Protect Your Business from Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerabilities

Researchers have discovered two critical security vulnerabilities that threaten smartphones, laptops, desktops and cloud servers.

The threats, dubbed Spectre and Meltdown, exploit a computing process called speculative execution where processors attempt to predict commands to maximize performance and save time. In some instances, sensitive data can be exposed during this process even though it is supposed to be protected.

Meltdown primarily impacts ARM, Intel and AMD processors. Almost all computing systems, however, are at risk from Spectre.

Immediate action is required to prevent hackers from stealing sensitive information from your devices. While all chips may need to be replaced to fix the problem, applying software updates can serve as a short term fix.

Microsoft, for instance, has already released security updates to address these vulnerabilities. Google and Amazon are in the process of updating their cloud services. And Apple has issued updates for its operating systems.

"We continue to develop and test further mitigations for these issues and will release them in upcoming updates of iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS," Apple stated.

For a complete technical rundown of these vulnerabilities, click here.

You may also want to consider working with a managed services provider, so that you don’t get blindsided by these types of vulnerabilities. To get started, click here.