New CompTIA Advisory Councils Align With IT Channel Ecosystem

CompTIA, the industry association for information technology (IT), recently announced details about its new advisory councils CompTIA, 2016.
The four advisory councils include the Distributor Partner Advisory Council Advisory Board, Advisory Council and the Commission seller end user newly formed, which will provide CompTIA and its members with greater visibility across the range of IT sales cycle.
"The CompTIA Advisory Councils have a rich history to serve as opinion leaders and carry out political ideas that help guide and shape our industry and communities, and influence and inspire our Board of Directors, CompTIA management team and our administrative staff, "said Annette Taber, vice president of industry strategies, CompTIA.
"The realignment of our advisory boards corresponds to the four major segments of the IT chain -Distributors, partners, suppliers and end users - will help keep the advice and specific skills to develop and implement projects and initiatives that are critical for market segments that represent "continued Taber.
CompTIA membership of advisory councils is "by invitation only" and participants must be able to demonstrate a thorough knowledge and experience in various management positions channels. The four new advisers CompTIA tips consist of more than 80 industry executives representing a cross section of the distributor, supplier of IT solutions, end users and provider organizations. For more information on advisory councils in 2016 CompTIA click here (https://www.comptia.org/communities/councils).
Advisory Councils announce new initiatives and new leadersUnder the new charter, advisory boards CompTIA initiatives and objectives of actions to advance the key before IT industry. These include promoting the importance of IT business, bridging the gap between business and technology, and the exchange of best practices around how to build a successful practice hybrid cloud.
"Our advisory councils working for the industry to identify and address key turning points, including cloud computing, managed services, best practices program and the transformation of business model," Taber said. "Together, these tips provide CompTIA with external validation that our educational initiatives are aligned with the needs of our members and the wider whole IT industry."
To help ensure success, CompTIA has also called Ken Presti IT industry channel veteran as director of advisory boards. In this paper, Presti seeks to increase the visibility and voice of advisory boards and CompTIA serves to help drive positive change together.
"We are excited to have Ken on board to help focus attention and efforts of our Advisory Board," Taber said. "With nearly 20 years of industry experience, Ken includes the channel, their main concerns, values ​​and means of influence. His knowledge and experience will be invaluable to help our advisory councils expand their iT relevance channel and influence decisions at the highest level within the IT industry. "

SYO-401 Exam Question No 42

Question No 42:

Which of the following is BEST used to capture and analyze network traffic between hosts on the
same network segment?

A. Protocol analyzer
B. Router
C. Firewall
D. HIPS

Answer: A

SYO-401 Exam Question No 41

Question No 41:

Which of the following is BEST at blocking attacks and providing security at layer 7 of the OSI model?

A. WAF
B. NIDS
C. Routers
D. Switches

Answer: A

Realising the Benefits of Digital Business Will Take Time

This year will be a pivotal year for organisations pursuing digital transformation strategies, and while companies have embraced cloud and mobile over the past five years, global trade association CompTIA says it will take more than the adoption of these technologies to realise the benefits of digital business.

A non-profit trade body, CompTIA has issued its report on business technology trends to watch in 2016.

According to Tim Herbert, senior VP, research and market intelligence, CompTIA, the pressure will be on C-suite executives to “drive the realignment of business models and workflows to ensure integration with existing technology investments, while incorporating new data analytics, social, and automation elements”.

And, Moheb Moses, Director - Channel Dynamics, and ANZ Community Director - CompTIA, said, CompTIA views 2016 as another year of momentum and continuation, “as incremental advancements in a number of areas make their mark on the IT industry and broader economy”.

So, here’s what CompTIA has to say about the six business and technology trends to watch in 2016:

•  User experience drives technology initiatives: As technology becomes increasingly important to all facets of business, efforts will intensify to provide better end-to-end user experiences. Some of these efforts will be ‘pushed,’ where technology providers or employers want to encourage or influence certain user behaviours. Other initiatives may result from ‘pull’; users accustomed to user-friendly consumer applications will exert influence over corporate IT to replicate those same experiences. These efforts will need to go well beyond user interfaces. Technology providers and organisations will have to factor in elements such as mobile, cloud, data and social.

•  Digital business encompasses more than IT: The notion of elevating technology discussions to C-suite and boardroom levels of importance has been percolating for some time. As with many aspects of innovation, however, advances on this front occur in fits and starts, often taking longer than expected. With technology-driven business transformation now mission critical for so many organisations, expect greater numbers of CEOs and boardrooms to embrace their role of ensuring these strategies become part of the business. Realising maximum benefits from these transformational opportunities requires efforts that go well beyond the IT department.

• Cloud is the new electricity: Cloud computing has been a dominant force in the IT industry, thanks to the way it has transformed IT operations and technology strategies. Companies have considered many cloud-specific aspects of business systems, from migration to integration and security. As the questions around cloud are answered and the benefits are becoming obvious, businesses are adopting a cloud-first strategy as they plan new technology projects. In time, this will drive cloud to the same place as “electricity” or “Internet”— so prevalent that it becomes a standard part of any planning. On the front end of the computing spectrum, mobile devices will follow a similar pattern. The ultimate goal is the complete solution.

• Companies go on the offensive with security: The mindset around security has been shifting in recent years due to a number of factors, such as the adoption of new technology models and the reliance on digital data. This year, ongoing security breaches across a wide range of industries and companies will add a proactive element to the security approach. Companies will increase activities such as penetration testing, external audits, and end user evaluations that lead to investments in new security training platforms. As metrics are developed around these areas, companies will also begin to publicly disclose the results of their tactics. As the security balance shifts further away from prevention and more towards detection, active measures will be needed to keep ahead of the curve.

• The chase for analytics heats up (again): Big data first came on the scene a few years ago, but there is renewed interest in gaining insights from data and making data-based decisions. The competitive advantage gained from intelligent use of data has separated early adopters from their counterparts, and everyone wants to quickly follow suit. The spectrum of data tools includes initial storage and the processing stage, but analytic and visualization will be the dominant areas of interest.

• The software layer gets much more attention: The definition of software has changed, as the concept of packaged applications with licenses is moving to an app or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. The importance of software has also grown, as manual, paper-based processes are replaced by digital equivalents. To build a digital workflow, companies are quickly recognizing the need for some level of development to customize or integrate applications. In turn, development efforts are being streamlined through the use of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) environments and containers for greater app independence. Integration also hints at the growing demand to virtualise and automate infrastructure. More programming skills are needed as companies pursue software defined data centers (SDDC) or, at the very least, a higher degree of automation.

• Nick Beauregard, CEO and Founder at HubOne and Chair, ANZ Community at CompTIA, said, ““While these trends present an evolving breed of opportunities and threats for our industry, the continuous change once again underpins why as an industry we need to listen to customers and work together to address the new business landscape. The CompTIA ANZ Channel Community is one of these forums and I look forward to hearing insights at our events in the year ahead.”

SYO-401 Exam Question No 40

Question No 40:

A bank has a fleet of aging payment terminals used by merchants for transactional processing. The terminals currently support single DES but require an upgrade in order to be compliant with security standards. Which of the following is likely to be the simplest upgrade to the aging terminals which will improve in-transit protection of transactional data?

A. AES
B. 3DES
C. RC4
D. WPA2

Answer: B

CompTIA Thanks Department of Commerce, EU for New Safe Harbor Agreement

CompTIA, the Computing Technology Industry Association, issued the following statement on a new project of the Safe Harbor Agreement (to be called "the EU are American. Privacy Shield") announced today by the European Commissioner jourová see.

The insurance agreement before port, which provides guidelines for US companies to transfer data securely from the EU to the United States, was annulled by the European Court of Justice in October. Without a new agreement, thousands of US companies were left without a way to transfer data across the Atlantic, without the risk of sanctions by the European data protection authorities.

The following statement should be attributed to Elizabeth Hyman, executive vice president, CompTIA:

"We thank the European Commission and the United States Department of Commerce for their hard work in developing this new draft agreement on EU-US privacy shield.

This is a great step forward for more than 4,000 companies in the United States they have transferred data across the Atlantic under the safe harbor. However, there is much work to be done before this new agreement can be implemented, and we hope that the process continues to move forward at this critical moment for the future of trade between the EU and the United States. "

SYO-401 Exam Question No 39

Question No 39:

A merchant acquirer has the need to store credit card numbers in a transactional database in a high performance environment. Which of the following BEST protects the credit card data?

A. Database field encryption
B. File-level encryption
C. Data loss prevention system
D. Full disk encryption

Answer: A