricing, read this FAQ on the pricing adjustments.

The post What You Need To Know About Google Cloud Infrastructure Pricing Updates appeared first on My TechDecisions.

According to the company, the new services will make it easier for enterprise customers to protect data out-of-the-box across a wide variety of applications and uses.

The company announced the Preview for Backup for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), which it calls a simple, cloud-native way for organizations to protect, manage and restore containerized applications and data, enabling users to more easily meet service-level objectives, automate common backup and recovery tasks and show reporting for compliance and audit purposes.

Google says this means more applications can be deployed in GKE, making it easier for larger customers to expand their use of GKE and manage more demanding workflows.

According to Google, Backup for GKE orchestrates data protection and restores for the customer so IT only has to manage data at the container level.

This allows customers to create a backup plan to schedule periodic backups of both application data and GKE cluster state data. Customers can also restore reach backup to a cluster in the same region or to a cluster in a different region.

“You can even customize your backups to ensure application consistency for the most demanding, tier-one database workloads,” reads a company blog post. “The result is a feature that drives down the operational cost for infrastructure teams at companies like Atos, while also making it easier for architects and developers to use GKE for their most critical applications.”

Google also announced Filestore Enterprise, which it calls a fully managed cloud-native NFS solution that lets customers deploy critical file-based applications in Google Cloud. The service is designed to applications that demand high availability and is backed by a Service-Level Ageement that delivers 99.99% regional availability, the company says.

According to Google, the Filestore family now includes:

• Filestore Basic for file sharing, software development, and GKE workloads
• Filestore High Scalefor high performance computing (HPC) application requirements such as genome sequencing, and financial-services trading analysis
• Filestore Enterprisefor critical applications (e.g., SAP) and GKE workloads

According to Google Filestore also lets customers take periodic snapshots of the file system and retain a desired number of recovery points, allowing for the recovery of an entire file system in less than 10 minutes from any of the prior snapshot recovery points.

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