Hot products at RSA 2017

RSA Conference underwayImage by Web SummitRSA, the world’s largest security conference, is underway this week in San Francisco with attendees from around the world gathering to hear the latest strategies for fighting cyberattacks. They’ll also be able to view the latest hardware and software to protect their most valuable corporate assets. Here is a brief description of some new security products being announced at the conference.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

36 – New White Paper that describes OTV to interconnect Multiple VXLAN EVPN Fabrics

Good day,

In the meantime that this long series of sub-posts becomes a white paper, there is a new document available on CCO written by Lukas Krattiger that covers the Layer 2 and Layer 3 interconnection of multiple VXLAN fabrics. I feel this document is complementary to this series of Post 36, describing from a different angle (using a human language approach) how to achieve VXLAN EVPN Multi-Fabric design in conjunction with OTV.

Optimizing Layer 2 DCI with OTV between Multiple VXLAN EVPN Fabrics (Multifabric) White Paper

Good reading, yves

Cybersecurity alliance promoting intel-sharing seeks to expand

Hackers have probably had a harder time slipping past your security software, thanks to an alliance between some of the top vendors in the industry.The Cyber Threat Alliance, a group of security firms that often compete, says its efforts to share intelligence on the latest hacking threats have been paying off. Rivals including Fortinet, Intel Security, Palo Alto Networks and Symantec originally entered into the alliance over two years ago, even as doubts arose over whether it’d last.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cybersecurity alliance promoting intel-sharing seeks to expand

Hackers have probably had a harder time slipping past your security software, thanks to an alliance between some of the top vendors in the industry.The Cyber Threat Alliance, a group of security firms that often compete, says its efforts to share intelligence on the latest hacking threats have been paying off. Rivals including Fortinet, Intel Security, Palo Alto Networks and Symantec originally entered into the alliance over two years ago, even as doubts arose over whether it’d last.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Use Ansible to Execute a Single Command on All Routers

I was using Ansible playbooks to configure Cisco IOS routers running in VIRL and wanted to extract the router configurations before stopping the simulation.

You can download the playbooks from my Github repository, and here’s how you can run Ansible with VIRL.

Cybersecurity and the Cloud in 2017

Infoworld Senior Writer Fahmida Rashid chats with Palo Alto Networks' CSO Rick Howard about the biggest cybersecurity challenges facing businesses working in the cloud in 2017.

The Cybersecurity Canon

Palo Alto Networks' CSO Rick Howard sits down at RSA 2017 with Infoworld's Fahmida Rashid to talk about what the Cybersecurity Canon is, and his top picks for inclusion this year.

Worried about hacks, senators want info on Trump’s personal phone

Two senators have written to the U.S. Department of Defense about reports that President Donald Trump may still be using an old unsecured Android phone, including to communicate through his Twitter account.“While it is important for the President to have the ability to communicate electronically, it is equally important that he does so in a manner that is secure and that ensures the preservation of presidential records,” Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware, and Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, wrote in the letter, which was made public Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worried about hacks, senators want info on Trump’s personal phone

Two senators have written to the U.S. Department of Defense about reports that President Donald Trump may still be using an old unsecured Android phone, including to communicate through his Twitter account.“While it is important for the President to have the ability to communicate electronically, it is equally important that he does so in a manner that is secure and that ensures the preservation of presidential records,” Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware, and Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, wrote in the letter, which was made public Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EP12: Cisco SE Manager (CCIE #1753) Rusty Heird shares what he looks for when hiring and more!

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Amazon Chime goes after WebEx, Skype for Business and more

Companies looking for a new video- and teleconferencing system have a fresh face to turn to in the market: Amazon Web Services.On Monday, the public cloud provider announced the launch of Amazon Chime, a new service that’s designed to compete with the likes of WebEx, Skype for Business and GoToMeeting. It’s a powerful swing at some very entrenched enterprise software players by the public cloud provider.AWS launched the service with native applications for Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android. Chime’s infrastructure is based in the U.S., but Gene Farrell, AWS’s vice president of enterprise applications, said that the service can be accessed worldwide.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Researcher develops ransomware attack that targets water supply

A security researcher is showing that it’s not hard to hold industrial control systems for ransom. He's experimented with a simulated water treatment system based on actual programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and documented how these can be hacked.David Formby, a PhD student at Georgia Institute of Technology, conducted his experiment to warn the industry about the danger of poorly-secured PLCs. These small dedicated computers can be used to control important factory processes or utilities, but are sometimes connected to the internet.For instance, Formby found that 1,500 of these industrial PLCs are accessible online, he said while speaking at the RSA cybersecurity conference on Monday. It's not hard to imagine a hacker trying to exploit these exposed PLCs, he added. Cybercriminals have been infecting businesses across the world with ransomware, a form of malware that can hold data hostage in exchange for bitcoin.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Researcher develops ransomware attack that targets water supply

A security researcher is showing that it’s not hard to hold industrial control systems for ransom. He's experimented with a simulated water treatment system based on actual programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and documented how these can be hacked.David Formby, a PhD student at Georgia Institute of Technology, conducted his experiment to warn the industry about the danger of poorly-secured PLCs. These small dedicated computers can be used to control important factory processes or utilities, but are sometimes connected to the internet.For instance, Formby found that 1,500 of these industrial PLCs are accessible online, he said while speaking at the RSA cybersecurity conference on Monday. It's not hard to imagine a hacker trying to exploit these exposed PLCs, he added. Cybercriminals have been infecting businesses across the world with ransomware, a form of malware that can hold data hostage in exchange for bitcoin.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Chips coming by June will herald the next generation of Wi-Fi

Qualcomm will start shipping sample chips for the next generation of Wi-Fi by June, helping device and network vendors develop products that might quadruple users’ speeds and lengthen battery life.The new silicon uses an early version of IEEE 802.11ax, a specification designed to make wireless LANs more efficient and increase their performance as a result. The formal standard isn’t expected to be signed off until late next year, but it’s common for some components using a new standard to ship before that step takes place.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Chips coming by June will herald the next generation of Wi-Fi

Qualcomm will start shipping sample chips for the next generation of Wi-Fi by June, helping device and network vendors develop products that might quadruple users’ speeds and lengthen battery life.The new silicon uses an early version of IEEE 802.11ax, a specification designed to make wireless LANs more efficient and increase their performance as a result. The formal standard isn’t expected to be signed off until late next year, but it’s common for some components using a new standard to ship before that step takes place.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple stock: Shares of AAPL close at new all-time high

Bolstered by a new Goldman Sachs research note which put a target price of $150 on AAPL, shares of the Cupertio-based company opened strong today and closed at $133.29. In turn, shares of Apple reached a new all-time closing high today, besting the previous high of $132.54 which the company hit back in May of 2015.The Goldman Sachs research note aside, investors seem to be unusually optimistic about Apple's future prospects, primarily due to the impending iPhone 8 which already has all the trappings of huge record-breaking release. Based on recent reports, it appears that the iPhone 8 will eliminate the iPhone's traditional top and bottom bezels and will instead feature a completely edgeless OLED display. Additionally, there are rumors that the iPhone 8 will introduce some new augmented reality features while delivering a huge leap forward in battery life.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

White House H-1B plan puts U.S. workers in front

A top White House adviser Sunday outlined two key principles underlying the administration's approach to H-1B reform. It wants a system requiring employers to first consider U.S. workers for a job before hiring visa-holding workers, and it intends to distribute H-1B visas under a "merit-based" system.Stephen Miller, senior policy adviser for President Donald Trump, said the administration will seek an immigration program where "American workers are given jobs first."In a television interview Sunday on Meet the Press, Miller also said that Trump "has made clear" his interest in creating "a merit-based system where individuals coming into the country bring the kinds of benefits economically that will grow our economy and help lift up wages for everybody." (You can find the transcript here).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Will Australia take up the API advantage or whither on the vine?

I’ve always been confused as to why my homeland isn’t actually more of an API world leader. After all, Australia has an ideal environment to see the growth of API-led business and government initiatives: The distance and the off-kilter time zone mean APIs could help Australian businesses appeal to international audiences at all times of the day and night without having to have an around-the-clock staff employed. Australian businesses could integrate their services better into a global marketplace by leveraging APIs. There has been a long history of Australia’s skills at assessing international world practice and then implementing the best locally. Australia’s small population spread across a large land mass means delivering digital government services using APIs could support much more of the population at a lower cost.  On the negative side, Australia has squandered much of its mining economy boom without advancing a digital economy; dragged its heals on implementing a national broadband network, which is now noticeably slower than in my adopted homeland of Spain; and has regularly slipped in annual rankings for innovation and capacity to support tech startup ecosystems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New LibreOffice release sparks record donations to Document Foundation

The release of version 5.3 of LibreOffice, the free software productivity suite, has pushed the number of donations to the Document Foundation to a record high, according to the group’s co-founder, Italo Vignoli.“Donations are the key to the life and development of the project,” he wrote in a blog post.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Lessons from the rise and fall of an open source project | Intel now supports Vulkan on Windows 10 PCsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HoloLens Spectator View makes it easier to show off AR creations

When Microsoft first unveiled its HoloLens augmented reality headgear, the company used a special camera to show viewers third-person images of the digital objects being rendered in the headset.Now, anyone who owns two HoloLenses can recreate the same setup, thanks to a project that Microsoft released on Monday. Called Spectator View, it lets users sync up information from a HoloLens about where augmented reality objects are and what they look like with footage from a camera. Using that makes it possible to create a third-person view of augmented reality action.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here