Reckoning The Spectre And Meltdown Performance Hit For HPC

While no one has yet created an exploit to take advantage of the Spectre and Meltdown speculative execution vulnerabilities that were exposed by Google six months ago and that were revealed in early January, it is only a matter of time. The patching frenzy has not settled down yet, and a big concern is not just whether these patches fill the security gaps, but at what cost they do so in terms of application performance.

To try to ascertain the performance impact of the Spectre and Meltdown patches, most people have relied on comments from Google on the negligible …

Reckoning The Spectre And Meltdown Performance Hit For HPC was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Giving the Monkey a Smaller Club

Over at the ACM blog, there is a terrific article about software design that has direct application to network design and architecture.

The problem is that once you give a monkey a club, he is going to hit you with it if you try to take it away from him.

What do monkeys and clubs have to do with software or network design? The primary point of interaction is security. The club you intend to make your network operator’s life easier is also a club an attacker can use to break into your network, or damage its operation. Clubs are just that way. If you think of the collection of tools as not just tools, but also as an attack surface, you can immediately see the correlation between the available tools and the attack surface. One way to increase security is to reduce the attack surface, and one way to reduce the attack surface is tools, reduce the number of tools—or the club.

The best way to reduce the attack surface of a piece of software is to remove any unnecessary code.

Consider this: the components of any network are actually made up of code. So to translate this to Continue reading

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What is microsegmentation? How getting granular improves network security

Microsegmentation is a method of creating secure zones in data centers and cloud deployments that allows companies to isolate workloads from one another and secure them individually. It’s aimed at making network security more granular. Microsegmentation vs. VLANs, firewalls and ACLs Network segmentation isn’t new. Companies have relied on firewalls, virtual local area networks (VLAN) and access control lists (ACL) for network segmentation for years. With microsegmentation, policies are applied to individual workloads for greater attack resistance.To read this article in full, please click here

What is microsegmentation? How getting granular improves network security

Microsegmentation is a method of creating secure zones in data centers and cloud deployments that allows companies to isolate workloads from one another and secure them individually. It’s aimed at making network security more granular. Microsegmentation vs. VLANs, firewalls and ACLs Network segmentation isn’t new. Companies have relied on firewalls, virtual local area networks (VLAN) and access control lists (ACL) for network segmentation for years. With microsegmentation, policies are applied to individual workloads for greater attack resistance.To read this article in full, please click here

What is microsegmentation? How getting granular improves network security

Microsegmentation is a method of creating secure zones in data centers and cloud deployments that allows companies to isolate workloads from one another and secure them individually. It’s aimed at making network security more granular. Microsegmentation vs. VLANs, firewalls and ACLs Network segmentation isn’t new. Companies have relied on firewalls, virtual local area networks (VLAN) and access control lists (ACL) for network segmentation for years. With microsegmentation, policies are applied to individual workloads for greater attack resistance.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 4 questions to ask before deploying SD-WAN

SD-WAN has become the definitive buzzword in enterprise networking, and if you’re a decision maker in IT, chances are the technology has come up in conversation. According to Gartner, by 2018, 40 percent of WAN edge infrastructure will be based on SD-WAN or something similar.What is SD-WAN? In a nutshell, Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) simplifies enterprise connectivity between remote locations and branch offices. Common features of a SD-WAN solution include: Combining network links of one location into a single pool of capacity available for all applications and services Customization of the bandwidth and connectivity to meet the needs of your specific network services, locations, or users The ability to centrally define and manage policies and network traffic without requiring manual configuration at each device. Many startups and tech giants have positioned themselves as an SD-WAN solution, each with their own idea on how the technology works and what solution it offers the business. Yet with so many vendors out there claiming to be SD-WAN, it’s hard to determine which solution is right for your business.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 4 questions to ask before deploying SD-WAN

SD-WAN has become the definitive buzzword in enterprise networking, and if you’re a decision maker in IT, chances are the technology has come up in conversation. According to Gartner, by 2018, 40 percent of WAN edge infrastructure will be based on SD-WAN or something similar.What is SD-WAN? In a nutshell, Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) simplifies enterprise connectivity between remote locations and branch offices. Common features of a SD-WAN solution include: Combining network links of one location into a single pool of capacity available for all applications and services Customization of the bandwidth and connectivity to meet the needs of your specific network services, locations, or users The ability to centrally define and manage policies and network traffic without requiring manual configuration at each device. Many startups and tech giants have positioned themselves as an SD-WAN solution, each with their own idea on how the technology works and what solution it offers the business. Yet with so many vendors out there claiming to be SD-WAN, it’s hard to determine which solution is right for your business.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Prepare your digital enterprises for 2018

To gain the edge in today’s competitive digital marketplace, enterprises must update/transform from their old-school network services tools in favor of innovative solutions that revamp existing infrastructures. The best way to stay ahead of the digital evolution curve is to plan your digital infrastructures in advance and create strategic execution plans involving multiple teams. We’ve already determined that network automation is the ultimate solution, but challenges remain. In this article, we will discuss the visibility challenges ahead in 2018, and how to overcome them.  Major challenges faced by network teams today There are many automation technologies available for enterprises to strengthen digital infrastructures. Regardless of their availability, network teams are finding it extremely difficult to adapt. There is a huge misconception today that applying automation is a single-step process. The truth is, automation is a complex progression to put in place, as all existing infrastructures and processes must be redefined. Apart from this, network automation creates the demand for team restructuring, role defining, and allotment of access control for various tasks. Amidst these tasks, networking teams also face major visibility challenges when restructuring the digital networks. Below are few initiatives that can help businesses gain agility and security in Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Prepare your digital enterprises for 2018

To gain the edge in today’s competitive digital marketplace, enterprises must update/transform from their old-school network services tools in favor of innovative solutions that revamp existing infrastructures. The best way to stay ahead of the digital evolution curve is to plan your digital infrastructures in advance and create strategic execution plans involving multiple teams. We’ve already determined that network automation is the ultimate solution, but challenges remain. In this article, we will discuss the visibility challenges ahead in 2018, and how to overcome them.  Major challenges faced by network teams today There are many automation technologies available for enterprises to strengthen digital infrastructures. Regardless of their availability, network teams are finding it extremely difficult to adapt. There is a huge misconception today that applying automation is a single-step process. The truth is, automation is a complex progression to put in place, as all existing infrastructures and processes must be redefined. Apart from this, network automation creates the demand for team restructuring, role defining, and allotment of access control for various tasks. Amidst these tasks, networking teams also face major visibility challenges when restructuring the digital networks. Below are few initiatives that can help businesses gain agility and security in Continue reading

2018: Time To Listen To The Voices of Women

2017 was a year when the voice of women resonated around the world. Global women’s marches, hashtags such as #MeToo and #TimesUp, record numbers of women entering politics – all together a global call for action that signaled women were tired of not being heard.

It’s been a year that’s left many in the western world asking how we got here and how we can make sure we never go back. A big reason for this is because of what the Internet helps us do. We can reach further, speak louder, and come together like never before.

We know that women use the Internet to build opportunities for business, their communities, and for their families. But for the first time we are seeing how women are using it to collaborate, coordinate, and unite to make change happen.

But now is the time to ask questions.

Just under 50% of the world’s population isn’t online. Break that down further, women are 50% less likely to be connected than men.

The Internet’s future is one where new divides are emerging. It’s not just the binary fact of being on or offline – it’s who, how, and where. And, as the world’s political Continue reading

BrandPost: 2018 New Year’s Resolutions for WAN Managers

I’d like to wish everyone a hearty Happy New Year! This is the time of year that we make promises to ourselves like saying we will get to the gym more often, lose weight, not text and drive, and other things that should improve our lives or the world we live in. Many of us make these resolutions annually, but fail to keep them because they are often unrealistic or simply too hard to live up to.I’d like to offer five New Year’s resolutions for those of you who manage your company’s wide-area network (WAN). They are as follows:I resolve to leverage automation. The concept of automating manual networking tasks certainly isn’t new. However, the implementation of automation has been very light to date, primarily because most skilled engineers could keep the network up and running doing things the way they’ve always been done. Also, networking professionals generally fear the concept of automation as it threatens to marginalize or eliminate their jobs.To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco adds new capabilities to its IBN infrastructure

Cisco has advanced its intent-based networking gear so now it can both verify that networks are actually running according to the intentions set by admins and also so it can help to find and resolve network problems faster on both wired and wireless networks.The company says this is a new phase in the evolution of its IBN in which it is addressing assurance – the ability to assess whether the intentions that have been translated into policies and orchestrated throughout the network by configuring individual devices are carrying out the intentions they are supposed to.+DON'T MISS:Getting grounded in intent-based networking; A deep dive into Cisco's intent-based networking; What is intent-based networking?+To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco adds new capabilities to its IBN infrastructure

Cisco has advanced its intent-based networking gear so now it can both verify that networks are actually running according to the intentions set by admins and also so it can help to find and resolve network problems faster on both wired and wireless networks.The company says this is a new phase in the evolution of its IBN in which it is addressing assurance – the ability to assess whether the intentions that have been translated into policies and orchestrated throughout the network by configuring individual devices are carrying out the intentions they are supposed to.+DON'T MISS:Getting grounded in intent-based networking; A deep dive into Cisco's intent-based networking; What is intent-based networking?+To read this article in full, please click here

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