Friday Tech News

Good morning and Happy Friday!

Thank you so much for making this a part of your Friday morning coffee time. I'm Phil Moroni, and I'm an Account Executive in the Information Technology Services Industry here with another edition of Friday Tech News!

What is this? This is a newsletter that provides updates and insights on the latest trends and developments in the technology industry. I am a professional who specializes in supporting IT leaders in evaluating, investing, and managing people, processes, and technology tools that support their businesses.

Each week, I summarize relevant industry updates from popular Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM's), software publishers, and managed providers. The goal of my research and newsletter is to keep you informed about current trends and events that may impact your business from a trusted and reputable source. It's just information I'm sharing, and, I follow and work with hundreds of partners in the industry, keeping track of their growth, changes, and evolution so that you don't have to.

Bottom Line: As you focus on improving your business through digital initiatives, my commitment is to keep you informed of the fast-paced changes and trends taking place so that you can plan ahead and stay ahead of the game.

Key areas of focus for me are:

1. Cloud Computing, Security, Trends

2. Developer & Security Tools

3. Networking & Infrastructure Tools

4. End User Tools & Workspace Tech

5. Emerging Technologies and Future Concepts

If you have any questions, would like information about any specific vendors I follow, or would like to have a conversation about any topic that is challenging you, I invite you to engage with me! I value feedback immensely and would love to know what you find valuable about this newsletter so feel free to reach out!

Thank you for reading, and stay digitally and physically safe!

Phil

OEM News & Updates 📰

Laminar | Laminar Launches Two New Solutions to Become First Full Data Security Platform for Multi-Cloud and SaaS Environments

• I’ve been speaking with Laminar recently, and I’m excited about their future. I think they’re innovative and have come a long way in a short time, so definitely pay attention to this one! This announcement talks about Data Access Governance and Data Detection and Response solutions coming into the portfolio.

OpenAI | OpenAI makes GPT-4 generally available

• No need to say more. Have fun, be safe, and don’t input business or customer data into it.

Checkmarx | Checkmarx Announces Groundbreaking CheckAI Plugin for ChatGPT to Detect and Prevent Attacks Against ChatGPT-Generated Code

• Great announcement from Checkmarx. For those that are using ChatGPT to write code, I hope you’re investing in SAST / DAST / IAST solutions as well. This will be the first plugin to protect against attacks against ChatGPT generated code. It enables devs and security teams to protect against attacks by open source packages and dependencies while working within the ChatGPT interface.

Intel | Enhanced AI security on the horizon with Nvidia and Intel collaboration

• Great partnership and announcement. Security should / is the focus of AI right now for most enterprises and that’s a good thing as we wrangle our hands around the use of responsible and ethical AI.

Netskope | Netskope Recognized as a Leader in SSE and ZTNA in New IDC MarketScape Reports

Skuid | Skuid Launches in AWS Marketplace to Provide Custom Digital Experiences and Enterprise Business Apps at Scale

BrightSpot | BrightSpot Partners With OpenAI

• OpenAI had a big week with several announcements (another below) and I’m excited to see what more they’ll be doing in the partnership realm.

OpenAI | SurveyStance and ChatGPT Collaborate to Transform User Feedback Analysis

DELL | Dell Partners with Cloud Provider Oort

Google Cloud | Enhancing AI Capabilities: Google Cloud Integrates Vector Search in Managed Databases

• This will enable faster and more accurate retrieval of complex data types such as images, audio, video, etc.

Genesys | Genesys Launches Automated Task Management Solution for Enhanced Customer Satisfaction

Teradata | Teradata Collaborates with Microsoft to Offer VantageCloud Lake on Azure, Enabling AI/ML at Scale Throughout the Enterprise

• Integrating data lakes, data warehouses, and analytics tools under a unified platform

Datadog | Datadog Named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ For Application Performance Monitoring And Observability

• I’ve liked Datadog for years - really cool people and product. If you’ve been paying attention to them, you’ll also know they’ve made some great acquisitions and are expanding their reach outside of just APM.

Zoom | Zoom, Theta Lake boost partnership with advanced security-focused integration

ServiceNow | ServiceNow's (NOW) Cloud Services Gets Gartner Recognition

• A nod to SNOW in the APM category, it’s a complex and robust tool but a must have in the Enterprise IMO (Sorry Atlassian, your support just is atrocious). I’m also glad to see that ServiceNow is expanding and hiring more whereas we’ve seen tech layoffs in other areas.

Splunk | Splunk Named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring and Observability

• No surprise here. Splunk is great if you can afford to 1. buy the licensing and 2. train and build your security program to use it to the fullest extent of its capabilities. Make sure you’re investing in training and great partnerships if you’re looking at Splunk. Alternatives in the space I like are Sumo Logic and Cribl.

AWS | AWS, NVIDIA and Vestbee team up to empower Fintech Startups with AWS Global Fintech Accelerator

Qualys | Qualys Wins Best Vulnerability Management Solution Category in the SC Awards Europe 2023

Commvault | Commvault Announces Metallic: Salesforce Backup, Recovery & Sandbox Seeding - Unlimited Storage on Salesforce AppExchange, the World's Leading Enterprise Cloud Marketplace

Microsoft GitHub | GitHub Passkeys are now available in public beta

• Passwords are slowly going away, great announcement from Microsoft GitHub here.

Cyware | Cyware Expands Partnership with ZeroFox Through Inclusion in the Partner Advisory Marketplace

JFrog | JFrog Curation aims to secure the software supply chain from hackers

Upbound | Upbound Completes SOC 2 Type II Assessment, Launches New Trust Center For Vulnerability Disclosures

• Upbound looks super promising. Their new Trust Center enables users and security researchers to report vulnerabilities with fast intake, validation, triage, and contextual remediation.

AWS | AWS Lambda now detects and stops recursive loops in Lambda functions

Microsoft | Azure AD is Becoming Microsoft Entra ID

• Why? I have no idea why change a good name for something that is universally known. But, that’s Microsoft for you. Enjoy the new adjustment to no longer saying AAD.

Articles I Liked This Week 💡

Help Net Security | CVSS 4.0 released, to help assess real-time threat and impact of vulnerabilities

Washington Post | Chinese hackers breach U.S. government email through Microsoft cloud

CIO Dive | Cybercriminals target highly profitable companies, study finds

• Lot of good reads on CIO Dive this week. This was just one I found noteworthy. If you need enhancements to your security posture and can’t get funding, hopefully this article could be of some use to you.

CIO | 3 tough decisions for IT leaders to achieve a successful digital transformation

InfoWorld | How to use GPT as a natural language to SQL query engine

• I liked this article because it focuses on two things: this is being used in the enterprise and you need to have security top of mind. Good read, and one of many on AI this week on InfoWorld.com 

CSO | Ransomware attacks cost financial organizations US$32.3 billion in downtime since 2018

• I’m always fascinated by these numbers, especially as I’ve been around long enough to be seeing how investing in some simple solutions can prevent ransomware. Another article I read and posted this week talked about how private companies are being more targeted than ever before, especially profitable ones - so be diligent and check your controls in place today.

DevOps | Is ChatGPT Helping or Hurting Your Developers’ Productivity?

• Some key benefits? Debugging code…simplifying documentation. Some limitations? Writing old code. Writing buggy code. Overall security concerns of what users are inputting etc. Good write up overall.

CyberSecurity Dive | White House shares the 69 initiatives slated to shore up national cybersecurity

• Not a fully comprehensive list as noted in the article but, I like to see prioritization any day of the week.

Tech Funding & M&A 💸

Paperspace | DigitalOcean Buys Cloud Startup Paperspace To ‘Expand’ AI, ML For SMBs, Startups

• Paperspace is a New York based cloud platform that develops, trains, and deploys machine learning models and AI applications.

Waldo | Testing automation platform Tricentis acquires Waldo

• Waldo is a New York based SaaS platform that provides solutions such as mobile test automation and test case management for businesses.

Cyware | Cyware: AI-Powered Cyber Fusion Platform Company Closes $30 Million

• Cyware is a New York based cyber fusion platform that provides solutions such as threat intelligence and security orchestration for enterprises.

SCADAfence | Honeywell to Buy Israeli Cybersecurity Firm SCADAfence

• SCADAfence is an Israel based IoT cybersecurity platform that offers solutions including network monitoring and threat detection.

CyberGRX | ProcessUnity and CyberGRX unite to bolster third-party risk management

• CyberGRX is a Colorado based cyber risk exchange platform that provides solutions such as third party risk management and attack scenario analytics for businesses.

DataJAR | Jamf announces its acquisition of dataJAR

• DataJAR is an England based cloud platform that offers solutions such as Apple device management and data security for businesses.

RiskLens | Safe Security Acquires RiskLens to Become CRQM Market Leader

• RiskLens is a Washington based Cybersecurity platform that offers solutions such as threat reporting and risk prioritization for businesses.

Secure Code Warrior | Secure Code Warrior raises $50 million to accelerate product innovation

• Secure Code Warrior is an Australia based agile learning platform that offers cybersecurity training programs for developer driven security teams. Big fan of this product and company and have heard positive results from their customer base.

Oort | Securing Identity as the New Perimeter: Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire Oort

• Oort is a Massachusetts based cybersecurity platform that provides solutions such as identity threat detection and response management for enterprises.

SAVVY | Fireglass founder back at it, raises $22 million Series A for new cybersecurity start

• Savvy develops a platform that aims to eliminate workforce initiated security incidents involving SaaS apps.

Meme of the week 🤣

Recommendations 👉🏻

This is a section that I intend to build out more! Know fantastic newsletter resources for information? Please let me know so I can start linking appropriate reads here!