• Security Alert: The Anti-Alfred E. Newman Effect

  August 9, 2021 Alex Woodie

  For years, business leaders resembled Alfred E. Newman when it came to security. If “What, me worry?” wasn’t their motto, then it was something awful close. But amid a slew of high-profile cyberattacks on the nation’s infrastructure, corporate and government officials are – finally – starting to get the message.

  “The Summer of Ransomware” began in May 2021, when hackers shut down the largest gasoline pipeline on the East Coast. That attack was followed by several other high profile attacks that shut down schools, meat processing plants, and healthcare networks in the U.S. and Western Europe. There has also …

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• One IBM i Shop’s Close Call With Ransomware

  July 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Think the ransomware epidemic won’t affect you, that it’s somebody else’s problem? After reading this story about one IBM i shop’s recent experience with cybercriminals, it may have you thinking twice about your approach to security.

  Greg is the IT manager at a midsize distribution company located in the South. IT Jungle is abiding by his request to keep his last name and the name of his company out of this article. But Greg was determined to share his story with the wider IBM i community, in the hopes that it will spur them to take the ransomware threat seriously, …

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• Ransomware Attacks Hit Closer To Home

  July 12, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Fifteen hundred organizations around the world had their data locked up in the latest ransomware attack, including grocery store chains and schools. It’s unclear if any IBM i shops were included in the attack, which a Russian hacking group claimed credit for. But it’s clear that ransomware is a growing threat to all organizations, including IBM i shops.

  On July 2, as hundreds of millions of Americans hunkered down for the long Independence Day holiday weekend, hackers using the REvil were just getting started. The Russian-affiliated hacking group had already done the hard work of exploiting a five-year-old security flaw …

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• Ransomware Epidemic Hits Epic Proportions, And IBM i Shops Take Notice

  May 17, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The ransomware outbreak hit home for millions of Americans last week when attackers shut down a major East Coast pipeline as well as a hospital network on the West Coast. For IBM i shops, the events are a potent reminder to re-evaluate network security and data protection systems to ensure they’re resilient from attack.

  You could be forgiven for thinking you were watching an episode of Mr. Robot last week as news spread of the shutdown of Colonial Pipeline network, which provides 45 percent of the gasoline for the entire East Coast of the United States through 5,500 miles of …

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• Christmas for Ransomware: How COVID-19 Is Fueling Cybercrime

  November 18, 2020 Alex Woodie

  American tech professionals may be feeling secure working from home in 2020, but that warm fuzzy feeling quickly turns into a sticky, cold sweat when one realizes all the overtime that cybercriminals are putting in to steal your hard-won resources. The situation is getting so bad that some have taken to calling COVID-19 “Christmas for ransomware.”

  According to Bitdefender’s “Mid-Year Threat Landscape Report 2020,” reports of ransomware increased by 715 percent from the first half of 2019 to the first half of 2020. The company says that this figure suggests that threat actors upped their ransomware campaigns to …

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• Raz-Lee Simulates Ransomware Attack on IBM i

  August 12, 2020 Alex Woodie

  How would your IBM i server react to a ransomware attack? Would it successfully repel the invaders, or would it give the bad guys what they’re after: chaos and bitcoin? Simulating a ransomware attack is the gist of a new feature in Anti-Ransomware from Raz-Lee Security, which recently shipped a new release of the software.

  Raz-Lee Security debuted Anti-Ransomware back in 2018, a year after a pair of widespread ransomware attacks (WannaCry and Petya) made the computing world sit up and take notice of the new security threat blossoming on the Internet.

  Anti-Ransomware uses a rules-based approach to detect …

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• Three IBM i Vendors Who Are Still Announcing Things in 2019

  December 11, 2019 Alex Woodie

  It’s that time of year when the holidays beckon and work starts to slow. We notice that here at IT Jungle, as the fruitcake deliveries heat up and the pace of news comes to a grinding halt. Here are three IBM i software vendors that aren’t letting the calendar get in the way of making announcements.

  The fun starts out with Raz-Lee Security, the Nanuet, New York, company, which unveiled a pair of new IBM i security software bundles last week. What’s more, it is also offering discount pricing for those who act fast.

  The first bundle, the …

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• Raz-Lee Debuts Anti-Ransomware For IBM i

  June 18, 2018 Alex Woodie

  Despite its reputation as a secure digital fortress for back office automation, the IBM i server is subject to all manner of modern security threats. That includes ransomware, which can work its way onto mapped IFS drives and render business documents stored on the IBM i server useless. Raz-Lee Security recently launched a new solution aimed at combatting the spread of ransomware on IBM i.

  Today’s business environment rewards companies that embrace openness. Companies are encouraged to open up their mainframes and IBM i servers and leverage the data and business processes they contain using APIs, microservices, and modern user …

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• Ransomware Raises The Stakes For Data Insurance

  August 14, 2017 Adam Roth

  In May, the WannaCry ransomware attack flooded news headlines worldwide. With over 230,000 infected computers, covering a span of roughly 150 countries, it was one of the larger attacks we have seen in some time. WannaCry spread through various operating systems but appeared to have had little impact on IBM i shops.

  However, even though IBM i have the reputation as being an impenetrable operating system doesn’t mean that they are immune to attacks. If an IBM i shop has a connected Windows network on a shared drive with the IBM i host, a virus can easily enter and spread …

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• WannaCry: What IBM i Pros Need To Know

  May 17, 2017 Alex Woodie

  Last week’s epic WannaCry ransomware attack left hundreds of thousands of people around the world scrambling to recover their data, either by paying the cyber crooks or executing their disaster recovery plan. If you’re an IBM i professional, the question you should be asking yourself is: What if that were me?

  Companies in the United States escaped relatively unscathed from the ransomware attack, which exploited a known security vulnerability in the Windows operating system and was based on code that was “weaponized” by the National Security Agency and subsequently stolen by hackers.

  There are two main reasons for this. For …

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