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• KKR and GIP to spend $15bn on CyrusOne

  CyrusOne is set for a return to being a privately held company after global investment firms KKR and Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) announced a deal to buy the data center REIT out for $15bn.

  The all-cash deal will see the private equity players acquire all CyrusOne’s outstanding shares of common stock for $90.50 per share.

  Launched in 2001, CyrusOne has since designed, built and operated more than 50 colocation data centers across the world. The firm also offers managed hosting for cloud and dedicated servers through Connectria. 

  Data center deal 

  The transaction, unanimously approved by the CyrusOne board, is expected to close in the second quarter of 2022.

  “This transaction is a testament to the tremendous work by the entire CyrusOne team. We have built one of the world’s leading data center companies with a presence across key U.S. and international markets supporting our customers’ mission-critical digital infrastructure requirements while creating significant value for our stockholders,” noted Dave Ferdman, Co-Founder and interim President and Chief Executive Officer of CyrusOne.

  “KKR and GIP will provide substantial additional resources and expertise to accelerate our global expansion and help us deliver the timely and reliable solutions at scale that our customers value.”

  KKR’s investment is being made primarily from its global infrastructure and real estate equity strategies, and GIP’s investment is being made from its global infrastructure funds.

  “CyrusOne has built one of the strongest data center companies in the world and has a strong track record of development and operational expertise in addition to delivering best-in-class service to its customers. We are excited to work together with the company’s proven team to build on CyrusOne’s market leadership and support their customers’ growing data center infrastructure requirements,” said Waldemar Szlezak, Managing Director at KKR, and Will Brilliant, Partner at GIP. 

  “We see numerous opportunities ahead to continue expanding CyrusOne’s footprint across key global digital gateway markets and look forward to leveraging our global resources, access to long term capital and deep expertise to support the company’s growth.”

  In 2007, CyrusOne was first acquired by ABRY Partners, then was sold in 2010 to telecommunications service provider Cincinnati Bell for $525 million.

  Should you need a group of servers that work together to provide fast delivery of Internet content, take a look at our list of the best CDN providers.

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• Securing BYOD in the post-pandemic world

  There have been more changes to cloud and network access during the pandemic than in the previous five years together. Personal devices accessing corporate networks increased 20% in 2020, creating new complexity and increasing risk. New approaches to work are making IT rethink policies and cybersecurity practices for end-user devices. Many of these new policies are more lenient, allowing more and different devices to be used, but they also are creating more chaos.

  About the author

  Chris Cochran is Director and Cybersecurity Advocate at Axonius.

  More than 80% of IT professionals believe workers are violating their company’s rules, inadvertently or otherwise, leaving them blind to about 40% of the end-user hardware accessing their networks. As BYOD environments become more diverse and more complex, it opens the door to more security concerns because traditional IT tools don’t produce accurate device inventories, which are needed to ensure security and compliance.

  BYOD, WFH, and the new normal today

  An increase in personal devices - representing a multitude of brands, versions, and operating systems - substantially complicates security practices. It’s a struggle to implement all the necessary security configurations or determine the status of end-user device compliance. Likewise, work-from-anywhere approaches add to complexity. Corporate networks must now extend beyond headquarters’ and even brand offices to include access points from anywhere in the world.

  During asset management audits, many companies rely on their configuration management database (CMDB) to survey the condition of endpoints accessing corporate infrastructure, but it only produces a static, moment-in-time count, and it’s a daunting task to complete. BYOD connections often are short-lived episodes - this snapshot approach can easily miss the large segment of users who randomly connect and drop from their own devices.

  For compliance issues, specialized tools such as endpoint agent queries are commonly used to determine the version of installed anti-virus software on known devices, but they don’t pinpoint the ones without any protection, and these are the devices that pose the greatest threat. Attackers target unprotected personal devices and, once compromised, the malware on these devices can infiltrate corporate infrastructure and potentially gain access to sensitive data.

  Without an accurate understanding of the devices on the network and their status, it’s hard to certify that your organization is secure and adhering to industry standards, such as NIST or CIS Benchmarks. BYOD monitoring and enforcement must evolve to keep pace with increased access by more uncontrolled devices that are often using untrusted networks.

  Shoring up end-user device practices

  Definitive, actionable practices are the foundation of good end-user device security. The first step is to ensure your company’s policies incorporate the NIST BYOD security guidelines, such as requiring passwords and authentication on all end-user devices, and mandating that users keep software and anti-virus applications up to date. Knowledge can be empowering as well, so employees should be trained, and consistently reminded, on the protocols to connect safely. Limiting user access to resources on a need-to-know, zero-trust basis can help protect networks from attacks unintentionally initiated by compromised end-user devices.

  Looking inward, an organization’s technology team needs to examine its own internal processes and work procedures. Today, security and operational IT staff often function as independent entities with vital data siloed within isolated departments. As BYOD becomes more complex and ubiquitous, security and IT groups need to share information and resources to track who is connecting to the network and the condition of those devices. Analysts suggest considering the emerging field of cyber asset attack surface management (CAASM) as a way to manage complexity. This approach involves aggregated data that allows IT and security teams to share a credible and always current asset management inventory without the time-consuming manual effort, quickly uncover coverage gaps, and more efficiently validate and enforce policies.

  Post-pandemic social and business dynamics are reshaping the workplace, resulting in increased complexity and BYOD security concerns. The key to effectively managing this will be maintaining visibility into the status of any device that touches the corporate infrastructure, at all times, with new CAASM tools that close the growing visibility gap. In the “new normal” world, this more effective approach can provide much-needed BYOD oversight and reduce the IT workload as part of a larger cybersecurity management program.

  • We feature the best endpoint protection software.

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• New academic tool used to identify fake news domain names

  By analyzing browser behavior and domain registration data, a new tool can identify if a site has been set up to spread misinformation.

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• Poor website accessibility could be costing your business billions in online sales

  Web hosting providers LCN rates how accessible UK retail websites are as online shopping booms.

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