IBM and data security and backup provider Cohesity have formed a new partnership, calling for Cohesity’s data protection functionality to be incorporated into an upcoming IBM storage product suite, dubbed Storage Defender, for better protection of end-user organizations’ critical information.The capabilities of Cohesity's DataProtect backup and recovery product will be one of four main feature sets in the Storage Defender program, according to an announcement from IBM Thursday.The Storage Defender suite is designed to bring together IBM and third-party products in order to unify primary, secondary replication, and backup management, said IBM. It’s an as-a-service offering that features a single-pane-of-glass interface, SLA-driven policy automation and the ability to work with a wide variety of data sources, including physical storage, cloud hypervisors, and an assortment of different database types.To read this article in full, please click here
IBM said this week it will soon roll out an AI-infused, hybrid-cloud oriented version of its z/OS mainframe operating system.Expected in the third quarter, z/OS 3.1 will support technologies intended to enable deployment of AI workloads co-located with z/OS applications, IBM said in a customer preview letter.The new OS will work best with the newest version of the Big Iron, the z16, but it will support z14 models and above, IBM says.The z16 includes an AI accelerator built onto its core Telum processor that can do 300 billion deep-learning inferences per day with one millisecond latency and includes what IBM calls a quantum-safe system to protect organizations from anticipated quantum-based security threats.To read this article in full, please click here
One year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the country’s overall resilience and defiance has been inspiring, but telecommunications and internet connectivity has grown much more difficult.Initially the country’s internet network mostly withstood with some outages and slowdowns, but that has changed over time as the aggressors devote more effort in destroying physical locations and deploying malware and other cybersecurity weapons.For example, researchers at Top10VPN recently reported some distressing analysis including:To read this article in full, please click here
The CDN provider's new DDoS scrubbing offering impersonates the customer’s network to phase out malicious traffic, and employs advanced IP masking at source to prevent direct-to-origin attacks.
Observability may be the latest buzzword in an industry loaded with them, but Cisco will tell you the primary goal of the technology is to help enterprises get a handle on effectively managing distributed resources in ways that have not been possible in the past.The idea of employing observability tools and applications is a hot idea. Gartner says that by 2024, 30% of enterprises implementing distributed system architectures will have adopted observability techniques to improve digital-business service performance, up from less than 10% in 2020.“Today’s operational teams have tools for network monitoring, application monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, call monitoring, and more, but they rarely intermingle to provide a cohesive view of what’s going on across the enterprise,” according to Carlos Pereira, Cisco Fellow and chief architect in its Strategy, Incubation & Applications group.To read this article in full, please click here
Nigel Williams-Lucas, director of Information Technology at Maryland-based footwear retailer DTLR, faced a challenge that most IT execs will recognize: the business was pushing hard on digital transformation, and the IT infrastructure was struggling to keep pace.Store managers were seeking better data analytics and business intelligence from backend systems like inventory and sales. The business wanted IT systems to support customers ordering online and picking up at a physical store within two hours.The network needed to securely support real-time, bandwidth-intensive IP security cameras. And Williams-Lucas wanted to roll out beaconing technology, in which the network gathers information about customer in-store activity via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, and can send discount offers to a customer’s phone based on where they are in the store and what they appear to be interested in.To read this article in full, please click here
After the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Wednesday released a recovery script for organizations affected by a massive ransomware attack targeting VMWare ESXi servers worldwide, reports surfaced that the malware evolved in a way that made earlier recovery procedures ineffective.The attacks, aimed at VMware’s ESXi bare metal hypervisor, were first made public February 3 by the French Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-FR), and target ESXi instances running older versions of the software, or those that have not been patched to current standards. Some 3,800 servers have been affected globally, CISA and the FBI said.To read this article in full, please click here
Extreme Networks has added network fabric capabilities to its flagship SD-WAN platform to enable customers to link and manage distributed resources more securely.Additional enhancements to the ExtremeCloud SD-WAN platform include improved automated workflows and direct connectivity to cloud systems such as Microsoft Azure and AWS.“The overarching idea is to help customers more effectively connect distributed sites, especially the smaller branch office, without increasing optical or management overhead,” said Rob Hull, product marketing director at Extreme. “For the smaller sites, especially, with maybe no IT person or few, it gives them the big-site quality-of-service feel and big-site centralized management capability.”To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco has strengthened some of its key security software packages with an eye toward better protecting distributed enterprise resources.Specifically, Cisco added more intelligence to its Duo access-protection software and introduced a new application called Business Risk Observability that can help enterprises measure the impact of security risks on their core applications. The company also enhanced its SASE offering by expanding its SD-WAN integration options.To read this article in full, please click here
Fortinet is introducing a new ASIC that promises to meld the security and network functions of its core family of FortiGate firewalls more efficiently and powerfully.The custom chip is 7-nanometer package, called fifth-generation security processing system or FortiSP5, that promises a number of performance improvements for the FortiGate system. It enables 17x faster firewall performance and 32x faster encryption processes while using 88% less power compared to standard CPUs, according to John Maddison, executive vice president of products and CMO at Fortinet. With FortiSP5, Fortinet's firewalls will be able to handle higher levels of traffic inspection to block threats and boost protection, according to the vendor.To read this article in full, please click here
A new offering from IT services provider NTT combines Palo Alto Networks' Prisma SASE offering with NTT's managed network services and AIOps infrastructure.SASE – secure access service edge – has been gaining interest for its potential to reduce networking complexity while improving security. It combines SD-WAN with security services, including secure web access gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), zero-trust network access (ZTNA), and firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), in a single, cloud-delivered service model.To read this article in full, please click here
Before the start of the Covid epidemic, a traditional WAN architecture with centralized security worked well for Village Roadshow. "Advanced security inspection services can be applied, firewalls can provide separation, and a demilitarized zone can be implemented," said Michael Fagan, chief transformation officer at Village Roadshow, the largest theme park owner in Australia.But it required backhauling traffic from remote sites to a data center or hub for security inspection, which can hurt application performance, create a poor user experience, and cost the company in productivity, he said.When the pandemic led the company to transition to a hybrid workforce, with most people working from home or from a remote site, it prompted Village Roadshow to rethink its network and security approach.To read this article in full, please click here
A new AI-based system from Nvidia sniffs out unusual behavior and ties it to users, in an effort to prevent insider attacks and protect digital credentials.
AmerCareRoyal, which provides disposable products for the food service and hospitality industries, is the product of six mergers and acquisitions over the past several years, and its former network security setup couldn’t keep up.Jeff DeSandre, who joined the company as CIO in 2019, wanted an SD-WAN platform that came with more advanced management options and firewalls. After looking at the market, he added threat detection and response capabilities to his wish list. “I was focused on getting our arms quickly around our wide area network and securing our edge, and then making sure that the solution I went with could scale to my long-term roadmap,” he says.To read this article in full, please click here
By 2024, 88% of enterprises will use two or more infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers, according to research by EMA, which believes that network infrastructure and operations teams must take a leadership role in defining network architecture that ensures the performance and security of their multi-cloud digital services.EMA recently polled a group of these enterprises, surveying 351 IT stakeholders, including 39% in network engineering, 21% in the CIO suite, 15% on cloud teams, and 11% in cybersecurity.EMA found that networking teams and network technology have become more important in 81% of multi-cloud strategies in recent years. Unfortunately, only 24% of research participants firmly believe that their networking teams have enough influence over cloud decision-making.To read this article in full, please click here
New integration with Okta, containerization support and a tagging system are all present in the latest version of Remote.it’s network management platform.
Secure access service edge (SASE) is a network architecture that rolls SD-WAN and security into a single, centrally-managed cloud service that promises simplified WAN deployment, improved security, and better performance.According to Gartner, SASE’s benefits are transformational because it can speed deployment time for new users, locations, applications, and devices, as well as reduce attack surfaces and shorten remediation times by as much as 95%.With the pandemic, adoption of SASE has been on an upward swing. Gartner predicts in its most recent SASE roadmap that 80% of enterprises will have adopted a SASE or SSE architecture by 2025, up from 20% in 2021. (Security service edge, or SSE, is a security-focused subset of SASE that’s basically SASE without SD-WAN.)To read this article in full, please click here
Despite the challenges posed by economic turmoil, epidemics, and political upheaval, network researchers are continuing to blaze new trails in innovation, performance, management, and security. In sum, 2023 is shaping up as a year of network evolution and transformation.Here are eight network technologies you will want to pay particularly close attention to.1. Unified SASE: Addresses hybrid workforce, hybrid clouds
Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) tightly integrates security and networking into a single platform. The technology uses a single-pass scanning architecture combined with a unified policy that's configured via a unified console that draws from a unified data lake. "This is significant for organizations to continue to provide a consistent and assured user experience while protecting users, devices, sites, and data amid the rapidly evolving dynamics coming in 2023," says Kelly Ahuja, CEO of networking and cybersecurity firm Versa Networks.To read this article in full, please click here
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