E-Commerce Sector at Risk of ‘Lethal’ DDoS Attacks this 2017

A tough road is expected for businesses that rely on digital technology this year as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks continue to evolve, according to a report cited by IPC, a local cloud pioneer and the only DDoS mitigation service provider in the country with a local attack scrubbing facility.

The worldwide study conducted by IPC’s DDoS Mitigation partner Nexusguard revealed a 380% increase in frequency of attacks in the first quarter of 2017. “More than 16,600 attacks were recorded during the first quarter, with notable ones being an enormous 275Gbps attack that took place during Valentine’s Day and a lengthy attack spanning 4,060 minutes which occurred during the Chinese New Year,” said Juniman Kasman, Chief Technology Officer of Nexusguard.

Additionally, the study shows that the percentage of days with large attacks also grew substantially. “The percentage of days with sizeable attacks (larger than 10Gbps) grew considerably between January (48.39%) and March (64.29%),” added Kasman.

For Dave De Leon, IPC’s Chief Operating Officer, the rising complexity of DDoS attacks can adversely affect companies who utilize digital means for business. “Online businesses have much to lose from going offline due to DDoS attacks. The ecommerce industry is a very vulnerable sector because operations rely heavily on the Internet. One successful attack can lead to huge financial losses. If you factor in the risk of losing customers, then we might be talking about millions.”

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Online transactions paralyzed

During a DDoS attack, cybercriminals flood a website with traffic coming from numerous requests in order to overwhelm its server. Due to the staggering amount of incoming traffic, the server is unable to support it and eventually crashes. Its main objective is to prevent users — both customers and the staff of the company — from accessing the site. To put it plainly, DDoS attacks knock perfectly healthy websites offline by overwhelming them.

The threat of evolving DDoS attacks is at a pivotal moment where the practice of online shopping is growing at an exponential rate, as revealed in an eMarketer study that forecasts a global e-commerce market amounting to $2.290 trillion this year. IPC believes that this growth will further attract criminals to launch more attacks.

“An inaccessible website is possibly the worst scenario any e-commerce company could experience. Aside from not being able to conduct business, their reputation is also at stake since an ongoing attack can disrupt the shopping experience of customers. If not remedied, irate customers will eventually choose other sites.” said De Leon. “As a solution, we urge online sellers to find a DDoS mitigation provider that can fend off large-scale attacks and assure them of a stable connection amidst these online disasters.”

Together with partner Nexusguard, IPC’s Premium DDoS Mitigation solution ensures business continuity in light of DDoS attacks. The company’s DDoS Mitigation experts employ GRE (Generic Route Encapsulation) Tunnel solutions that easily and constantly avert any incoming malicious traffic that can take down a website. Round-the-clock monitoring of the network is also part of the service, as a way to quickly implement security measures in the event of an attack.

“DDoS Mitigation should be an essential part of an e-commerce company’s cybersecurity strategy. DDoS attacks are specialized threats designed to bring down a company’s website. It all boils down to how much an hour or a day of downtime will cost you. If you can’t even begin to imagine the losses, then it’s time to talk to a DDoS Mitigation expert,” said De Leon.

For more information on how to protect your online business from DDoS attacks, visit http://ipc.ph/en/ddos/.

G.SKILL Releases New Extreme DDR4 Specifications for the 8th Gen Intel® Core™ Processor and Z370 Platform

G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world’s leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, is thrilled to announce new Trident Z and Trident Z RGB specifications for latest 8^th Gen Intel® Core™ processors built on the Coffee Lake microarchitecture and Z370 chipset motherboards, manufactured with ultra-high performance Samsung B-die DDR4 ICs.

Fastest 32GB (4x8GB) RGB Memory on the Market With every new platform launch, G.SKILL aims to maximize performance with higher memory specifications. This time paired with the new 8^th Gen Intel® Core™ processors and Z370 chipset, the Trident Z RGB memory is pushed to a blistering DDR4-4000MHz CL18-19-19-39 32GB (4x8GB) at 1.35V. The image below shows the new RGB kit stress tested on the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS X HERO (WI-FI AC) motherboard and an Intel® Core™ i5-8600K processor.

King of DDR4 Frequency

In addition to the new RGB memory specification, G.SKILL is also releasing an ultra-fast Trident Z memory kit for pure performance seekers. The new kit runs at DDR4-4600MHz CL19-25-25-45 16GB (2x8GB) at 1.5V. The following screenshot shows the memory kit under validation test on ASUS ROG MAXIMUS X APEX motherboard and an Intel® Core™ i5-8600K processor.

Best of Both Worlds: DDR4-4200Mhz 32GB (4x8GB)

Perfect for users with light workstations and content creation PCs, without the need to sacrifice memory frequency or capacity, G.SKILL releases a new DDR4-4200MHz CL19-21-21-41 32GB (4x8GB) at 1.4V memory kit. Below is a screenshot of the memory kit running on an ASUS ROG Maximus X Formula motherboard and Intel® Core™ i5-8600K processor.

List of Specifications for 8^th Gen Intel® Core™ Processors

Availability

These high end Trident Z and Trident Z RGB memory kits will be available via G.SKILL authorized distribution partners in November 2017.

Siemens Sees Potential in Digitalization of Philippines’ Food and Beverage Industry

Digitalization presentation on F&B industry by Roland Heymann, Head of Global Food and Beverage, Technical Account Management, Siemens Germany

At the full-day seminar on “Digitalization of the Food and Beverage Industry in the Philippines” held by Siemens last month, a team of global experts from the company showcased their technological expertise to current and potential customers in Philippines’ F&B industry.

Through interactive presentation sessions, Siemens presented how industry players can discover the potential of digitalization in food and beverage industry. Topics covered include “Digitalization - The future of manufacturing in Food and Beverage” and “Standardization – Set the pace for digitalization in Food and Beverage”. There was also a live demonstration to showcase how companies can “Reduce downtimes and cost with transparent operation”, where Siemens used the example of the dairy industry to demonstrate how both process and discrete workflows in the food and beverage industry can benefit from digitalization. Factors typically affecting the dairy industry are high cost sensitivity and mass production on the one hand, coupled with the growing diversity of available flavors and innovative packaging concepts on the other.

“We’ve been working with a number of global food and beverage players and learned from them about their demands and specific trends in the market. In order to respond to these needs, we are adapting our digital enterprise software suite accordingly and are implementing these functions into our applications, our solutions, and our products. While doing so, we aim to bring those solutions to anywhere in the world that has major expansions and investments ongoing for the food and beverage industry, to give all regions and specifically the Philippines an equal and fair chance to leverage our learnings,” shared Roland Heymann, Head of Global Food and Beverage, Technical Account Management, Siemens Germany.

Digitalization the Food and Beverage in Industry in the Philippines

The F&B industry in the Philippines is a highly competitive one, and it is expected to amount to approximately US$26 million in revenue this year. For manufacturers in the industry, operating productive production facilities requires many factors for consideration, including a consistently high level of product quality, maximum plant availability, optimum resource efficiency – and, increasingly, the greatest possible flexibility in order to meet more and more individual customer requirements.

Additionally, about 1.3 billion tonnes of food – which is about a third of all that is produced – around the world is wasted due to factors such as poor equipment, transportation and infrastructure, rejection due to aesthetics, and over purchase. The supply chain has to be more agile to allow companies to produce the right amount of products to cater to consumer demands, at the right time and at the right location.

Mastering all these challenges today and in the future is possible only with digitalization. Digitalization is the interaction of the virtual and real world. It is a major trend and innovation driver, creating completely new business and growth opportunities for companies. Digitalization of the entire value chain is crucial for catching new trends and ensuring competitiveness.

This is particularly important for the Philippines, as the country is growing rapidly in terms of population and production capacities. Digitalization would lay the foundation of how the local food and beverage industry will perform in the next few years and be able to compete with other countries in the region.

The digitalization of the manufacturing industry, which is also known as “Industrie 4.0”, is a topic of global interest.

Siemens offers the products and solutions required fully or gradually integrate and digitalize the entire value chain. The Digital Enterprise Suite is Siemens’ answer to Industrie 4.0, and it enables manufacturing companies to streamline and digitalize their entire business process, seamlessly integrating suppliers into the mix. They can begin at any point of their value chain, from product design to service, and can extend digitalization gradually, depending on their current needs.

With the Digital Enterprise Suite, Siemens offers a comprehensive portfolio of software-based systems specifically for the discrete industries. It integrates and digitalizes the complete value chain from Product Design, Production Planning, Production Engineering, Production Execution to Services. The result of the integration and digitalization of the complete value chain is a perfect digital copy of the value chain – the Digital Twin. This enables companies to perform simulation, testing, and optimization in a completely virtual world – before ever committing any resources in the real world. The connection of the virtual and real worlds leads to shorter time-to-market as well as greater flexibility, quality, and efficiency.

Enrico Buergo, Vice President and Country Division Lead, Siemens Philippines, said, “Digitalization is an integral part of the industrial revolution. You have this shift coming, it’s about the analysis, integration and standardization. We’re bringing it here to kick-start a very vibrant market which is food and beverage... and we really want to use it as a way for each company to achieve whatever it is they are aspiring and not to be left in the game.”

“The future is always in motion,” explains Alexander Grimm, Head of Food and Beverage ASEAN, Siemens Singapore, during the beginning of his presentation session. “Digitalization itself, it’s a thing which is in movement. It’s a continuous development.” He later explains in detail how customers have become more discerning in terms of the wants, and how digitalization in production can address these needs at the quicker and more precise way.

Present in the seminar were key officials of Siemens from both the regional and global headquarters including Enrico Buergo, Vice President and Country Division Lead, Siemens Philippines;  Alexander Grimm, Head of Food and Beverage ASEAN, Siemens Singapore; Roland Heymann, Head of Global Food and Beverage, Technical Account Management, Siemens Germany; Christopher Roppelt, Key Expert for Food and Beverage Automatic Concepts, Siemens Germany; and Lito Torres, Head of Factory and Automation, Siemens Philippines.

As part of the company’s commitment to the F&B industry in the Philippines, Siemens will be offering a two-day workshop that would showcase in detail products and technology that can be personalized and applied to their operating processes. The workshop will be conducted by product specialists and will be at no cost to participants of the seminar. Those who are interested can get in touch with their Siemens representative.

For more information on Siemens offerings in the F&B industry, please visit https://www.siemens.com/global/en/home/markets/food-beverage.html