Imperial College NHS Trust has broken reliance on on-prem storage and moved a big chunk of its capacity to Wasabi’s cloud object and file storage. The move is expected to cut storage costs by 30% and reduce painful refresh cycles and ongoing maintenance overheads.

The trust deals with more than one million patient contacts a year and is one of the largest acute trusts in the country. It had been locked into a five-year storage infrastructure hardware upgrade cycle, which had seen it move through HP, EMC and Huawei storage for the multiple petabytes of data it keeps.

“Every five years, we went through a storage refresh, with capacity doubling every year,” said technical architect Yusuf Mangera. “But you’d find yourself in year three or four having to buy TBs of capacity that would just last a year. It doesn’t make sense.

“Everyone started talking about cloud, but we stayed away from it for some time. It introduces a revenue-based model of paying for storage, and being in the public sector, we have been mostly capital spend-based. So we stayed away until we had more appropriate financial structures in place.”

With ongoing digitisation of information and data volumes expanding by 2x every year, the scalability offered by the cloud began to make more sense, especially for secondary data such as backups and archives, where migration between platforms during upgrades means moving relatively unaccessed data from one platform to another.

Wasabi was selected as a cloud storage supplier, largely because of its lack of egress costs and price points that were “significantly lower” than other suppliers, according to Mangera. He also pointed to Wasabi’s connectivity to S3 object storage and SMB file protocols.

A big advantage, said Mangera, is that the pain of upgrade cycles is reduced. “Not having to refresh every five years is a benefit,” he added.

Imperial College NHS Trust has about 4PB of production data on-site and about 4PB archived on-prem too. With what is held in the Wasabi cloud, that makes about 15PB. On-site, the trust runs HPE 3PAR and Huawei 18000 SAN storage, Qumulo file storage, Tintri for virtual servers and desktops and Commvault HyperScale X backup appliances.

Data classification and migration to the cloud is an ongoing project, said Mangera, with about 15-20% of data likely to remain on-site.

Significant benefits of the shift to the cloud include smoothing out backup and archiving processes. Previously, backup would become more onerous as the equipment cycle proceeded due to backup volumes increasing and infrastructure gradually being run towards capacity. Now it has been rationalised, with copies for rapid restore being held on-site, and in the cloud in case of total site failure.

Longer-term retention that previously went to tape is now staged off to the cloud. On-site storage for backups is handled by Commvault HyperScale X software-defined data protection appliances running on HPE hardware. It is staged off to the Wasabi cloud via a 10Gbps WAN connection.

When it comes to quantifying benefits, Mangera said: “ROI [return on investment] will not be visible for the next 12 months, but we expect it to be significant, taking into account the reduction in staff time and resources, and licence and support costs. We are looking at 30% savings by year two and year three.”

As the world becomes increasingly data-driven, businesses must find suitable solutions to help them achieve their desired outcomes. Data lake storage has garnered the attention of many organizations that need to store large amounts of unstructured, raw information until it can be used in analytics applications.

The data lake solution market is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years and is driven by vendors that offer cost-effective, scalable solutions for their customers.

Learn more about data lake solutions, what key features they should have and some of the top vendors to consider this year. 

What is a data lake solution?

A data lake is defined as a single, centralized repository that can store massive amounts of unstructured and semi-structured information in its native, raw form. 

It’s common for an organization to store unstructured data in a data lake if it hasn’t decided how that information will be used. Some examples of unstructured data include images, documents, videos and audio. These data types are useful in today’s advanced machine learning (ML) and advanced analytics applications.

Data lakes differ from data warehouses, which store structured, filtered information for specific purposes in files or folders. Data lakes were created in response to some of the limitations of data warehouses. For example, data warehouses are expensive and proprietary, cannot handle certain business use cases an organization must address, and may lead to unwanted information homogeneity.

On-premise data lake solutions were commonly used before the widespread adoption of the cloud. Now, it’s understood that some of the best hosts for data lakes are cloud-based platforms on the edge because of their inherent scalability and considerably modular services. 

A 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlights several business benefits of using the cloud, including better customer service and the acquisition of cost-effective options for IT management services.

Cloud data lakes and on-premise data lakes have pros and cons. Businesses should consider cost, scale and available technical resources to decide which type is best.

Read more about data lakes: What is a data lake? Definition, benefits, architecture and best practices

5 must-have features of a data lake solution

It’s critical to understand what features a data lake offers. Most solutions come with the same core components, but each vendor may have specific offerings or unique selling points (USPs) that could influence a business’s decision.

Below are five key features every data lake should have:

1. Various interfaces, APIs and endpoints

Data lakes that offer diverse interfaces, APIs and endpoints can make it much easier to upload, access and move information. These capabilities are important for a data lake because it allows unstructured data for a wide range of use cases, depending on a business’s desired outcome.

2. Support for or connection to processing and analytics layers

ML engineers, data scientists, decision-makers and analysts benefit most from a centralized data lake solution that stores information for easy access and availability. This characteristic can help data professionals and IT managers work with data more seamlessly and efficiently, thus improving productivity and helping companies reach their goals.

3. Robust search and cataloging features

Imagine a data lake with large amounts of information but no sense of organization. A viable data lake solution must incorporate generic organizational methods and search capabilities, which provide the most value for its users. Other features might include key-value storage, tagging, metadata, or tools to classify and collect subsets of information.

4. Security and access control

Security and access control are two must-have features with any digital tool. The current cybersecurity landscape is expanding, making it easier for threat actors to exploit a company’s data and cause irreparable damage. Only certain users should have access to a data lake, and the solution must have strong security to protect sensitive information.

5. Flexibility and scalability

More organizations are growing larger and operating at a much faster rate. Data lake solutions must be flexible and scalable to meet the ever-changing needs of modern businesses working with information.

Also read: Unlocking analytics with data lake and graph analysis

Top 10 data lake solution vendors in 2022

Some data lake solutions are best suited for businesses in certain industries. In contrast, others may work well for a company of a particular size or with a specific number of employees or customers. This can make choosing a potential data lake solution vendor challenging. 

Companies considering investing in a data lake solution this year should check out some of the vendors below.

1. Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The AWS Cloud provides many essential tools and services that allow companies to build a data lake that meets their needs. The AWS data lake solution is widely used, cost-effective and user-friendly. It leverages the security, durability, flexibility and scalability that Amazon S3 object storage offers to its users. 

The data lake also features Amazon DynamoDB to handle and manage metadata. AWS data lake offers an intuitive, web-based console user interface (UI) to manage the data lake easily. It also forms data lake policies, removes or adds data packages, creates manifests of datasets for analytics purposes, and features search data packages.

2. Cloudera

Cloudera is another top data lake vendor that will create and maintain safe, secure storage for all data types. Some of Cloudera SDX’s Data Lake Service capabilities include:

• Data schema/metadata information
• Metadata management and governance
• Compliance-ready access auditing
• Data access authorization and authentication for improved security

Other benefits of Cloudera’s data lake include product support, downloads, community and documentation. GSK and Toyota leveraged Cloudera’s data lake to garner critical business intelligence (BI) insights and manage data analytics processes.

3. Databricks 

Databricks is another viable vendor, and it also offers a handful of data lake alternatives. The Databricks Lakehouse Platform combines the best elements of data lakes and warehouses to provide reliability, governance, security and performance.

Databricks’ platform helps break down silos that normally separate and complicate data, which frustrates data scientists, ML engineers and other IT professionals. Aside from the platform, Databricks also offers its Delta Lake solution, an open-format storage layer that can Improve data lake management processes. 

4. Domo

Domo is a cloud-based software company that can provide big data solutions to all companies. Users have the freedom to choose a cloud architecture that works for their business. Domo is an open platform that can augment existing data lakes, whether it’s in the cloud or on-premise. Users can use combined cloud options, including:

• Choosing Domo’s cloud
• Connecting to any cloud data
• Selecting a cloud data platform

Domo offers advanced security features, such as BYOK (bring your own key) encryption, control data access and governance capabilities. Well-known corporations such as Nestle, DHL, Cisco and Comcast leverage the Domo Cloud to better manage their needs.

5. Google Cloud

Google is another big tech player offering customers data lake solutions. Companies can use Google Cloud’s data lake to analyze any data securely and cost-effectively. It can handle large volumes of information and IT professionals’ various processing tasks. Companies that don’t want to rebuild their on-premise data lakes in the cloud can easily lift and shift their information to Google Cloud. 

Some key features of Google’s data lakes include Apache Spark and Hadoop migration, which are fully managed services, integrated data science and analytics, and cost management tools. Major companies like Twitter, Vodafone, Pandora and Metro have benefited from Google Cloud’s data lakes.

6. HP Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is another data lake solution vendor that can help businesses harness the power of their big data. HPE’s solution is called GreenLake — it offers organizations a truly scalable, cloud-based solution that simplifies their Hadoop experiences. 

HPE GreenLake is an end-to-end solution that includes software, hardware and HPE Pointnext Services. These services can help businesses overcome IT challenges and spend more time on meaningful tasks. 

7. IBM

Business technology leader IBM also offers data lake solutions for companies. IBM is well-known for its cloud computing and data analytics solutions. It’s a great choice if an operation is looking for a suitable data lake solution. IBM’s cloud-based approach operates on three key principles: embedded governance, automated integration and virtualization.

These are some data lake solutions from IBM: 

• IBM Db2
• IBM Db2 BigSQL
• IBM Netezza
• IBM Watson Query
• IBM Watson Knowledge Catalog
• IBM Cloud Pak for Data

With so many data lakes available, there’s surely one to fit a company’s unique needs. Financial services, healthcare and communications businesses often use IBM data lakes for various purposes.

8. Microsoft Azure

Microsoft offers its Azure Data Lake solution, which features easy storage methods, processing, and analytics using various languages and platforms. Azure Data Lake also works with a company’s existing IT investments and infrastructure to make IT management seamless.

The Azure Data Lake solution is affordable, comprehensive, secure and supported by Microsoft. Companies benefit from 24/7 support and expertise to help them overcome any big data challenges they may face. Microsoft is a leader in business analytics and tech solutions, making it a popular choice for many organizations.

9. Oracle

Companies can use Oracle’s Big Data Service to build data lakes to manage the influx of information needed to power their business decisions. The Big Data Service is automated and will provide users with an affordable and comprehensive Hadoop data lake platform based on Cloudera Enterprise. 

This solution can be used as a data lake or an ML platform. Another important feature of Oracle is it is one of the best open-source data lakes available. It also comes with Oracle-based tools to add even more value. Oracle’s Big Data Service is scalable, flexible, secure and will meet data storage requirements at a low cost.

10. Snowflake

Snowflake’s data lake solution is secure, reliable and accessible and helps businesses break down silos to Improve their strategies. The top features of Snowflake’s data lake include a central platform for all information, fast querying and secure collaboration.

Siemens and Devon Energy are two companies that provide testimonials regarding Snowflake’s data lake solutions and offer positive feedback. Another benefit of Snowflake is its extensive partner ecosystem, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Accenture, Deloitte and Google Cloud.

The importance of choosing the right data lake solution vendor 

Companies that spend extra time researching which vendors will offer the best enterprise data lake solutions for them can manage their information better. Rather than choose any vendor, it’s best to consider all options available and determine which solutions will meet the specific needs of an organization.

Every business uses information, some more than others. However, the world is becoming highly data-driven — therefore, leveraging the right data solutions will only grow more important in the coming years. This list will help companies decide which data lake solution vendor is right for their operations.

Read next: Get the most value from your data with data lakehouse architecture

Analysts covering Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) are claiming a bright future is ahead. The reports state Azure will disproportionately benefit from growing demand for cloud services and will continue to narrow the gap with AWS. Investors will also see increased value from large share buyback programs and an increasing dividend. Despite this growth, the stock has dropped by nearly one-quarter since the beginning of the year due to tech selloffs. This has caused many investors to want to jump into the stock. However, it still appears to be slightly overvalued and does not supply an adequate margin of safety. Therefore, I would like to see the stock continue to fall before buying.

What Does Credit Suisse Think of Microsoft?

Credit Suisse (CS) recently announced it expects Microsoft Azure to disproportionately benefit from an accelerated shift to cloud services. The reasoning behind this statement is because Azure is narrowing the gap with Amazon's (AMZN) AWS while also widening the gap with Google Cloud (GOOG)(GOOGL). Furthermore, Azure is growing meaningfully faster than AWS, Google Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud (BABA) when achieving similar revenue run-rate milestones.

Since the end of 2017, it is estimated that Azure has increased its market share by over 9 percentage points to reach 21% in the most recent quarter. During this time, AWS has continued to hover at around 33% of the market share.

Although Azure's fundamentals are not broken down by Microsoft, we can still see how the Intelligent Cloud segment has performed over the past few years and compare this to AWS. From 3Q15 to the company's most recent earnings report, cloud revenues have increased from $5.9 billion to $19.05 billion. This calculates to a Y/Y CAGR of about 18.2%.

AWS has also been growing rapidly during the same time period. Since 3Q15 to the most recent report, AWS had increased its revenue from $2.09 billion to $18.44 billion. This is a Y/Y CAGR of 36.5%. While this may seem like bad news for Azure, it is important to note that the growth rate stated for Microsoft includes many other products outside of Azure. Therefore, it is difficult to see Azure's true revenue growth rate to compare to AWS.

Other Analysts Are Betting on Microsoft Too

Other analysts are betting on Azure and other products from Microsoft too. Wedbush recently stated Microsoft is a top pick in the current market due to continued cloud growth. Other analysts are stating the acquisition of Activision Blizzard (ATVI) and focus on Xbox will help Microsoft grow and diversify.

Furthermore, Microsoft Edge is expanding its user-base. Now that Internet Explorer is officially shut down, Microsoft plans to expand on Edge and continue to make it more popular among consumers. The company's most recent effort to do this is by adding a free built-in VPN to Edge. Edge has recently become the second most used Desktop browser worldwide, only being behind Google Chrome. This new VPN is a unique offering from Microsoft to create continued growth. Other popular browsers have VPNs but they must be paid for. The only other browser that has a free VPN is Opera, which Microsoft is leagues ahead of. All in all, Microsoft is set to see higher fundamentals from both Azure rising in market share and its other products expanding their features.

Large Share Buybacks and Dividends supply Shareholders Increased Value

Last year, Microsoft announced a $60 billion share buyback program. At the time of this announcement, the buyback represented a buyback ratio of just under 3% of shares. Microsoft will likely continue to issue more share buybacks in the future due to the company having a large cash position and ability to generate a strong free cash flow. In its most recent quarter, the company had $104.69 billion in cash, as well as generating about $20 billion in free cash flow. In the same time period, Microsoft bought back about $8.35 billion worth of shares.

On top of the large share buybacks, Microsoft continues to raise its dividend. At the same time of announcing its share buyback, the company also announced a dividend hike of 11% to $0.62 per quarter. This follows Microsoft's trend of consistently increasing its dividend. Over the past 10 years, the quarterly dividend has increased from $0.20 to $0.62. This calculates to an annual CAGR of 12%. Once again, this trend will likely continue to increase due to Microsoft's large cash position.

Why Did Microsoft Stock Drop So Much?

Despite Microsoft likely having a bright future, its stock is down nearly 25% since the beginning of the year. This could allow investors to see great value from an investment if they can get in at the right price.

One of the biggest reasons why Microsoft stock is down a large amount this year is because of the selloff of the tech sector. Rising interest rates and worries of a recession are causing investors to move away from tech and into consumer staples and other stable investments. Furthermore, many tech companies are lowering their headcounts in anticipation for worse futures. Meta Platforms (META) froze hiring due to lower revenue caused by changes to Apple's (AAPL) privacy options. Robinhood (HOOD) and Coinbase (COIN) also recently laid off large percentages of their workforces. These are causing concerns for many other tech companies, including Microsoft.

Supply chain issues are also causing Microsoft to see decreased demand and production. Microsoft's products like Xbox and Surface need chips to be manufactured. As long as the chip shortage continues, the company will not be able to manufacture enough of these products and will likely see lower revenue. The chip shortage also hurts computer manufacturers like Dell (DELL) and HP (HPQ). These manufacturers use Windows as an operating system and as long as their manufacturing is restricted, Windows will see less demand.

However, the rising demand of Azure is placing Microsoft ahead of many other tech companies. Azure allows the company to protect itself from downturns in other aspects of its business and we are already seeing this with its share price being down much less than other competitors. Companies like Netflix (NFLX) and Spotify (SPOT) are down 60%-70% YTD due to seeing inflated demand during the pandemic. Azure allows Microsoft to see continuously high demand even after the pandemic and allow the company to thrive in the upcoming future. However, getting into Microsoft at the right price is crucial.

The Stock's Multiples are Higher Than Competitors

Since Microsoft is a very sought after stock, its multiples are far above many of its competitors. The company currently has the highest EV/Revenue, EV/EBITDA, and P/S multiples of any of its major competitors. The stock currently has the second highest P/E only behind Amazon. It is important to mention that Amazon's core retail business has much higher expenses than AWS, meaning its margins are much lower than Microsoft's, which causes a higher P/E.

Another reason, besides its high quality business model, for many of Microsoft's higher multiples is because of the company's net debt. Microsoft currently has a net debt of -$26.7 billion. Since this figure is included in many valuation methods, it causes the intrinsic value to be much higher than companies with a positive net debt. Therefore, Microsoft's higher multiples could be justified in the eyes of many investors.

Valuation

Despite if the valuation multiples are justified, I believe it is best to be as conservative as possible when valuing a stock. Therefore, I will use a relative valuation with industry-average multiples as well as a DCF. For the relative valuation, I multiplied consensus analyst estimates for FY22 by the average multiples for EV/Revenue, EV/EBITDA, P/E, and P/S of Microsoft and its competitors. After adjusting for the company's net debt and averaging the price targets, a fair value of $213.26 can be calculated. This means the stock could have a downside of 16.86%.

For the DCF, I used consensus analyst estimates for Microsoft's free cash flow in the upcoming years. I then used a discount rate of 10% to supply a nice premium over current AAA corporate bonds and a terminal growth rate of 2.5%. After finding the sum of the discounted cash flow projections, adjusting for net debt, and dividing by the number of shares outstanding, a fair value of $200.89 can be calculated. This gives the stock an implied downside of 21.23%.

What Does This Mean for Investors?

Microsoft likely has a very positive future ahead due to Azure closing the gap with AWS and widening the gap with smaller competitors. Azure is seeing massive growth in revenue and increasing its market share at a rapid rate. Many analysts are claiming Azure will disproportionately benefit from increased demand for cloud services and this will push the stock higher. Investors are also seeing increased value due to increased share buybacks and a great dividend. Despite these reasons for growth, the stock is down nearly 25% YTD due to a general selloff of the tech sector. While this may seem great for investors looking to buy, I would like to see it drop a bit more to provide a margin of safety. Therefore, I will apply a Hold rating to Microsoft stock.

Printers for small businesses have come a long way in recent years. They are now more affordable and offer a variety of features that meet the needs of small businesses, whether just launching or well established. When choosing a printer, it’s important to consider the cost and fees, features and customer support options.

Printers for small businesses vary in price, so it is important to find one that fits your budget. Features matter, because if you print a lot of documents in a day, you need something to keep up. Similarly, if you only print a few documents, you may be able to get by with a smaller, less industrial printer. Customer support is also an important consideration, as you want to be able to get help when you need it.

We rated printers for small businesses on a scale of 0 to 5 stars, with five stars being the highest rating. The ratings are based on ease of use, costs, ongoing fees, customer support, features and functionality. Additionally, we considered real customer reviews when rating the printers.

The new report on “Fog Networking Market Report 2022 by Key Players, Types, Applications, Countries, Market Size, Forecast to 2030” offered by Market Research, Inc. includes a comprehensive analysis of the market size, geographical landscape along with the revenue estimation of the industry. In addition, the report also highlights the challenges impeding market growth and expansion strategies employed by leading companies in the “Fog Networking Market”.

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New research from Atlas VPN shows that cloud-native exploits on major cloud service providers (CSPs) declined during the first four months of 2022.

Cloud-native exploits dropped by 25%, from 71 exploits in the first four months of 2021 to 53 exploits in the first four months of this year, Atlas researcher Ruta Cizinauskaite told the E-Commerce Times.

Although those numbers may seem small, they are significant, maintained Paolo Passeri, a cyber intelligence principal at Netskope, a Security Service Edge provider in Santa Clara, Calif., and author of the Hackmageddon blog, from where Atlas obtained the data for its report.

“This is only the so-called tip of the iceberg, that is, campaigns that have been unearthed and disclosed by security researchers,” he told the E-Commerce Times.

One of the most targeted CSPs during the period was Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cizinauskaite wrote in the report released June 8. “[AWS] suffered the most cloud-native exploits among cloud service providers as of April 2022,” she reported. “In total, it experienced 10 cloud-native exploits accounting for nearly a fifth (18.9%) of all such events in the first four months of this year.”

She explained that cloud-native threats refer to cyber events that exploit the cloud in one or more stages of the “kill chain,” a cybersecurity model that identifies the typical steps taken by hackers during a cyberattack.

Tool for Mischief

For hackers, Amazon — which, with a third of the CSP market, is top dog — is a robust battleground where an attacker can never run out of targets, Alon Gal, co-founder and CTO of Hudson Rock, a threat intelligence company in Tel Aviv, Israel, told the E-Commerce Times.

AWS is also a flexible tool that can be used for multiple purposes, Passeri added. For example, AWS can be used to host a malicious payload delivered during an attack, as a command-and-control center for malware or to provide the infrastructure to exfiltrate data, he explained.

“As trust in cloud service providers has increased, so has the attraction for cybercriminals that target selected external services with sophisticated yet expected techniques,” Gal observed.

“Once a playbook for a technique is developed,” he continued, “it usually results in a quick win for them across multiple companies.”

Tempting Targets

David Vincent, vice president of product strategies at Appsian Security, an ERP security application provider in Dallas, explained that more and more organizations are moving their critical business systems into the cloud for obvious advantages.

“As long as these business systems contain valuable targets such as data and personally identifiable information or enable financial transactions, like payments, that criminals want access to, these cloud solutions will continue to be targeted by malicious actors,” he told the E-Commerce Times.

With 60% of corporate data stored in the cloud, CSPs have become a target for hackers, Passeri added.

“Besides,” he continued, “a compromised cloud account can provide the attackers multiple tools to make their attacks more evasive.” For example, they can provide a platform to host malicious content, such as AWS, OneDrive or Google Drive. They can also provide an embedded email service, such as Exchange or Gmail, to deliver malicious content that evades web security gateways.

Fishers of Bytes

The report noted that trailing behind AWS in the targeted department were five services each with five exploits: Microsoft OneDrive, Discord, Dropbox, Google Drive, and GitHub.

Other services had a thinner slice of the exploit pie: Pastebin (5.7%); Microsoft 365 and Azure (3.8%); and Adobe Creative Cloud, Blogger, Google Docs, Google Firebase, Google Forms, MediaFire, and Microsoft Teams (1.9%).

A majority of the exploits (64.8%), the report found, were aimed at delivering a malware strain or a phishing page.

Other exploits used the CSPs to set up a command and control infrastructure for malignant activities elsewhere (18.5%) and for stealing data or launching other attacks (16.7%).

“Successful hackers are like fishermen, they have different lures in the tackle box to attack a victim’s weakness, and they often must change the lure or use multiple lures because the victims become informed and won’t bite,” Vincent explained.

Exploiting CSP Infrastructure

Passeri explained that malware delivered to CSPs is not designed to compromise their systems but to use their infrastructure since it is considered trusted by the victims and organizations that use it.

In addition, he continued, the CSPs offer a flexible platform that is resilient and simplifies hosting. For example, there is no need to allocate an IP space and register a domain.

Advantages to hackers using a CSP’s infrastructure cited by Passeri include:

• It is considered trusted by the victim because they see a legitimate domain and in the case of a phishing page, a webpage hosted on a cloud service with a legitimate certificate.
• In some cases it is considered trusted by organizations because too many of them consider the CSP infrastructure trusted, so they end up whitelisting the corresponding traffic, meaning that the security controls normally enforced on the traditional web traffic are not applied.
• It is resilient because if the malicious content is taken down, the attackers can spin up a new instance instantaneously.
• Traditional web security technologies are blind to the context, that is, they do not recognize if, for example, a connection to AWS is heading to a legitimate corporate instance, or to a rogue instance controlled by the attackers.

Info-Stealers

One form of malware distributed through CSPs is information-stealing software. “Info-stealers are a quick win for hackers, as they are able to capture all the sensitive data from a compromised computer in a matter of seconds while leaving almost no traces behind,” Gal said.

“They can then use data like corporate credentials and cookies that were captured by the stealer to cause significant data breaches and ransomware attacks,” he added.

While hackers are willing to use CSP infrastructure for nefarious ends, they’re less inclined to attack that infrastructure itself. “Most exploits from CSPs are a result of misconfigured public internet-facing resources, like AWS S3 buckets,” explained Carmit Yadin, CEO and founder of DeviceTotal, a risk management company in Tel Aviv, Israel.

“Malicious actors target these misconfigurations rather than looking for a vulnerability in the CSP’s infrastructure,” he told the E-Commerce Times. “CSPs often maintain a more secure infrastructure than their customers can manage alone.”

The best 2-in-1 laptops are redefining the way we see and and use notebooks. Even if they're not for all users, many can benefit from these laptops that straddle the two worlds of laptops and tablets. Thanks to their unique and versatile form factor, they offer a variety of uses and modes that almost make it seem like you’re getting multiple devices in one.

Excellent 2-in-1 laptops offer much more than their traditional counterparts. Because hybrid laptops can fold back into tablet mode, be put into tent mode for media consumption, and set in stand mode for presentations, switching between different devices can now be a thing of the past. This means that you can spend less and reduce your carbon footprint while still having all the tools you need for different tasks. Plus, that seamless switching between modes will only save you time and Improve your workflow, increasing your productivity.