As the number of cyber attacks increases, the demand for penetration tests – to determine the strength of a company’s defense – is also going up. People are worried about their companies’ networks and computer systems being hacked and data being stolen. Plus, many regulatory standards such PCI and HITRUST require these tests to be performed on at least an annual basis.The demand for these tests is only going to increase as attackers get more sophisticated. And it’s essential these tests catch all possible vulnerabilities.[ Also read: What to consider when deploying a next-generation firewall | Get regularly scheduled insights: Sign up for Network World newsletters ]
Benefits and gaps of penetration tests
Penetration tests involve live tests of computer networks, systems, or web applications to find potential vulnerabilities. The tester actually attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities and documents the details of the results to their client. They document how severe the vulnerabilities are and recommend the steps that should be taken in order to resolve them.To read this article in full, please click here
Digital twin technology has moved beyond manufacturing and into the merging worlds of the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and data analytics.As more complex “things” become connected with the ability to produce data, having a digital equivalent gives data scientists and other IT professionals the ability to optimize deployments for peak efficiency and create other what-if scenarios.[ Now read 20 hot jobs ambitious IT pros should shoot for. ]
What is a digital twin?
A digital twin is a digital representation of a physical object or system. The technology behind digital twins has expanded to include large items such as buildings, factories and even cities, and some have said people and processes can have digital twins, expanding the concept even further. The idea first arose at NASA: full-scale mockups of early space capsules, used on the ground to mirror and diagnose problems in orbit, eventually gave way to fully digital simulations.To read this article in full, please click here
AutoNation spent years trying to establish a disaster recovery plan that inspired confidence. It went through multiple iterations, including failed attempts at a full on-premises solution and a solution completely in the cloud. The Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based auto retailer, which operates 300 locations across 16 states, finally found what it needed with a hybrid model featuring disaster recovery as a service.“Both the on-premises and public cloud disaster recovery models were expensive, not tested often or thoroughly enough, and were true planning and implementation disasters that left us open to risk,” says Adam Rasner, AutoNation’s vice president of IT and operations, who was brought on two years ago in part to revamp the disaster recovery plan. The public cloud approach sported a hefty price tag: an estimated $3 million if it were needed in the wake of a three-month catastrophic outage. “We were probably a little bit too early in the adoption of disaster recovery in the cloud,” Rasner says, noting that the cloud providers have matured substantially in recent years.To read this article in full, please click here
Solutions are needed to replace the archaic air-gapping of computers used to isolate and protect sensitive defense information, the U.S. Government has decided. Air-gapping, used often now, is the practice of physically isolating data-storing computers from other systems, computers, and networks. It theoretically can’t be compromised because there is nothing between the machines — there are no links into the machines; they’re removed.However, many say air-gapping is no longer practical, as the cloud and internet takes a hold of massive swaths of data and communications.“Keeping a system completely disconnected from all means of information transfer is an unrealistic security tactic,” says Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on its website, announcing an initiative to develop completely new hardware and software that will allow defense communications to take place securely among myriad existing systems, networks, and security protocols.To read this article in full, please click here
As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to evolve, it can be difficult to track which tools are most popular for different purposes. Similarly, trying to keep tabs on the relative popularity of programming languages can be a complex endeavor with few clear parameters. So, trying to figure out the most popular programming languages among the estimated 6.2 million IoT developers (in 2016) seems doubly fraught — but I’m not going to let that stop me.To read this article in full, please click here
France's IDRIS supercomputing center announced it will deploy a new HPE SGI 8600 supercomputer in June that is capable of reaching 14 petaflops at peak performance, which would put the system in the top 15 of supercomputers in the world, going off the November 2018 list.Named Jean Zay, after a French politician, the system will be designed specifically for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. French President Emmanuel Macron has called for a national AI strategy. The system will sport 1,528 Intel Xeon Scalable nodes and 261 GPU nodes, each with four Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs.To read this article in full, please click here
France's IDRIS supercomputing center announced it will deploy a new HPE SGI 8600 supercomputer in June that is capable of reaching 14 petaflops at peak performance, which would put the system in the top 15 of supercomputers in the world, going off the November 2018 list.Named Jean Zay, after a French politician, the system will be designed specifically for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. French President Emmanuel Macron has called for a national AI strategy. The system will sport 1,528 Intel Xeon Scalable nodes and 261 GPU nodes, each with four Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco has rolled out a new family of switches, software, developer tools and blueprints to meld IoT and industrial networking with intent-based networking and classic IT security, monitoring and application-development support.To take on the daunting task the company unveiled a new family of industrial-networking Catalyst switches, IoT developer tools and support for Cisco’s DevNet developer program, and it validated IoT network design blueprints customers can work with to build solid IoT environments. To read this article in full, please click here
As enterprises come under more pressure to be more agile, efficient, and user-centric, wide-area network (WAN) edge infrastructure services are becoming critical for achieving the digital transformation. By deploying software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) services closer to users’ end locations such as branch offices and connected devices, enterprises can improve application performance, manage data traffic flow, and reduce latency, all while reducing network infrastructure operational and maintenance costs.A growing number of enterprises are recognizing the competitive benefits of moving WAN services to the network edge. In a Gartner survey, 27% of organizations said they intend to exploit edge computing in 2018 as part of their infrastructure strategies, with that percentage rising to 70% by the end of 2019. According to Gartner’s report, by the end of 2023, more than 90% of WAN edge infrastructure refresh initiatives will be based on virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE) platforms or SD-WAN software/appliances versus traditional routers, up from less than 40% today.To read this article in full, please click here
Kubernetes, legacy application integration and edge computing technologies are but a few of the technologies Cisco sees as having some of the greatest impact on cloud computing in 2019.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
Data breaches and security threats are a top concern among IT leaders, yet it’s harder than ever to hire skilled security professionals. That has organizations looking for ways to more easily improve their security strategy. One option is to implement a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN).I recently talked with Hamza Seqqat, director of solutions architecture at Apcela, to get his take on how SD-WAN affects security strategy. Seqqat helps enterprise organizations redefine their wide-area networks to accommodate the growing use of cloud-based applications and services. In our discussion, he outlined four areas where SD-WAN offers new security benefits.To read this article in full, please click here
If enterprise IT folks haven’t taken a look at their DNS ecosystem recently now may be a good time. This week the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) told all federal agencies to bolt down their Domain Name System in the face of a series of global hacking campaigns.
More about DNS:To read this article in full, please click here
Storage-class memory (SCM), RAM that has the ability to retain its contents like NAND flash memory but the speed of DRAM, will eventually supplant flash as the high-speed storage medium of choice.That’s the prediction of Ivan Iannaccone, vice president and general manager of HPE’s 3PAR storage unit. But he adds that it will take some time.“It’s not going to happen overnight; it’s just a matter of time for it to become economically viable, but it will eventually take over. Maybe in 10 years,” he told me.[ Read also: Why disk beat tape in the backup wars | Get daily network and data center insights: Sign up for Network World newsletters ]
On a per-byte basis, SCM is around four times more expensive than flash. Currently only two vendors make it: Intel and Samsung. Intel sells it under the Optane brand and targets it at enterprises, and Intel’s Optane HPE uses it in its storage arrays.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco has patched security vulnerabilities in four packages of SD-WAN Solution software that address buffer overflow, arbitrary file override and privilege access weaknesses that could have led to denial of service attacks or access problems.The first patch, called “Critical” by Cisco, fixes a vulnerability in the vContainer of the Cisco SD-WAN Solution that could let an authenticated, remote attacker cause a denial of service (DoS) and execute arbitrary code as the root user, the company wrote in a security advisory. To read this article in full, please click here
The Linux Foundation announced the foundation of a new umbrella group called LF Edge designed to help unify a fragmented edge-computing marketplace and offer a common framework for future edge projects.The initial announcement lists five open source projects that will serve as the nucleus of the LF Edge framework. Those projects are:
EdgeX Foundry – Originated at Dell/EMC, EdgeX Foundry is a platform-agnostic software framework that allows for plug-and-play integration of microservices and is designed to run on any industrial edge gateway, creating a bridge layer between sensors and the cloud.
Home Edge Project – Contributed by Samsung, the Home Edge Project looks like an attempt to do for consumer IoT what EdgeX Foundry is doing for industrial IoT – a run-anywhere services layer for home-based IoT devices.
Akraino Edge Stack – Taking up the cloud end of the stack is Akraino Edge Stack, which is designed to automate provisioning and offer flexibility and scalability at the back end to businesses trying to run edge services with a cloud back end. The original code was contributed by AT&T.
Project EVE – A contribution of IoT software maker Zededa, Project EVE is so named because it’s an edge-virtualization engine. The Continue reading
Cisco’s AppDynamics business rolled out a raft of enterprise technologies it says will help customers better manage everything from software-defined networks and serverless computing environments to application performance.The wide-ranging announcement – easily AppDynamics largest technology upgrade since being acquired by Cisco two years ago – targets enterprise customers looking to monitor performance and automate the response to problems in business applications. [ Learn more about SDN: Find out where SDN is going and learn the difference between SDN and NFV. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco’s AppDynamics business rolled out a raft of enterprise technologies it said will help customers better manage everything from software-defined networks and serverless computing environments to application performance.The wide-ranging announcement – easily AppDynamics largest technology upgrade since being acquired by Cisco two years ago – targets enterprise customers looking to monitor performance and automate the response to problems in business applications. [ Learn more about SDN: Find out where SDN is going and learn the difference between SDN and NFV. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]
The rollout included key components such as a Cognition Engine that will be the basis for future automation and artificial intelligence-based application performance management and the integration of AppDynamics application monitoring tools and Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) technology to help customers mix application health and network operations management in the data center and multi-cloud environments.To read this article in full, please click here
Internet of Things (IoT) research firm Berg Insight recently released figures indicating the installed base of wireless IoT devices in industrial automation reached 21.3 million in 2018. That number could be 50.3 million connections by 2023, the company says. It’s a lot of new industrial wireless nodes coming, and potentially a lot of data packet collisions if the new networks aren’t thought out for handling a snowballing scale.Copying frogs is the answer, say researchers at Osaka University in Japan. They say they’ve discovered that the calling patterns of male Japanese tree frogs don’t overlap, and thus replicate how one would ideally like to see a network function — no packets crashing. The leaping amphibians collectively orchestrate their croaking and silences.To read this article in full, please click here
The two things everybody knows about IoT are that A, its use is growing at a pretty spectacular rate, encompassing use cases from the most frivolous of consumer gadgetry to the most heavy-duty of industrial machinery, and B, it is, as a consequence, a gloriously tempting target for malicious hackers.News related to point B has been making headlines lately, including the results of a study from Gemalto, which found that roughly half of all companies using IoT didn’t even have the basic ability to detect outside interference or hacking on their devices. That is, in a word, bad.To read this article in full, please click here