Nvidia has announced a Zero Trust platform built around its BlueField data-processing units and Nvidia software.Zero Trust is an architecture that verifies every user and device that tries to access the network and enforces strict access control and identity management that limits authorized users to accessing only those resources they need to do their jobs.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
“You cannot just rely on the firewall on the outside, you have to assume that any application or any user inside your data center is a bad actor,” said Manuvir Das, head of enterprise computing at Nvidia. “Zero Trust basically just refers to the fact that you can't trust any application or user because there are bad actors.”To read this article in full, please click here
A demonstration earlier this year at Stanford School of Engineering proved that a small fleet of computer-controlled drones can maintain their flight integrity in the face of continual cyberattacks on the 5G network used to manage the devices through the deployment of software-defined networking (SDN).For enterprise IT pros charged with securing devices wirelessly across a 5G network, the drone test results are promising evidence that SDN can help networks under cyberattack to recover almost instantaneously.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco has upgraded two of its core software programs to make it easier for enterprise customers to secure data-center and WAN-connected resources.Cisco has introduced what it calls Integrated Domain, which combines the domain controllers of Cisco DNA Center and Cisco SD-WAN vManage to tie together network connectivity between the two domains as well as ensuring security-policy consistency end-to-end, according to Justin Buchanan, Cisco director of product management, security policy and access.To read this article in full, please click here
Zero Trust relies on continuously re-authorizing users, applications, and devices to establish myriad “perimeters of one” in the environment, but the name isn’t quite accurate.Zero Trust doesn’t literally mean zero trust; it means zero implicit trust. You—whether that means a person, or a software or hardware system—are not to be trusted simply by virtue of where you are on the network; there is no network perimeter within which you are automatically trusted to connect to services. And you are not to be trusted now just because you were trusted when you first gained access to the network; gaining admission once is not the same thing as ongoing trust. And you are not to be trusted to make the new service connection you are trying to make now just because you were trusted to make the previous one.To read this article in full, please click here
Expect the unexpected – that’s just one of the core premises IT leaders need to embrace in the next few years, according to Gartner's top strategic predictions for 2022 and beyond.IT leaders need to be able to move in multiple strategic directions at once, said Daryl Plummer, distinguished research vice president and Gartner Fellow, to the virtual audience at the firm’s IT Symposium/Xpo Americas, held this week.Network certs: Significant raises for the right ones
“Resilience, opportunity and risk have always been components of good business strategy, but today these issues hold new meaning,” Plummer said. “This year’s predictions embody how resilience must be built in more non-traditional ways, from talent to business modularity, while opportunity and risk must be viewed with a greater sense of urgency.”To read this article in full, please click here
With IT budgets growing at the fastest rate in 10 years, worldwide IT spending is projected to total $4.5 trillion in 2022, an increase of 5.5% from 2021, according to the latest Gartner forecasts.All IT spending segments—from data-center systems to communications services—are forecast to grow next year, according to Gartner.
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Enterprise software is likely to have the highest growth in 2022 at 11.5%, driven by infrastructure software spending. Global spending on devices grew over 15% as remote work, telehealth and remote learning took hold, and Gartner expects 2022 will continue that growth as enterprises upgrade devices and/or invest in multiple devices to support the hybrid work setting. “Enterprises will increasingly build new technologies and software, rather than buy and implement them, leading to overall slower spending levels in 2022 compared to 2021,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished research vice president at Gartner.To read this article in full, please click here
With IT budgets growing at the fastest rate in 10 years, worldwide IT spending is projected to total $4.5 trillion in 2022, an increase of 5.5% from 2021, according to the latest Gartner forecasts.All IT spending segments—from data-center systems to communications services—are forecast to grow next year, according to Gartner.
[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
Enterprise software is likely to have the highest growth in 2022 at 11.5%, driven by infrastructure software spending. Global spending on devices grew over 15% as remote work, telehealth and remote learning took hold, and Gartner expects 2022 will continue that growth as enterprises upgrade devices and/or invest in multiple devices to support the hybrid work setting. “Enterprises will increasingly build new technologies and software, rather than buy and implement them, leading to overall slower spending levels in 2022 compared to 2021,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished research vice president at Gartner.To read this article in full, please click here
Hewlett Packard Enterprise company Aruba is taking the wraps of a new flagship data-center switch aimed at helping to better control and secure hybrid-cloud traffic in the enterprise.The Aruba CX 10000 Series switch is a top-of-rack, L2/3 data-center box with 3.2Tbps of switching capacity, 48 ports of line rate 10/25GbE and six 40/100GbE ports, the company says. But its most intriguing component is an integrated Elba programmable data processing unit (DPU) from Pensando that helps eliminate the need for separate appliances for security and load balancing, for example.The 10 most powerful companies in enterprise networking 2021
Pensando is a startup lead by a crew of ex-Cisco stars including its chairmen of the board, former Cisco CEO John Chambers. Others leaders of the company include former Cisco engineering icons Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero and Soni Jiandani, collectively known as MPLS based on their first initials. The MPLS group has founded a number of companies that were spun back into Cisco during Chamber’s time as CEO including Andiamo Systems for SAN switching, Nuova Systems for data-center switching and Insieme Networks for software-defined networking systems.To read this article in full, please click here
As organizations become less centralized they face new security challenges that require new ways of addressing threats that will change the basic fabric of network security, according to Gartner analysts.A persistent challenge adapting to these changes is the skills gap--finding IT pros with the technical know-how to meet evolving security issues, Peter Firstbrook, Gartner vice president and anayst told attendees at Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2021 Americas.Gartner: IT skills shortage hobbles cloud, edge, automation growth
“Cybersecurity teams are being asked to secure countless forms of digital transformation and other new technologies, and if they don’t have those skilled practitioners they move toward managed or cloud-delivered services where they might not have as much control as they’d like,” Firstbrook said.To read this article in full, please click here
Digital investments, be they in AI, cloud, security, or engineering, will be among the top technology drivers for 2022, according to Gartner’s annual forecast of what it expects will be leading strategic IT trends.Gartner: IT skills shortage hobbles cloud, edge, automation growth
“It is an overarching drive for organizations to do more with and scale the digital environments they have been rapidly developing during the pandemic,” said David Groombridge, research vice president at Gartner. “Most of these trends define technologies that together show how businesses will reconnect with partners and consumers to create scalable, resilient technical foundations for the future.” Gartner unwrapped its forecast at its virtual IT Symposium/Xpo Americas this week.To read this article in full, please click here
Edge computing is gaining steam as an enterprise IT strategy with organizations looking to push storage and analytics closer to where data is gathered, as in IoT networks. But it’s got its challenges.
Tech Spotlight: Edge Computing
Proving the value of analytics on the edge (CIO)
The cutting edge of healthcare: How edge computing will transform medicine (Computerworld)
Securing the edge: 4 trends to watch (CSO)
How to choose a cloud IoT platform (InfoWorld)
Edge computing: 5 potential pitfalls (Network World)
Its potential upsides are undeniable, including improved latency as well as reduced WAN bandwidth and transmission costs. As a result, enterprises are embracing it. Revenues in the edge-computing market were $4.68 billion in 2020 and are expected to reach $61.14 billion by 2028, according to a May 2021 report by Grand View Research.To read this article in full, please click here
It’s the time of year when most enterprises are involved in a more-or-less-formal technology review cycle, as a preparatory step for next year’s budgeting. They’ve done this for decades, and it’s interesting to me that in any given year, enterprises share roughly three of their top five priorities. It’s more interesting that over three-quarters of enterprises carry over at least two of their top five priorities for multiple years. Why aren’t they getting addressed? They say their top problem is an “information gap.”Buyers adopt network technologies that improve their business, not just their network. They have to justify spending, particularly spending on some new technology that someone inside or outside has suggested. That means that they have to understand how it will improve operations, how they’ll deploy it, and what the cost will be. To do this for a new technology, they need information on how that improvement would happen—and they say they’re not getting it.To read this article in full, please click here
When it comes to protecting data-center-based resources in the highly distributed world, traditional security hardware and software components just aren’t going to cut it.That’s the bottom line for enterprises as they move to distributed digital environments according to Tom Gillis, senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s networking & advanced security business group. The idea is that security needs to be put deep into the infrastructure fabric and protect workloads across their lifecycle, Gillis said during an interview with Network World at the company’s VMworld virtual conference.To read this article in full, please click here
When National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) was launched in October 2004, it was a modest affair, offering anodyne advice to individual Americans and US businesses along the lines of making sure to update your antivirus software twice a year.Since then NCSAM has grown into an event-packed month with star-studded guest panels, annual launches in various cities (looking at you, Ypsilanti, Michigan!), the participation of federal cybersecurity officials, and weekly themes. This year, for example, the themes in each successive week are:
Be Cyber Smart
Phight the Phish!
Experience. Share. (Cybersecurity Career Awareness Week)
Cybersecurity First
Linux security: Cmd provides visibility, control over user activity
Not sure why the organizers didn’t make “Cybersecurity First” the theme of the month’s first week, but it is not for me to second-guess the federal Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the public/private National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), organizers of the annual awareness month.To read this article in full, please click here
The recent T-Mobile data breach, reportedly facilitated by attackers gaining access to an unprotected router and from there into the network, could have been prevented through the use of network automation.IDS, IPS, SASE, and other newer technologies get a lot more attention, but automation is critical to modern network security. Here’s a look at how automation should be used to enhance network security.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco has patched three critical security holes in its IOS XE software that's used across a variety of its core routers and switches.The three critical warnings are part of a big release of 32 security alerts, many of which are IOS XE-related, including firewall, SD-WAN and wireless access vulnerabilities.Linux security: Cmd provides visibility, control over user activity
Of the critical patches, the worst is a weakness in the Cisco IOS XE Software for Cisco Catalyst 9000 Family Wireless Controllers; it's rated as a 10 out of 10 on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).To read this article in full, please click here
Nutanix is releasing enhancements to its AOS operating system and Era database-management service designed to make it easier for enterprises to manage data, workloads, and business-continuity security tools in hybrid cloud environments via software-defined networking capabilitiesAOS and Era are both components of the Nutanix Cloud Platform. AOS 6, the new version of Nutanix's hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software, is designed to simplify network management across multiple clouds and enable enterprises to build virtual private clouds. Nutanix announced the updates at its .NEXT event this week.To read this article in full, please click here
Tape is definitely not the best choice for primary recovery, but it does have features that make it a credible option for restoring systems and data that have fallen victim to ransomware without having to pay the ransom.The cloud has many more upsides than tape as a recovery tool in general, but there are circumstances where tape should be seriously considerd, and ransomware recovery is one of them.How to choose the best NVMe storage array
When cloud’s not good enough
Using the cloud for ransomware recovery—or not—has become somewhat of a religious discussion in many circles. Choosing the cloud offers many positive things, including cost, speed, and immediate availability—all great advantages when responding to a ransomware attack.To read this article in full, please click here
Palo Alto Networks has bolted together its SD-WAN and security technologies to offer an integrated, cloud-based, secure-access service edge (SASE) offering aimed at simplifying distributed enterprises.Called Prisma SASE, the package brings together the company’s core Prisma Access package of cloud-based, next-generation security gateways with its Prisma SD-WAN technology it got when it bought CloudGenix for $420 million last year.To read this article in full, please click here
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. A June report from Sapio Research, commissioned by Versa Networks, finds 34% of companies are already using SASE, and another 30% plan to in the next six to 12 months.To read this article in full, please click here