The Rise of the Hybrid IT/OT Professional

GDPR: Going Beyond Borders

Today, the EU General Data Protection Regulation – or GDPR – comes into effect amid a great deal of anticipation and build-up. For the past few years, companies and policy makers around the world have been preparing for this legislation to come into force. It introduces higher and stricter privacy requirements and heavy fines for noncompliance. The interesting, yet challenging, part of the GDPR is that it applies to all organizations processing the personal data of subjects within the European Union, regardless of their location.

In this sense, the GDPR is an ambitious effort that seeks to fill a gap in the field of Internet privacy. Implementation by organizations around the world has not been easy as the statute is complex and, in many ways, difficult to enforce. This has been particularly so for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and startups as the costs of ensuring compliance are considerable.

At the Internet Society, we are pleased to see privacy becoming a priority, not just a “nice to have.” As an organization with a global community, operating all over the world, we are among those who have been preparing for the GDPR. Doing privacy well is not easy, but it’s Continue reading

Video: SPB Fabric Use Cases

As part of his “how does Avaya implement data center fabrics” presentation, Roger Lapuh talked about use cases for SPB in data center fabrics.

I have no idea what Extreme decided to do with the numerous data center fabric solutions they bought in the last few years, so the video might have just a historic value at this point… but it’s still nice to see what you can do with smart engineering.

PenTest Edition: Cracking WEP, WPS, WPA, and WPA2 Wi-Fi Networks with the “Fern Wi-Fi Cracker” Tool

Fortinet Security Fabric Connectors Automate Management for Multi-Vendor Environments

It does this through one-click integrations with partners including AWS, Cisco ACI, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and VMware NSX.

Podcast: Talking Data Privacy and GDPR with Todd M. Tolbert

“Let’s raise the bar on data privacy and make the Internet safer.”  With the imminent arrival of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), this was one of the points raised by Todd M. Tolbert, our Chief Administrative Officer, in an episode of the Non-Profit Tech Podcast published yesterday. Hosted by fusionSpan’s Justin Burniske, the 35-minute episode covered a wide range of topics, including:

• the difference between data privacy and data protection
• Todd’s thinking about the value the GDPR brings in terms of thinking about data
• mistakes organizations make with regard to handling their data
• resources for organizations to do more
• how you can’t be liable for data that you don’t have in the first place
• asking the question… do you really need to keep those 700 email addresses that no longer work?

And, of course, Todd being who he is, there were some Texan things mixed in to the conversation as well. I very much enjoyed the episode and found it a useful contribution to the ongoing privacy discussions that tomorrow’s GDPR deadline has generated.

Some of the resources Todd shared included:

• Online Trust Alliance’s Online Trust Audit and Honor Roll
• Online Trust Alliance’s Cyber Incident Continue reading

Worth Reading: Buried vulnerabilities

The problem isn’t just that you’re introducing vulnerabilities, but that once they’re there, they tend to stay there. Not just in code that you need, but, even worse, in code that you don’t need. —Mike Bursell @opensource.com

IDG Contributor Network: Soil to sale, ranch to register: IoT connects producers, distributors, retailers and consumers

IoT, because of its flexibility and, let us admit, complexity, gives CIOs and business leaders in similar roles pause. And this anxiety about the pain of implementing comprehensive digital transformation is causing some foot dragging. Delaying however could put your business at risk, potentially causing your business to fall behind and ultimately fail.  Implementing IoT solutions offer the opportunity to sustain your business leadership, the ability to scale and create new types of sales/revenues, as well as cost savings.  No matter what the industry, there are partners aplenty eager to help enterprises transform their operations via the extraordinary power of fully deployed IoT systems.To read this article in full, please click here

Edgewater Customizes SD-WAN to Fit Small Businesses

The company's SD-WAN is geared toward smaller companies that are not looking for an MPLS replacement.

CenturyLink SD-WAN Biz Remains Small, but Is Growing

Most customers are buying SD-WAN services together with MPLS though the former is showing stronger overall growth.

FBI Takes On Russian Hackers, Seizes VPNFilter Malware Domain

The move essentially redirects the malware’s attacks to an FBI-controlled server.

20 hot jobs ambitious IT pros should shoot for

What should your next role in IT be? Maybe a security management expert? Or a change management guru?“Factors such as the proliferation of network-connected devices, adoption of cloud services and exponential rise in security threats are affecting hiring trends,” according to a survey released today by researchers at IDC and sponsored by Cisco about what IT roles will be hot in the future.[ Click here to download a PDF bundle of five essential articles about IoT in the enterprise. ] “Despite the central role that technology and the technology workforce play in this digital era, certain key roles stand out from the pack in terms of importance and opportunity. Not all roles are equal in the future,” wrote Mark Leary an intelligence analyst with Cisco Services in a blog post about the study.To read this article in full, please click here

Top 5 Recommendations for the IT Professional at DockerCon 2018

DockerCon 2018 is right around the corner and it’s not just a conference for developers! We’ve created experiences and activities designed with the IT professional in mind.

Registration is open so secure your spot and begin planning your conference experience.

“What gets me excited about Docker is how liberating their platform is for technologists. As a technologist, Docker gives me the freedom, flexibility, and makes it extremely easy to run and deploy apps on modern infrastructure.” – Arjuna Rivera, I2 Labs Leader, Lockheed Martin

DockerCon is the premier container industry event, where you’ll see examples of Docker best practices that you can implement within your company, gain hands-on experience of the Docker container platform, including Kubernetes, security, networking and storage, plus learn how to bring the Docker container platform in to your organization to modernize applications and streamline your deployment and maintenance operations.

Networking is key benefit to a conference and at DockerCon we’ve made it easy to find peers in our Hallway Track. Whether you’re looking for somebody to help answer your questions, or you have wisdom to share with others, the Hallway Track is like your own custom breakout session.

Here are our top 5 recommendations for Continue reading

Destructive ‘VPNFilter’ Attack Network Uncovered

Worth Reading: How much of the Internet is QUIC?

First, we investigated the QUIC-capable infrastructure in IPv4 on its common UDP port 443, from which we built a ZMap module to rapidly enumerate QUIC hosts. We exercised QUIC’s version negotiation feature within our module, which yields QUIC support as well as the supported QUIC versions. —Jan Rüth @APNIC

The future of storage is here

Sometime in the past couple of years, Gartner introduced a term called “Shared Accelerated Storage” (SAS) to describe what’s next for the industry after all-flash arrays. I’m not sure when they first used the term, but it was the very first bullet in its 2017 Storage Hype Cycle, indicating its relative newness as a market category.In its Hype Cycle, Gartner has a rather long and complicated definition of what SAS is. The easy way to think about it is that it brings the benefits of network-based systems and direct-attached systems together by leveraging a number of new technologies, most notably Nonvolatile Memory Express— or NVMe, as its more commonly known.  To read this article in full, please click here

Community Networks Can Bridge the Digital Divide, But Some Still Need to Be Convinced

Community networks can help bring connectivity to many of world’s population still without it, but some governments, ISPs, and some potential users need to be convinced of their benefits, connectivity experts said.

Community networks can bring huge economic, educational, and social opportunities to areas without Internet access, Raul Echeberria, the Internet Society’s vice president for global engagement, said Wednesday.

With nearly half the world’s population still lacking Internet access, “this is creating a huge gap of opportunities,” he said during a community networking roundtable discussion hosted by the Internet Society.

Through community network projects such as a year-old network in the mountainous region of Tusheti in the nation of Georgia, the Internet Society has seen the proof that existing technologies can bring Internet service to some of the most remote areas on Earth, Echeberria said.

After a year of operation, the Georgian network is providing new economic opportunities to inn keepers and other tourism-related businesses in the region, said Ucha Seturi, director of the community network project there. Demand for Internet service is growing, he added.

With the technology questions largely solved, a key piece of the puzzle for community networks is getting the buy-in of the unserved communities and Continue reading

Thanks, Arista! We’ll Leave a Light on for You

Wow.  Just, wow.  Here we were at Pica8, ten days away from announcing a screamingly simplified white box switching architecture for enterprise campus networks – one that makes legacy switch stack and chassis switch replacement with disaggregated white box switches ridiculously easy — when Arista suddenly pops up and says that the success white box switches are having in the data center is now well and truly annoying to them, so they are starting to plan a future expedition to the enterprise campus in search of replacing lost revenue.

But after blowing straight past total market validation for us – we already have a number of ongoing enterprise campus network deployments inside some of Cisco’s oldest and largest accounts – Arista then went on to articulate the changes they envision for their future campus network switching push and, in doing so, came very close to a one-to-one mapping with what we’ve just announced as an orderable solution with our new PicaPilot switch orchestration software (see link below). (I really must order a case of champagne for my friends over there.)

Just how close is the mapping?  Well, let’s start with solving the urgent requirement to simplify Continue reading

Thanks, Arista! We’ll Leave a Light on for You

Wow.  Just, wow.  Here we were at Pica8, ten days away from announcing a screamingly simplified white box switching architecture for enterprise campus networks – one that makes legacy switch stack and chassis switch replacement with disaggregated white box switches ridiculously easy — when Arista suddenly pops up and says that the success white box switches are having in the data center is now well and truly annoying to them, so they are starting to plan a future expedition to the enterprise campus in search of replacing lost revenue.

But after blowing straight past total market validation for us – we already have a number of ongoing enterprise campus network deployments inside some of Cisco’s oldest and largest accounts – Arista then went on to articulate the changes they envision for their future campus network switching push and, in doing so, came very close to a one-to-one mapping with what we’ve just announced as an orderable solution with our new PicaPilot switch orchestration software (see link below). (I really must order a case of champagne for my friends over there.)

Just how close is the mapping?  Well, let’s start with solving the urgent requirement to simplify Continue reading

Lumina Networks Raises $10M With Investments From Both Verizon and AT&T

It will spend some of its funding to expand its business in Europe and in Japan.