The role of email security in reducing user risk amid rising threats
Phishing remains one of the most dangerous and persistent cyber threats for individuals and organizations. Modern attacks use a growing arsenal of deceptive techniques that bypass traditional secure email gateways (SEGs) and email authentication measures, targeting organizations, employees, and vendors. From business email compromise (BEC) to QR phishing and account takeovers, these threats are designed to exploit weaknesses across multiple communication channels, including email, Slack, Teams, SMS, and cloud drives.
Phishing remains the most popular attack vector for bad actors looking to gain unauthorized access or extract fraudulent payment, and it is estimated that 90% of all attacks start with a phishing email. However, as companies have shifted to using a multitude of apps to support communication and collaboration, attackers too have evolved their approach. Attackers now engage employees across a combination of channels in an attempt to build trust and pivot targeted users to less-secure apps and devices. Cloudflare is uniquely positioned to address this trend thanks to our integrated Zero Trust services, extensive visibility from protecting approximately 20% of all websites, and signals derived from processing billions of email messages a year.
Cloudflare recognizes that combating phishing requires an integrated approach and a more complete view Continue reading
DSNS Nameservers
It's common folklore in the Domain Name System that a delegated domain name must be served by 2 or more nameservers. This guidance raises a couple of questions. Firstly, when presented with a list of nameservers for a domain how do recursive resolvers respond? Do they send queries to all of the nameservers at once? Or do they serialise their actions in looking for a responsive nameserver? Secondly, if these queries are serialised, then how can a domain administrator organise the zone’s nameservers to maximise both DNS resolution performance and service resilience?D2DO261: Year in Review: Peak Serverless, K8s Complexity, DevOps Sprawl (and What’s Next)
Join us today for a look back at this year’s developments in cloud security and DevOps. We ask if serverless computing has peaked, why Kubernetes continues to be so hard, whether cloud repatriation is a real trend, and whether the DevOps role has become too darn big. We also explore the future of cloud computing,... Read more »HS091: The Game Has Changed: Security Strategy After Salt Typhoon and the Pager-Bomb Hack
Recent events have driven home a simple fact: neither your devices nor your network services can be trusted totally, and they could all be turned against you, possibly fatally. Join us as we discuss the harsh realities of the evolving cybersecurity space, and how enterprise leaders in and out of IT need to change their... Read more »
PP044: Optimizing Security and Performance with ADEM and App Acceleration (Sponsored)
Autonomous Digital Experience Management, or ADEM, measures network and application performance from the user perspective and gives network and IT teams visibility into the entire data path—including the home user network, first mile and last mile, and the WAN. On today’s Packet Protector, we learn how ADEM can complement your network and security efforts with... Read more »Segment Routing IPv6 (SRv6) with FRR and Debian
In a previous post, I wrote about my experiences with using FRR on Ubuntu to provide L3VPN services over Segment Routing on IPv6 (SRv6). Since then a new major version of FRR has become available and I thought it may be time to revisit this configuration to see if I still experience the same issues. Success TL;DR - I am happy to report that IPv4 and IPv6 L3VPN mostly works out of the box.NB508: Google Serves Up Custom AI and Quantum Chips; Nokia Puts Muscle Behind SONiC
Take a Network Break! This is our final show for 2024. We start with critical vulnerabilities in Ivanti and OpenWrt, and then discuss what effect a proposed bill from US Senator Ron Wyden would have on telecom security (short answer: more paperwork but unlikely to improve protection). Extreme Networks announces a new AI platform that... Read more »Internationalization and localization: bringing Cloudflare Radar to a global audience
Cloudflare Radar celebrated its fourth birthday in September 2024. As we’ve expanded Radar’s scope over the last four years, the value that it provides as a resource for the global Internet has grown over time, and with Radar data and graphs often appearing in publications and social media around the world, we knew that we needed to make it available in languages beyond English.
Localization is important because most Internet users do not speak English as a first language. According to W3Techs, English usage on the Internet has dropped 8.3 points (57.7% to 49.4%) since January 2023, whereas usage of other languages like Spanish, German, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch is steadily increasing. Furthermore, a CSA Research study determined that 65% of Internet users prefer content in their language.
To successfully (and painlessly) localize any product, it must be internationalized first. Internationalization is the process of making a product ready to be translated and adapted into multiple languages and cultures, and it sets the foundation to enable your product to be localized later on at a much faster pace (and at a lower cost, both in time and budget). Below, we review how Cloudflare’s Radar Continue reading
Happy Holidays and All the Best in 2025!
Another year is almost gone, and it’s time for my traditional “I will disappear until mid-January” retreat (also, don’t expect me to read my email until I’m back).
I hope you’ll also be able to disconnect from the crazy pace of the networking world, forget the “AI will make networking engineers obsolete” shenanigans (hint: SDN did not), and focus on your loved ones. I would also like to wish you all the best in 2025!
I will probably get bored sometime in late December, so expect a few new netlab features in early January.
AI for Network Engineers: Recurrent Neural Network (RNN)
Introduction
So far, this book has introduced two neural network architectures. The first one, the Feed-Forward Neural Network (FNN), works well for simple tasks, such as recognizing handwritten digits in small-sized images. The second one, the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), is designed for processing larger images. CNNs can identify objects in images even when the location or orientation of the object changes.
This chapter introduces the Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). Unlike FNNs and CNNs, an RNN’s inputs include not only the current data but also all the inputs it has processed previously. In other words, an RNN preserves and uses historical data. This is achieved by feeding the output of the previous time step back into the hidden layer along with the current input vector.
Although RNNs can be used for predicting sequential data of variable lengths, such as sales figures or a patient’s historical health records, this chapter focuses on how RNNs can perform character-based text autocompletion. The upcoming chapters will explore word-based text prediction.
Text Datasets
For training the RNN model, we typically use text datasets like IMDB Reviews or the Wikipedia Text Corpus. However, in this chapter, we simplify the process by using a tailored dataset containing Continue reading
From Python to Go 007. (Data)Classes, Structs, and Custom Data Types.
Hello my friend,
Today we are going to talk about the last data type, which in generally exists in Python and Go (Golang), and which we need dearly for all meaningful applications including network and IT infrastructure automation. We are talking about structured, typed data, which is represented in Python in form of objects and classes and in Go (Golang) in form of structs. These structures are truly powerful and once you figure out how to use them, I’m quite confident you will be using it everywhere, where you can.
You Talk So Much About Go (Golang), But You Offer Python In Trainings. Why?
This question I’ve been asked rather frequently recently. Indeed, why do we in each blog post talk about Network Automation Trainings, which gravitate around Python/Ansible duet. The answer is straightforward: whilst Go (Golang) is very powerful as we showing it in these blogs, its usage in many cases is justified only in very high-scale environment. For majority of networks and IT systems, Python is great. It is suffice to say that entire OpenStack is built in Python. And ourselves we use it extensively in many customers’ systems. Go (Golang) is useful as extension of automation skills, Continue reading
Worth Reading: Hard Truths about AI-assisted Coding
Addy Osmani published an excellent overview of the challenges of AI-assisted coding. They apply equally well to the “AI will generate device configurations for me” or “AI will troubleshoot my network” ideas (ignoring for the moment the impact of the orders-of-magnitude smaller training set), so it’s definitely worth reading.
I particularly liked the “AI is like having a very eager junior developer on your team” take, as well as the description of the “70% problem” (AI will get you 70% there, but the last 30% will be frustrating) – a phenomenon perfectly illustrated by the following diagram by Forrest Brazeal:
Hedge 253: Touch Grass!
In this episode of the Hedge, Eyvonne, Tom, and Russ talk about whether Intel will survive, centralization and industrial spying, and why you need to go touch grass and read a book.
N4N007: Performance vs. Cost
When building your network and buying equipment, is performance or cost more important? On today’s episode, we discuss the balance between performance and cost in selecting networking equipment. We also cover other considerations, including why you should understand client and network needs, the fluid nature of pricing, and the necessity of creative problem-solving. Bonus material: ... Read more »TNO011: Behind the NetOps Curtain at Cisco Live!
Ever wonder how large conferences such as Cisco Live! manage their on-site network operations? Today’s podcast guest, Jason Davis joins host Scott Robohn to discuss history of network operations at Cisco Live!, and the intricacies, challenges, and strategies involved in setting up and managing network operations for such a large event. Episode Guest: Jason Davis, ... Read more »HN761: Who Are You Building Automation For? An AutoCon2 Roundtable
Today’s Heavy Networking comes to you from the AutoCon2 tech event being held in Westminster, Colorado. This episode was recorded in conference room on site at AutoCon2 in November, 2024. The format? Roundtable. Four network automators have raised their hand and brought topics they want to discuss. Those topics include: Crafting tools to “listen” to... Read more »Use Disaggregated BGP Prefixes to Influence Inbound Internet Traffic
As much as I love explaining how to use BGP in an optimal way, sometimes we have to do what we know is bad to get the job done. For example, if you have to deal with clueless ISPs who cannot figure out how to use BGP communities, you might be forced to use the Big Hammer of disaggregated prefixes. You can practice how that works in the next BGP lab exercise.
Click here to start the lab in your browser using GitHub Codespaces (or set up your own lab infrastructure). After starting the lab environment, change the directory to policy/b-disaggregate and execute netlab up.