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Category Archives for "Networking"

Cloudflare’s New Magic WAN Is A Familiar Trick

Cloudflare is building out its network and security services offerings to compete with SASE and CASB providers. The new Magic WAN and Magic Firewall offerings let customers direct traffic from branch offices, remote workers, and data centers to Cloudlfare's infrastructure for WAN transport and security inspection.

The post Cloudflare’s New Magic WAN Is A Familiar Trick appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Scientists are working on a switch to help lower the cost of using quantum computers

As IT professionals know, enterprise server farms are huge energy consumers, and the larger they are, the more voracious their appetite.Quantum computing could help because it is not only supposed to solve complex problems exponentially faster than classical computing, it’s also supposed to do so while consuming less energy. However major barriers—such as creating the extremely low temperatures required to enable superconductivity that is used in quantum-computing components—stand in the way.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] Now researchers at MIT are working on a tiny device that could help enable quantum computing and drastically reduce server-farm costs. The roots of this device—made from a superconducting nanowire—stretch back to a similar concept developed in the mid-1950s by an MIT electrical engineer who died tragically young before his vision could become reality.To read this article in full, please click here

Scientists are working on a switch to help lower the cost of using quantum computers

As IT professionals know, enterprise server farms are huge energy consumers, and the larger they are, the more voracious their appetite.Quantum computing could help because it is not only supposed to solve complex problems exponentially faster than classical computing, it’s also supposed to do so while consuming less energy. However major barriers—such as creating the extremely low temperatures required to enable superconductivity that is used in quantum-computing components—stand in the way.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] Now researchers at MIT are working on a tiny device that could help enable quantum computing and drastically reduce server-farm costs. The roots of this device—made from a superconducting nanowire—stretch back to a similar concept developed in the mid-1950s by an MIT electrical engineer who died tragically young before his vision could become reality.To read this article in full, please click here

The Hedge 76: Frederico Lucifredi and the Taxonomy of Indecision

Decision making, especially in large organizations, fails in many interesting ways. Understanding these failure modes can help us cope with seemingly difficult situations, and learn how to make decisions better. On this episode of the Hedge, Frederico Lucifredi, Ethan Banks, and Russ White discuss Frederico’s thoughts on developing a taxonomy of indecision. You can find his presentation on this topic here.

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Witness VMware Disrupt Enterprise Data Center Security at XFD5 

The security industry needs to wake up. Today’s attackers are too numerous and too determined to get caught by simple perimeter defenses. It’s no longer a matter of if an attack will be successful, it’s a matter of when. Security pros need to recognize this reality, stop using archaic detect and respond approaches to secure the enterprise, and start focusing on blocking the spread of attacks once they make that initial breach.  

Changing the industry won’t be easy. It will require a bold step  one that we believe we’ve taken at VMware with our distributed, software-defined approach to enterprise security. This approach gives us the ability to operationalize east-west security at scale, simplify the implementation of segmentation in just a few steps, and insert advanced threat prevention inside the data center. 

We’ll showcase these latest security advances on Thursday, March 25, starting at  at 2:00 pm PST. Broadcasting live around the world during Security Field Day 5 NSX security experts will run through simple, practical steps that security teams can take to meet Continue reading

Announcing Cloudflare’s Data Loss Prevention platform

Announcing Cloudflare’s Data Loss Prevention platform

Today, we’re excited to announce that your team can use Cloudflare’s network to build Zero Trust controls over the data in your enterprise - wherever it lives and however it moves.

Stopping data loss is difficult for any team and that challenge has become harder as users have left offices and data has left on-premise storage centers. Enterprises can no longer build a simple castle-and-moat around their data. Users now connect from any location on the planet to applications that live in environments outside of that enterprise’s control.

We have talked to hundreds of customers who have resorted to applying stopgap measures to try and maintain that castle-and-moat model in some form, but each of those band-aids slow down their users or drive up costs - or both. Almost all of the short-term options available combine point solutions that ultimately force traffic to backhaul through a central location.

Announcing Cloudflare’s Data Loss Prevention platform

Part of Cloudflare One, Cloudflare’s approach to data loss prevention relies on the same infrastructure and global network that accelerates user traffic to the Internet to also perform inline inspection against all traffic regardless of how it arrives on our network.

We also know that enterprises need more than just scanning Continue reading

Gloo Edge 2.0: A Fully Istio-Integrated API Gateway for Multiple Clusters

Version 2.0 of Solo.io’s Gloo Edge will integrate the Gloo Edge, an ingress controller, and the open source Istio service mesh will form a single control plane, Solo.io said this week during its Torsten Volk, an analyst for Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), said. “Most organizations have regarded Istio as something to ‘attack once it’s become more approachable and easier to manage,’” Volk said. “These Solo.io announcements might ring in this new age of “service mesh for everyone.” In a Continue reading

Using Cloudflare for Data Loss Prevention

Using Cloudflare for Data Loss Prevention
Using Cloudflare for Data Loss Prevention

Data exfiltration, or data loss, can be a very time-consuming and expensive ordeal causing financial loss, negative brand association, and penalties from privacy focused laws. Take for example, an incident where sensitive smart grid and metering R&D knowledge information from an industrial control system of a North American electric utility was exfiltrated through an attack that was suspected to have originated from inside the network. Unauthorized access to data from a utilities company can result in a compromised smart grid or power outages.

In another example, a security researcher found exposed and unknown (undocumented) API endpoints for Tesla’s Backup Gateway that could have been used to export data or make unauthorized changes. This would have had very real physical consequences had the unauthenticated API endpoint been used by an attacker to damage the battery or the connected electric grid.

Using Cloudflare for Data Loss Prevention
Source: Verizon 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report

Both these examples emphasize the importance of considering internal and external threats when thinking about how to protect a network from data exfiltration. An insider threat isn’t necessarily a user willfully causing harm: according to Fortinet’s 2019 Insider Threat Report, from the organizations surveyed 71% were concerned about a careless user causing an accidental Continue reading

Protecting your APIs from abuse and data exfiltration

Protecting your APIs from abuse and data exfiltration
Protecting your APIs from abuse and data exfiltration

API traffic is growing fast. Last year alone it grew 300% faster at our edge than web traffic. Because APIs power mobile and web applications, transmitting instructions as diverse as “order a pizza from my favourite restaurant using this credit card” or “place a cryptocurrency trade and these are my personal details”, they are ripe for data theft and abuse. Data exposure is listed as one of the top threats for API traffic by OWASP; this includes data leaks and exfiltration from origin responses (API Security TOP 10 threats 2019). The increase in API traffic and more frequent data attacks call for new security solutions.

Cloudflare’s security toolkit had always been designed to protect web and API traffic. However, after talking to hundreds of customers we realised that there is a need for easily deployed and configured security tools for API traffic in a single interface. To meet this demand, in October 2020 we launched API ShieldTM, a new product aimed at bringing together all security solutions designed for API traffic. We started by providing mTLS authentication to all Cloudflare users free of charge, gRPC support and Schema Validation in Beta. During the launch we laid Continue reading

Hands-On: Azure Route Server

TL&DR: Azure Route Server works as advertised. Setting it up is excruciatingly slow. You might want to start the process just before taking a long lunch break.

I decided to take Azure Route Server for a ride. Simple setup, two Networking Virtual Appliance (NVA) instances running Quagga to advertise a single prefix (just to see how multipathing works).

Here’s the diagram of what I set up:

Hands-On: Azure Route Server

TL&DR: Azure Route Server works as advertised. Setting it up is excruciatingly slow. You might want to start the process just before taking a long lunch break.

I decided to take Azure Route Server for a ride. Simple setup, two Networking Virtual Appliance (NVA) instances running Quagga to advertise a single prefix (just to see how multipathing works).

Here’s the diagram of what I set up:

Google and Cisco extend SD-WAN, cloud network-management integration

Google and Cisco have extended their technology development relationship to make it easier to marry cloud-based resources with SD-WAN command and control.The expanded technology agreement is centered around a cloud-based network-management system Google rolled out this week that promises to let customers configure and manage multiple on-prem- and public-cloud networks. The new service, called Network Connectivity Center, offers a central console for connecting and watching over multiple networking aspects, including traffic flows, performance metrics, and VPN connectivity.To read this article in full, please click here

It is Always Something (RFC1925, Rule 7)

While those working in the network engineering world are quite familiar with the expression “it is always something!,” defining this (often exasperated) declaration is a little trickier. The wise folks in the IETF, however, have provided a definition in RFC1925. Rule 7, “it is always something,” is quickly followed with a corollary, rule 7a, which says: “Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two (you can’t have all three).”

You can either quickly build a network which works well and is therefore expensive, or take your time and build a network that is cheap and still does not work well, or… Well, you get the idea. There are many other instances of these sorts of three-way tradeoffs in the real world, such as the (in)famous CAP theorem, which states a database can be consistent, available, and partitionable (or partitioned). Eventual consistency, and problems from microloops to surprise package deliveries (when you thought you ordered one thing, but another was placed in your cart because of a database inconsistency) have resulted. Another form of this three-way tradeoff is the much less famous, but equally true, state, optimization, surface tradeoff trio in network design.

It is possible, however, to build a system Continue reading

Browser Isolation for teams of all sizes

Browser Isolation for teams of all sizes

Every Internet-connected organization relies on web browsers to operate: accepting transactions, engaging with customers, or working with sensitive data. The very act of clicking a link triggers your web browser to download and execute a large bundle of unknown code on your local device.

Browser Isolation for teams of all sizes

IT organizations have always been on the back foot while defending themselves from security threats. It is not a question of ‘if’, but ‘when’ the next zero-day vulnerability will compromise a web browser. How can IT organizations protect their users and data from unknown threats without over-blocking every potential risk? The solution is to shift the burden of executing untrusted code from the user’s device to a remote isolated browser.

Browser Isolation for teams of all sizes

Bringing Remote Browser Isolation to teams of any size

Today we are excited to announce that Cloudflare Browser Isolation is now available within Cloudflare for Teams suite of zero trust security and secure web browsing services as an add-on. Teams of any size from startups to large enterprises can benefit from reliable and safe browsing without changing their preferred web browser or setting up complex network topologies.

Remote Browsers must be reliable

Running sensitive workloads in secure environments is nothing new, and Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) Continue reading