Author: Stuart Crawford

What is the Future of Ransomware?

Ransomware is a kind of software commonly developed and used by hackers to restrain access to a computer system and/or database until a certain demand is met; mostly hackers want the payment of a sum of money. The hackers threaten the organization whose computer system they have blocked, that if they do not pay the sum of money demanded, the company’s database will be leaked online or destroyed completely.

This has become a quick way for hackers to earn money. In the past, when hackers had to waste a lot of time and resources snooping around a target site, this type of activity didn’t really pay off. This method was risky for many reasons and wasn’t much of a threat.

Today, things are much different. Hackers can easily gain access to a company’s database and then hold the information hostage until a ransom is paid. The advent of cryptocurrency makes the whole transaction seamless and untraceable. This is one of the reasons why ransomware is so big nowadays.

How Big A Threat Is Ransomware?

According to the FBI, businesses paid out $24 million in ransomware payments in 2015. By 2016, that number had reached one billion dollars. The average ransom is now approximately $1,000 but some healthcare organizations have reported paying $17,000 to regain access to their files. As long as companies continue to reward hackers by paying the ransom, this crime will continue to escalate.

Who Are The Likely Victims Of Ransomware Attack?

Most ransomware attacks start as a fishing expedition, which means that the hackers make out a list of organizations and their employees and then try to access their confidential information. Targeted organizations are those that contain sensitive personal information, such as healthcare and financial organizations. Many times, businesses think that the best course of action is to pay the ransom, rather than hire security and IT specialists to come in and restore access. Sometimes, organizations are embarrassed to admit that they’ve been a victim of this crime. They want to make it go away as quickly and painlessly as possible.

What Defense Strategies Can An Organization Put In Place Against Ransomware?

The very first step is to understand how a ransomware attack happens. Hackers send out phishing or spear phishing emails to employees of the organization in an attempt to get someone to click on a bad link. Once this happens, the ransomware virus is downloaded to the company’s network and all files are frozen. At this point, you have two choices: pay the ransom or call in security experts to unlock the files.

The first step for most companies is to lay out a security strategy to deal with viruses, worms, ransomware, and other forms of attack. Every organization should have a plan to address data breaches. The experts say that it’s not a matter of whether you get attacked; it’s just a matter of when. So the best course of action is to be ready. Below are few basic steps you can take:

• Train your employees what to watch out for in suspicious emails. Training must take place on a regular basis because people forget or get careless.
• Hire a security company to test your current system to see where your weaknesses are. Most IT security pros will assess your security, then give you a list of things that should be done right away to shore up your defenses. They can also help you make a long-term plan of action.
• Regular system backups should be performed. If you have all your data backed up at an off-site cloud data storage site, then it can be easy and painless to completely restore all your data.
• Perform regular patches and updates. This keeps your network protected. New cyber threats come out almost daily so this is an important step to keeping your database secure.

Additional Tips

Employees are the key problem when it comes to ransomware attacks and other viruses. They should be fully aware of the types of email scams that are currently going around. Employees should know what to look for and how to avoid clicking a bad link.

It’s not easy to be in a position where you have to negotiate with a ransomware attacker but every decision depends on the circumstances at hand. Whether you work with a managed IT provider or have in-house IT techs, it’s important for them to be fully engaged in keeping your data safe. However, if an attack does occur, you can greatly reduce your losses by being ready and knowing what to do.

Wrap Up

Hackers stay up-to-date on the latest IT technology, so you must do this as well. Social media has opened the doors for hackers because it’s so prevalent these days and many users get careless. Start by finding a great team of security experts to help you get up-to-speed. Get all stakeholders in your organization involved in data security. Don’t get lax. Make sure employees are aware of the dangers online.

The All-New Surface Go: What You Need To Know

There’s no shortage of gizmos and gadgets to choose from in today’s tech world, but not all are created equal, and some are exceptionally unique, like the new Microsoft Surface Go. The Surface Go is the tech giant’s way of combining the Surface Pro’s premium features with affordability and portability – two of the most sought-after features for laptop and tablet owners, understandably. Touted as the “smallest and most affordable Surface yet,” the Go is one of Microsoft’s most exciting new ventures, and with its August debut fast approaching, there’s plenty to know about this trailblazing 2-in-1.

Those familiar with the Microsoft Surface line may have a solid idea of what’s to come in the Go. Here are a few of the most interesting aspects of the Microsoft Surface Go, including specs, price, and all the things you can do with this piece of gadgetry in tow.

What Does It Look Like?

One of the Go’s most endearing qualities is certainly its tiny size. Like its predecessor, the Go is a tablet that attaches firmly to Microsoft’s Type Cover keyboard. Measuring at 9.6 by 6.9 inches, it’s just 8.3 mm thin and weighs only 1.15 pounds. About the size of a composite notebook, with a 10-inch diagonal display that’s sufficient for everything from business to entertainment, the Go is primed for accessibility, above all.

With a gadget made for accessibility comes a need for durability. The Surface Go boasts a magnesium enclosure and an ultra-bright, high-resolution touchscreen bonded with durable Gorilla Glass. And with respect to the design of the Go, convenience is key. It comes complete with a kickstand that extends to 165 degrees, as well as support for a stylus pen, which can magnetically attach to the tablet.

There are also plenty of ports to keep you productive all day. There is, of course, the charging port, but in addition, you’ll find a USB-C 3.1 for data and video, as well as a MicroSD card reader and a headphone jack.

What Can The Surface Go Do?

When designing the Go, in addition to portability and affordability, Microsoft aimed for productivity. They sought to create a device that would be sufficient for both work and play. From Office apps for business and school to Netflix and Hulu for entertainment, Microsoft’s team kept a wide variety of users and uses in mind to create a gadget that checks all the boxes.

When it comes to display, the Surface Go doesn’t skimp. Its high-resolution PixelSense Display is custom-built and can support the Surface Pen with exceptional pressure sensitivity, low latency, low pen parallax and precision. All of this results in near-perfect note taking, design, and drawing.

Easy on the eyes but bold enough for vibrant videos, art, and photos, the Surface Go isn’t short on aesthetics in the least. Even the Surface Pro’s screen capabilities are unique. When in portrait mode, the screen is designed to fit the scale of school textbooks. While in landscape mode, pages will appear side by side, mimicking a paperback in your hand.

Power-wise, despite its small size, the Surface Go is nothing to scoff at. It gets its power from a 7th Generation Intel Pentium Gold Processor 4415Y, which allows for up to nine hours of battery. Other features include Windows’ Hello face recognition camera, which will be used for bio-authentication, plus two front-facing speakers and a sufficient 8-megapixel rear camera to capture high-quality photos.

How Much Does The Surface Pro Cost?

Compared to the Surface Pro, the Go is a steal, and the most affordable Surface ever. When it ships in early August, it will cost $399. With this, users will receive 64 gigabytes of internal storage, plus 4 gigabytes of RAM. More costly options include one with 256 gigabytes of storage and an impressive 8 gigabytes of RAM, as well as an LTE version, which will be available later in 2018.

If you’re looking for add-ons, you’ve got options in a Type Cover keyboard and stylus pen. The Surface Go has the option of a signature Type Cover, custom-made with design features that make for a superb typing experience. Ergonomic key pitch, excellent key travel, and high precision tuning are a few other details you’ll find in the Type Cover. There is also the option to connect your device to the Surface Mobile Mouse for further convenience.

Wrap Up

With an ever-growing number of laptops, tablets, and other tech gadgets to choose from, Microsoft’s taken big steps in creating something more affordable. Hot off the heels of the success of the Surface Pro, the Surface Go is the answer for those who want an inexpensive, but tech-heavy tablet computer. If you’re among the crowd looking for a sleek combination of looks, function, and savings, the Surface Go may be right up your alley.

If you work for a company that deals with government agencies, you may have heard of the NIST, or The National Institute of Standards and Technology. The NIST has its own unique set of standards by which certain companies and organizations must comply.

These cybersecurity guidelines, implemented by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) are a point of stress for many organizations, and rightfully so. In fact, ensuring compliance with current NIST standards is among the top priorities for a number of industries in the tech game today, including those in universities, consulting companies, research institutions, manufacturers, and others. If you work within one of these industries and are contracted in any capacity by the DoD, you may do well to familiarize yourself with the most recent NIST standards to ensure you are safe from the consequences of failure to comply.

What Do You Need to Know About NIST Guidelines?

Over time, the NIST, has worked to require additional standards for the processing, storing, and transmission of defense information. The new guidelines seek to promote the protection of “Controlled Unclassified Information,” or CUI, which is defined as government information that, while unclassified, still requires safeguarding. Therefore, the NIST has put into place a specific set of processes, listed in NIST Special Publication 800-171, to ensure government information is protected at all times.

If your company has plans to work with the DOD in the future, you’ll need to take the required steps to ensure you meet the guidelines of the NIST 800-171 mandate. Sections 3.1 through 3.14 of the guidelines contain 109 requirements that companies must meet to comply, though it may have proved difficult for many to meet all 109 by the December 31, 2017 deadline. To address this, the Federal Government typically expects companies to come up with a game plan to earn compliance within a reasonable time frame. Failure to comply may result in your company’s removal from the approved vendors’ list.

There are a few questions you may ask yourself if you’re concerned about whether or not your organization is subject to NIST standards. Simply put, if your company currently holds a United States federal contractor is currently listed as a supplier on a United States federal contract, you likely must answer to the NIST.

Here are a few additional questions that may serve as an indicator of whether or not your company should be concerned about compliance:

• Is your company’s access to CUI contained and reliably isolated?
• Is the CUI controlled? Things like the CUI’s physical location, internet network, authentication factors, and infrastructure all come into play when ensuring the CUI is accessible only to authorized parties.
• Does the site have substantial information technology practices?
• Are backups being maintained?
• Has credible antivirus software been installed?

These are the types of practices subject to the NIST’s guidelines.

What Are Some Common NIST Compliance Myths?

While NIST compliance is vital in a variety of different industries, there are some myths circulating that may make it difficult to know for sure whether compliance has been met. Here are some of the most common myths regarding NIST Compliance:

NIST Compliance Is Too Expensive.

There may be costs associated with becoming NIST compliant, but that doesn’t mean doing so has to cost a fortune. You may not require the help of a large consulting company. Make sure to do your due diligence before committing.

My Company Is Too Small To Worry About NIST Compliance.

Companies of all sizes may be subject to NIST compliance. These guidelines don’t just apply to direct manufacturers, but also any subcontractor currently selling to one of the government’s suppliers. Although your company may not depend on business with the DoD, you may not want to rule yourself out down the line. This is what makes NIST compliance so important for businesses both big and small.

There’s Not Enough Time For Us To Become NIST Compliant.

While there are consequences to not meeting compliance by the aforementioned deadline, it’s still not too late to strive for compliance.

What Steps Can My Business Take To Prepare for DFARS Compliance?

To meet the requirements set forth by DFARS, you’ll need to follow a few steps:

Create A Security Controls Traceability Matrix

If you’re hoping to demonstrate compliance, you’ll need to do it across the system and identify areas of weakness. It’s important to identify every component within your unique system that may be subject to guidelines. Each of these should be mapped out using a simple matrix to ensure accountability.

Pinpoint The Gaps

Your matrix should provide a valuable glimpse into where gaps in compliance may lie. Once you have it, it’s time to investigate where these may be affected in the system.

Visualize And Execute Your Game Plan

Once you’ve determined the gaps, you should develop a strong gap remediation plan that will explore how and when each gap will be fixed and what types of resources you’ll need to achieve this, then put your plan into play. Be sure to document how the gaps have been addressed, as well as be prepared to present data as evidence of your compliance.

Every business knows that getting hit by a data breach can have devastating results. Oftentimes, you lose business along with customer trust. There’s a costly impact to your reputation, and a lot of time is lost on recovering all your data – all translating to huge financial losses. A new report now puts these implications and hidden costs of data breach into perspective.

Ponemon Institute’s 2018 “Cost of a Data Breach Study” presents some worrying figures on the financial impact of data breaches on the corporate world.

While the costs of data breaches are expected to vary depending on factors such as the nature of data lost, the size and nature of the organization whose data has been compromised, and the severity or extent of the attack, Ponemon Institute reports that the global average total cost of a data breach exceeds a whopping $3.8 million.

This represents a 6.4 percent increase from last year’s $3.62 million. What does this mean? The cost of a single data breach is on the rise even as technology continues to present businesses with better, more advanced ways to protect their records both online and offline.

What The Report Covered   

The researchers at Ponemon Institute interviewed nearly 500 companies that had experienced a data breach for the study and analyzed numerous costs and cost factors surrounding an attack. These included incident investigation, legal and regulatory activities, recovery, damage to company reputation, and lost business occurring through customer turnover.

Based on these in-depth interviews, the study established that a mega breach, which simply refers to an attack in the range of 1 million to 50 million lost records, could respectively cost anywhere from $40 million to $350 million on average.

This was the first time the Ponemon Institute study, which has been released annually for the past 13 years, covered calculations of the costs associated with such mega breaches. It, however, did not include huge incidents such as the 2017 Equifax data breach in calculating the averages, arguing that these are uncommon and not the type of breaches that most organizations experience.

According to the report, a company that suffers a mega-breach is bound to experience lost business as the most significant cost. Lost business can claim up to one-third of the total cost of such a breach involving the loss of at least one million records.

What Influences The Cost Of Data Breaches?

A host of factors come into play to determine the costs incurred by organizations that have suffered a breach.

While the knowledge of these factors could mean little by itself, there are some factors that have the potential to reduce these costs. One such factor is the length of time it takes a business to identify and contain an attack incident.

To put it simply, if an organization takes a long time to identify an attack, they would equally take longer to contain the incident – and this would inevitably translate to more extensive damages and bigger losses.

Identifying a breach sooner, on the other hand, allows the victim to address it sooner and be able to contain the problem before the damage spreads. This has the potential to minimize the cost of a data breach.

If the figures from the Ponemon Institute report are anything to go by, it can take up to 197 days (well over 6 months) to identify a data breach and another 69 days to contain it.

Direly, these figures have significantly gone up in the last year, ostensibly because of an increase in the severity of these attacks.

Anything Companies Can Do To Reduce Data Breach Costs?

There are quite a few strategies that, if properly implemented, can help businesses to significantly lower the potential of data breaches and their associated costs.

For starters, the report from Ponemon Institute provides a strong correlation between the time taken to identify and contain an incident of data breach and its related costs. The yearly study has established this same correlation for four consecutive years now – indicating that the quicker you identify a breach, the less it will cost you.

So then, all you have to do is remain vigilant and prepared for an attack at all times. How you wonder? Consider extensive use of encryption in your organization, as this can cut the cost by as much as $13 per capita.

The research also recommends putting in place an incident response team. This, according to the study, can decrease the cost of a data breach by up to $14 per compromised record from the $148 average per-capita cost.

Conclusion

Based on the data from the 2018 cost of a data breach study, being able to contain a breach in less than 30 days will save you more than USD 1 million compared to a company that does not. However, if you can combine vigilance with an automated, state of the art security system, there’s no reason why you can’t keep data breaches from happening in your organization in the first place.

Ticketfly, the California-based ticketing service owned by Eventbrite, hit the headlines in late May, 2018 for shutting itself down in a move to protect user data following a perceived “cyber incident.”

There’s no denying, this must have been tremendously inconvenient to eventgoers who, as part of the security breach, were treated to the message: “Your Security Down im Not Sorry,” in place of the usual login interface on the Ticketfly homepage.

Alongside this message was an image of the Guy Fawkes Anonymous and a Yandex email address belonging to the hacker; neither was of much help to the users.

The hacker had defaced the ticketing website with a picture of the V for Vendetta character plus a claim of responsibility that read: “Ticketfly HacKeD By IsHaKdZ.” This left the company with little choice but to take the site offline and throw itself into damage control.

Ticketfly went on to investigate the incident with the help of third-party forensic cybersecurity experts. The exact extent of the attack and the types of data that the hackers accessed remains yet to be established.

Reports emerged that the Eventbrite-owned ticketing company was supplying venues with lists of ticket buyers, who were required to carry their photo IDs and a printout of their tickets (for those who had the tickets) to the show(s).

The outage was, however, definitely going to present a more serious challenge to those who had bought tickets for an approaching show and didn’t already have the tickets.

The affected ticket buyers would have to sit tight; the company would give them more information as it became available.

Fast Forward To Date

The date is June 2, 2018 – Ticketfly just resumed its normal ticketing operations. Details emerge that the company has been the target of a malicious cyberattack that has led to the compromise of up to 27 million user accounts hosted on its servers.

This is the official communication from the company itself. It clears the air on the earlier reports going around speculating that about 26 million user accounts have been compromised from the Ticketfly attack.

The company, which handles ticket distribution for events like Riot Fest, Celebrate Brooklyn, and a series of venues across Canada and the US, has since confirmed that there was indeed a cyberattack that compromised some event venue and customer data.

It is relieved to confirm, however, that the breached data is limited to people’s names, email addresses, physical addresses, and phone numbers connected to the approximated 27 million Ticketfly accounts. More sensitive information including payment and login data such as credit card numbers and passwords were thankfully not part of the stolen data.

As part of the leak, the compromised names, email addresses, phone numbers, and home addresses were posted on a public server – with some reports indicating that the hacker intended to make public even more data should his demands fail to be met.

Too Early To Celebrate?

The question that now lingers in the minds of many is with regards to the nature of the data that is still in the hands of the hacker who has threatened to release this data to the public.

These threats cannot be taken lightly by any chance. There are reports indicating that the hacker had notified Ticketfly of a security fault ahead of the “cyber incident,” asking the company for a one bitcoin ransom in exchange for repairing the fault. Apparently, Ticketfly did not take the deal, leading to the eventual uploading of the data to the public server. The current value of one Bitcoin is $8,095.

Like any users involved in a major data breach, the primary fear for the victims in this Ticketfly data breach is the idea that the hackers could impersonate them in various instances of identity fraud or consider using their information to access their financial records.

This kind of fear may be unfounded as Troy Hunt, the guy who owns and runs the website named, Have I Been Pwned, feels that this breach is not as ominous as most, given the fact that the perpetrator apparently did not get his hands on people’s passwords or payment information.

The Have I Been Pwned website allows people to check whether their email addresses have been compromised in incidents of data breaches. If your info is included on a public server somewhere, you can find out at this site.

Wrap Up

Right now, it remains to be seen whether the dark hours have passed for Ticketfly or if there are still enough vulnerabilities for the attacker to exploit. By now, there’s no doubt that Ticketfly has improved their security to ensure that all credit card information and user logins are stored in an encrypted database that is cordoned off.

The Microsoft Inspire 2018 partner conference is now behind us, but the new dawn that it marked for the company’s cloud computing service, Azure, has just begun.

Of course, there was a lot that transpired from this partner conference, especially the new opportunities, resources, and incentives that are now available for partners.

In this write-up however, we focus on the wide range of updates – not in all of Microsoft’s partner programs and products that span Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and other business apps, but its cloud computing service known as Azure.

Here’s a roundup of the tech giant’s biggest updates and additions to Azure from the Inspire 2018 conference.

New Cloud Apps And Technologies

The number of cloud apps and technologies that are available through Azure just multiplied. The first amazing addition to this channel is the Azure Data Box Disk, an SSD-disk based version of the Azure Data Box appliance rolled out in 2017.

With the Azure Data Box Disk, businesses can move data into Azure with much ease regardless of where the data lives. The new offering allows for the transfer of up to 35 terabytes of data from multiple remote locations such as offices or branches – whether on a recurrent basis or once.

The other interesting Azure addition from Microsoft Inspire 2018 is Azure Virtual WAN, a networking service that provides users (businesses) with automated, optimized branch-to-branch connectivity through Azure using last mile internet. It also allows businesses to build a spoke-hub network in Azure that can route traffic to virtual appliances such as Azure network security services and firewalls.

The Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based network security service that protects your Azure Virtual Network resources. The Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS) is highly available and fully functional, with unrestricted cloud scalability.

The high availability being built-in means that there are no additional load balancers, nor anything that requires configuring. The unrestricted cloud scalability, on the other hand, means that your Azure Firewall can scale up as much as needed to accommodate fluctuating network traffic flows. Ultimately, you won’t need to budget for any peak traffic – which translates to significant cost savings.

Microsoft Is Expanding Private Offers In The Azure Marketplace

As part of Microsoft’s 2019 development plans for its partner network, the company is expanding its private offers in the Azure marketplace. This means that partners will be able to deliver a better buying experience to their customers by confidentially sharing with them solutions that meet their unique buying needs. This way, Microsoft partners are getting a new means to boost their sales with the corporation.

With the private offer feature, partners are also able to offer discounts to select customers on the Azure channel, rather than having to put up with the standard pricing approach, which can be less appealing.

Vetted & Approved By Microsoft: Azure Expert Managed Service Providers

Microsoft just took its Azure Expert Managed Service Provider program, started as a pilot program at the beginning of the year, to another level. The Azure Expert MSP program is a brand-new platform designed to help those select partners who have demonstrated the greatest level of skill and capabilities with regards to delivering consistent managed services on Azure. This helps them to stand out from the pack.

For a partner to join the new Azure MSP group, they have to be carefully vetted by Microsoft. One of the key qualifications for entering the program is to obtain references from multiple customers and pass a rigorous two-day third-party audit, which is repeated every year.

The idea, according to Microsoft, is to ensure that partners in the Azure Expert Managed Service Provider program are prepared to facilitate customer migrations to the cloud and help them with their cloud projects.

Azure IoT Central Gets New Updates

Azure IoT Central, Microsoft’s Software-as-a-Service IoT (internet of things) solution experienced nothing short of a facelift. These updates are introducing support for the business analytics service, Power BI, and task automation tool Microsoft Flow, as a way to make visualization of real-time intelligence possible.

Additionally, partners on the Cloud Solution Provider program are now able to include management and provisioning of Azure IoT Central applications in their subscription offerings.

Customers seeking to migrate their Windows Server and SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 workloads to Azure have also been assured of a time extension and free security updates even as Microsoft is winding down its support for the former.

Beyond Microsoft Gold: New Apps And Infrastructure For Azure

As part of its mission to boost profitability for partners, Microsoft is launching advanced specializations going beyond Microsoft Gold competencies to help partners with differentiation.

Apps and Infrastructure will include SAP on Azure, cloud migration, Azure Stack, Linux on Azure, backup & disaster recovery, as well as high-performance computing and networking.

Conclusion

Microsoft is clearly pushing positive outcomes on its partner network. And judging from the revelations from the Inspire 2018 conference, the company is determined to see this network prosper. They’re making the most of the opportunities that have since come to light and forging ahead for a brighter future.

Physical face-to-face meetings are on a sharp decline and this decline is attributed to a corresponding rapid growth of video conferencing technology. The last few years have seen immense development in telecommunications, especially on the teleconferencing front.

First, watch the funny video below that pokes fun at conference calls in real life.  Enjoy!

Video Conferencing Can Get Messy If Not Properly Set Up

Despite the outstanding benefits of conference calls, many companies are still reluctant to embrace them and they have valid reasons for their reservations. Being part of an improperly set up conference call can be an awful experience, which might give your company staff a negative impression of conference calls (More so if you are trying it out for the first time).

The PTZ Pro 2

If you’ve ever been part of one before or hosted one, you know how disorderly they might get. That’s where PTZ PRO 2 comes in handy. It’s a conferencing camera built to optimize all aspects of a conference call. PTZ PRO 2 is a solution which enhances the quality of both video and audio to give your conference calls dignity.

What’s PTZ Pro 2 All About?

The PTZ Pro 2 is a state-of-the-art camera technology which has brought new enhancements to video conference calls. The technology was developed with conferencing calls in mind. The camera has a 10X high definition optical zoom with a 2,600 pan and 1,300 tilt.

If you are looking for camera technology with top-notch optics to transmit videos in real time and create the experience of sharing a room with your colleagues, then this might be the perfect fit.

Its adjustable camera controls are efficient and offer more convenience for conference call organizers. The remote control gives the host more functionalities to control the cameras even if they are thousands of miles away. Other impressive enhancements that come with the PTZ Pro 2 include a sharp video resolution, colorful reproduction of images, and a high optical accuracy.

In a nutshell, PTZ Pro 2 is about ease of use and capturing the motion in high definition using better controls.

The PTZ Pro 2 is the ideal camera for large meeting rooms and auditoriums. The lens has a wide field of view, a sharp focus for detailed images, and the camera is free to pan and tilt. The powerful 10x zoom lens has an autofocus which delivers astounding image clarity to participants of the meeting regardless of the distance.

Like other Logitech cameras, the PTZ works for both small and large group meetings. It is compatible with many types of video conferencing software so you don’t have to worry about application compatibility. There’s a good chance that every video conferencing app you’ve used before will work well with the PTZ Pro 2.

Easy To Use

The USB plug-and-play connectivity makes the device so easy to set up and use, you’ll be amazed. All you need to do is connect it to the meeting room computer through a USB port and you will be good to go. PTZ Pro 2 is compatible with most conferencing call software on Macs and Windows devices.

Remote Control

You can operate the PTZ Pro 2 when near it or thousands of miles away. When near the camera, you can use a hand-held remote to tilt, pan, and zoom. The hand-held remote control works if you are operating the camera while in the meeting room. If you have to control it when thousands of miles away, all you need is a downloadable remote control application. The application will give you all the functionalities that the hand-held remote does.

High-Grade Premium Camera Lens

PTZ Pro 2 is decked out with a premium camera lens. Here is what’s special about this lens; it gives you crystal clear images with colorful rendition, sharpness, balanced brightness, and it maintains clarity even when the lens is zoomed in.

You Get To Choose From Different Mounting Options

Unlike many video conferencing cameras, the PTZ Pro 2 gives you multiple mounting options to choose from. It comes with mounting hardware for table top and for wall mounting. For additional flexibility, you have the option of mounting the camera on a tripod thread.

Certified For Business

Not all video conferencing cameras are certified for business. Cameras certified for business have many functionalities which make them ideal for professional purposes. The PTZ 2 camera is certified for use with a number of types of video conferencing software like Skype for Business, Broadsoft, LifeSize Cloud, Vidyo, Zoom, Cisco WebEx, and BlueJeans.

When looking to buy a camera with high definition video and clear audio, the PTZ Pro 2 is worth considering.