Cisco DevNet Scavenger Hunt at GSX 17

At Cisco’s GSX conference at the start of FY17, the DevNet team made a programming scavenger hunt by posting daily challenges that required using things like containers, Cisco Shipped, Python, and RESTful APIs in Cisco software in order to solve puzzles. In order to submit an answer, the team created an API that contestants had to use (in effect creating another challenge that contestants had to solve).

This post contains the artifacts I created while solving some of the challenges.

Tools Used

  • Postman
  • Browser (for reading docs and such)
  • Python 2.7 (for Challenge 2)

Challenge 2: UCS Manager API

Your customer has been asked by their Help Desk Manager to make it easier on his first line engineers when requests come in related to UCS Server problems. Today, they have to train engineers on UCS Manager to get details like blade status, firmware levels, and uptime.  He is asking how they could embed those details in their help desk system.  Create some sample code leveraging the Python SDK for UCS Manager.

  • There is a Service Profile with a dn of org-root/ls-gsx-minihack1. Find its int_id.
Answer

Challenge 5: ACI REST API

Congratulations! Your customer has selected ACI Continue reading

New products of the week 8.29.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.ASG-Mobius 6.0Key features: ASG-Mobius 6.0 is a purpose-built content management system with proven scalability supporting platform, device and data independence. New AWS support enables cloud based solutions, on premise or hybrid implementations. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 8.29.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.ASG-Mobius 6.0Key features: ASG-Mobius 6.0 is a purpose-built content management system with proven scalability supporting platform, device and data independence. New AWS support enables cloud based solutions, on premise or hybrid implementations. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft Excel is ruining scientific papers with its autocorrect feature

The iPhone's autocorrect feature is often a help, but also a major source of embarrassment. So much so there is a whole website dedicated to nothing but embarrassing autocorrect moments.Those are merely embarrassing moments. Microsoft Excel, the de facto spreadsheet application in the world, is making a mess of scientific papers all over the world thanks to the software's own auto-format and autocorrect functions.According to the BBC, a report from the Melbourne, Australia-based academic institute Baker IDI, found four 704 errors in genetic names in 3,597 published scientific papers. That's almost 20 percent of all papers. For example, Excel changed the name of a gene called SEPT2 (short for Septin) to a date, September 2.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: IT security’s reality distortion field

Despite increasing data breaches (a whopping 4.7 billion data records worldwide being lost or stolen since 2013) and mounting regulatory and customer pressures around data protection, IT decision makers worldwide continue to ignore reality and rely on the same breach prevention strategies when it comes to protecting customer data and information. Today’s IT security professional clearly has a “reality distortion field” when it comes to the effectiveness of perimeter security. According to a recent survey of IT decision makers worldwide, one-third of organizations experienced a data breach in the past 12 months. Yet, while 86 percent of organizations have increased perimeter security spending, 69 percent are not confident their data would be secure if perimeter defenses were breached. This is up from 66 percent in 2015 and 59 percent in 2014. Furthermore, 66 percent believe unauthorized users can access their network, and nearly two in five (16 percent) said unauthorized users could access their entire network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: On-screen security alerts don’t work

Pop-up alerts on computer screens don’t work because they arrive at the wrong times, scientists say.Despite the popular belief—cultivated perhaps mainly by bosses—that humans can multitask, many believe they can’t. And that hypothesis may be proven, in part, by the discovery that on-screen alerts generally don’t achieve action if one is busy doing something else. The result is an increase in security vulnerabilities.Computer users are engrossed in tasks when the randomly timed alerts arrive, and it makes them less likely to respond.+ Also on Network World: How to craft a security awareness program that works +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: Top tools for preventing data leaks

Most security tools are focused on keeping external attackers at bay. But what about the sensitive data that lives inside your network? How do you make sure it doesn’t get out, either intentionally or by accident?That’s where Data Loss Prevention (DLP) comes into play. DLP tools are designed to block protected data from being shared in various ways, everything from e-mail attachments to printing to even screen captures. DLP can protect core network stores as well as connected endpoints which might have confidential information.We looked at DLP solutions from Comodo, Digital Guardian and Forcepoint. Symantec was invited to participate, but declined.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Top tools for preventing data leaks

Data loss prevention toolsImage by ThinkstockWe tested data loss prevention (DLP) tools from Comodo, Digital Guardian and Forcepoint. These products are designed to stop protected data from being shared in multiple ways, everything from e-mail attachments to printing to even screen captures. Forcepoint Triton was the most mature, easiest to setup and had the most features. Digital Guardian DLP was able to eliminate almost all false positives and would be a good choice for organizations with huge amounts of intellectual property. Comodo DLP offered a lot of flexibility as well as extras like a VPN, firewall, patch and mobile device manager, making it a good choice for organizations getting up to speed with their overall cybersecurity defenses. Read the full review.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top tools for preventing data leaks

Data loss prevention toolsImage by ThinkstockWe tested data loss prevention (DLP) tools from Comodo, Digital Guardian and Forcepoint. These products are designed to stop protected data from being shared in multiple ways, everything from e-mail attachments to printing to even screen captures. Forcepoint Triton was the most mature, easiest to setup and had the most features. Digital Guardian DLP was able to eliminate almost all false positives and would be a good choice for organizations with huge amounts of intellectual property. Comodo DLP offered a lot of flexibility as well as extras like a VPN, firewall, patch and mobile device manager, making it a good choice for organizations getting up to speed with their overall cybersecurity defenses. Read the full review.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hot products from VMWorld 2016

Moving to VegasImage by ThinkstockFor the first time VMware has moved its domestic VMWorld conference to Las Vegas – and what better place than under the bright lights of the strip to talk about the latest in virtualization, SDN, containers, hyperconverged infrastructure and mobile management. Check out our compilation of the hottest new products and services being announced and displayed at VMWorld 2016. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco DevNet Scavenger Hunt at GSX 17

At Cisco's GSX conference at the start of FY17, the DevNet team made a programming scavenger hunt by posting daily challenges that required using things like containers, Cisco Shipped, Python, and RESTful APIs in Cisco software in order to solve puzzles. In order to submit an answer, the team created an API that contestants had to use (in effect creating another challenge that contestants had to solve).

This post contains the artifacts I created while solving some of the challenges.

VMworld 2016 Day 1 Keynote

This is a liveblog of the day 1 keynote at VMworld 2016 in Las Vegas, NV. I managed to snag a somewhat decent seat in the massive bloggers/press/analysts area, though it filled up really quickly. Based on the announcements made this morning, it should be a great general session, and I’m really interested to see how its received by the community.

The keynote starts with a high-energy percussion/DJ session, followed by a talk about tomorrow—from where tomorrow will emerge, what tomorrow will look like, and what tomorrow will care about. Don’t stand in line for tomorrow; you are tomorrow, because tomorrow is about people. Which way will you face? What will you do to bring about tomorrow? All of this lines up, naturally, with VMworld’s “be_Tomorrow” theme.

After that talk Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, takes the stage. He talks briefly about his foot injury, then thanks the 21 “Alumni Elite” who have attended every single VMworld. Gelsinger then moves into a discussion of buzzwords and “digital transformation,” claiming that all businesses are digital businesses, and therefore all businesses need to worry about the challenges that face digital businesses. Gelsinger talks about a couple companies that have Continue reading

Opera warns 1.7 million Opera Sync users of breach, forces password reset

About 350 million people use the Opera browser. Of those, 1.7 million received an email from Opera, warning that attackers breached Opera’s cloud Sync service server. Even if a person didn’t check their email, they would have known something was up since Opera forced a password reset for Sync users.Opera announced the breach on Friday. The company said it detected and then “quickly blocked” an attack last week, but “some data, including some of our sync users’ passwords and account information, such as login names, may have been compromised.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Opera warns 1.7 million Opera Sync users of breach, forces password reset

About 350 million people use the Opera browser. Of those, 1.7 million received an email from Opera, warning that attackers breached Opera’s cloud Sync service server. Even if a person didn’t check their email, they would have known something was up since Opera forced a password reset for Sync users.Opera announced the breach on Friday. The company said it detected and then “quickly blocked” an attack last week, but “some data, including some of our sync users’ passwords and account information, such as login names, may have been compromised.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Building a Raspberry Pi-powered Barkometer, Part 1

I recently had a visit from my local animal control department. A youthful, uniformed guy rang the doorbell and handed me a letter. He told me that there had been a complaint from a neighbor (he, of course, was not at liberty to reveal the identity of the neighbor) about my dog barking. This was unexpected because my dog, Harvey (he’s an Australian Shepherd), doesn’t bark that much and when he does, it’s usually just a couple of midrange yelps. He mostly barks when he exits the back door (he always assumes that there’s some critter that needs to be dealt with) and occasionally, if the birds dare to land on our trees, he'll shout a few times but even then, it’s a brief protest rather than a drawn out rager. I’d argue that other neighbors' dogs are far noisier than my dog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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