Hybrid IT Requires Communication, Breadth of Skills

Protecting the enterprise against mobile threats

Mobile devices have transformed the digital enterprise allowing employees to access the information they need to be most productive from virtually anywhere. Has that convenience come at a cost to enterprise security, though?  According to Forrester's The State of Enterprise Mobile Security: 2016 to 2017, by Chris Sherman, "Employees are going to continue to purchase and use whatever devices and apps they need to serve customers and be highly productive, whether or not these devices are company-sanctioned."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Protecting the enterprise against mobile threats

Mobile devices have transformed the digital enterprise allowing employees to access the information they need to be most productive from virtually anywhere. Has that convenience come at a cost to enterprise security, though?  According to Forrester's The State of Enterprise Mobile Security: 2016 to 2017, by Chris Sherman, "Employees are going to continue to purchase and use whatever devices and apps they need to serve customers and be highly productive, whether or not these devices are company-sanctioned."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tier 1 carrier performance: February, 2017 snapshot

The post Tier 1 carrier performance: February, 2017 snapshot appeared first on Noction.

Video: Out-of-Band SDN Management Network

One of the challenges of designing a controller-based solution is the transport network used to exchange information between controller and controlled devices. Can you do that in-band or is it better to have an out-of-band network (built with traditional components)? Terry Slattery explained some of the pros and cons in the Monitoring SDN Networks webinar.

WikiLeaks will share CIA hacking details with companies, but can they use it?

WikiLeaks plans to share details about what it says are CIA hacking tools with the tech companies so that software fixes can be developed.But will software companies want it?The information WikiLeaks plans to share comes from 8,700-plus documents it says were stolen from an internal CIA server. If the data is classified -- and it almost certainly is -- possessing it would be a crime.That was underlined on Thursday by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who advised tech vendors to consider the legal consequences of receiving documents from WikiLeaks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WikiLeaks will share CIA hacking details with companies, but can they use it?

WikiLeaks plans to share details about what it says are CIA hacking tools with the tech companies so that software fixes can be developed.But will software companies want it?The information WikiLeaks plans to share comes from 8,700-plus documents it says were stolen from an internal CIA server. If the data is classified -- and it almost certainly is -- possessing it would be a crime.That was underlined on Thursday by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who advised tech vendors to consider the legal consequences of receiving documents from WikiLeaks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

It’s official: Disaggregation is here to stay

When Cumulus Networks was first created, disaggregation was completely disruptive. Organizations of all shapes and sizes were running proprietary hardware and software through every single ounce of their data centers. We went into this industry excited to start something new and make networking faster, smarter, scalable and all-around better. We’re thrilled to report that a lot has changed since then.

This week, Arista announced that their operating system, Arista cEOS™, will support virtual machines, containers and third-party merchant silicon-based switches (ya know, like Cumulus Networks has been doing for quite some time now). This seems like a huge jump for Arista, who has been part of the proprietary school of thought from day one, but we’re honestly not surprised. This is an indicator of just how transformative open networking has been for the industry. It’s taking hold, sinking its teeth into tradition and tearing it apart (both literally and figuratively).

Here are a few other recent signifiers that disaggregation is here to stay:

• Gartner’s recent data showing 30% growth in white-box switching shipments, driven by the flexibility and significant cost reductions network operators are achieving through software operating systems
• Gartner reporting that by the year 2020, it is expected that over Continue reading

The CIA should help vendors patch the flaws it was exploiting

The CIA exploits exposed this week reveal that the agency does hacking just like criminals do, including buying exploits from black-hat researchers who sell their wares on the dark web.It’s also a demonstration of bad security on the part of the CIA, which apparently entrusted the entire portfolio to both agency employees and contractors, one of whom turned out not to be trustworthy and passed them on to Wikileaks.A criminal investigation into who that was is underway so the CIA is rightfully busy with that, but it should try to find time to help out the vendors whose gear was exploited patch the flaws quickly. Before the leak, these attacks were not widely known. But now that they are, they have little value to the CIA anymore, so the CIA should help shore up the vulnerabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The CIA should help vendors patch the flaws it was exploiting

The CIA exploits exposed this week reveal that the agency does hacking just like criminals do, including buying exploits from black-hat researchers who sell their wares on the dark web.It’s also a demonstration of bad security on the part of the CIA, which apparently entrusted the entire portfolio to both agency employees and contractors, one of whom turned out not to be trustworthy and passed them on to Wikileaks.A criminal investigation into who that was is underway so the CIA is rightfully busy with that, but it should try to find time to help out the vendors whose gear was exploited patch the flaws quickly. Before the leak, these attacks were not widely known. But now that they are, they have little value to the CIA anymore, so the CIA should help shore up the vulnerabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel’s PC chief talks about 5G, changes in chip design

Intel surprised many observers when the company hired outsider Venkata Renduchintala to lead the company's PC, Internet of Things, and Systems Architecture groups.With more than a year under his belt, he's spearheading a cultural change inside the company, getting employees to think beyond PCs and talk about technologies like 5G and IoT.There's been a lot of chatter about changes in the company's chip development strategy, with the recent announcement of the 8th Generation Core processors, an unprecedented fourth chip architecture on the 14-nanometer process. The chip industry veteran sat down with the IDG News Service at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to talk about what spurred the move and also his thoughts on 5G.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel’s PC chief talks about 5G, changes in chip design

Intel surprised many observers when the company hired outsider Venkata Renduchintala to lead the company's PC, Internet of Things, and Systems Architecture groups.With more than a year under his belt, he's spearheading a cultural change inside the company, getting employees to think beyond PCs and talk about technologies like 5G and IoT.There's been a lot of chatter about changes in the company's chip development strategy, with the recent announcement of the 8th Generation Core processors, an unprecedented fourth chip architecture on the 14-nanometer process. The chip industry veteran sat down with the IDG News Service at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to talk about what spurred the move and also his thoughts on 5G.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to achieve security via whitelisting with Docker containers  

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  Docker containers have become an important means for organizations to build and run applications in the cloud. There’s a lot of flexibility with containers, as they can be deployed on top of any bare-metal server, virtual machine, or platform-as-as-service (PaaS) environment. Developers have embraced Docker containers on public clouds because they don’t need help from an IT operations team to spin them up.A software container is simply a thin package of an application and the libraries that support the application, making it easy to move a container from one operating system to another. This makes it possible for a developer to build an application and then take all the source code and supporting files and basically create something like a zip file so the container can be deployed just about anywhere. It contains everything the application needs to run, including code, runtime, system tools and system libraries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to achieve security via whitelisting with Docker containers  

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  Docker containers have become an important means for organizations to build and run applications in the cloud. There’s a lot of flexibility with containers, as they can be deployed on top of any bare-metal server, virtual machine, or platform-as-as-service (PaaS) environment. Developers have embraced Docker containers on public clouds because they don’t need help from an IT operations team to spin them up.A software container is simply a thin package of an application and the libraries that support the application, making it easy to move a container from one operating system to another. This makes it possible for a developer to build an application and then take all the source code and supporting files and basically create something like a zip file so the container can be deployed just about anywhere. It contains everything the application needs to run, including code, runtime, system tools and system libraries.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

After CIA leak, Intel Security releases detection tool for EFI rootkits

Intel Security has released a tool that allows users to check if their computer's low-level system firmware has been modified and contains unauthorized code.The release comes after CIA documents leaked Tuesday revealed that the agency has developed EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) rootkits for Apple's Macbooks. A rootkit is a malicious program that runs with high privileges -- typically in the kernel -- and hides the existence of other malicious components and activities.The documents from CIA's Embedded Development Branch (EDB) mention an OS X "implant" called DerStarke that includes a kernel code injection module dubbed Bokor and an EFI persistence module called DarkMatter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

After CIA leak, Intel Security releases detection tool for EFI rootkits

Intel Security has released a tool that allows users to check if their computer's low-level system firmware has been modified and contains unauthorized code.The release comes after CIA documents leaked Tuesday revealed that the agency has developed EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) rootkits for Apple's Macbooks. A rootkit is a malicious program that runs with high privileges -- typically in the kernel -- and hides the existence of other malicious components and activities.The documents from CIA's Embedded Development Branch (EDB) mention an OS X "implant" called DerStarke that includes a kernel code injection module dubbed Bokor and an EFI persistence module called DarkMatter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Keys to solving wicked problems

The incredible pace of change of the Internet — from research laboratory inception to global telecommunication necessity — is due to the continuing pursuit, development and deployment of technology and practices adopted to make the Internet better. This has required continuous attention to a wide variety of problems ranging from “simple” to so-called “wicked problems”. Problems in the latter category have been addressed through collaboration. This post outlines key characteristics of successful collaboration activities. —CircleID

The post Worth Reading: Keys to solving wicked problems appeared first on 'net work.

Microsoft’s .NET Core slowly marches onto Raspberry Pi 3

Microsoft's .NET Core is now making its way to Raspberry Pi developer boards, and an official .NET 2.0 Core is coming from the software company later this year.The .NET Core for Raspberry Pi and instructions to install it are available on the Github site.The .NET platform can be used to develop mobile, PC, and server applications and services. The Raspberry Pi 3 board can serve as an entry-level PC or be used to develop smart gadgets, robots, or internet-of-things devices.Microsoft recently opened up the programming framework for .NET Core, and separate from the Raspberry Pi move, Samsung is adopting it for the Tizen OS platform. Tizen is a Linux-based OS being developed by Samsung used in smartwatches and other devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Private search firm migrates to OpenStack as it adopts automation

Nate Baechtold, Enterprise Architect at EBSCO Information Services, says it was going to be too hard to automate the company’s VMware environment so the firm shifted to OpenStack, which natively abstracts underlying components much like AWS.  But the next sticking point was how to enable developers to build in load balancing?  A self-service model using the existing hardware-based system was too complex, Baechtold tells Network World Editor in Chief John Dix, but a new software-defined tool fit the bill. EBSCO Information Services Nate Baechtold, Enterprise Architect at EBSCO Information ServicesTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Private search firm migrates to OpenStack as it adopts automation

Nate Baechtold, Enterprise Architect at EBSCO Information Services, says it was going to be too hard to automate the company’s VMware environment so the firm shifted to OpenStack, which natively abstracts underlying components much like AWS.  But the next sticking point was how to enable developers to build in load balancing?  A self-service model using the existing hardware-based system was too complex, Baechtold tells Network World Editor in Chief John Dix, but a new software-defined tool fit the bill. EBSCO Information Services Nate Baechtold, Enterprise Architect at EBSCO Information ServicesTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here