IDG Contributor Network: SD-WAN facilitates security on the WAN

With RSA San Francisco—one of, if not the biggest security show of the year—behind us, it’s a good time to revisit security and SD-WANs. I know, we already lived through Yoda’s prognostications about the future of networking and security. In that blog post, we spoke about vendor approaches to securing the new Internet connections created by SD-WAN. There’s another dimension, though, to SD-WAN security that we didn’t discuss and that’s about the WAN.The WAN: Risk and reward for today’s attackers For a lot of SD-WAN vendors, security integration means inspecting incoming and outgoing Internet traffic. But while services, such as Zscaler, may inspect HTTP traffic bound for the internet, they do nothing for traffic bound to other locations. And that’s a problem because increasingly site-to-site traffic requires its own inspection and protection.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: How to bury a breach notification

Amid the hustle and bustle of the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco last week, researchers at RSA released a startling report that received very little press coverage relative to its overall importance. The report detailed a malware campaign that piggybacked on a popular piece of software used by system administrators at some of the nation’s largest companies. Incredibly, the report did not name the affected software, and the vendor in question has apparently chosen to bury its breach disclosure. This post is an attempt to remedy that. —Krebs on Security

The post Worth Reading: How to bury a breach notification appeared first on 'net work.

IDG Contributor Network: To improve information security, enterprises and government must share information

Information security is forever weaved into our daily lives. From the massive data breaches impacting Target, Yahoo and Anthem to IoT-powered DDoS attacks that take down substantial portions of the internet for extended periods of time, information security impacts everyone.The reality is providing protection in this kind of environment is so challenging that no single entity, whether it’s a company or a government agency, can accomplish this task alone. There needs to be some kind of cooperation between the private and public sectors. This leads to the questions of what kind of relationship should the government and companies have, how can they work together and what’s preventing this process from happening?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: To improve information security, enterprises and government must share information

Information security is forever weaved into our daily lives. From the massive data breaches impacting Target, Yahoo and Anthem to IoT-powered DDoS attacks that take down substantial portions of the internet for extended periods of time, information security impacts everyone.The reality is providing protection in this kind of environment is so challenging that no single entity, whether it’s a company or a government agency, can accomplish this task alone. There needs to be some kind of cooperation between the private and public sectors. This leads to the questions of what kind of relationship should the government and companies have, how can they work together and what’s preventing this process from happening?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IT experience can be beneficial for a cybersecurity career

Given my interest in cybersecurity skills and training, I’m contacted by academic institutions, professional organizations and training companies with news about some type of cybersecurity education curriculum. This isn’t surprising given the global shortage of cybersecurity skills. In fact, new ESG research discloses that 45% of organizations report a “problematic shortage” of cybersecurity skills in 2017.Clearly we need more smart and well-prepared people to enter the cybersecurity ranks, but it’s important to note that most cybersecurity professionals don’t enter the workforce directly from college or training programs. According to research conducted in 2016 by ESG and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), 78% of cybersecurity professionals follow a more indirect route. These folks start their careers as IT professionals and make their way into cybersecurity as their careers progress.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IT experience can be beneficial for a cybersecurity career

Given my interest in cybersecurity skills and training, I’m contacted by academic institutions, professional organizations and training companies with news about some type of cybersecurity education curriculum. This isn’t surprising given the global shortage of cybersecurity skills. In fact, new ESG research discloses that 45% of organizations report a “problematic shortage” of cybersecurity skills in 2017.Clearly we need more smart and well-prepared people to enter the cybersecurity ranks, but it’s important to note that most cybersecurity professionals don’t enter the workforce directly from college or training programs. According to research conducted in 2016 by ESG and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), 78% of cybersecurity professionals follow a more indirect route. These folks start their careers as IT professionals and make their way into cybersecurity as their careers progress.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IT Experience Can Be Beneficial for a Cybersecurity Career

Given my interest in cybersecurity skills and training, I’m contacted by academic institutions, professional organizations, and training companies with news about some type of cybersecurity education curriculum.  This isn’t surprising given the global shortage of cybersecurity skills.  New ESG research discloses that 45% of organizations report a “problematic shortage” of cybersecurity skills in 2017 (note: I am an ESG employee).Clearly we need more smart and well-prepared people to enter the cybersecurity ranks but it’s important to note that most cybersecurity professionals don’t enter the workforce directly from college or training programs.  According to research conducted in 2016 by ESG and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), 78% of cybersecurity professionals follow a more indirect route.  These folks start their careers as IT professionals and make their way into cybersecurity as their careers progress.  (Note:  The two ESG/ISSA research reports are available for free download here).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Palo Alto Networks pays $105M for LightCyber to better detect network attacks

Palo Alto Networks has bought LightCyber for its behavioral analytics platform that can speed the time to detect intrusions that have already breached networks and are looking around for ways to carry out exploits.The $105 million cash deal brings LightCyber’s ability to analyze behavior of devices to discover reconnaissance by malware inside networks and lateral movements as it seeks to compromise vulnerable systems.Based on machine learning, LightCyber absorbs the behaviors of individuals and devices, sets a normal level for them and finds anomalies that could indicate attacks underway.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Palo Alto Networks pays $105M for LightCyber to better detect network attacks

Palo Alto Networks has bought LightCyber for its behavioral analytics platform that can speed the time to detect intrusions that have already breached networks and are looking around for ways to carry out exploits.The $105 million cash deal brings LightCyber’s ability to analyze behavior of devices to discover reconnaissance by malware inside networks and lateral movements as it seeks to compromise vulnerable systems.Based on machine learning, LightCyber absorbs the behaviors of individuals and devices, sets a normal level for them and finds anomalies that could indicate attacks underway.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Robots are just as plagued by security vulnerabilities as IoT devices

An analysis of robots used in homes, businesses and industrial installations has revealed many of the same basic weaknesses that are common in IoT devices, raising questions about security implications for human safety.The robotics industry has already seen significant growth in recent years and will only further accelerate. Robots are  expected to serve in many roles, from assisting people in homes, stores and medical facilities, to manufacturing things in factories and even handling security and law enforcement tasks."When you think of robots as computers with arms, legs, or wheels, they become kinetic IoT devices that, if hacked, can pose new serious threats we have never encountered before," researchers from cybersecurity consultancy firm IOActive said in a new report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Robots are just as plagued by security vulnerabilities as IoT devices

An analysis of robots used in homes, businesses and industrial installations has revealed many of the same basic weaknesses that are common in IoT devices, raising questions about security implications for human safety.The robotics industry has already seen significant growth in recent years and will only further accelerate. Robots are  expected to serve in many roles, from assisting people in homes, stores and medical facilities, to manufacturing things in factories and even handling security and law enforcement tasks."When you think of robots as computers with arms, legs, or wheels, they become kinetic IoT devices that, if hacked, can pose new serious threats we have never encountered before," researchers from cybersecurity consultancy firm IOActive said in a new report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Introducing Ansible Tower 3.1

Ansible Tower 3.1

We're excited to announce the release of Ansible Tower 3.1. Our engineering team has been hard at work on enhancing Ansible Tower to allow teams to harness the power of automation across servers, applications, environments, and networks, and with Ansible Tower 3.1, we've brought together a variety of enhancements that allow your teams to automate more processes, more frequently, and more easily analyze the results of your automation across the enterprise

Model complex processes with multi-Playbook workflows

Ansible brought simple, agentless automation to IT. But some IT processes don't lend themselves to being automated in a single Playbook - if you're provisioning environments, you may want to handle basic provisioning, default configuration, and application deployment differently. And once you've automated those tasks, you want to reuse those tasks in different ways, or in different environments. Plus, what if a deployment goes wrong? You may need to back your environment out to the last known good state.

To solve these issues, we developed Tower workflows. With Tower workflows, you can chain together any number of Playbooks together into a workflow, with each workflow step potentially using a different Playbook, inventory, set of credentials, and more. Easily launch one or more Continue reading

Introducing Ansible Tower 3.1

Ansible Tower 3.1

We're excited to announce the release of Ansible Tower 3.1. Our engineering team has been hard at work on enhancing Ansible Tower to allow teams to harness the power of automation across servers, applications, environments, and networks, and with Ansible Tower 3.1, we've brought together a variety of enhancements that allow your teams to automate more processes, more frequently, and more easily analyze the results of your automation across the enterprise

Model complex processes with multi-Playbook workflows

Ansible brought simple, agentless automation to IT. But some IT processes don't lend themselves to being automated in a single Playbook - if you're provisioning environments, you may want to handle basic provisioning, default configuration, and application deployment differently. And once you've automated those tasks, you want to reuse those tasks in different ways, or in different environments. Plus, what if a deployment goes wrong? You may need to back your environment out to the last known good state.

To solve these issues, we developed Tower workflows. With Tower workflows, you can chain together any number of Playbooks together into a workflow, with each workflow step potentially using a different Playbook, inventory, set of credentials, and more. Easily launch one or more Continue reading

Five sides and 1,500 access points: Wi-Fi at the Pentagon

The central offices of the U.S. Department of Defense – better known as the Pentagon – pose a unique IT challenge in a lot of ways, but bringing the 6.5 million square-foot space up to the wireless standards of the modern office environment was a particularly big undertaking, according to a government contractor charged with the task. The idea of a technology that broadcasts information in all directions, invisibly, through the air, is an understandably unpleasant one to a certain cast of military mind. So selling the people who run the Pentagon on installing Wi-Fi wasn’t an easy pitch, according to Defense Engineering, Inc. program manager Brendan DeBow.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: AI as advisor, not magician

In 2009, Google introduced Gmail Autopilot. “As more and more everyday communications take place over email, lots of people have complained about how hard it is to read and respond to every message. This is because they actually read and respond to all their messages.” Autopilot replied to email as if it were actually you. It included an authenticity control panel to adjust for "tone, typo propensity, and preferred punctuation."Autopilot was launched as an April Fools' prank. It was one of several programs tied to Google CADIE (cognitive autoheuristic distributed intelligence entity). Google provided several examples that demonstrated how helpful autopilot could be, including this one:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Quantifying the Impact of “Cloudbleed”

Last Thursday we released details on a bug in Cloudflare's parser impacting our customers. It was an extremely serious bug that caused data flowing through Cloudflare's network to be leaked onto the Internet. We fully patched the bug within hours of being notified. However, given the scale of Cloudflare, the impact was potentially massive.

The bug has been dubbed “Cloudbleed.” Because of its potential impact, the bug has been written about extensively and generated a lot of uncertainty. The burden of that uncertainty has been felt by our partners, customers, our customers’ customers. The question we’ve been asked the most often is: what risk does Cloudbleed pose to me?

We've spent the last twelve days using log data on the actual requests we’ve seen across our network to get a better grip on what the impact was and, in turn, provide an estimate of the risk to our customers. This post outlines our initial findings.

The summary is that, while the bug was very bad and had the potential to be much worse, based on our analysis so far: 1) we have found no evidence based on our logs that the bug was maliciously exploited before it was patched; Continue reading

Making Remote NVM-Express Flash Look Local And Fast

Large enterprises are embracing NVM-Express flash as the storage technology of choice for their data intensive and often highly unpredictable workloads. NVM-Express devices bring with them high performance – up to 1 million I/O operations per second – and low latency – less than 100 microseconds. And flash storage now has high capacity, too, making it a natural fit for such datacenter applications.

As we have discussed here before, all-flash arrays are quickly becoming mainstream, particularly within larger enterprises, as an alternative to disk drives in environments where tens or hundreds of petabytes of data – rather than the …

Making Remote NVM-Express Flash Look Local And Fast was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

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