Software : Many SMBs don't understand cloud

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Many SMBs don't understand cloud Posted: A significant number of small and midsized businesses are unsure about cloud services or think they are only for large companies, according to research by Opinion Matters for internet security company AVG Technologies. It shows that 31% of the companies questioned in the UK had heard about cloud services but did not understand them, while 22% thought they were only for large firms. Only 21% said they had had deployed some form of cloud service and the same percentage were considering adopting it in the next 12 months. 52% said they deal with their IT themselves. Other factors standing in the way of using cloud services were cost, cited by 23%, lack of trust (17%) and a belief that the services were too complicated (10%). Mike Foreman, general manager for SMBs at AVG, told TRBC that companies need to be more ready to take up cloud services. "They're probably using it without knowing it, from simple things like booking a train ticket, filing an online tax return or email. But the really big advantage would be that they could have the type of thing that was only available to a big enterprise, such as mobility, working outside the fixed office network. "To do it before you needed lots of firewall and VPN equipment to punch a hole through your office network. Cloud has ripped all this apart; small businesses now have all that functionality and the ability to work on the go. "The applications they want to run are now hosted in the cloud." The survey covered 505 companies with 100 employees or less in the UK. AVG has just released version 2.1 of its CloudCare security platform, which includes anti-virus and content filtering managed through a console run on the cloud. New features include more refined filtering, a check-in box to remove other security systems from a computer, remote virus vault management and a personalised component installation.

Researchers claim Java still has 'vulnerabilities' Posted: Security Explorations researcher Adam Gowdiak posted a message on Friday stating that his team had discovered not one, not two, but three security holes in Java's latest version. According to Gowdiak, one of the security risks manifests as the same problem for which Oracle recently released emergency patch Java 7 Update 11. The vulnerability allows clever hackers to gain a "complete Java security sandbox bypass", a persisting problem that prompted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to recommend disabling the software temporarily. Security Explorations also found two new security flaws in "recent version of Java SE7 code," which it has submitted to Oracle for review, and hopefully for a fix. Java jams The researchers at Security Explorations cited the exploiter group Immunity as one of their sources in discovering the still-vulnerable portion of Java code after the patch was issued. A quick browse through Immunity's findings shows that the remaining flaw is predicated on the signing of a Java applet, and that the flaw is not present in Java 6, which has been confirmed by Oracle. Because of the prompt added by the Java 7 Update 11, a portion of the initial security hole has been filled, and unsigned applets can no longer gain access by that method. However, if the new holes discovered by Gowdiak and team are legitimate threats, it may be advisable to keep Java disabled for browsers until Oracle responds with another, more complete fix.

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