How to protect against Meltdown and Spectre These providers will likely see the most damaging performance impacts since they have the highest workloads and are also most vulnerable to exploitations through Spectre vulnerabilities, meaning the sensitive business data you store in the cloud through these providers is now at risk. Intel is still getting a sense of the performance impact data centers of major cloud service providers like Amazon and Microsoft can expect. However, businesses running large-scale, heavy workloads, like virtualization and data center/cloud workloads, on their servers should expect a significant performance impact. So, while reports that the average computer user shouldn’t experience noticeable slowdowns may be true for newer devices, computers with chips dating back to 2015 or older will slow down “significantly,” according to Microsoft. The performance impact is highly dependent on your hardware, operating system, and workload. While there are differing reports from a variety of Tech companies and experts evaluating the projected performance impacts of these patches, it’s more complicated than a simple answer. While patches are being produced rapidly to diminish the likelihood of successfully exploiting Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, the performance impact of these patches is likely to be the most damaging aspect of these security flaws. Meltdown and Spectre could negatively impact server performance There are ways Meltdown and Spectre could impact your business, including an increased risk of cyberattacks targeting your sensitive data by exploiting these processor vulnerabilities and a decrease in performance, AKA speed, resulting from patches for your business’ devices or the cloud services supplied through your cloud provider. How Meltdown and Spectre Impact Your Business It’s also likely Spectre will continue to be exploited for years to come given the fact that it offers various avenues of attack.įor a full explanation and helpful FAQ section, check out the Meltdown Attack website created by the researchers that helped discover it. However, only some exploitations of Spectre can be stopped by patches, which means new hardware may be necessary to guarantee security. The major things to know are that Meltdown can be mostly mitigated through software patches that major Tech giants, like Apple, Google, and Microsoft, are rapidly pushing out. Spectre is even worse because it’s a threat to smartphones as well as major server-based cloud providers since it may allow hackers, posing as customers, to steal information from virtual neighbors hosted on the same server. Translation: These vulnerabilities can be exploited by hackers to steal sensitive data, like passwords, from your computer. Meltdown “basically melts security boundaries which are normally enforced by the hardware,” while Spectre, “breaks the isolation between different applications,” which gives hackers the ability “to trick error-free programs, which follow best practices, into leaking their secrets,” according to researchers. ![]() These security flaws affect almost all processors produced since 1995, so yes, every laptop, desktop, or smartphone you use is at risk. We’re here to help clear up the confusion surrounding the impact Meltdown and Spectre security flaws, and their respective patches will have on your business. The answer is complex and made more confusing by Intel’s statements that went from saying the performance impact of patches for these security flaws “should not be significant” to “may initially be higher” to “significant” in under a week. By now, you’ve likely heard of the latest massive security flaws: Meltdown and Spectre.Īfter news dropped about the multiple, critical vulnerabilities in modern processors (mostly, but not exclusively, Intel chips), the Tech community and businesses wanted to know…
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