Does Automation Require Reengineering?

During Networking Field Day 33 this week we had a great presentation from Graphiant around their solution. While the presentation was great you should definitely check out the videos linked above, Ali Shaikh said something in one of the sessions that resonated with me quite a bit:

Automation of an existing system doesn’t change the system.

Seems simple, right? It belies a major issue we’re seeing with automation. Making the existing stuff run faster doesn’t actually fix our issues. It just makes them less visible.

Rapid Rattletraps

Most systems don’t work according to plan. They’re an accumulation of years of work that doesn’t always fit well together. For instance, the classic XKCD comic:

When it comes to automation, the idea is that we want to make things run faster and reduce the likelihood of error. What we don’t talk about is how each individual system has its own quirks and may not even be a good candidate for automation at any point. Automation is all about making things work without intervention. It’s also dependent on making sure the process you’re trying to automate is well-documented and repeatable in the first place.

How many times have you seen or heard of Continue reading

Victims of Success

It feels like the cybersecurity space is getting more and more crowded with breaches in the modern era. I joke that on our weekly Gestalt IT Rundown news show that we could include a breach story every week and still not cover them all. Even Risky Business can’t keep up. However, the defenders seem to be gaining on the attackers and that means the battle lines are shifting again.

Don’t Dwell

A recent article from The Register noted that dwell times for detection of ransomware and malware hav dropped almost a full day in the last year. Dwell time is especially important because detecting the ransomware early means you can take preventative measures before it can be deployed. I’ve seen all manner of early detection systems, such as data protection companies measuring the entropy of data-at-rest to determine when it is no longer able to be compressed, meaning it likely has been encrypted and should be restored.

Likewise, XDR companies are starting to reduce the time it takes to catch behaviors on the network that are out of the ordinary. When a user starts scanning for open file shares and doing recon on the network you can almost guarantee they’ve Continue reading

The Essence of Cisco and Splunk

You no doubt noticed that Cisco bought Splunk last week for $28 billion. It was a deal that had been rumored for at least a year if not longer. The purchase makes a lot of sense from a number of angles. I’m going to focus on a couple of them here with some alliteration to help you understand why this may be one of the biggest signals of a shift in the way that Cisco does business.

The S Stands for Security

Cisco is now a premier security company now. The addition of the most power SIEM on the market means that Cisco’s security strategy now has a completeness of vision. SecureX has been a very big part of the sales cycle for Cisco as of late and having all the parts to make it work top to bottom is a big win. XDR is a great thing for organizations but it doesn’t work without massive amounts of data to analyze. Guess where Splunk comes in?

Aside from some very specialized plays, Cisco now has an answer for just about everything a modern enterprise could want in a security vendor. They may not be number one in every market but Continue reading

Wi-Fi 6E Won’t Make a Difference

It’s finally here. The vaunted day when the newest iPhone model has Wi-Fi 6E. You’d be forgiven for missing it. It wasn’t mentioned as a flagship feature in the keynote. I had to unearth it in the tech specs page linked above. The trumpets didn’t sound heralding the coming of a new paradigm shift. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that even cares in the long run. Even the rumor mill had moved on before the iPhone 15 was even released. If this is the technological innovation we’ve all been waiting for, why does it sound like no one cares?

Newer Is Better

I might be overselling the importance of Wi-Fi 6E just a bit, but that’s because I talk to a lot of wireless engineers. More than a couple of them had said they weren’t even going to bother upgrading to the new USB-C wonder phone unless it had Wi-Fi 6E. Of course, I didn’t do a survey to find out how many of them had 6E-capable access points at home, either. I’d bet the number was 100%. I’d be willing to be the survey of people outside of that sphere looking to buy an iPhone Continue reading

Overcoming the Wall

I was watching a Youtube video this week that had a great quote. The creator was talking about sanding a woodworking project and said something about how much it needed to be sanded.

Whenever you think you’re done, that’s when you’ve just started.

That statement really resonated with me. I’ve found that it’s far too easy to think you’re finished with something right about the time you really need to hunker down and put in extra effort. In running they call it “hitting the wall” and it usually marks the point when your body is out of energy. There’s often another wall you hit mentally before you get there, though, and that’s the one that needs to be overcome with some tenacity.

The Looming Rise

If your brain is like mine you don’t like belaboring something. The mind craves completion and resolution. Once you’ve solved a problem it’s done and finished. No need to continue on with it once you’ve reached a point where it’s good enough. Time to move on to something else that’s new and exciting and a source of dopamine.

However, that feeling of being done with something early on is often a false sense of completion. Continue reading

Networking Is Fast Enough

Without looking up the specs, can you tell me the PHY differences between Gigabit Ethernet and 10GbE? How about 40GbE and 800GbE? Other than the numbers being different do you know how things change? Do you honestly care? Likewise for Wi-Fi 6, 6E, and 7. Can you tell me how the spectrum changes affect you or why the QAM changes are so important? Or do you want those technologies simply because the numbers are bigger?

The more time I spend in the networking space the more I realize that we’ve come to a comfortable point with our technology. You could call it a wall but that provides negative connotations to things. Most of our end-user Ethernet connectivity is gigabit. Sure, there are the occasional 10GbE cards for desktop workstations that do lots of heavy lifting for video editing or more specialized workflows like medical imaging. The rest of the world has old fashioned 1000Mb connections based on 802.3z ratified in 1998.

Wireless is similar. You’re probably running on a Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) or Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) access point right now. If you’re running on 11ac you might even be connected using Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) if you’re Continue reading

Argument Farming

The old standard.

I’m no stranger to disagreement with people on the Internet. Most of my popular posts grew from my disagreement with others around things like being called an engineer, being a 10x engineer, and something about IPv6 and NAT. I’ve always tried to explain my reasoning for my positions and discuss the relevant points with people that want to have a debate. I tend to avoid commenting on people that just accuse me of being wrong and tell me I need to grow up or work in the real world.

Buying the Farm

However, I’ve noticed recently that there have been some people in the realm of social media and influencing that have taken to posting so-called hot takes on things solely for the purpose of engagement. It’s less of a discussion and more of a post that outlines all the reasons why a particular thing that people might like is wrong.

For example, it would be like me posting something about how an apple is the dumbest fruit because it’s not perfectly round or orange or how the peel is ridiculous because you can eat it. While there are some opinions and points to be Continue reading

Changing Diapers, Not Lives

When was the last time you heard a product pitch that included words like paradigm shift or disruptive or even game changing? Odds are good that covers the majority of them. Marketing teams love to sell people on the idea of radically shifting the way that they do something or revolutionizing an industry. How often do you feel that companies make something that accomplishes the goal of their marketing hype? Once a year? Once a decade? Of the things that really have changed the world, did they do it with a big splash? Or was it more of a gradual change?

Repetition and Routine

When children are small they are practically helpless. They need to be fed and held and have their diapers changed. Until they are old enough to move and have the motor functions to feed themselves they require constant care. In fact, potty training is usually one of the last things on that list above. Kids can feed themselves and walk places and still be wearing diapers. It’s just one of those things that we do as parents.

Yet, changing diapers represents a task that we usually have no issue with. Sure it’s not the most glamorous Continue reading

Don’t Let the Cybersecurity Trust Mark Become Like Food Labeling

I got several press releases this week talking about the newest program from the US Federal government for cybersecurity labeling. This program is something designed to help consumers understand how secure IoT devices are and the challenges that can be faced trying to keep your network secure from the large number of smart devices that are being implemented today. Consumer Reports has been pushing for something like this for a while and lauded the move with some caution. I’m going to take it a little further. We need to be very careful about this so it doesn’t become as worthless as the nutrition labels mandated by the government.

Absolute Units

Having labels is certainly better than not having them. Knowing how much sugar a sports drink has is way more helpful than when I was growing up and we had to guess. Knowing where to find that info on a package means I’m not having to go find it somewhere on the Internet¹. However, all is not sunshine and roses. That’s because of the way that companies choose to fudge their numbers.

Food companies spent a lot of time trying to work the numbers on those nutrition labels for Continue reading

Cross Training for Career Completeness

Are you good at your job? Have you spent thousands of hours training to be the best at a particular discipline? Can you configure things with your eyes closed and are finally on top of the world? What happens next? Where do you go if things change?

It sounds like an age-old career question. You’ve mastered a role. You’ve learned all there is to learn. What more can you do? It’s not something specific to technology either. One of my favorite stories about this struggle comes from the iconic martial artist Bruce Lee. He spent his formative years becoming an expert at Wing Chun and no one would argue he wasn’t one of the best. As the story goes, in 1967 he engaged in a sparring match with a practitioner of a different art and, although he won, he was exhausted and thought things had gone on far too long. This is what encouraged him to develop Jeet Kun Do as a way to incorporate new styles together for more efficiency and eventually led to the development of mixed martial arts (MMA).

What does Bruce Lee have to do with tech? The value of cross training with different tech disciplines Continue reading

My Belated Review of Cisco Live 2023

It’s been a couple of weeks since Cisco Live US 2023 and I’m just now getting around to writing about it. I was thrilled to attend my 18th Cisco Live and it was just the thing I needed to reconnect with the community. The landscape of Cisco Live looks a little different than it has in years past. There are some challenges that are rising that need to be studied and understood before they become bigger than the event itself.

Showstopping Reveals? Or Consistent Improvement?

What was the big announcement from Cisco this year? What was the thing that was said on stage that stopped the presses and got people chattering? Was it a switch? A firewall? Was it a revolutionary new AI platform? Or a stable IP connection to Mars? Do you even know? Or was it more of a discussion of general topics with some technologies brought up alongside them?

In the last few years you may have noticed that the number of huge big announcements coinciding with the big yearly conferences has come down a bit. Rather than having some big news drop the morning of the keynote the big reveals are being given their own time Continue reading

Using AI for Attack Attribution

While I was hanging out at Cisco Live last week, I had a fun conversation with someone about the use of AI in security. We’ve seen a lot of companies jump in to add AI-enabled services to their platforms and offerings. I’m not going to spend time debating the merits of it or trying to argue for AI versus machine learning (ML). What I do want to talk about is something that I feel might be a little overlooked when it comes to using AI in security research.

Whodunnit?

After a big breach notification or a report that something has been exposed there are two separate races that start. The most visible is the one to patch the exploit and contain the damage. Figure out what’s broken and fix it so there’s no more threat of attack. The other race involves figuring out who is responsible for causing the issue.

Attribution is something that security researchers value highly in the post-mortem of an attack. If the attack is the first of its kind the researchers want to know who caused it. They want to see if the attackers are someone new on the scene that have developed new tools and Continue reading

Time Is Not On Your Side

It’s been almost five years since I wrote about the challenges of project management and timing your work as an engineer. While most of that information is still very true even today I’ve recently had my own challenges with my son’s Eagle Scout project. He is of a mind that you can throw together a plan and just do a whole week of work in just a couple of days. I, having worked in the IT industry for years, have assured him that it absolutely doesn’t work like that. Why is there a disconnect between us? And how does that disconnect look to the rest of the world?

Time Taking You

The first problem that I often see when working with people that aren’t familiar with projects is that they vastly underestimate the amount of time it takes to get something done. You may recall from my last post that my project managers at my old VAR job had built in something they called Tom Time to every quote. That provided a way for my estimate to reflect reality once I arrived on site and found the things didn’t go according to plan.

Part of the reason why my estimates Continue reading

Aruba Isn’t A Wireless Company (Any More)

Remember when Aruba was a wireless company? I know it sounds like something that happened 40 years ago but the idea that Aruba only really made wireless access points and some campus switches to support them isn’t as old as you think. The company, now known as HPE Aruba Networking (née Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company), makes more than just Wi-Fi gear. Yet the perception of the industry is that they’re still a wireless company looking to compete with the largest parts of the market.

Branching Out of Office

This year’s Aruba Atmopshere showed me that Aruba is trying to do more than just campus wireless. The industry has shifted away from just providing edge connectivity and is now focused on a holistic lineup of products that are user-focused. You don’t need to go much further than the technical keynote on the second day of the conference to see that. Or the Networking Field Day Experience videos linked above.

Do you know what Aruba wanted to showcase?

• Campus Switches
• Data Center Switches
• Private 5G/LTE
• SASE/SSE
• IoT
• Cloud-Enabled Management

You know what wasn’t on that list? Access points. For a “wireless” company that’s a pretty glaring omission, right? I think Continue reading

The Shifting Lens of Mentoring

The other day I realized that I had become the “old man” at Tech Field Day. Not so much that I’m ready for AARP but more that I’ve been there longer than anyone else but Stephen. The realization was a long time coming but the thing that pushed me to understand it was when someone asked a question about a policy we had and I not only knew the reason why we did it but also a time before we had it.

As I spent time thinking about the way that I’ve graduated from being the new guy to the old mentor I thought about the inflection point when the changeover happened.

Green and Growing

The first part of the demarcation between mentor and mentee in my eyes is where the knowledge lies. When you’re first starting out you’re the one that needs to understand things. You ask lots and lots of questions and try to understand how things are done and why you do them that way. Focusing on that knowledge acquisition is part of the marker of someone in need of mentorship.

For those trying to mentor these eager employees don’t make the mistake of getting frustrated at Continue reading

Mastodon Needs More Brand Support

As much as I want to move over to Mastodon full time, there’s one thing I feel that is massively holding it back. Yes, you can laud the big things about federations and freedom as much as you want. However, one thing I’ve seen hanging out in the fringes of the Fediverse that will ultimately hold Mastodon back is the hostility toward brands.

Welcoming The Crowd

If you’re already up in arms because of that opening, ask yourself why. What is it about a brand that has you upset? Don’t they have the same right to share on the platform as the rest of us? I will admit that not every person on Mastodon has this outward hostility toward companies. However I can also sense this feeling that brands don’t belong.

It reminds me a lot of the thinly veiled distaste for companies that some Linux proponents have. The “get your dirty binary drivers out of my pristine kernel” crowd. The ones that want the brands to bend to their will and only do things the way they want. If you can’t provide us the drivers and software for free with full code support for us to hack as much Continue reading

Consuming Content the Way You Want

One of the true hidden gems of being a part of a big community is the ability to discuss ideas and see different perspectives. It’s one of the reasons why I enjoy working at Tech Field Day and why I’m lamenting the death spiral of Twitter. My move to Mastodon is picking up steam and I’m slowly replicating the way that I consume content and interact there but it’s very much the same way I felt about Twitter thirteen years ago. There’s promise but it needs work.

As I thought about my journey with social media and discussed it with people in the community I realized that a large part of what has me so frustrated is the way in which my experience has been co-opted into a kind of performative mess. Social media is becoming less about idea exchange and more about broadcast.

Give and Take

When I first started out on Twitter I could post things that were interesting to me. I could craft the way I posted those short updates. Did I want to be factual and dry? Or should I be more humorous and snarky? I crafted my own voice as I shared with others. My Continue reading

Perfection Paralysis

This is a sort of companion piece to my post last week because I saw a very short post here about doing less. It really hit home with me because I’m just as bad as Shawn about wanting everything to be perfect when I write it or create it.

Maximizing Mistakes

One of the things that I’ve noticed in a lot of content that I’ve been consuming recently is the inclusion of mistakes. When you’re writing you have ample access to a backspace key so typos shouldn’t exist (and autocorrect can bugger off). But in video and audio content you can often make a mistake and not even realize it. Flubbing a word or needed to do a retake for something happens quite often, even if you never see or hear them.

What has me curious and a bit interested is that more of those quick errors are making it in. These are things that could easily be fixed in post production and yet they stay. It’s almost like the creators are admitting that mistakes happen and it’s hard to read scripts perfectly every time like some kind of robot. Honest mistakes over things like pronunciation or difficult word combinations Continue reading

Content Creation Complications

If you’ve noticed my regular blog posts have been a bit irregular as of late you’re not alone. I’m honestly working through a bit of writer’s block as of late. The irony is that I’m not running out of things to talk about. I’m actually running out of time to talk about them the way that I want.

Putting in the Work

By now you, my dear readers, know that I’m not going to put out a post of 200-300 words just to put something out during the week. I’d rather spend some time looking into a topic and creating something that informs or encourages discussion. That means having sources or doing research.

Research takes time. Ironically enough I’ve always had a much easier time writing things so long as I have the info to pull from in my head. One of the side effects of neurodivergence that I’ve learned about recently is that neurodivergent people tend to write their ‘first draft’ in their head throughout the creation process. Rather than writing and rewriting over and over again I pool all the information in my brain and work through it all to put down my final thoughts. That means what Continue reading

Assume Disaster

One of the things that people have mentioned to me in the past regarding my event management skills is my reaction time. They say, “You are always on top of things when they go wrong. How do you do it?”

My response never fails to make them laugh. I offer, “I always assume something is going to go wrong. I may not know what it is but when it does happen I’m ready to fix it.”

That may sound like a cynical take on planning and operations but it’s served me well for many years. Why is it that things we spend so much time working on always seem to go off the rails?

Complexity Fails

Whether it’s an event or a network or even a carpentry project you have to assume that something is going to go wrong. Why? Because the more complex the project the more likely you are to hit a snag. Systems that build on themselves and require input to proceed are notorious for hitting blocks that cause the whole thing to snarl into a mess of missed timelines.

When I was in college studying project management I learned there’s even a term for Continue reading