Financial Services Take Containers to the Bank
Big banks find more to like with container technology, which offers security plus tools to innovate and better compete in a dogged marketplace.
How BCG Gamma is Transforming Analytics with Docker
Changing the culture and service offerings of a big consulting firm isn’t easy, but BCG has been on that path for the past five years. BCG has evolved from traditional consulting services into a digital transformation powerhouse with six divisions that deliver strategic and technical services to clients.
One of those divisions, BCG Gamma, is a global team of world-class data scientists who build data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence solutions for the firm’s clients. But building and shipping analytics, ML and AI applications to clients is challenging. Andrea Gallego, CTO of the division, is charged with creating an infrastructure that can support delivering high-quality ML and AI models at scale.
The Challenge: Shipping ML and AI Software to Clients at Scale
The big question on her mind was how BCG Gamma could not only build models, but deliver them to clients at the edge with real-time orchestration, monitoring and updates. GDPR and other regulations also meant she had to do this while ensuring integrity, consistency and lineage across data models.
Andrea and her team launched the BCG GammaX initiative, a core team of 30 engineers specializing in analytics software engineering, data engineering, UX design, distributed systems, and Continue reading
Qualcomm Nixes $44B NXP Acquisition
China’s refusal to approve the deal was viewed as part of the growing trade war between the U.S. and China.
Rubrik’s Radar Tackles Ransomware With Machine Learning
Unlike traditional security platforms that target this type of malware from a threat prevention vantage point, the data protection and management company comes at it from a backup perspective.
Security Startups LoginRadius and Siemplify Score Millions More in Funding
Microsoft's venture fund, M12, is just one of the VC firms pouring money into security startups.
EdgeX Foundry Adds Security to IoT Open Source Software
The beauty of EdgeX open source software is that companies can “mix-and-match” components.
Episode 31 – Analytics and Security
Security is facing a crisis of well trained engineers. As a result, operators are relying more heavily on analytics to provide security intelligence. In this show, Eric Osterweil joins Network Collective to discuss the use of analytics in security, and the role analytics can play to augment engineering talent.
We would like to thank Core BTS for sponsoring this episode of Network Collective. Core BTS focuses on partnering with your company to deliver technical solutions that enhance and drive your business. If you’re looking for a partner to help your technology teams take the next step, you can reach out to Core BTS by emailing them here.
We also would also like to thank Cumulus Networks for sponsoring this episode of Network Collective. Cumulus is bringing S.O.U.L. back to the network. Simple. Open. Untethered. Linux. For more information about how you can bring S.O.U.L. to your network, head on over to https://cumulusnetworks.com/ncautomation. There you can find out how Cumulus Networks can help you build a datacenter as efficient and as flexible as the worlds largest data centers and try Cumulus technology absolutely free.
Eric Osterweil
Guest
Eyvonne Sharp
Host
Russ Continue reading
Google Cloud CEO: Enterprise Table Stakes and Cutting Edge
At the annual Google Next conference the company launched an integrated portfolio of cloud services that combine open source projects with Google’s cloud infrastructure and security services.
Going Proactive on Security: Driving Encryption Adoption Intelligently
It's no secret that Cloudflare operates at a huge scale. Cloudflare provides security and performance to over 9 million websites all around the world, from small businesses and WordPress blogs to Fortune 500 companies. That means one in every 10 web requests goes through our network.
However, hidden behind the scenes, we offer support in using our platform to all our customers - whether they're on our free plan or on our Enterprise offering. This blog post dives into some of the technology that helps make this possible and how we're using it to drive encryption and build a better web.
Why Now?
Recently web browser vendors have been working on extending encryption on the internet. Traditionally they would use positive indicators to mark encrypted traffic as secure; when traffic was served securely over HTTPS, a green padlock would indicate in your browser that this was the case. In moving to standardise encryption online, Google Chrome have been leading the charge in marking insecure page loads as "Not Secure". Today, this UI change has been pushed out to all Google Chrome users globally for all websites: any website loaded over HTTP will be marked as insecure.
That's not all though; Continue reading
James Feger Ditches CenturyLink for F5 Networks
Adding Feger is the latest in a number of hires by F5 as it shifts its business model to prepare for 5G, IoT, and the cloud.
Cloudflare Access: Now teams of any size can turn off their VPN
Using a VPN is painful. Logging-in interrupts your workflow. You have to remember a separate set of credentials, which your administrator has to manage. The VPN slows you down when you're away from the office. Beyond just inconvenience, a VPN can pose a real security risk. A single infected device or malicious user can compromise your network once inside the perimeter.
In response, large enterprises have deployed expensive zero trust solutions. The name sounds counterintuitive - don’t we want to add trust to our network security? Zero trust refers to the default state of these tools. They trust no one; each request has to prove that itself. This architecture, most notably demonstrated at Google with Beyondcorp, has allowed teams to start to migrate to a more secure method of access control.
However, users of zero trust tools still suffer from the same latency problems they endured with old-school VPNs. Even worse, the price tag puts these tools out of reach for most teams.
Here at Cloudflare, we shared those same frustrations with VPNs. After evaluating our options, we realized we could build a better zero trust solution by leveraging some of the unique capabilities we have here at Cloudflare:
Our Continue reading
Gigamon Dives Deeper Into Security Space With Icebrg Acquisition
Gigamon will combine its network traffic visibility capabilities with Icebrg’s security platform and allow SOC teams to deploy new security technologies as “security applications” on top of it.
Today, Chrome Takes Another Step Forward in Addressing the Design Flaw That is an Unencrypted Web
The following is a guest post by Troy Hunt, awarded Security expert, blogger, and Pluralsight author. He’s also the creator of the popular Have I been pwned?, the free aggregation service that helps the owners of over 5 billion accounts impacted by data breaches.
I still clearly remember my first foray onto the internet as a university student back in the mid 90's. It was a simpler online time back then, of course; we weren't doing our personal banking or our tax returns or handling our medical records so the whole premise of encrypting the transport layer wasn't exactly a high priority. In time, those services came along and so did the need to have some assurances about the confidentiality of the material we were sending around over other people's networks and computers. SSL as it was at the time was costly, but hey, banks and the like could absorb that given the nature of their businesses. However, at the time, there were all sorts of problems with the premise of serving traffic securely ranging from the cost of certs to the effort involved in obtaining and configuring them through to the performance hit on the Continue reading
IBM-Led Nabla Container Platform Touts Isolation for Its Security Posture
The design differs from traditional Docker-based containers that allow for a host kernel to be shared by running containers, which leads to more interaction between the host and container pods.
Xage Scores $12M Series A for Blockchain-Based IoT Security
The company’s platform uses blockchain to connect industrial IoT devices and synchronize and store credentials, certificates, policies, and data between edge and data center locations.
Research: Even Password Complexity is a Tradeoff
Stronger passwords are always better—at least this is the working theory of most folks in information technology, security or otherwise. Such blanket rules should raise your suspicions, however; the rule11 maxim if you haven’t found the tradeoff, you haven’t looked hard enough should apply to passwords, too.
Begin with this simple assertion: complex passwords are primarily a guard against password guessing attacks. Further, while the loss of a single account can be tragic for the individual user (and in some systems, the loss of a single password can have massive consequences!), for the system operator, it is the overall health of the system that matters. There is, in any system, a point at which enough accounts have been compromised that the system itself can no longer secure any information. This not only means the system can no longer hide information, it also means transactions within the system can no longer be trusted.
The number of compromised accounts varies based on the kind of system in view; effectively breaching Continue reading
Tech Heavyweights Create Open Source Project to Transfer Data
Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft are behind the initiative. So far, Amazon and Apple are not part of the group.
Where in the World is NSX?
VMware NSX is going worldwide! We’ll be out and about through the end of the year, spreading networking and security love across America, Asia Pacific, and Europe. Our goal is to help agile organizations move toward a Virtual Cloud Network with consistent connectivity, branch optimization, and security across all infrastructure.
Whether we’ll be at a booth, product demo, talk, or otherwise – we want to connect! Join us at any of the major conferences and NSX upcoming events listed below to chat with our product experts. And, if you think you’ll be in attendance, be sure to tweet at us to let us know!
NSX Upcoming Events
Checkpoint CPX – 2/4
When: February 2 – 4, 2019
Where: Las Vegas, NV
Click here to learn more
Networking Field Day – 2/13
When: February 13 – 15, 2019
Where: Palo Alto, CA
Click here to learn more
Mobile World Congress – 2/25
When: February 25 – 28, 2019
Where: Barcelona, Spain
Click here to learn more
RSAC – 3/4
When: March 4 – 8, 2019
Where: San Francisco, CA
Click here to learn more
Cisco Live APJ– 3/5
When: March 5 Continue reading
Securing U.S. Democracy: Athenian Project Update
Last December, Cloudflare announced the Athenian Project to help protect U.S. state and local election websites from cyber attack.
Since then, the need to protect our electoral systems has become increasingly urgent. As described by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, the “digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack.” Just last week, we learned new details about how state election systems were targeted for cyberattack during the 2016 election. The U.S. government’s indictment of twelve Russian military intelligence officers describes the scanning of state election-related websites for vulnerabilities and theft of personal information related to approximately 500,000 voters.
This direct attack on the U.S. election systems using common Internet vulnerabilities reinforces the need to ensure democratic institutions are protected from attack in the future. The Athenian Project is Cloudflare’s attempt to do our part to secure our democracy.
Engaging with Elections Officials
Since announcing the Athenian Project, we’ve talked to state, county, and municipal officials around the country about protecting their election and voter registration websites. Today, we’re proud to report that we have Athenian Project participants in 19 states, and are in talks with many more. We have also strategized with civil Continue reading