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Mathison, an all-in-one diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) platform, today announced the launch of its new Equity Index. The index allows employers to build action plans, mobilize employees and measure the ongoing impact of their DE&I initiatives.

The Equity Index provides a framework for auditing the entire talent life cycle. It identifies changes that will advance diversity, recruiting and training. Employers can build and manage their DE&I road maps on an ongoing basis in the way they set goals, benchmark and report progress. The index is based on more than three years of comprehensive research. Hundreds of DE&I experts and HR professionals across more than 25 industries participated in the research.

Mathison was co-founded in 2019 by Dave Walsh and Arthur Woods. The company name honors Alan Mathison Turing. Highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, Turing helped crack the German Enigma Code during World War II. Despite this, he never received the recognition he deserved and instead was persecuted for being gay. The company says that Turing “represents brilliance of mind, true innovation, genuine inspiration and triumph over adversity — core values that we strive to embody at our company today.”

Diagnostics and Direction

As Mathison explains on their website, “Wherever you are in the [DE&I] process, we meet you there and help accelerate your progress.” The Equity Index diagnoses organizations’ operations, policies and practices to gauge DE&I gaps and strengths. The system recommends personalized and prioritized DE&I goals that are mapped to an extensive knowledge base of DE&I guides, case studies and training. Teams are guided across every step of their DE&I journey. Progress is visible on an intuitive, downloadable dashboard, so the sharing of DEI progress and metrics is easy and powerful.

Beyond its being the right thing to do, data shows that companies who value diversity and inclusion outperform other companies by as much as 400% according to Great Places to Work.

Mathison’s Dave Walsh

“Despite the best intentions, we’ve seen countless organizations struggle to identify DE&I gaps, get buy-in and make ongoing progress,” said Walsh, who also serves as Mathison’s CEO. “We’re excited to roll out the new Equity Index to enable organizations to accelerate, manage and measure their DE&I impact and affect real change.”

D&H Distributing is set to begin offering the Microsoft Surface for Business portfolio of devices to its channel partners.

D&H will provide the portfolio of devices including Laptop 4, Laptop Studio, Laptop Go 2, Pro 8 and Pro 7+. The portfolio also includes Pro X, Go 3, Duo 2, Studio 2 and Hub 2S.

Along with Microsoft 365, these devices will play a major part in the distributor’s new modern solutions initiative. The strategy helps channel partners better deliver end-to-end, cloud-based software, hardware and services to a range of end-users.

Jason Bystrak is D&H’s vice president of modern solutions

D&H’s Jason Bystrak

“D&H is thrilled to add Microsoft Surface for Business, elevating our line card with this industry-leading computing solution for a range of verticals,” he said.

This gives D&H channel partners a “compelling” option for providing a suite of devices and accompanying MSP offerings, Bystrak said. D&H is helping its partners grow their practices toward more midmarket opportunities.

D&H’s Ongoing Focus on Work from Home, Business Continuity

The addition of Microsoft Surface for Business devices is essential to D&H’s ongoing focus on work-from-home and business continuity. It supports the evolving needs of the market as the hybrid workplace continues to take shape.

D&H said these Microsoft devices provide a new offering for its partners in target markets such as education and health care.

The distributor will offer the devices in conjunction with the Microsoft 365 solution as part of a bundle. It will deliver the bundle through a monthly subscription. This allows companies to assign IT expenses to their operational budgets, as opposed to the capital budget. That provides a more economical way to maintain an updated computing environment. In addition, it plays into D&H’s ongoing built for growth initiative, which continues to bring new opportunities and options to promote its partners’ expansion and profitability.

D&H’s Success Path to Cloud

D&H will fold content around Microsoft Surface for Business into its Success Path to Cloud program. This gives partners resources, training and support to help them create a successful managed services practice that incorporates cloud solutions. D&H will bundle white-glove and deployment services along with sales of the Microsoft devices to support solution providers as they deliver this technology on site at school, medical or other facility campuses.

Jason Jones is Microsoft‘s senior partner development manager for Microsoft Cloud.

“D&H has an upstanding reputation built on supporting its partners and developing their businesses, helping solution providers take advantage of high-performance computing as part of a richly functional, cloud-enabled workplace,” he said. “As the market continues to get more complex, involving different degrees of hybrid infrastructures, we’re glad to extend our relationship with D&H to include our flagship Microsoft Surface for Business devices.”

Mathison, an all-in-one diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) platform, today announced the launch of its new Equity Index. The index allows employers to build action plans, mobilize employees and measure the ongoing impact of their DE&I initiatives.

The Equity Index provides a framework for auditing the entire talent life cycle. It identifies changes that will advance diversity, recruiting and training. Employers can build and manage their DE&I road maps on an ongoing basis in the way they set goals, benchmark and report progress. The index is based on more than three years of comprehensive research. Hundreds of DE&I experts and HR professionals across more than 25 industries participated in the research.

Mathison was co-founded in 2019 by Dave Walsh and Arthur Woods. The company name honors Alan Mathison Turing. Highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, Turing helped crack the German Enigma Code during World War II. Despite this, he never received the recognition he deserved and instead was persecuted for being gay. The company says that Turing “represents brilliance of mind, true innovation, genuine inspiration and triumph over adversity — core values that we strive to embody at our company today.”

Diagnostics and Direction

As Mathison explains on their website, “Wherever you are in the [DE&I] process, we meet you there and help accelerate your progress.” The Equity Index diagnoses organizations’ operations, policies and practices to gauge DE&I gaps and strengths. The system recommends personalized and prioritized DE&I goals that are mapped to an extensive knowledge base of DE&I guides, case studies and training. Teams are guided across every step of their DE&I journey. Progress is visible on an intuitive, downloadable dashboard, so the sharing of DEI progress and metrics is easy and powerful.

Beyond its being the right thing to do, data shows that companies who value diversity and inclusion outperform other companies by as much as 400% according to Great Places to Work.

Mathison’s Dave Walsh

“Despite the best intentions, we’ve seen countless organizations struggle to identify DE&I gaps, get buy-in and make ongoing progress,” said Walsh, who also serves as Mathison’s CEO. “We’re excited to roll out the new Equity Index to enable organizations to accelerate, manage and measure their DE&I impact and affect real change.”

D&H Distributing is set to begin offering the Microsoft Surface for Business portfolio of devices to its channel partners.

D&H will provide the portfolio of devices including Laptop 4, Laptop Studio, Laptop Go 2, Pro 8 and Pro 7+. The portfolio also includes Pro X, Go 3, Duo 2, Studio 2 and Hub 2S.

Along with Microsoft 365, these devices will play a major part in the distributor’s new modern solutions initiative. The strategy helps channel partners better deliver end-to-end, cloud-based software, hardware and services to a range of end-users.

Jason Bystrak is D&H’s vice president of modern solutions

D&H’s Jason Bystrak

“D&H is thrilled to add Microsoft Surface for Business, elevating our line card with this industry-leading computing solution for a range of verticals,” he said.

This gives D&H channel partners a “compelling” option for providing a suite of devices and accompanying MSP offerings, Bystrak said. D&H is helping its partners grow their practices toward more midmarket opportunities.

D&H’s Ongoing Focus on Work from Home, Business Continuity

The addition of Microsoft Surface for Business devices is essential to D&H’s ongoing focus on work-from-home and business continuity. It supports the evolving needs of the market as the hybrid workplace continues to take shape.

D&H said these Microsoft devices provide a new offering for its partners in target markets such as education and health care.

The distributor will offer the devices in conjunction with the Microsoft 365 solution as part of a bundle. It will deliver the bundle through a monthly subscription. This allows companies to assign IT expenses to their operational budgets, as opposed to the capital budget. That provides a more economical way to maintain an updated computing environment. In addition, it plays into D&H’s ongoing built for growth initiative, which continues to bring new opportunities and options to promote its partners’ expansion and profitability.

D&H’s Success Path to Cloud

D&H will fold content around Microsoft Surface for Business into its Success Path to Cloud program. This gives partners resources, training and support to help them create a successful managed services practice that incorporates cloud solutions. D&H will bundle white-glove and deployment services along with sales of the Microsoft devices to support solution providers as they deliver this technology on site at school, medical or other facility campuses.

Jason Jones is Microsoft‘s senior partner development manager for Microsoft Cloud.

“D&H has an upstanding reputation built on supporting its partners and developing their businesses, helping solution providers take advantage of high-performance computing as part of a richly functional, cloud-enabled workplace,” he said. “As the market continues to get more complex, involving different degrees of hybrid infrastructures, we’re glad to extend our relationship with D&H to include our flagship Microsoft Surface for Business devices.”

Mathison, an all-in-one diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) platform, today announced the launch of its new Equity Index. The index allows employers to build action plans, mobilize employees and measure the ongoing impact of their DE&I initiatives.

The Equity Index provides a framework for auditing the entire talent life cycle. It identifies changes that will advance diversity, recruiting and training. Employers can build and manage their DE&I road maps on an ongoing basis in the way they set goals, benchmark and report progress. The index is based on more than three years of comprehensive research. Hundreds of DE&I experts and HR professionals across more than 25 industries participated in the research.

Mathison was co-founded in 2019 by Dave Walsh and Arthur Woods. The company name honors Alan Mathison Turing. Highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, Turing helped crack the German Enigma Code during World War II. Despite this, he never received the recognition he deserved and instead was persecuted for being gay. The company says that Turing “represents brilliance of mind, true innovation, genuine inspiration and triumph over adversity — core values that we strive to embody at our company today.”

Diagnostics and Direction

As Mathison explains on their website, “Wherever you are in the [DE&I] process, we meet you there and help accelerate your progress.” The Equity Index diagnoses organizations’ operations, policies and practices to gauge DE&I gaps and strengths. The system recommends personalized and prioritized DE&I goals that are mapped to an extensive knowledge base of DE&I guides, case studies and training. Teams are guided across every step of their DE&I journey. Progress is visible on an intuitive, downloadable dashboard, so the sharing of DEI progress and metrics is easy and powerful.

Beyond its being the right thing to do, data shows that companies who value diversity and inclusion outperform other companies by as much as 400% according to Great Places to Work.

Mathison’s Dave Walsh

“Despite the best intentions, we’ve seen countless organizations struggle to identify DE&I gaps, get buy-in and make ongoing progress,” said Walsh, who also serves as Mathison’s CEO. “We’re excited to roll out the new Equity Index to enable organizations to accelerate, manage and measure their DE&I impact and affect real change.”

D&H Distributing is set to begin offering the Microsoft Surface for Business portfolio of devices to its channel partners.

D&H will provide the portfolio of devices including Laptop 4, Laptop Studio, Laptop Go 2, Pro 8 and Pro 7+. The portfolio also includes Pro X, Go 3, Duo 2, Studio 2 and Hub 2S.

Along with Microsoft 365, these devices will play a major part in the distributor’s new modern solutions initiative. The strategy helps channel partners better deliver end-to-end, cloud-based software, hardware and services to a range of end-users.

Jason Bystrak is D&H’s vice president of modern solutions

D&H’s Jason Bystrak

“D&H is thrilled to add Microsoft Surface for Business, elevating our line card with this industry-leading computing solution for a range of verticals,” he said.

This gives D&H channel partners a “compelling” option for providing a suite of devices and accompanying MSP offerings, Bystrak said. D&H is helping its partners grow their practices toward more midmarket opportunities.

D&H’s Ongoing Focus on Work from Home, Business Continuity

The addition of Microsoft Surface for Business devices is essential to D&H’s ongoing focus on work-from-home and business continuity. It supports the evolving needs of the market as the hybrid workplace continues to take shape.

D&H said these Microsoft devices provide a new offering for its partners in target markets such as education and health care.

The distributor will offer the devices in conjunction with the Microsoft 365 solution as part of a bundle. It will deliver the bundle through a monthly subscription. This allows companies to assign IT expenses to their operational budgets, as opposed to the capital budget. That provides a more economical way to maintain an updated computing environment. In addition, it plays into D&H’s ongoing built for growth initiative, which continues to bring new opportunities and options to promote its partners’ expansion and profitability.

D&H’s Success Path to Cloud

D&H will fold content around Microsoft Surface for Business into its Success Path to Cloud program. This gives partners resources, training and support to help them create a successful managed services practice that incorporates cloud solutions. D&H will bundle white-glove and deployment services along with sales of the Microsoft devices to support solution providers as they deliver this technology on site at school, medical or other facility campuses.

Jason Jones is Microsoft‘s senior partner development manager for Microsoft Cloud.

“D&H has an upstanding reputation built on supporting its partners and developing their businesses, helping solution providers take advantage of high-performance computing as part of a richly functional, cloud-enabled workplace,” he said. “As the market continues to get more complex, involving different degrees of hybrid infrastructures, we’re glad to extend our relationship with D&H to include our flagship Microsoft Surface for Business devices.”

Microsoft joined a number of technology providers in blaming macroeconomic trends for lower-than-expected quarterly earnings.

The Redmond, Washington-based software giant on Tuesday unveiled its fiscal year fourth-quarter results. The company reported that commercial bookings grew 25%, and enterprise services grew by 5%. Total revenue ticked up from $46.2 billion a year ago to $51.9 billion year-over-year, setting a record for Microsoft. However, that number missed the analyst forecast of $52.4, CNBC reports.

It’s worth noting that product revenue was actually lower than it was a year ago, while service and other revenue increased by $6 billion. Profit was $16.7 billion. The increasing cost of revenue gave Microsoft a gross margin of $35.4 billion, up from $32.2 billion a year ago.

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella

“We see real opportunity to help every customer in every industry use digital technology to overcome today’s challenges and emerge stronger,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft. “No company is better positioned than Microsoft to help organizations deliver on their digital imperative — so they can do more with less.”

Macroeconomics

Microsoft in its quarterly earnings report cited multiple factors for missing expectations. First, the company noted an unfavorable foreign exchange rate movement. It also cited extended production shutdowns in China. According to Microsoft, the shutdowns, as well as a “deteriorating PC market,” impacted Windows OEM revenue by more than $300 million.

And then there’s that elephant in the room – Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. The company said its decision to shrink its Russian operations led to $126 million in bad debt expense, asset impairments and severance.

Moreover, Microsoft said it spent $113 million in severance for non-Russian employees last quarter. The corporation cited a “strategic realignment of our business groups.”

Lastly, Microsoft said advertising spend on LinkedIn and Microsoft Search also decreased.

Segments

Revenue in Microsoft’s productivity and business processes ($16.6 billion) and intelligent cloud ($20.9 billion) segments both grew from the previous quarter. However, personal computing revenue dipped slightly from $14.5 billion to $14.3 billion.

Revenue for Office commercial products and cloud services grew by increased 9% year-over-year. Within that number, Office 365 commercial revenue grew 15%.

Enterprise support services revenue offset diminishing consulting services.

Microsoft reported its cloud revenue as $25 billion, which represented a 28% year-over-year increase. The company also noted that it landed the largest number of large cloud deals ever.

Microsoft’s Amy Hood

“In a dynamic environment we saw strong demand, took share, and increased customer commitment to our cloud platform,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft. “… As we begin a new fiscal year, we remain committed to balancing operational discipline with continued investments in key strategic areas to drive future growth.”

Nadella noted that Telstra will move its IT load to Azure.

AWS RE:INFORCE — Amazon has revamped its AWS Security Competency program with a new set of specializations. The cloud giant redesigned it so customers could more easily find partners with proper specialties based on their requirements.

AWS launched the new program on Tuesday at AWS re:Inforce, the company’s security conference in Boston. AWS chief information security officer (CISO) C.J. Moses announced the relaunch of the program during the opening keynote session.

“We want to assist customers in avoiding security jargon so they can pinpoint the third-party software needed to support them, all of course validated by AWS,” Moses said. “Because our AWS security competency partners are critical to extending the benefits of AWS, we took customer feedback to do a global design.”

AWS organized the program into eight categories that address 40 different customer security use cases, including software and professional service support, Moses noted. The eight categories include application security, data protection, identity and access management (IAM), compliance and privacy and infrastructure security. Threat detection and response (TDR), perimeter protection and core security are also on the list.

‘[The] software security competency partners successfully underwent a rigorous technical and operational validation process with AWS security experts,” Moses said.

For example, AWS created a zero-trust network use case in the infrastructure category.

AWS announced 42 launch partners. They include Accenture, Alert Logic, Aqua, Barracuda, Check Point, Deloitte, DXC Technology, Fortinet, IBM, Presidio and Sentinel One. Others are Sophos, Splunk, Tanium, Tenable, Trend Micro, Wipro, Wiz and ZScaler.

Alert Logic announced it met the AWS Security Competency for TDR for its managed detection and response (MDR) offering. Also, Alert Logic said it has achieved the new AWS Level 1 MSSP Software Competency.

Level 1 MSSP Software Competency

AWS also launched specialization categories for the AWS Level 1 MSSP Competency. The new categories consist of six specialized managed security services to AWS’s Level 1 MSSP Competency program launched last year.

At the time, the program launched with competencies including infrastructure vulnerability, resource inventory visibility, security best practices monitoring, compliance monitoring, triaging of security events, 24×7 incident alerting, distributed denial-of-service mitigation, managed intrusion protection, MDR for AWS endpoints and managed web application firewall.

According to AWS, the solutions must provide 24×7 monitoring and response services and extend AWS’ Level 1 MSSP baseline. The six MSSP security service domains include: vulnerability management, network security, cloud security best practices and compliance, host and endpoint security, threat detection and response and application security.

AWS said Level 1 MSSP partners are certified to use native AWS security services including Amazon Guard Duty, the AWS Security Hub and ISV SaaS security tools. Level 1 MSSP partners provide 24×7 monitoring of “essential” AWS resources, while providing complete visibility of AWS resources that are added, moved or removed.

Level 1 MSSP Competency specialization partners supporting the new AWS categories include Accenture, Arctic Wolf, Capgemini, Deepwatch, Delotte, DXC, GDIT, Hitachi, Ibexlabs, IBM, Proficio, RedBearIT, StackArmor and Wipro.

We outline the six new Level 1 MSSP Competency Specialization categories, as described by AWS in the slideshow above.

Mathison, an all-in-one diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) platform, today announced the launch of its new Equity Index. The index allows employers to build action plans, mobilize employees and measure the ongoing impact of their DE&I initiatives.

The Equity Index provides a framework for auditing the entire talent life cycle. It identifies changes that will advance diversity, recruiting and training. Employers can build and manage their DE&I road maps on an ongoing basis in the way they set goals, benchmark and report progress. The index is based on more than three years of comprehensive research. Hundreds of DE&I experts and HR professionals across more than 25 industries participated in the research.

Mathison was co-founded in 2019 by Dave Walsh and Arthur Woods. The company name honors Alan Mathison Turing. Highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, Turing helped crack the German Enigma Code during World War II. Despite this, he never received the recognition he deserved and instead was persecuted for being gay. The company says that Turing “represents brilliance of mind, true innovation, genuine inspiration and triumph over adversity — core values that we strive to embody at our company today.”

Diagnostics and Direction

As Mathison explains on their website, “Wherever you are in the [DE&I] process, we meet you there and help accelerate your progress.” The Equity Index diagnoses organizations’ operations, policies and practices to gauge DE&I gaps and strengths. The system recommends personalized and prioritized DE&I goals that are mapped to an extensive knowledge base of DE&I guides, case studies and training. Teams are guided across every step of their DE&I journey. Progress is visible on an intuitive, downloadable dashboard, so the sharing of DEI progress and metrics is easy and powerful.

Beyond its being the right thing to do, data shows that companies who value diversity and inclusion outperform other companies by as much as 400% according to Great Places to Work.

Mathison’s Dave Walsh

“Despite the best intentions, we’ve seen countless organizations struggle to identify DE&I gaps, get buy-in and make ongoing progress,” said Walsh, who also serves as Mathison’s CEO. “We’re excited to roll out the new Equity Index to enable organizations to accelerate, manage and measure their DE&I impact and affect real change.”

The latest Check Point Research data shows ransomware attacks impacted one out of 40 organizations each week globally during the second quarter of 2022.

That’s a 59% year-over-year increase in ransomware attacks. Average weekly attacks per organization globally reached a peak of 1,200  attacks, a 32% increase year-over-year. That represents an all-time peak.

No Signs of Slowing Down

Omer Dembinsky is data group manager at Check Point Software Technologies.

Check Point’s Omer Dembinsky

“Ransomware attacks are showing no signs of slowing down,” he said. “Hackers are leveraging the increase in attack surface from remote work and learning. And the war between Ukraine and Russia also helps drive the proliferating trend, as geopolitical tensions rising inspires hackers to take sides. Lastly, the willingness of organizations to meet ransomware demands in order to protect patients has proved the business of ransomware to be highly lucrative. Hence, we see that hackers are continuing to invest resources in going after health care organizations. We strongly recommend organizations everywhere to take note of our ransomware prevention tips, such as backing up data, keeping systems up to date and training employees on awareness.”

Check Point Research also shared general cyberattack trends. The top three most targeted industries for ransomware are government/military, education/research and health care. And Africa saw the highest volume of attacks peaking at 1,700 attacks on average per organization.

May marked the fifth anniversary of the infamous WannaCry attack, and it seems ransomware has completely changed the threat landscape. It has evolved to be a weapon in the hands of attack groups threatening governments. Check Point Research recently coined the term “country extortion.” It did so after observing how ransomware expanded its business borders to now include the government sector.

Scroll through our slideshow above for more from Check Point Research on second-quarter ransomware activity.