F5 Networks taps versatile Ciena higher-up to take over as CEO

F5 Networks CEO and President John McAdam, thrust back into that role in late 2015 under unusual circumstances, has announced that Ciena SVP and COO Francois Locoh-Donou will succeed him on April 3.McAdam joined F5 in 2000 and served as CEO and President until July 2015, when he handed the reins to Manuel Rivelo. But Rivelo stepped down in December of that year for unspecified personal conduct issues, and McAdam jumped back into the fray at the Seattle company, which he has helped to build into an application delivery powerhouse generating about $2B in annual revenue.  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

F5 Networks taps versatile Ciena higher-up to take over as CEO

F5 Networks CEO and President John McAdam, thrust back into that role in late 2015 under unusual circumstances, has announced that Ciena SVP and COO Francois Locoh-Donou will succeed him on April 3.McAdam joined F5 in 2000 and served as CEO and President until July 2015, when he handed the reins to Manuel Rivelo. But Rivelo stepped down in December of that year for unspecified personal conduct issues, and McAdam jumped back into the fray at the Seattle company, which he has helped to build into an application delivery powerhouse generating about $2B in annual revenue.  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

33% off SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive 32GB for iPhone and iPad – Deal Alert

The SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive lets you quickly free up space on iPhones, iPads, and iPods; automatically back up photos and watch videos straight from the drive. The flexible Lightning connector works with most cases, while the USB 3.0 connector makes it easy to move content between devices. This flash drive also includes encryption software to password protect files, so you can share content while keeping sensitive files secure. Plus, the SanDisk iXpand Drive app provides a fast and simple way to organize content and play music and videos directly from the drive.  TheSanDisk iXpand Flash Drive currently averages 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 600 customers (read reviews) and its list price of $59.99 is currently discounted 33% to $39.94.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New ‘Made in China’ chip on the way as country boosts indigenous tech

The number of powerful chips coming out of China keeps growing as a war of words on semiconductors with the U.S. escalates.A joint venture between Qualcomm and China's Guizhou province, called Huaxintong Semiconductor Technology, has started the development of a new server chip based on ARM technology.The joint venture is "now busy developing a customized server CPU product based on our technology and designs for the China market," said Derek Aberle, president at Qualcomm, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript of an earnings call last week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New ‘made in China’ chip on the way as country boosts indigenous tech

The number of powerful chips coming out of China keeps growing as a war of words on semiconductors with the U.S. escalates. A joint venture between Qualcomm and China's Guizhou province, called Huaxintong Semiconductor Technology, has started the development of a new server chip based on ARM technology. The joint venture is "now busy developing a customized server CPU product based on our technology and designs for the China market," said Derek Aberle, president at Qualcomm, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript of an earnings call last week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Harbinger of The Great Internet Wall arrives

By Presidential proclamation, non-U.S. citizens' data is in jeopardy. An executive order by President Trump could hurt a data transfer framework that allows EU citizens’ personal information to be transmitted to the U.S. for processing with the promise that the data would have the same privacy protection in the U.S. as it has in the EU. That’s because a section of the order says, “Agencies shall, to the extent consistent with applicable law, ensure that their privacy policies exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information.” To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Harbinger of The Great Internet Wall arrives

By Presidential proclamation, non-U.S. citizens' data is in jeopardy. An executive order by President Trump could hurt a data transfer framework that allows EU citizens’ personal information to be transmitted to the U.S. for processing with the promise that the data would have the same privacy protection in the U.S. as it has in the EU. That’s because a section of the order says, “Agencies shall, to the extent consistent with applicable law, ensure that their privacy policies exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information.” To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook tries to revamp password recovery by supplanting email

Forgot your password? Well, Facebook wants to help you recover your internet account.The company is releasing an open source protocol that will let third-party sites recover user accounts through Facebook.Typically, when people forget their password to a site, they’re forced to answer a security question or send a password reset request to their email. But these methods of account recovery can be vulnerable to hacking, said Facebook security engineer Brad Hill.He recalled a time when he was granted permission to break into an online bank account. To do so, he took advantage of the password reset questions.“It asked me what my favorite color was, and it let me guess as many times as I wanted,” he said Monday, during a presentation at the USENIX Enigma 2017 security conference.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook tries to revamp password recovery by supplanting email

Forgot your password? Well, Facebook wants to help you recover your internet account.The company is releasing an open source protocol that will let third-party sites recover user accounts through Facebook.Typically, when people forget their password to a site, they’re forced to answer a security question or send a password reset request to their email. But these methods of account recovery can be vulnerable to hacking, said Facebook security engineer Brad Hill.He recalled a time when he was granted permission to break into an online bank account. To do so, he took advantage of the password reset questions.“It asked me what my favorite color was, and it let me guess as many times as I wanted,” he said Monday, during a presentation at the USENIX Enigma 2017 security conference.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DARPA picks 30 contenders to battle in wireless spectrum competition

DARPA says there are now 30 contenders for its $3.75 million Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2) whose goal is to get mobile devices more intelligent access to the ever-tightening wireless spectrum.+More on Network World: Intelligence agency opens $325,000 advanced, automated fingerprint gathering competition+ The defense research agency last March announced Spectrum Collaboration Challenge and said the primary goal of the contest was to infuse radios with “advanced machine-learning capabilities so they can collectively develop strategies that optimize use of the wireless spectrum in ways not possible with today’s intrinsically inefficient approach of pre-allocating exclusive access to designated frequencies.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DARPA picks 30 contenders to battle in wireless spectrum competition

DARPA says there are now 30 contenders for its $3.75 million Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2) whose goal is to get mobile devices more intelligent access to the ever-tightening wireless spectrum.+More on Network World: Intelligence agency opens $325,000 advanced, automated fingerprint gathering competition+ The defense research agency last March announced Spectrum Collaboration Challenge and said the primary goal of the contest was to infuse radios with “advanced machine-learning capabilities so they can collectively develop strategies that optimize use of the wireless spectrum in ways not possible with today’s intrinsically inefficient approach of pre-allocating exclusive access to designated frequencies.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DARPA picks 30 contenders to battle in wireless spectrum competition

DARPA says there are now 30 contenders for its $3.75 million Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2) whose goal is to get mobile devices more intelligent access to the ever-tightening wireless spectrum.+More on Network World: Intelligence agency opens $325,000 advanced, automated fingerprint gathering competition+ The defense research agency last March announced Spectrum Collaboration Challenge and said the primary goal of the contest was to infuse radios with “advanced machine-learning capabilities so they can collectively develop strategies that optimize use of the wireless spectrum in ways not possible with today’s intrinsically inefficient approach of pre-allocating exclusive access to designated frequencies.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: An infrastructure for on demand service profiling

LinkedIn has built hundreds of application services, with thousands of instances running in data centers. Optimizing the performance of these services can dramatically improve user experience and reduce operational costs, and profilers are commonly used to help achieve this. LinkedIn’s On-Demand Profiling infrastructure (“ODP”) is one method we use to identify these optimizations. Profiling is a useful method to improve the performance of services. However, the tooling solutions for profiling don’t have fixed standards, are often decentralized, can be costly, and for a company with a large server footprint such as LinkedIn, are inconvenient to use at best. —Linkedin Engineering Blog

The post Worth Reading: An infrastructure for on demand service profiling appeared first on 'net work.

Hyperscalers Ready To Run Barefoot In The Datacenter

Breaking into the switch market is not an easy task, whether you are talking about providing whole switches or just the chips that drive them. But there is always room for innovation, which is why some of the upstarts have a pretty credible chance to shake up networking, which is the last bastion of proprietary within the datacenter.

Barefoot Networks is one of the up-and-coming switch chip makers, with its “Tofino” family of ASICs that, among other things, has circuits and software that allow for the data plane – that part of the device that controls how data moves …

Hyperscalers Ready To Run Barefoot In The Datacenter was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Firebolt: the fastest, safest ads on the web

Cloudflare’s mission is to help build a better Internet. That means a faster, more secure, open Internet world-wide. We have millions of customers using our services like free SSL, an advanced WAF, the latest compression and the most up to date security to ensure that their web sites, mobile apps and APIs are secure and fast.

One vital area of web technology has lagged behind in terms of speed and security: online ads. And consumers have been turning to ad blocking technology to secure and speed up their own web browsing.

Today, Cloudflare is introducing a new product to make web ads secure, fast and safe. That product is Firebolt.

Firebolt

With Firebolt, ad networks can instantly speed up and secure their ads, resulting in happy consumers and better conversion rates.

Firebolt delivers:

Lightning fast ad delivery

Cloudflare's global network of 102 data centers in 50 countries, combined with routing and performance technologies, makes the delivery of online ads to any device up to five times faster.

Free, simple SSL

Adding SSL to ad serving has been challenging for some ad networks. Cloudflare has years of experience providing free, one click SSL for our customers. Firebolt ads are Continue reading

After AppDynamics sale, is anyone going to snap up the rest of the APM market?

Cisco’s purchase last week of application performance management vendor AppDynamics for $3.7 billion in cash and assumed equity awards could signal that the APM sector in general is a potential M&A target, according to industry analysts.The APM market, which Gartner last summer said grew to $2.7B billion in 2015, is fragmented, and has been for some time. That means that consolidation may be overdue, with Cisco’s AppDynamics buy marking the start of the race.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Cisco’s AppDynamics purchase: A big price tag that could have big dividends + New Office 365 subscriptions for consumers plunged 62% in 2016To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Headcount: The Latest in Hirings, Firings And Retirings for January 2017

Microsoft gets a CTO; Ciena COO steps down.

Linux, OpenStack, Citrix Add Their Voices in Opposition to Immigration Ban

OpenStack plans future summits outside of the U.S.

Toxic Cultures and Reality

I have lived through multiple toxic cultures in my life. It’s easy to say, “just quit,” or “just go to HR,” but—for various reasons—these are not always a good solution. For instance, if you are in the military, “just quit” is not, precisely, an option. So how should you deal with these sorts of bad situations?

Start here: you are not going to change the culture. Just like I tell my daughters not to date guys so they can “fix” them, I have never seen anyone “fix” a culture through any sort of “mass action.” You are not going to “win” by going to the boss, or by getting someone from the outside to force everyone to change. You are not going to change the culture by griping about it. Believe me, I’ve tried all these things. They don’t (really) work.

Given these points, what can you do?

Start with a large dose of humility. First, you are probably a part of a number of toxic cultures yourself, and you probably even contribute at least some amount of the poison. Second, you are almost always limited in your power to change things; your influence, no matter how right you Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: How to practice cybersecurity (and why it’s different from IT security)

Keeping companies safe from attackers is no longer just a technical issue of having the right defensive technologies in place. To me, this is practicing IT security, which is still needed but doesn’t address what happens after the attackers infiltrate your organization (and they will, despite your best efforts to keep them out).I’m trying to draw attention to this topic to get security teams, businesses executives and corporate boards to realize that IT security will not help them once attackers infiltrate a target. Once this happens, cybersecurity is required.  + Also on Network World: Recruiting and retaining cybersecurity talent + In cybersecurity, the defenders acknowledge that highly motivated and creative adversaries are launching sophisticated attacks. There’s also the realization that when software is used as a weapon, building a stronger or taller wall may not necessarily keep out the bad guys. To them, more defensive measures provide them with additional opportunities to find weak spots and gain access to a network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here