What We Know A new critical zero-day vulnerability has been detected, is widely distributed, and is easily exploitable, allowing attackers to gain full control over affected servers. The vulnerability was identified within Apache Log4j 2, an open-source Java package used to enable logging in many popular applications. The issue can allow remote access to your computer through public servers you access running the Apache Log4j Java-based logging library.

On Jan 6th, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) updated their Emergency Directive 21-01 with supplemental guidance and activity alerts on the SolarWinds Orion Compromise. 

What We Currently Know We’ve all been following the news about the SolarWinds supply chain attack where threat actors exploited the company’s Orion software update to plant malware on corporate and government networks. The situation continues to unfold with new headlines announcing the scale of the attack, including an additional threat actor believed unrelated to the first attack.

You are probably familiar at this point with the security attacks against FireEye and SolarWinds. The GreenPages Team has been digging into the incidents and collecting information on how best to inform our network. We hope you find this insight useful.

Many organizations have moved onto Office 365 and assumed that “Microsoft has got this.” No matter what SaaS-based platform you’re talking about, there will almost always be an expected shared responsibility to take care of and protect your data.

What Is the CARES Act? The Federal government enacted the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act ("CARES Act") which established the Coronavirus Relief Fund and appropriated $150 billion to it. 

Visit Our COVID-19 Page for Resources to Stay Agile & Fully Operational in a Remote Work Culture Originally written on CRN.com by Steven Burke The coronavirus lockdown with 265 million Americans in 32 states ordered to stay at home has created a “massive” surge in work-at-home technology purchases and shortages of products, including laptops and PCs, according to a survey of solution providers and IT decision-makers by CRN parent The Channel Company.

Our world has changed dramatically and suddenly over the past weeks, affecting each of us profoundly in both our personal lives and business endeavors. I’ve addressed our team internally at GreenPages, but I want to reach out to all of you—whether you’re a new or a long-standing client, or a customer we’ve yet to work with. This message may be reaching you digitally, but its sentiment comes from an honest and genuine place. As technologists, like all of you, we thrive on solving problems. Taking a particularly difficult challenge, holding it up to the light, measuring, calculating, testing, proving, and ultimately solving that problem is a reward in itself. These actions, performed with agility, creativity, and velocity, all push us to innovate beyond what we often think capable. It’s an intellectual pursuit; we’ve trained to be good at and we’re proud when we succeed. But as this global crisis caused by COVID-19 continues testing us at the national, state, business, family, and individual level, we’re reminded that true innovation is driven by human character, and qualities such as listening, collaboration, support, encouragement, and sacrifice, are its fuel. Throughout GreenPages’ 28 years in business, we’ve aspired to be the kind of company that customers trust and turn to for technology expertise. As such, I want to share with you some examples of how, just in the past several weeks, we’re helping customers support and maintain their organizational mandates and missions: Deploying IT personnel onsite at two of our enterprise medical center clients to augment their security and networking teams Rapid creation of comprehensive business continuity and pandemic response plans for local government agencies to support work-from-home environments Securing additional software licensing to help several clients scale applications for their users within their contract and budget Sourcing, configuring, and supplying hardware and additional laptops for key clients to support remote employees and contractors Expanded Help Desk Managed Services for several clients to burst phone and ticket support due to increased demand from end users as they moved rapidly to work-from-home stances The list is long and evolving; the main point is that we have numerous ways we can help you continue to provide essential services to your own users and customers. As I told our team the other day, I am proud of how they have risen to this unprecedented challenge—by working around the clock for our clients, assuming responsibilities outside of job descriptions, and being the kind of people eager to take up the mantle and do what’s necessary. It’s still too early to tell what the economic and personal impact of COVID-19 will be, but we do know it will be material. So, as IT leaders, we must continue to operate and prove that technology-enabled, digital-era companies can perform well through disruption, while also being a shining example of what we can accomplish together as colleagues and friends despite the major challenges that each of us are facing. If there’s anything we can do to help, or anything I can personally facilitate for you, please reach out. We are all on the front lines and in this together. Take Care, Ron Ron Dupler Chief Executive Officer GreenPages Technology Solutions

We dove deep into our blog archive and discovered a gem from 2015, "Cloud Computing in 2020: Looking into that Crystal Ball." We got a few things right and we got a few things wrong, including the circa 2015 concept of a cloud architect being an "emerging idea." I thought it would be great to write an update on where we are now with these former predictions. We asked David Jones, GreenPages' Director of CSP Operations, to go back to the future and respond to our 2015 predictions. Read his responses (in green) below! Let's just hope Biff doesn't get his hands on this article in the past, you never know what he could do with it!