US lawmakers want answers on Yahoo email surveillance

A bipartisan group of 48 U.S. lawmakers wants two government agencies to explain a surveillance program in which Yahoo reportedly scanned all the messages of its email users on behalf of the FBI.After recent news reports of the email scanning program, the Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence need to brief Congress about the efforts, the lawmakers said in a letter to the two agencies.The first news reports about the program contained "conflicting reports about which legal authority was used" for the email scans, said the letter, organized by Representatives Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican, and Ted Lieu, a California Democrat.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Migrating the Runbook – a Journey from Legacy to DevOps

"Just type this invoice up for me will you please?" asked a sheepish looking Malcolm.

"I do have better things to do you know" I replied.

"Yes, yes, I know. But who else is going to do it?"

"Give it here then!"

In the beginning, there was a problem

That was a fairly common interaction for me as a young lad. I was fresh out of school and working my summer in the sales department of a local car dealership. My job was mostly admin related tasks, which up until that point hadn't included doing all the sales guys' typing. Our secretary had recently departed the company, and the sales guys all figured I could happily do the replacement typing jobs. The duty had fallen to me because a) I had the stereotypical 1980s glasses of a nerdy computer kid and b) they all knew I actually was a nerdy computer kid. So fair play to them for assuming I could type, I could.

The thing was I really did have better things to do, and these daily interruptions were eating into my productive time. I wanted that time back; so Continue reading

63% off TaoTronics LED Desk Lamp, (Dimmable, Touch Control, 5 Color Modes, USB Charging Port) – Deal Alert

The TaoTronics energy-saving LED Desk Lamp comes with vision-friendly, low power consumption LED light source, adjustable color modes, and dimmable brightness settings, making this ideal for your dorm room, home or office. With a slight touch from your finger tips, you can switch between a strong white light to soft yellow light. 5 different color temperatures and 7 brightness levels for you to fine tune your illumination. This new generation of eco-friendly LED lighting consumes 75% less power than traditional incandescent lights, while providing the same amount of light. No more fumbling to get a charger, the USB port tucked away behind the touch panel comes in handy for when your smartphone or tablet needs a quick charge. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Limitations of Current Branch Office WAN

A key characteristic of the traditional branch office WAN architecture is to have T1/E1-based access to a service provider’s MPLS network at each branch office and to have one or more high speed links at each data center. In this architecture it is common to backhaul some or all of a company’s Internet traffic to a data center before handing that traffic off to the Internet. In order to understand how common this architectural approach is, the survey respondents were asked to indicate how much of their Internet traffic that is generated in branch offices is backhauled to a data center before being handed off to the Internet. —ECI

The post Worth Reading: Limitations of Current Branch Office WAN appeared first on 'net work.

SDxCentral Weekly News Roundup — October 14, 2016

NoviFlow launched its vSwitch Offload system for optimizing the deployment of NFV.

Why Google’s Network Needs Five Controllers

It's all about SDN and the path to Cloud 3.0.

The Many Paths to Carrier NFV

Many operators view the shift to the telco cloud and NFV as a series of steps that require careful planning, not a wholesale rip-and-replace.

How blockchain can benefit IT outsourcing providers

Earlier this month IBM and its customer Bank of Tokyo announced that they would begin piloting blockchain technology to automate business transactions between the two companies. The joint experiment is one of the first projects built on the open-source Hyperledger Project (the Linux Foundation-led blockchain platform) to explore contract management, the companies said. It’s also an early example of the benefits of using an existing IT outsourcing engagement to experiment with blockchain technology.[ Related: How blockchain will disrupt your business ]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

British navy sends robots to sea in military exercise

The Royal Navy is testing just how much robot craft can do by themselves in military exercises off the British coast.Operation Unmanned Warrior 16 is a chance for allied nations and the defense industry to show off their latest maritime autonomous systems, as part of a broader military exercise called Joint Warrior."Fire and forget" torpedoes capable of homing in on the noise emitted by a target -- then sinking it -- have been around since World War II, but the systems involved in this exercise are less offensive.More than 50 craft are taking part this week, including uncrewed helicopters and underwater vehicles, and an autonomous rigid inflatable boat (RIB). They will perform tasks such as surveillance, intelligence-gathering and mine countermeasures.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

British navy sends robots to sea in military exercise

The Royal Navy is testing just how much robot craft can do by themselves in military exercises off the British coast.Operation Unmanned Warrior 16 is a chance for allied nations and the defense industry to show off their latest maritime autonomous systems, as part of a broader military exercise called Joint Warrior."Fire and forget" torpedoes capable of homing in on the noise emitted by a target -- then sinking it -- have been around since World War II, but the systems involved in this exercise are less offensive.More than 50 craft are taking part this week, including uncrewed helicopters and underwater vehicles, and an autonomous rigid inflatable boat (RIB). They will perform tasks such as surveillance, intelligence-gathering and mine countermeasures.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GlobalSign certificate revocation error leaves websites inaccessible

Users around the world have had trouble accessing some HTTPS websites due to an error at GlobalSign, one of the world's largest certificate authorities.As part of a planned exercise, GlobalSign revoked one of its cross-certificates that allowed end-user certificates to chain to alternate root certificates. GlobalSign operates multiple roots, which are trusted in browsers and operating systems by default, and links them together through these cross-certificates.The revocation of such a certificate was interpreted by some browsers and systems also as a revocation of the intermediate certificates that chained back to it. This was not really the case or the company's intention.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GlobalSign certificate revocation error leaves websites inaccessible

Users around the world have had trouble accessing some HTTPS websites due to an error at GlobalSign, one of the world's largest certificate authorities.As part of a planned exercise, GlobalSign revoked one of its cross-certificates that allowed end-user certificates to chain to alternate root certificates. GlobalSign operates multiple roots, which are trusted in browsers and operating systems by default, and links them together through these cross-certificates.The revocation of such a certificate was interpreted by some browsers and systems also as a revocation of the intermediate certificates that chained back to it. This was not really the case or the company's intention.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Game-Changing Questions to Ask Before You Deploy SDN

Before you deploy SDN, consider asking these questions.

IT attrition could help address the cybersecurity skills shortage

When it comes to the cybersecurity skills shortage, ESG research reveals the following: Forty-six percent of organizations claim that they have a “problematic shortage” of cybersecurity skills. This represents an increase of 18 percent compared to 2015.  A vast majority (87 percent) admit that it is “very difficult,” “difficult,” or “somewhat difficult” to recruit and hire cybersecurity professionals. Yup, there is a definite shortage of cybersecurity professionals available, so recruiters are tripping over each other as they try to poach talent from their existing employers.  According to a recently published report by ESG and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), 46 percent of cybersecurity professionals are solicited to consider other cybersecurity jobs by various types of recruiters at least once per week! This situation has led to salary inflation and massive disruption. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IT attrition could help address the cybersecurity skills shortage

When it comes to the cybersecurity skills shortage, ESG research reveals the following: Forty-six percent of organizations claim that they have a “problematic shortage” of cybersecurity skills. This represents an increase of 18 percent compared to 2015.  A vast majority (87 percent) admit that it is “very difficult,” “difficult,” or “somewhat difficult” to recruit and hire cybersecurity professionals. Yup, there is a definite shortage of cybersecurity professionals available, so recruiters are tripping over each other as they try to poach talent from their existing employers.  According to a recently published report by ESG and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), 46 percent of cybersecurity professionals are solicited to consider other cybersecurity jobs by various types of recruiters at least once per week! This situation has led to salary inflation and massive disruption. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The case against the VMware-AWS deal

There will always be antagonists.In the hours that passed after VMware and Amazon Web Services announced one of the most significant recent partnerships in the cloud market, pundits on social media raised questions about what the arrangement means for enterprise customers.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Winners and losers from the big VMware-AWS Pact | Oops, news of the VMware-AWS deal leaked early on a VMware Blog +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ask Me About My Beez! A Look at NetBeez, 18 Months On.

I was first introduced to NetBeez at Networking Field Day 9, where I saw an interesting monitoring product using Raspberry Pi-based agents and a cloud-based management and reporting console. That was back in February 2015, but I met with NetBeez a second time at Networking Field Day 12 in September 2016. Eighteen months is plenty of time to make some significant updates, so I’m going to look at the current product from a capabilities perspective and also see how it works when using it in anger. As background it may be worth reading my review of NetBeez from June 2015 first.

NetBeez Overview

By way of a refresher, the NetBeez product is made of two parts:

• an Agent (aka a Beez, which always sounds odd to say because Beez sounds like it should be the plural form of the noun);
• a web management portal to which the agents send their data and from which the agents are managed and their uploaded data are analyzed.

The Agents

• FastEthernet – As I saw at NFD9, the FastEthernet Beez agent is a Raspberry Pi in a case with a NetBeez logo on it, and the micro-SD card slot is covered by Continue reading

Packet Blast: Top Tech Blogs, Oct. 14

Transforming Enterprise Communications Infrastructure

University IT employees fighting for jobs question security

Data security is a simmering issue in offshore outsourcing. The offshore workers who staff help desks, call centers and manage systems are accessing data in the U.S. The University of California IT employees, who will soon lose their jobs to overseas workers, are trying point this out.The IT employees say workers in India will have access to UCSF medical and financial information as well as to files with research and study data. The data will reside on hardware based in the U.S.They believe the university has an obligation to disclose its plans to the broader university community and give researchers, in particular, options about who can access this data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here