IDG Contributor Network: How to avoid falling for the W-2 phishing scam

While this blog is nominally mine, I don’t come up with ideas in a vacuum. This article on W-2 scams sprung from a conversation I had with my colleague Steve Williams, who ended up being my co-author. Check out more about him at the end of this piece.Multiple times each year, LinkedIn feeds and information security forums light up with examples of the latest and greatest versions of phishing attacks. Most recently the hot stories have been about a simple targeted request that avoids links, attachments, and malware, plays friendly with email filters, and appears extremely urgent to the recipient. This form of phishing is known as the W-2 scam.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

15 Infrastructure Experts to See at Interop ITX

IDG Contributor Network: Intelligent automation points the way to future economic growth

As someone deeply involved in technology strategy, I’m often asked about the impact of automation. Will automation—specifically, intelligent automation—create prosperity and growth, or will it create a dystopian future where workers are increasingly replaced by software robots?I always answer—and believe—that intelligent automation is a vast opportunity, not a threat. By working hand in hand with intelligent technology, we can achieve greater things. It frees us from mundane, repetitive activities—unleashing creativity and letting us build stronger, more productive working relationships. Intelligent automation makes us more human, not less.Unprecedented productivity gains That’s why McKinsey’s recent report, A Future That Works, is so fascinating. It predicts that automation will increase productivity by up to 1.4 percent per year over the next 50 years. By comparison, the steam engine only drove 0.3 percent annual increases, and the IT revolution only raised productivity growth by 0.4 percent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Intelligent automation points the way to future economic growth

As someone deeply involved in technology strategy, I’m often asked about the impact of automation. Will automation—specifically, intelligent automation—create prosperity and growth, or will it create a dystopian future where workers are increasingly replaced by software robots?I always answer—and believe—that intelligent automation is a vast opportunity, not a threat. By working hand in hand with intelligent technology, we can achieve greater things. It frees us from mundane, repetitive activities—unleashing creativity and letting us build stronger, more productive working relationships. Intelligent automation makes us more human, not less.Unprecedented productivity gains That’s why McKinsey’s recent report, A Future That Works, is so fascinating. It predicts that automation will increase productivity by up to 1.4 percent per year over the next 50 years. By comparison, the steam engine only drove 0.3 percent annual increases, and the IT revolution only raised productivity growth by 0.4 percent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The definition of work is shifting—here’s what you need to know

Back in the late 1990s, when I started my career with a job helping to develop IBM’s first ecommerce payment product, the term “work” was rather strictly defined. For the most part, my colleagues and I conformed to regular office hours, stationed at our desks on site. But even so, it was impossible to ignore the signs portending how the workplace was poised to change. My Nokia handset offered an exciting new kind of 24/7 connectivity, audio conferencing was gaining in popularity, and “telecommuting” was on the rise (to name just a few).+ Also on Network World: A mobile-first strategy improves employee productivity, study finds + Fast forward to today, and it’s clear that the definition of work is continuing to morph, now even faster than before. Savvy employers realize there is little time to waste and that they must adapt to a variety of cultural and technological changes if they want to attract and retain talent, improve employee performance and maintain a competitive advantage. Here’s what you need to know about this shifting landscape:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Botnets: Is your network really protected?

The tech world moves at a tremendous pace, unleashing wave after wave of innovation intended to improve our everyday lives. Many new devices, from security cameras to fridges, or TVs to baby monitors, are now internet connected. This affords us remote access and facilitates the collection of data, which is ostensibly used to make our systems “smarter.”However, it also opens new doors into our offices and homes through which hackers can come uninvited.There were around 6.4 billion connected things in use worldwide in 2016, and that’s set to grow to 8.4 billion this year, according to Gartner. There’s no doubt that the Internet of Things (IoT) will bring many benefits, but it also brings greater risk.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Botnets: Is your network really protected?

The tech world moves at a tremendous pace, unleashing wave after wave of innovation intended to improve our everyday lives. Many new devices, from security cameras to fridges, or TVs to baby monitors, are now internet connected. This affords us remote access and facilitates the collection of data, which is ostensibly used to make our systems “smarter.”However, it also opens new doors into our offices and homes through which hackers can come uninvited.There were around 6.4 billion connected things in use worldwide in 2016, and that’s set to grow to 8.4 billion this year, according to Gartner. There’s no doubt that the Internet of Things (IoT) will bring many benefits, but it also brings greater risk.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: Slow Internet? Firebind can sniff out the problem

We found Firebind to be an effective tool for reaching into branch office networks to diagnose internet-based performance problems. Firebind has a simple agent installation procedure and uses email-based alerting, so network managers won’t find it a burden to install or operate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Review: Slow Internet? Firebind can sniff out the problem

We found Firebind to be an effective tool for reaching into branch office networks to diagnose internet-based performance problems. Firebind has a simple agent installation procedure and uses email-based alerting, so network managers won’t find it a burden to install or operate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Zix wins 5-vendor email encryption shootout

Email encryption products have made major strides since we last looked at them nearly two years ago. They have gotten easier to use and deploy, thanks to a combination of user interface and encryption key management improvements, and are at the point where encryption can almost be called effortless on the part of the end user.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Zix wins 5-vendor email encryption shootout

Email encryption products have made major strides since we last looked at them nearly two years ago. They have gotten easier to use and deploy, thanks to a combination of user interface and encryption key management improvements, and are at the point where encryption can almost be called effortless on the part of the end user. Our biggest criticism in 2015 was that the products couldn’t cover multiple use cases, such as when a user switches from reading emails on their smartphone to moving to a webmailer to composing messages on their Outlook desktop client. Fortunately, the products are all doing a better job handling multi-modal email.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Setting up DLP features for email security

Network World contributing editor David Strom provides a roundup of how to enable data leak prevention features on three email security platforms.

Setting up DLP features for email security.

Network World contributing editor David Strom provides a roundup of how to enable data leak prevention features on three email security platforms.

Zix wins 5-vendor email encryption shootout

Email encryption products have made major strides since we last looked at them nearly two years ago. They have gotten easier to use and deploy, thanks to a combination of user interface and encryption key management improvements, and are at the point where encryption can almost be called effortless on the part of the end user.Our biggest criticism in 2015 was that the products couldn’t cover multiple use cases, such as when a user switches from reading emails on their smartphone to moving to a webmailer to composing messages on their Outlook desktop client. Fortunately, the products are all doing a better job handling multi-modal email.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Zix wins 5-vendor email encryption shootout

Email encryption products have made major strides since we last looked at them nearly two years ago. They have gotten easier to use and deploy, thanks to a combination of user interface and encryption key management improvements, and are at the point where encryption can almost be called effortless on the part of the end user.Our biggest criticism in 2015 was that the products couldn’t cover multiple use cases, such as when a user switches from reading emails on their smartphone to moving to a webmailer to composing messages on their Outlook desktop client. Fortunately, the products are all doing a better job handling multi-modal email.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)

New products of the week 3.13.2017

New products of the weekImage by 1EOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.TachyonImage by 1ETo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 3.13.2017

New products of the weekImage by 1EOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.TachyonImage by 1ETo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Building an OpenStack Private Cloud

It’s uncommon to find an organization that succeeds in building a private OpenStack-based cloud. It’s extremely rare to find one that documented and published the whole process like Paddy Power Betfair did with their OpenStack Reference Architecture whitepaper.

I was delighted to see they decided to do a lot of things I was preaching for ages in blog posts, webinars, and lately in my Next Generation Data Center online course.

Highlights include:

NASA Pi Day Challenge 2017: Don’t crater…

NASA is encouraging teachers to share its Pi Day Challenge with students on March 14, which is known in mathematical circles as Pi Day (i.e., 3.14). After all, who can't get fired up to learn more about the mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter?Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the fourth straight year has created an illustrated quiz aimed at students in grades 6 through 12 features four math problems (using pi) that NASA scientists and engineers must solve to understand space.Topics touched on in the quiz include Mars craters, a total solar eclipse, Saturn and the search for life beyond Earth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Configuring Cisco IOS XE With YANG-based YAML Files

One thing that puts a lot of network engineers off NETCONF and YANG is the complexity of the device configuration process. Even the simplest change involves multiple tools and requires some knowledge of XML. In this post I will show how to use simple, human-readable YAML configuration files to instantiate YANG models and push them down to network devices using a single command.