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Category Archives for "Networking"

We’ve Added a New Microsoft Certification Course to Our Video Library!

Considering Windows Server 2016 MCSA Certification? In this helpful course, get the details about Windows Server 2016 70-741 exam, in the MCSA certification.

Why You Should Watch

In this course we will perform tasks related to the networking features and functionalities available in Windows Server 2016. Students should have familiarity with implementing and managing DNS, DHCP, and IPAM, as well as deploying remote access solutions such as VPN and RADIUS, managing DFS and branch cache solutions, configuring high performance network features and functionality, and implementing Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions, such as Hyper-V Network Virtualization (HNV) and Network Controller.

What You’ll Learn

This course will cover the following exam topics:

  • Implement a Domain Name System (DNS)
  • Implement DHCP and IPAM
  • Implement Network Connectivity and Remote Access Solutions
  • Implement an Advanced Network Infrastructure

About The Instructor

Melissa Hallock has been in the IT field since 1996 when she first began working with hardware. While working on a Bachelor of Applied Science in Networking, she landed her first IT job in a Forbe’s top 100 growing companies as a LAN Technician and worked with all things Microsoft. Later she migrated to Linux and Mac operating systems. Having always worked in an Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore

Welcome to Agility City! Let me set the scene: In the castle, the Wonderful Wizard orchestrates networks in beautiful and powerful ways. Point-to-point tunnel connections are heralded as “architectural wonders,” which decades ago were called bridges with disdain. Meanwhile, The Wicked Witch of the West brews a primordial potion of complexity that is hidden behind curtains of automated provisioning. Packets of information are heavily laden with unnecessary information and double encryption.It almost makes you want Dorothy Gale to appear and click her Ruby Red slippers; “There is no place like home. There is no place like home.” If only we start talking about true networking, and not orchestration of bridges.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: We need innovation to help escape from the cloud-services land of Oz

Welcome to Agility City! Let me set the scene.In the castle, the Wonderful Wizard orchestrates networks in beautiful and powerful ways. Point-to-point tunnel connections are heralded as “architectural wonders,” which decades ago were called bridges with disdain.Meanwhile, The Wicked Witch of the West brews a primordial potion of complexity that is hidden behind curtains of automated provisioning. Packets of information are heavily laden with unnecessary information and double encryption.[ Learn who's developing quantum computers. ] It almost makes you want Dorothy Gale to appear and click her ruby slippers - “There's no place like home. There's no place like home.” If only we start talking about true networking and not orchestration of bridges.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: We need innovation to help escape from the cloud-services land of Oz

Welcome to Agility City! Let me set the scene.In the castle, the Wonderful Wizard orchestrates networks in beautiful and powerful ways. Point-to-point tunnel connections are heralded as “architectural wonders,” which decades ago were called bridges with disdain.Meanwhile, The Wicked Witch of the West brews a primordial potion of complexity that is hidden behind curtains of automated provisioning. Packets of information are heavily laden with unnecessary information and double encryption.[ Learn who's developing quantum computers. ] It almost makes you want Dorothy Gale to appear and click her ruby slippers - “There's no place like home. There's no place like home.” If only we start talking about true networking and not orchestration of bridges.To read this article in full, please click here

Protection from Struts Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (S2-057)

Protection from Struts Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (S2-057)

On August 22 a new vulnerability in the Apache Struts framework was announced. It allows unauthenticated attackers to perform Remote Code Execution (RCE) on vulnerable hosts.

As security researcher Man Yue Mo explained, the vulnerability has similarities with previous Apache Struts vulnerabilities. The Cloudflare WAF already mitigated these so adjusting our rules to handle the new vulnerability was simple. Within hours of the disclosure we deployed a mitigation with no customer action required.

OGNL, again

Apache Struts RCE payloads often come in the form of Object-Graph Navigation Library (OGNL) expressions. OGNL is a language for interacting with the properties and functions of Java classes and Apache Struts supports it in many contexts.

For example, the snippet below uses OGNL to dynamically insert the value "5" into a webpage by calling a function.

<s:property value="%{getSum(2,3)}" />

OGNL expressions can also be used for more general code execution:

${
    #_memberAccess["allowStaticMethodAccess"]=true,
    @java.lang.Runtime@getRuntime().exec('calc')
}

Which means if you can find a way to make Apache Struts execute a user supplied OGNL expression, you've found an RCE vulnerability. Security researchers have found a significant number of vulnerabilities where this was the root cause.

What’s different this time?

The major difference between Continue reading

Why monday.com Is The Universal Team Management Tool for Your Team

Every project management tool seeks to do the same instrumental thing: keep teams connected, on task and on deadline to get major initiatives done. But the market is getting pretty crowded, and for good reason — no platform seems to have gotten the right feel for what people need to see, and how that information should be displayed so that it’s both actionable/relevant, and contextualized. That’s why monday.com is worth a shot. The platform is based off a simple, but powerful idea: that as humans, we like to feel like we’re contributing to part of a greater/effort good — an idea that sometimes gets lost in the shuffle as we focus on the details of getting stuff done. So projects are put onto a task board (think of it like a digital whiteboard), where everyone can have the same level of visibility into anyone else who’s contributing set of tasks. That transparency breaks down the silos between teams that cause communication errors and costly project mistakes — and it’s a beautiful, simple way to connect people to the processes that drive forward big business initiatives. To read this article in full, please click here

Complicated Vs. Complexity

I am currently reading Team of Teams, an excellent book!

In it, it highlights an interesting fact that I think is very relevant for the networking world and that is the difference between something that is complicated versus something that is complex.

There is a distinct difference in that something complicated can be broken down into its building blocks and analysed with a high degree of certainty. Think of a car engine for example. It is a very complicated piece of machinery for sure, but it is not complex, since you can divide its functionality down into components. On the other hand think of something like a virus and how it evolves. This is a complex organism that you you can’t be certain that will evolve in a predetermined fashion.

So im thinking, the way we build networks today, are we building them to be “just” complicated or are they really complex in nature instead? – The answer to this question determines how we need to manage our infrastructure!

Just some food for thought!

/Kim

Our Right to Protect Our Autonomy and Human Dignity

We are entering a new world in which data may be more important than software.”
– Tim O’Reilly

In this digital era where modern technology has become as ubiquitous as air, a seismic shift in innovation, revenue generation, and lifestyle has transpired, whereby data has become the most valuable commodity. In Australia, many youths struggle to “disconnect” completely from digital devices, with the proliferation of wearable technologies and broadband access facilitating the unavoidable integration of technology into our everyday lives. As a 21st century youth, and part of the demographic who consumes the most Internet and digital media, there exists a stark disparity between the amount of time we spend engaging with digital devices and our actual understanding of Internet governance and/or legislation.

We have become so reliant on the Internet and technology, we rarely question the personal risks we take and potential breaches of law that occur. Our dependence on digital devices and instant gratification prompts us to accept “Terms and Conditions” without ever reading a word and allows cookies to be saved despite having no idea what they are. Alarmingly, in the event our data is exploited or shared without our consent, we are oblivious to the Continue reading

BrandPost: Choosing Cybersecurity Products

Cybercrime damage is projected to reach $6 trillion annually by 2021. That’s creating lots of demand for security protection—estimated at over $1 trillion cumulatively between 2017 and 2021. As a result, an estimated 1,200 vendors are competing to provide enterprise-class cybersecurity products, so how do you go about choosing which solution to use?There’s no doubt, cyberthreats are real—according to the Online Trust Alliance (OTA), the number of cyber incidents targeting businesses almost doubled from 82,000 in 2016 to 159,700 in 2017, and due to non-reporting of many incidents, the actual number for 2017 could well have exceeded 360,000.To read this article in full, please click here

What to expect when the internet gets a big security upgrade

Ready or not, the upgrade to an important internet security operation may soon be launched. Then again, it might not.The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will meet the week of Sept. 17 and will likely decide whether or not to give the go ahead on its multi-year project to upgrade the top pair of cryptographic keys used in the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) protocol — commonly known as the root zone key signing key (KSK) — which secures the Internet's foundational servers.[ RELATED: Firewall face-off for the enterprise ] Changing these keys and making them stronger is an essential security step, in much the same way that regularly changing passwords is considered a practical habit by any Internet user, ICANN says. The update will help prevent certain nefarious activities such as attackers taking control of a session and directing users to a site that for example might steal their personal information.To read this article in full, please click here

What to expect when the internet gets a big security upgrade

Ready or not, the upgrade to an important internet security operation may soon be launched. Then again, it might not.The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will meet the week of Sept. 17 and will likely decide whether or not to give the go ahead on its multi-year project to upgrade the top pair of cryptographic keys used in the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) protocol — commonly known as the root zone key signing key (KSK) — which secures the Internet's foundational servers.[ RELATED: Firewall face-off for the enterprise ] Changing these keys and making them stronger is an essential security step, in much the same way that regularly changing passwords is considered a practical habit by any Internet user, ICANN says. The update will help prevent certain nefarious activities such as attackers taking control of a session and directing users to a site that for example might steal their personal information.To read this article in full, please click here

What to expect when the internet gets a big security upgrade

Ready or not, the upgrade to an important internet security operation may soon be launched. Then again, it might not.The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will meet the week of Sept. 17 and will likely decide whether or not to give the go ahead on its multi-year project to upgrade the top pair of cryptographic keys used in the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) protocol — commonly known as the root zone key signing key (KSK) — which secures the Internet's foundational servers.[ RELATED: Firewall face-off for the enterprise ] Changing these keys and making them stronger is an essential security step, in much the same way that regularly changing passwords is considered a practical habit by any Internet user, ICANN says. The update will help prevent certain nefarious activities such as attackers taking control of a session and directing users to a site that for example might steal their personal information.To read this article in full, please click here

The correct levels of backup save time, bandwidth, space

One of the most basic things to understand in backup and recovery is the concept of backup levels and what they mean.Without a proper understanding of what they are and how they work, companies can adopt bad practices that range from wasted bandwidth and storage to actually missing important data on their backups. Understanding these concepts is also crucial when selecting new data-protection products or services.[ Check out 10 hot storage companies to watch. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] Full backupTo read this article in full, please click here

What to expect when the Internet gets a big security upgrade

Ready or not, the upgrade to an important Internet security operation may soon be launched.  Then again, it might not.The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will meet the week of September 17 and will likely decide whether or not to give the go ahead on its multi-year project to upgrade the top pair of cryptographic keys used in the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) protocol – commonly known as the root zone key signing key (KSK) –  which secures the Internet's foundational servers.RELATED: Firewall face-off for the enterprise Changing these keys and making them stronger is an essential security step, in much the same way that regularly changing passwords is considered a practical habit by any Internet  user, ICANN says. The update will help prevent certain nefarious activities such as attackers taking control of a session and directing users to a site that for example might steal their personal information.To read this article in full, please click here

Network Infrastructure as Code Is Nothing New

Following “if you can’t explain it, you don’t understand it” mantra I decided to use blog posts to organize my ideas while preparing my Networking Infrastructure as Code presentation for the Autumn 2018 Building Network Automation Solutions online course. Constructive feedback is highly appreciated.

Let’s start with a simple terminology question: what exactly is Infrastructure as Code that everyone is raving about? Here’s what Wikipedia has to say on the topic:

Read more ...