Building a Disaster Preparedness Strategy & More in this Week’s Top Reads

According to Eaton, North American organizations lose $700 billion annually to downtime, with severe weather-related outages costing the economy between $18 and $33 billion yearly. Considering the stakes, organizations must have robust disaster preparedness strategies to survive extreme weather events and restore operations quickly. One of this week’s top reads explores why working with a qualified first-response service provider helps organizations finetune their disaster preparedness strategies.

We also covered a new threat vector: cybercriminals using the computing power of modern GPUs, such as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, to break passwords with great speed and efficiency. A machine running eight RTX 4090 GPUs could cycle through every one of the 200 billion eight-character password combinations in only 48 minutes using brute force methods. We explored how to counter this threat and make passwords resilient to hacking attacks.

We also covered why organizations plan to spend big on cybersecurity products and solutions at a time when they are tightening their budgets to withstand a period of high inflation. In an interesting read, Alessandro Chiarini, senior vice president of enterprise authentication at Aware, brings up and answers four key questions that organizations should ask when considering a cloud-based biometrics provider.   

Here’s a look at this week’s top reads from Spiceworks News & Insights.

Boosting your disaster preparedness with the help of leading service providers

According to Eaton, North American organizations lose $700 billion annually to downtime, with severe weather-related outages costing the economy between $18 and $33 billion yearly. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also states that cyclone intensity in the North Atlantic has “risen noticeably over the past 20 years, and eight of the 10 most active years since 1950 have occurred since the mid-1990s.”

These realities necessitate adopting robust disaster preparedness strategies that enable organizations to survive extreme weather events and restore operations quickly. In an interesting read, we explored how a qualified first-response service provider, like Eaton, can use its experience and know-how to help organizations prepare for unforeseen events.

Eaton’s disaster response services provide organizations with a slew of benefits, such as remote monitoring services, preventive maintenance and support services, UPS upgrades (kVA, Energy Saver System, firmware), Eaton replacement batteries, Multi-vendor services (support for other manufacturers’ products), and factory-certified replacement parts.

Click here to read more about how Eaton’s disaster recovery services help organizations.

Despite inflationary pressures, cybersecurity investments to zoom in 2023

Thanks to volatile food, energy, and gasoline prices, inflation rises at a rate not seen in 40 years, reaching 8.6% between May 2021 and May 2022. Electricity prices have increased by 12%, natural gas has jumped by 30.2%, and food costs have increased by 11.9% over the past year. To help balance budgets and navigate the potential impacts of recessions, companies are reconsidering how and where they spend their money. 

According to the Spiceworks Ziff Davis 2023 State of IT report, 83% of organizations are worried about a recession in 2023. 30% are re-evaluating vendors or contracts, 29% are decommissioning infrastructure, and 27% are planning a hiring freeze or a slowdown. Yet, Gartner anticipates increased cybersecurity spending across the board in 2023, with cloud security investment up 26.8%, data privacy and security purchases up 16.9% and 14.2%, respectively, and application security acquisition up 24.7%.

So what’s the big deal? What’s compelling companies to spend more on security even as they scale back other budgets? We explored four major factors driving growth in cybersecurity spending when organizations are looking to save money elsewhere.

Click here to read about the four factors driving higher cybersecurity investments in 2023.

Can you stop hackers from using modern GPUs to break your passwords?

Hackers have become so adept at cracking passwords that over 15 billion stolen logins from over 100,000 breaches are available on the Dark Web, and the use of these stolen credentials is responsible for 61% of all data breaches. The bad news is that hackers have found a new weapon to bolster their arsenal – high-performance GPUs that can crack open eight-digit passwords in milliseconds.

For instance, the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card with 24 GB of G6X memory at its disposal could serve hackers’ needs the best. In testsOpens a new window against Microsoft’s New Technology LAN Manager (NTLM) authentication protocol, the RTX 4090 recorded speeds of 300GH/sec and 200kh/sec. This allows it to crack passwords twice as fast as its predecessor, the RTX 3090. Perhaps the scariest assertion is that a machine running eight RTX 4090 GPUs could cycle through every one of the 200 billion eight-character password combinations in only 48 minutes using brute force methods.

Considering the capabilities of RTX 4090, we explored the top ways organizations can defeat the use of modern high-performance GPUs to break passwords and keep their devices, data and users secure from hacking attacks.

Click here to read about the top tips to prevent hackers from breaking your passwords.

How to choose the best cloud-based biometrics provider for your organization?

Many small business owners consider allowing their customers and employees to replace their password(s) with more advanced authentication methods like biometrics – faceprints, voiceprints, fingerprints, or iris scans. However, implementing biometric forms of authentication has typically required advanced technical development and special on-premise hardware and equipment – keeping biometrics out of reach for many organizations.

To overcome this handicap, organizations can go for biometric authentication as a cloud-based SaaS service. The cloud offers scalable technology, expandable storage, parallel processing capabilities, and an accessible entry point for apps and services that rely on mobile clients. However, storing biometric data on the cloud raises security, compliance, and privacy concerns. This is why end users must seek clear answers from their providers to ensure that these concerns are addressed.

In an interesting read, Alessandro Chiarini, senior vice president of enterprise authentication at Aware, brings up and answers four key questions that organizations should ask when considering a cloud-based biometrics provider. If their concerns are addressed, organizations can do away with outdated passwords once and for all and offer the promise of increased flexibility and scalability for applications.

Click here to read the top considerations for choosing the right cloud-based biometrics provider for your organization.  

As always, we invite you to explore our expansive coverage of the latest in the tech industry on Spiceworks News & Insights.   

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