Today’s topics include Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse getting a speed boost, and Symantec improving email security with threat isolation technology.
Microsoft has enhanced Azure SQL Data Warehouse to provide what the company is claiming is at least double the query performance. Jason Zander, executive vice president of Microsoft Azure, credits this improvement to “new instant data movement capabilities that allow for extremely efficient movement between data warehouse compute nodes.”
Microsoft Azure Data partner architect Tomas Talius said this was made possible by integrating data movement capabilities directly into the SQL Server engine, which enables the Azure SQL Data Warehouse to harness the performance-enhancing capabilities of the multi-core parallel processors that are running in its underlying architecture.
Performance is further enhanced by Azure Accelerated Networking, a set of network throughput optimizations for Azure cloud instances.
Symantec announced on July 17 its Email Threat Isolation technology, which secures email links and attachments inside of an isolated environment, such that malware or other attacks cannot impact system functions.
According to Jane Wong, vice president of product management and engineering for Messaging Security at Symantec, “This technology is tightly integrated with the Symantec Email Security solution, which safeguards Office 365, G Suite and on-premises email from email threats. … Email Threat Isolation gives users elevated levels of protection from advanced email attacks such as spear phishing, account takeover and ransomware attacks.”
When a user clicks on a malicious link in an email protected by Symantec Email Threat Isolation, the link appears identical to one opened in a native browser. However, the malicious link is executed remotely in a secure remote environment, which “confines all malicious activity and only sends safe rendering information to the user,” she said.