How microcertifications work for IT job seekers and employers

Organizations struggling to fill high-demand tech roles -- like Linux or cybersecurity, for instance -- often look at certifications to benchmark a candidate's skills and real-world experience and gauge their potential for success on the job. But for job seekers, certifications are expensive, time-consuming and often don't accurately assess the hands-on skills needed to succeed in a role.For many IT job seekers and the organizations that would hire them, microcertifications -- or microcredentials -- are a faster, more affordable and more effective way to achieve the same result and get open jobs filled faster.[ Related story: How unfilled tech jobs impact the US economy ] To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

9% off Vilros Raspberry Pi 3 Complete Starter Kit – Deal Alert

If you're looking to get started with Raspberry Pi, this Raspberry PI Complete Starter Kit comes with everything you need. And right now you'll save some bucks buying it on Amazon with this 9% off deal ($67.99 -- See it now on Amazon). The Vilros kit contains:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Okta acquires Stormpath to boost its identity services for developers

Okta has acquired Stormpath, a company that provides authentication services for developers. The deal should help the identity provider improve its developer-facing capabilities.Stormpath offered developers a set of tools for managing user logins for their apps. Rather than building a login system from scratch, developers could call the Stormpath API and have the company take care of it for them. Frederic Kerrest, Okta’s co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, said that the acquisition should help his company build self-service capabilities for developers.While Okta is probably best known for its identity and access management products aimed at businesses’ internal use, the company also operates a developer platform aimed at helping app developers handle user identity. Kerrest said that the developer capabilities are a fast-growing part of Okta’s business, but that its functionality could use some help. That’s where this acquisition comes in.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Okta acquires Stormpath to boost its identity services for developers

Okta has acquired Stormpath, a company that provides authentication services for developers. The deal should help the identity provider improve its developer-facing capabilities.Stormpath offered developers a set of tools for managing user logins for their apps. Rather than building a login system from scratch, developers could call the Stormpath API and have the company take care of it for them. Frederic Kerrest, Okta’s co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, said that the acquisition should help his company build self-service capabilities for developers.While Okta is probably best known for its identity and access management products aimed at businesses’ internal use, the company also operates a developer platform aimed at helping app developers handle user identity. Kerrest said that the developer capabilities are a fast-growing part of Okta’s business, but that its functionality could use some help. That’s where this acquisition comes in.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: IT Professionals Weigh in on Enterprise Automation

IT professionals are singing the praises of automation. It’s a transformative technology practice that allows IT to improve agility and the availability of services while liberating IT staff from time-consuming routine tasks. These are essential factors as organizations transition to digital business.But IT leaders also preach prudence. Automation in IT must be approached with a clear strategy. It must be fully understood, skillfully deployed, and diligently monitored, tested, and optimized.We reached out to influential IT leaders to learn what factors and best practices organizations should consider in order to realize the maximum benefits of automation in the data center. Here’s what they said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google faces new antitrust investigation in Turkey

Antitrust concerns about Google's tying of its app store and services to use of the Android OS are spreading, as Turkey's Competition Board has opened an inquiry, reversing an earlier decision.Russian search company Yandex filed a complaint with the board in 2015, alleging that Google requires smartphone manufacturers to pre-load Google Play Store, Google Play Services and Google Mobile Services on any Android devices they sell, and to make Google Search the default search provider on those devices.Such behavior would be a concern for Yandex, which offers app store, mobile mapping and search services of its own.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Response: Cisco’s Identity Crisis: Complexity, Pride, and SD-WAN

An excellent post from Eyvonne Sharp highlights one of Cisco’s weakest areas, its enduring passion for too many products, too many options, too much complexity:

With that in mind consider Cisco, a company in love with complexity. They’ve built their business making complex systems. Their culture breeds nerd knobs. They’ve built certification tracks — through which many network engineers have built their careers — to develop expert level understanding of their products.

At the same time, engineers operate in a culture were we believe configuration and operational complexity have inherent value. We unconsciously embrace the following logic: Networks are complex. One must be smart to understand networks. I understand networks. Therefore, I’m smart.

We extrapolate this logic and believe that complexity, for complexity’s sake, makes us superior. In truth, our pride has tied gordian knot with complexity and we don’t know how to unravel it.

Using SD-WAN as a use case to highlight Cisco’s love of its own complex technology instead of radically redefining itself. Cisco has limited traction in SD-WAN space because its current technology is hard to design, harder to operate and lacks features. While the business units are doing their best to make it simple, building on Continue reading

Why Automation is Necessary in IT

How to remotely control your Windows 10 computer via Google Chrome

Google provides a free and powerful tool, Chrome Remote Desktop, that lets you connect to and control your Windows 10 computer over the internet. (It also works with Windows 7 and Windows 8.) The computer has to be running Chrome, of course, and you also need a Gmail account to sign in to Chrome in order to use this feature.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

New products of the week 3.6.17

New products of the weekImage by CertaOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.A10 Networks Thunder CFW, with integrated Gi/SGi firewall capabilitiesImage by a10To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 3.6.17

New products of the weekImage by CertaOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.A10 Networks Thunder CFW, with integrated Gi/SGi firewall capabilitiesImage by a10To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: vArmour flips security on its head

Almost every cybersecurity program these days does some sort of scanning, sandboxing or traffic examination to look for anomalies that might indicate the presence of malware. We’ve even reviewed dedicated threat-hunting tools that ferret out malware that’s already active inside a network. However, what if there were a different way to approach security? Instead of searching for behaviors that might indicate a threat, what if you could define everything that is allowed within a network? If every process, application and workflow needed to conduct business could be defined, then by default everything outside of those definitions could be flagged as illegal. At the very least, critical programs could be identified and all interactions with them could be tightly defined and monitored. It’s a different way of looking at security, called segmentation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Review: vArmour flips security on its head

Almost every cybersecurity program these days does some sort of scanning, sandboxing or traffic examination to look for anomalies that might indicate the presence of malware. We’ve even reviewed dedicated threat-hunting tools that ferret out malware that’s already active inside a network. However, what if there were a different way to approach security? Instead of searching for behaviors that might indicate a threat, what if you could define everything that is allowed within a network? If every process, application and workflow needed to conduct business could be defined, then by default everything outside of those definitions could be flagged as illegal. At the very least, critical programs could be identified and all interactions with them could be tightly defined and monitored. It’s a different way of looking at security, called segmentation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Review: vArmour flips security on its head

Almost every cybersecurity program these days does some sort of scanning, sandboxing or traffic examination to look for anomalies that might indicate the presence of malware. We’ve even reviewed dedicated threat-hunting tools that ferret out malware that’s already active inside a network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Worth Reading: Agile Development and Security

Matthias Luft (a good friend of mine, and a guest speaker in the upcoming Building Next-Generation Data Center course) wrote a great post about the (lack of) security in software development.

The parts I like most (and they apply equally well to networking):

iPhone 8 Rumor Rollup: new Lightning twist; Apple getting schooled; delivery delay?

Despite the fact that Apple had no presence at the big Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona this past week, rumors about the iPhone 8 or iPhone X did not subside.Sure, Android and Windows had their week in the spotlight at MWC, but inquiring minds also wanted to know what's up with rumors about a possible new port on the next flagship iPhone.LIGHTNING FAST CHARGING The Wall Street Journal and others reported that a USB Type-C port might be coming to the iPhone 8 to deliver faster charging and data transfer speeds. But by the end of the week, in part because of commentary from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (revealed by MacRumors), the consensus seemed to be that the USB Type-C connecter will indeed come to the next iPhone, but on the other end of the cord from the Lightning connector. That's similar to what you find in the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware attack hit Pennsylvania Democratic Senators

The Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Caucus was hit with a ransomware attack, locking 16 Democratic senators and their staff out of their computer network.The attack was discovered on Friday morning; at the time of publishing on Sunday, the site was still down and displayed an “error establishing a database connection” message. The same error displays when trying to view each Democratic senator’s website.“Officials from the caucus have been in contact with law enforcement to investigate the incident and are working with Microsoft to restore the IT system,” according to a written statement text-messaged to reporters and obtained by The Hill. It was sent via text since the caucus could not use its email. “There is currently no indication that the caucus system was targeted or that any data has been compromised.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware attack hit Pennsylvania Democratic senators

The Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Caucus was hit with a ransomware attack, locking 16 Democratic senators and their staff out of their computer network.The attack was discovered on Friday morning; at the time of publishing, the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Caucus website was still down and displayed an “error establishing a database connection” message. The same error displays when trying to view each Democratic senator’s website.“Officials from the caucus have been in contact with law enforcement to investigate the incident and are working with Microsoft to restore the IT system,” according to a written statement text-messaged to reporters and obtained by The Hill. It was sent via text, since the caucus could not use its email. “There is currently no indication that the caucus system was targeted or that any data has been compromised.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware attack hit Pennsylvania Democratic Senators

The Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Caucus was hit with a ransomware attack, locking 16 Democratic senators and their staff out of their computer network.The attack was discovered on Friday morning; at the time of publishing on Sunday, the site was still down and displayed an “error establishing a database connection” message. The same error displays when trying to view each Democratic senator’s website.“Officials from the caucus have been in contact with law enforcement to investigate the incident and are working with Microsoft to restore the IT system,” according to a written statement text-messaged to reporters and obtained by The Hill. It was sent via text since the caucus could not use its email. “There is currently no indication that the caucus system was targeted or that any data has been compromised.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware attack hit Pennsylvania Democratic senators

The Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Caucus was hit with a ransomware attack, locking 16 Democratic senators and their staff out of their computer network.The attack was discovered on Friday morning; at the time of publishing, the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Caucus website was still down and displayed an “error establishing a database connection” message. The same error displays when trying to view each Democratic senator’s website.“Officials from the caucus have been in contact with law enforcement to investigate the incident and are working with Microsoft to restore the IT system,” according to a written statement text-messaged to reporters and obtained by The Hill. It was sent via text, since the caucus could not use its email. “There is currently no indication that the caucus system was targeted or that any data has been compromised.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here