Hiring an information security vendor? Use these best practices.

The exponential rise in security incidents has caused many businesses to look hard at getting their own houses in order before they become the next headline. As part of those efforts, businesses are turning to security consultants to perform audits, penetration testing and other assessments of their systems. These are admirable activities, worthy of consideration by any prudent organization. But these engagements should be entered into with all the care that a business would use in any other transaction in which a third party is granted access to the company’s most sensitive systems and data. Unfortunately, this is seldom the case. All too often, in their rush to move forward with these assessments, businesses fail to adequately address the most fundamental of contract terms. Cost overruns are common. In some instances, security consultants create more risk than they resolve.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Mirantis Raises Another $75M but Isn’t Talking About It

$100M is not enough for the pure-play OpenStack company.

BGP in an Arista Data Center

Why Layer 3 (L3)?

Extension of L2

Top Security Concerns at Black Hat 2015

Video

Building an OpenStack Practice

In Q4 2013 at Dasher, we began our journey to create an OpenStack ecosystem that helps our clients as they transform their business and IT infrastructure. For years, Dasher has been helping clients move from physical to virtual environments. As business and IT needs evolved, more customers started evaluating moving from virtual to cloud environments and building their own private cloud. Dasher saw OpenStack becoming the de facto standard for private cloud, but proprietary black box network switches remained a misfit, giving rise to open networking — the disaggregation of network hardware from software.

A couple of our clients along with one of our senior solution architects, Ryan Day, suggested we explore Cumulus Networks® and learn about their Cumulus® Linux® offering. The results are highlighted below and we will attempt to answer: Why do we think the Cumulus Linux OS is a logical step in the evolution of network operating systems?

Cumulus Linux enables software-defined everything (SDE). SDE may be the cool new fad of 2015, but adopting SDE because it is what all the cool kids are doing is certainly not a reason to move to a new technology. Let’s explore Dasher’s reasons for recommending Cumulus Continue reading

Performing Ping Sweeps with IOS TclSh

Pros and Cons: Manually Setting BGP Fast Timers

Solve Networking Challenges With Service Provider SDN & Ericsson

Ericsson presents the service provider SDN webinar with SDxCentral on August 26, 2015. See you there!

Network Dictionary – natatorium

Define natatorium in networking

The post Network Dictionary – natatorium appeared first on EtherealMind.

Big Data for Social Engineering

First, it integrates with corporate directories such as Active Directory and social media sites like LinkedIn to map the connections between employees, as well as important outside contacts. Bell calls this the “real org chart.” Hackers can use such information to choose people they ought to impersonate while trying to scam employees. From there, AVA users can craft custom phishing campaigns, both in email and Twitter, to see how employees respond. via wired

This is a white hat tool, of course, a form of social engineering penetration testing. Two points of interest, though.

First, you can be pretty certain hackers are already using this sort of tool today to find the right person to contact, how to contact them, and to discover the things they know people will respond to. The rule of thumb you should keep in mind is — at least 80% of the time, hackers are already using the tools researchers come up with to do penetration testing. Remember all those fake people inhabiting the world of twitter, facebok, and the like? Some of them might not be just another click farm — some of them might be clickbait for hackers to find out who you Continue reading

HL: Optimal Routing Design

Perfect start to get into network design, covers all the foundation topics and general principles. Amazon Review of Optimal Routing Design

The post HL: Optimal Routing Design appeared first on 'net work.

Vulnerability in enterprise-managed iOS devices puts business data at risk

A vulnerability in the iOS sandbox for third party applications, like those installed by companies on their employees' devices, can expose sensitive configuration settings and credentials. The flaw was discovered by researchers from mobile security firm Appthority and impacts apps deployed on iOS devices through mobile device management (MDM) or enterprise mobility management (EEM) products. These products allow administrators to automatically push applications, configuration settings and data access rules to enterprise mobile devices. Before a new iOS device is brought inside the network of a company that uses a mobile management system, an MDM account is created for it and a client application is installed. The MDM client is used to install corporate apps and to enforce access policies for corporate data and email.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel’s five (not very) big announcements from IDF this week

If you’ve paid any attention to Intel’s developer event in San Francisco this week, you’ve probably gathered already that there’s almost no chip news at the show. Intel has moved up the food chain, so to speak, and is showing developers what they can build with its technologies rather than focusing on new components.It makes sense, since with PCs on the wane Intel needs developers to get creative with its products. It can no longer flash a faster Core i7 chip and expect them to go do something interesting with it, because PCs nowadays just aren’t that interesting. Instead, it needs to show them what else they can do with its latest chips.+ ALSO FROM THE SHOW: IDF 2015's coolest demos | Intel’s big plan to seed the private cloud market +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Metaswitch Calico Grows Up a Little

Project Calico comes out of beta.

IDF 2015’s coolest demos

The best of Intel Developer Forum 2015Image by Mark HachmanEach year, Intel holds its Developer Forum to lead the PC industry into the direction Intel wants it to go: powerful new PCs, connected devices, touchscreens, and the like. Well, a bunch of stale PowerPoint foils won’t do the job. So Intel and its partners seed IDF with some amazing, awe-inspiring demos, all in a bid to get the developer community behind this year’s technological focus. What sort of demos, you ask? We have some of the best in the following pages. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: 4 powerline kits step in when Wi-Fi fails

Are there places in your home or office where your Wi-Fi signal doesn't reach? You're not alone. Because of Wi-Fi's limited range -- and old-school building construction techniques like thick plaster, brick or masonry walls -- even the best Wi-Fi networks have dead zones. If you have that problem, you have several options.You can start drilling holes in your walls so you can run network cabling. You can try a Wi-Fi range extender (which might help, depending on the strength of your Wi-Fi and the efficiency of the extender). Or you can use a powerline kit, which routes data over your electric cables by piggybacking the data on top of the electrical current's 60-hertz wave and then extracting the data at the other end.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Walled Gardens and Other Overlay Networks

Russ White wonders if the resurgence of Walled Gardens on the Internet is bad or a good thing. The long-term rise of Facebook, WeChat, Snapchat and other applications seems to be a sustaining trend. Overlay Network Previous walled gardens like AOL and CompuServe have been composting for many years. Their unique value was that they […]

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5 Real Ways To Approach Security Automation

How Did You Learn So Much About Networking?

One of my readers sent me a heartfelt email that teleported me 35 years down the memory lane. He wrote:

I only recently stumbled upon your blog and, well, it hurt. It's incredible the amount of topics you are able to talk about extensively and how you can dissect and find interesting stuff in even the most basic concepts.

May I humble ask how on earth can you know all of the things you know, with such attention to detail? Have you been gifted with an excellent memory, magical diet, or is it just magic?

Short answer: hard work and compound interest.

Show 251 – Arista Networks CloudVision – Sponsored

Arista CloudVision is a turnkey approach to workload orchestration and workflow automation. Building on Arista’s success in building programmable and open software for the cloud with Arista EOS, CloudVision extends the EOS architecture to a network-wide perspective.

The post Show 251 – Arista Networks CloudVision – Sponsored appeared first on Packet Pushers.