Unified Endpoint Management at IBM InterConnect 2015

InterConnect is IBM’s premier cloud and mobile conference in Las Vegas happening at Mandalay Bay and MGM Grand from February 22 – 26, 2015. Explore the latest in Unified Endpoint Management with IBM Endpoint Manager and IBM MobileFirst Protect (MaaS360). We have a number of educational sessions planned for you including technical discussions, case-studies, hands-on labs and live demos.

Coca-Cola, Schlumberger, Stanford University, Motorola, Kroger and Bancroft are just a few of the many case studies that will be featured. Click Here to view the complete agenda by searching for “Cloud Infrastructure & IT Optimization” Stream and the “Unified Endpoint Management” Track. To view our MobileFirst Protect (MaaS360) sessions, search for "Mobile Enterprise" Stream and the "Protect & Manage Mobile Infrastructure" Track.  You can also view a .pdf here.

In addition to hearing your peers share their success with Unified Endpoint Management, you'll network with more than 20,000 attendees, industry experts, and IBM thought leaders at the event. This is your chance to build your industry expertise, enhance your portfolio of industry thought leaders and advance your career as an IT leader.

When you attend, you can earn a year's worth of professional education with more than 1,500 in-depth business and technical training sessions, 200+ hands-on labs, and hundreds of certifications spanning the entire IT lifecycle.

Save with the Early Bird discount!
Register by December 31 to save US$200 with the Early Bird discount.

Risky Business: Top 3 Ways to Reinforce Your Cyber Defense [Free Webinar]

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2014 @ 10:00 am Eastern

Are you running a risky business when it comes to your cyber security defenses? Sure, it's easy to calculate and manage risk if you know the complete operating picture--but most organizations (both in the public as well as the private sector) don't. That means you may be implementing solutions without having continuous situational awareness: identifying what is connected to the network, controlling access to those networks, and enforcing continuous compliance across all endpoints.

And, it means you might be running a risky business when it comes to the security of your organization's data. But you don't have to.

Join this webcast to learn how you can quickly understand and remediate security threats by embedding knowledge of network access while driving continuous endpoint compliance--so you can find and fix visibility and security control gaps before they become major security breaches. In this session we'll show you how to protect your network with three core functions: Real-time visibility, control, and continuous compliance & automation. And you'll leave knowing how the combination of IBM Endpoint Manager and ForeScout CounterAct provide the ability to securely manage your networks and reduce risk.

Making Continuous Compliance a Reality

Contact me to learn more.

Automating the Datacenter with IBM Endpoint Manager

This post was originally published on October 2nd, 2014 by Brad Fisher on IBM developerWorks. It is the first in a series about leveraging IBM Endpoint Manager to automate the management of your datacenter.  Future blog posts will cover topics such as automated cluster patching, automating virtual and physical server builds, automating multi-tier application deployment and automating complex cross-server patching scenarios. Brad Fisher is a Senior Technical Staff Member in the Cloud and Smarter Infrastructure division of IBM.  Brad has over 25 years in the IT industry.  Having held positions in Cloud, Process Automation and Systems Management, most recently Brad has been working in Endpoint Management, focusing on IEM for Datacenters and the IEM for Server Automation solution, and how the Endpoint Management solutions can successfully manage a customers datacenter.

Managing even a simple datacenter entails some pretty complex activities… things like performing server builds, ensuring security compliance on servers, managing both a physical and virtual server environment as well as keeping servers patched.  Just patching is a complex activity as you have to deal with everything from patching single servers to patching business services that span multiple servers as well as patching nodes in a cluster… all while ensuring your servers are in a maintenance window and in some cases ensuring that you can patch business services and clusters while the service still remains available to process workloads.

IBM Endpoint Manager provides a solution called IBM Endpoint Manager for Datacenters that solves these problems in an elegant, automated manner, freeing up time for IT personnel to focus on other datacenter activities.

IBM Endpoint Manager for Datacenters value proposition is threefold:

• Increase Effectiveness and Efficiency through higher levels of Automation
• Improve Security posture through continuous configuration compliance
• Facilitate Consolidation of Tools and Teams and manage all platforms with one Interface, so that your valuable resources can work on higher business value tasks

IBM Endpoint Manager for Datacenters helps improve datacenter performance and security by:

• simplifying Server build and ongoing configuration management by more than 40%
• reducing costs for cluster patching by more than 50%
• increasing patch compliance to 98-99% first-pass success in minutes vs. days or weeks
• continuous Security compliance and policy enforcement with 8,000+ out-of-the-box compliance checks
• increasing IT Efficiency by leveraging automation from our integrated toolsets

With IBM Endpoint Manager for Datacenters you can sequence automation tasks in the correct order they need to be processed, even in parallel as needed, targeting individual tasks against different servers/groups of servers as necessary.

For a larger view, click the image above.

While there’s tens of thousands of out-of-the-box automation tasks provided by IBM, as well as an active online community that shares automation content they have built, if there’s ever automation content you need that isn’t provided it’s very easy using the included tooling to build your own automation content.

IBM Endpoint Manager for Datacenters can automate complex tasks in managing your datacenter and significantly reduce labor costs and increase efficiency of IT staff.

For more information see IBM Endpoint Manager for Datacenters

For videos on IBM Endpoint Manager for Datacenters, see IBM Endpoint Manager for Datacenters videos.

Shellshock Remediation 101: Secure Your Endpoints Today!

Live webinar at 10am Eastern on Wednesday, October 15th.

It’s been said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That’s great advice — unless you’re the one who needs the cure! 

Such is the case for those who've been infected with the Bash Bug. It doesn't take more than a quick web search to understand the severity of the bug. There is a lot of focus on prevention - which is great advice and something definitely worth listening to. But there’s not a lot of information about the cure - until now. 

Join our Unified Endpoint Management experts as they walk you through the steps you can take to remediate the Bash Bug today! You’ll learn how IBM Endpoint Manager can help you: 

• Detect endpoints vulnerable to the Bash Bug within minutes (whether it’s on or off the network)
• Patch vulnerable endpoints within minutes / hours with a 98% first-pass patch success rate
• Protect by ensuring continuous security configuration compliance across all endpoints through a single console

The saying is true: An ounce of protection is certainly worth a pound of cure. With IBM Endpoint Manager, you get both. 

IBM Endpoint Manager Patch Management for Windows Extends Support to Include Non-Security "Update"

This post was originally published by cglimson and the IBM Endpoint Manager Application Engineering Team on September 30th, 2014 at the IBM DeveloperWorks' Endpoint Management Bog.

IBM Endpoint Manager is pleased to announce that Patch Management for Windows now extends support to include the "Update" type of non-security updates. "Update" refers to widely released fixes to address bugs that are non-critical or non-security related.

For a list of operating systems and applications, see the Supported OS wiki.

Action to take:

• Gather the latest version of the the Patch Management for Windows (English) site.

Published site version:

• Patching Management for Windows site, version 2090.

Additional links:

• For a list of supported operating systems and applications, click HERE.

Shell-shocked after Heartbleed? All you need to know about Bash bug & how to protect your data w/ IBM Endpoint Manager

Originally published at ServiceManagement360.com by Rohan Ramesh on September 26, 2014 

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Just when you thought the worst was over for the year packed with security incidents from POS attacks to the Heartbleed bug, now we hear about the “Bash bug” that threatens to compromise everything from web servers to connected cameras and IOT devices.

What is the Bash bug?

This vulnerability was discovered by Stephane Chazelas and announced on the OSS-SEC mailing list (in addition to other security forums). This bug, which has been unnoticed for over two decades, allows attackers to execute malicious code within a bash shell (this is typically the command prompt on PCs, Macs and Linux machines), allowing them to overwrite authentication information and gain access to confidential information by taking control of the operating system.

If you thought the Heartbleed bug was bad, this is worse. It has been given a severity rating of 10 / 10 by the national vulnerability database and is predicted to leave a far larger number of endpoints unpatched due to the inability to identify all possible vulnerable devices in your organization.

What devices are affected?

The Bash bug affects Linux and Unix machines as well as hardware running Mac OSX, with the most vulnerable being web Apache –HTTP Server, and scripts executed by DHCP clients. This also affects a number of connected “Internet of Things” devices that have software built using Bash scripts. This could be anything from your cctv cameras to an Internet-connected light bulb in your home. Given that this bug has been around for a while, there may be older versions of OS on systems & devices that are vulnerable as well.

How do you protect your endpoints and data?

Within a day of the bug being disclosed, attackers are already looking for ways to target your systems – proof of concept code that exploits Bash using CGI scripts are already floating around the web.

There are two parts to fixing the problem. First, you need to identify every system within your organization on and off your network that is affected by this bug. Given the global reach of companies today, finding out these systems take time and even then, not all systems are identified. Second, you need remediation by applying a patch to all these systems, and many of them could be running different versions of operating systems. That means you need to apply a different patch for each type of OS. This adds to the complexity of getting all your systems patched in time.

What can IBM Endpoint customers do

to patch this vulnerability?

With IBM Endpoint Manager Client, which supports more than 90+ different flavors of operating systems, you can quickly enable “detection tasks and analyze content” through our patch support site, which will identify any systems that are vulnerable.

Task 1828: Check for “Shell Shock” bash Vulnerability (CVE-2014-7169)

Analysis 1829: “Shell Shock” bash Vulnerability (CVE-2014-7169) Status

Our security experts are working around the clock to update IBM Endpoint Manager to release patches that have been issued by operating system vendors. These can be applied to all your systems through the single centralized Endpoint Manager console. For instructions on how you can identify affected endpoints in your organization and a full list of operating system patches that have been released, click here.

If you currently do not have IBM Endpoint Manager, visit my website and contact me today to get our unique Unified Endpoint Management solution, which can find and fix problems across all your devices –from servers to smartphones – on and off the corporate network within minutes. Contact us on twitter @IBMEndpoint with any questions or concerns.

“This is high-quality, useful information and support. You and the IBM Endpoint Manager (BigFix) team continue to make us look good. Keep it up.”– Current IBM Endpoint Manager Customer