The UC giant, which is filing for bankruptcy for the second time in six years, listed in its filing unsecured claims valued in millions from the likes of Verint Americas, Microsoft and solution provider giant SHI International. Avaya’s CEO says the company is poised for a ‘transformation.’

Struggling unified communications giant Avaya Holdings Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday in federal court in Texas.

The filing follows months of speculation of a bankruptcy declaration following Avaya’s 2022 cloud subscription accounting problems that led to substantial earnings and revenue target misses.

Durham, N.C.-based Avaya said in a press release that “these actions will not impact the company’s customers, channel and strategic partners, suppliers, vendors or employees.”

[RELATED: Avaya Bankruptcy Filing: 5 Things To Know]

In its bankruptcy court filing, Avaya lists total assets of between $1 billion and $10 billion and total liabilities of between $1 billion and $10 billion. The company lists its number of creditors as being between 25,001 and 50,000.

The firm in the court filing lists the creditors with the largest unsecured claims include Verint Americas in the amount of $22.93 million; Microsoft for $9.01 million; Wistron Corp. for $8.9 million; and solution provider giant SHI International for $7.71 million.

Avaya previously filed for bankruptcy in 2017.

Avaya’s stretch of financial difficulties began in May when the company reported that it had missed its revenue target and posted a considerable earnings miss with revenue that declined 20 percent during the company’s third-quarter 2022, which ended June 30, 2022. The company then made the move to replace Jim Chirico, the company’s CEO since 2018. Alan Masarek was brought on in August as president and CEO after serving as Vonage’s CEO for six years.

“I joined Avaya to help unlock the power of its iconic brand, global customer footprint, massive partner ecosystem, large-scale communications deployments and outstanding team,” Masarek said in a statement published on Tuesday. “Strengthening Avaya’s capital structure is a critical step to fully realize their transformation, and they are excited to move ahead as a well-capitalized company with one of the strongest balance sheets in their industry that includes substantial cash to invest in their own success.”

In late December, Avaya said its stock could be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because the average closing price of the its common stock was less than $1 over a consecutive 30 trading-day period.

Completing the financial restructuring will reduce the company’s total debt by more than 75 percent, from approximately $3.4 billion today to approximately $800 million, Avaya said. Additionally, Avaya said it has secured committed financing of approximately $780 million.

The financial restructuring will provide the company improved financial flexibility to boost up its investment in communications products, solutions and services for customers, including the Avaya Experience Platform, its cloud-based Contact Center offering, Avaya said.

Avaya’s strategy includes a multistep process of shifting its portfolio and customers entirely to cloud—whether it’s private, multitenant or somewhere in between. It will also include a “cultural revitalization” that will allow Avaya to bring in the right talent for the work ahead, Masarek told CRN in an interview when he joined the company.

The company said it expects this financial restructuring to be completed within 60 to 90 days.

Kirkland & Ellis LLP is serving as legal counsel to Avaya, Evercore Group L.L.C. is serving as financial advisor and AlixPartners LLP is serving as restructuring advisor.

Founder, President and CTO at Fortinet, overseeing the technology vision and strategy for the global infrastructure security leader.

It has become clear that the world of work they knew in 2019 will never return. And this transition to a work-from-anywhere model has impacted more than just “knowledge workers.” accurate research by McKinsey found that 58% of all workers now have the opportunity to work from home at least once per week. This includes workers spanning a wide variety of jobs.

And while users are spreading out, more sensitive data is moving outside the traditional network. Proliferating endpoint devices interact with corporate resources from many network edges. And applications accessed from virtually anywhere leverage data hosted in the cloud and the on-premises data center.

Securely Meeting Today’s Digital Demands Is Not Easy

These trends have expanded the attack surface significantly, creating new cybersecurity risks many companies are not prepared to address. Rather than using traditional perimeter-based security models, IT networks now must be built around people rather than locations. This requires a new approach to cybersecurity.

To mitigate risk without creating friction, many organizations are taking a zero-trust approach to secure their sprawling digital resources. The principle of zero trust is simple: No user or device is implicitly trusted. Instead, every access attempt is verified—preferably in more than one way. Zero-trust network access (ZTNA) applies this principle to applications and networks. It goes beyond the traditional VPN tunnels that remote workers have long depended on to access the network, providing robust verification of both the user and the device.

Zero Trust Should Be Part Of A Bigger Picture

ZTNA is an integral first step in a larger zero-trust approach. The problem is that, in practice, ZTNA controls are often bolted onto an already unwieldy security and networking architecture. In many organizations, the result is that a very useful technology could create as many problems as it solves.

For example, inadequate or incomplete network segmentation can leave gaps in the protection provided by ZTNA, especially when the two functions are not integrated. Security information and event management (SIEM) tools may not know about login attempts rejected by ZTNA, making forensics less than comprehensive. ZTNA may not work seamlessly with endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions to ensure proactive prevention and response to security events. And ZTNA may not integrate with networking components, like software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WAN) solutions that provide remote and branch-office workers with access to corporate resources.

Optimizing ZTNA Through Security Integration

You may be sensing a pattern here: A lack of integration between different security infrastructure elements can fragment visibility and limit control and response. It’s a growing problem in organizations of all sizes. They add new security tools to address increasingly sophisticated cybercriminal tactics—in the cloud, in their OT environments, on endpoints and on-prem—and these tools wind up not talking to each other.

One essential solution for this problem is what Gartner calls a cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA)—essentially a common platform on which all security solutions are, or can be, integrated. Rather than having disaggregated security solutions working independently, a single ecosystem enables security functions to work seamlessly together—even when they’re not all from the same vendor.

When delivered comprehensively, a CSMA provides an enterprise view across an organization’s overall security. Intelligence is shared across the network, and security management is streamlined. It also enables integrated reporting and analytics for comprehensive forensics and point-and-click audit reports. In a nutshell, it allows zero-trust strategies, like ZTNA, to function as intended.

Converging Networking With Security

Building a CSMA is critical for zero-trust efforts, helping deliver the best outcomes in today’s highly distributed computing world. But even integration does not go far enough. To provide the fullest possible mitigation of risk, security and networking must be integrated as well.

As users, applications and data become increasingly distributed, networking has had to evolve to keep up. In accurate years, organizations have embraced SD-WAN, for example, because it delivers flexible and scalable networking. It enables network traffic to travel over the internet and other public infrastructure, enabling more efficient connections between users and the resources they need to access. But it can also present a security risk.

It really makes no sense for an organization to have an SD-WAN solution that is not integrated with the CSMA. Failure to do so keeps networking and security in separate silos, reducing operational efficiency while worsening the effectiveness of tools like ZTNA. But a convergence of the two—what you might call security-driven networking—can enable the best network performance while improving security.

Applying ZTNA Across The Enterprise

Rather than rolling out a fully integrated ZTNA initiative, many organizations are moving slowly, limiting its scope precisely because of the complexity it can add to an already unwieldy security infrastructure. However, building an integrated security and networking architecture is precisely what’s needed to enable a universal approach to ZTNA to provide maximum protection without adding complexity. And if done correctly, it will also help organizations address many challenges down the road, including:

• Effectively Managing Work-From-Anywhere: Organizations need to provide secure connections to the applications employees need, no matter where they are. ZTNA deployed in the cloud and on-prem enables secure and granular access that improves security and the user experience.

• Facilitating The Cloud Journey: Applications are moving from on-premises servers to private and public clouds. Using a ZTNA access proxy, IT has complete control over where these connect. Services can then easily move to the cloud, between clouds and back to campus without impacting user experience.

• Reducing Risk: With the help of multifactor authentication (MFA), ZTNA ensures that only authorized users and devices can access any application while concealing applications so bad actors cannot see them and attempt a breach.

ZTNA is fast becoming an essential layer of protection for today’s enterprises. But for today’s distributed workplace, it works best in a seamlessly integrated security and networking architecture.

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PR Newswire

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 29, 2023

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 29, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Time is one of the most precious and valuable resources they have as people. Think about all the charts we've seen that break down their lives hour-by-hour, showing just how little of it they actually have after accounting for work, sleep, and other regulatory tasks. Time is a resource that can't be reproduced or multiplied, so paying close attention to how they use their time is critical in a world that demands their time nearly every hour of the day, even when they try to sleep. , is a best-selling book on Amazon because of how important the strategies are today. This powerful book has also been featured on Forbes' top 20 recommended books on New Year's resolutions and featured in an article in Oprah Daily.

The Time Cleanse Introduces Timefulness - A Meaningful Way to Change Your Relationship with Time-Being Present, Aware and Intentional with Time

The Time Cleanse is about your relationship with time, recognizing which activities are time toxins, and taking actionable steps to Excellerate your relationship. Doing so gives you more time for the activities and people you love and increases your overall success.

The book introduces you to a revolutionary three-step process that accelerates your personal and professional goals. Through this ground-breaking process, you'll rebalance your work-life relationship without sacrificing anything and regain at least one hour of the day, every day, to focus on what matters most to you. Those hours add up quickly and equate to over 14 full days. That's 4% of an entire year!

The results from Griffith's methods eliminate the pressure you feel in your life, either from professional or personal factors. The Time Cleanse also helps you stop making excuses that keep you from achieving your goals by getting you back the time you need. With this book, you'll forge more meaningful memories with your time creating a legacy you're proud of.

Key Takeaways From The Time Cleanse

The Time Cleanse is an important and influential read because of the extreme amount of 'time toxins' that steal your time. For example, every notification on your phone could turn into a spiral of lost productivity. This is an obvious example, and The Time Cleanse goes even further by helping you analyze the time you spend and then determine if it's beneficial or toxic to personal progress. After working through and applying the updated time performance strategies in The Time Cleanse, you'll find an abundance of time that you can use to achieve your goals, whatever they may be.

If you've ever said that you don't have time to do something, whether starting your own business or spending more meaningful time with your loved ones, getting a copy of The Time Cleanse is the first thing you should do after studying this. Don't wait for it as a gift or treat it like a New Year's Resolution; do it NOW.

 is a renowned coach and author who is a shining example of the transformative power of adversity. Over the years, he's taught and coached the meaning of Timefulness, a key concept in The Time Cleanse to help people from all walks of life take back control of their life.

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SOURCE Steven Griffith