Managing The Branch Network

SDN Strategy: Put Applications First

IDG Contributor Network: Is outdated legislation holding back the gig economy?

We are in the midst of a dramatic shift in the way we work. In the new gig economy, some 40 percent of the American workforce consists of contingent workers: contract workers, part-time workers, independent contractors and those who freelance.The U.S. government doesn’t currently collect much data on the many American contingent workers, which means it can’t keep up with their needs. Recognizing this, the Department of Labor is introducing the Contingent Worker Supplement in its next population survey in 2017.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The advanced security techniques of criminal hackers

InfoWorld talks with Digital Shadows' Rick Holland about the security tools hackers use to protect themselves while ripping you off

How much do developers really care about security?

InfoWorld talks with GitHub's Jamesha Fisher about the cultural shifts necessary for baking security early into the devops process

Local Area Networking on RS-232

It was early 1980s and I was just entering my MacGyver phase when someone asked me “could you make a local area network out of RS-232-based shared bus?” Sure, why not, it can’t be that hard…

Inter-AS Option AB (a.k.a Option D)

The post Inter-AS Option AB (a.k.a Option D) appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

Drones have potential for industrial sabotage

Industrial facilities should be on guard against drones. Even off-the-shelf versions of the unmanned aircraft could be used to disrupt sensitive systems. On Wednesday, Jeff Melrose, a presenter at Black Hat 2016, showed how consumer drones could do more than just conduct aerial spying. The flying machines can also carry a transmitter to hack into a wireless keyboard or interfere with industrial controls, he said. It’s not enough to place a fence around a building to keep intruders out, according to Melrose, who is a principal tech specialist at Yokogawa, an industrial controls provider. These days, some consumer drones can travel up to 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) or more.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Drones have potential for industrial sabotage

Industrial facilities should be on guard against drones. Even off-the-shelf versions of the unmanned aircraft could be used to disrupt sensitive systems. On Wednesday, Jeff Melrose, a presenter at Black Hat 2016, showed how consumer drones could do more than just conduct aerial spying. The flying machines can also carry a transmitter to hack into a wireless keyboard or interfere with industrial controls, he said. It’s not enough to place a fence around a building to keep intruders out, according to Melrose, who is a principal tech specialist at Yokogawa, an industrial controls provider. These days, some consumer drones can travel up to 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) or more.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Banner Health alerts 3.7M potential victims of hack of its computers

Banner Health, a provider of hospital services, has notified by mail 3.7 million people -- including patients, health plan members, healthcare providers and customers at its food and beverage outlets -- that their payment card and health plan data, among other information, may have been compromised.The provider said Wednesday that it discovered on July 7 that cyberattackers may have gained access to computers that process payment card data at the food and beverage outlets at some of its locations. Payment cards that were used at these outlets at certain Banner Health locations from June 23 to July 7 this year may have been affected, the provider said. Card payments for medical services were not affected, according to the investigation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Banner Health alerts 3.7M potential victims of hack of its computers

Banner Health, a provider of hospital services, has notified by mail 3.7 million people -- including patients, health plan members, healthcare providers and customers at its food and beverage outlets -- that their payment card and health plan data, among other information, may have been compromised.The provider said Wednesday that it discovered on July 7 that cyberattackers may have gained access to computers that process payment card data at the food and beverage outlets at some of its locations. Payment cards that were used at these outlets at certain Banner Health locations from June 23 to July 7 this year may have been affected, the provider said. Card payments for medical services were not affected, according to the investigation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Fun in the Lab: Setting up 3 Phones – Part 2 Licensing

When we left me at the end of  Fun in the Lab: Setting up 3 Phones – Part 1 Prep Work …. (1) I had cloned an already existing CUCM VM and (2) I was stuck on the CUCM Licensing portion.

Today’s Mission

Today’s Mission (should I choose to accept it) is to license my CUCM.

My mission will involve –

• Learning how to get a license for a CUCM internally within Cisco for lab use
• Cleaning up my CUCM VM since it was a cloned VM

I’m still hoping I will eventually come across some cookies.  Why?  Because all my UC friends keep telling me I should “check out the dark side (UC)” and that “they have cookies”.  Just in case they are telling you this.  I need to let you know I have found NONE so far and I think they aren’t telling the truth.

PLAY TIME!

The licensing error message that came up on the CUCM said 2 things

1. “Install sufficient licenses in the Cisco Prime License Manager for this system”
2. “If licenses for this system are not already being managed by a Cisco Prime License Manager server, the system must first be Continue reading

The (Second) Coming of Composable Systems

The concept of composable or disaggregated infrastructure is nothing new, but with approaching advances in technology on both the software and network sides (photonics in particular) an old idea might be infused with new life.

Several vendors have already taken a disaggregated architecture approach at the storage, network, and system level. Cisco Systems’ now defunct UCS M Series, for instance, is one example, and one can consider Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s The Machine as one contemporary example and its Project Synergy as two others; DriveScale, which we covered back in May, is possibly another. But thus far, none of …

The (Second) Coming of Composable Systems was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Slideshow: Take a peek inside ‘Area 404,’ Facebook’s brand new hardware lab

Facebook's Silicon Valley headquartersImage by Martyn WilliamsFacebook used to design its servers and other hardware at labs scattered across the company, but they've now been consolidated in a state of the art facility at its Menlo Park, California, headquarters. The new lab is called Area 404, a play on the 404 error message seen on the web and, presumably, the U.S. military's Area 51 research base. It covers 22,000 square feet and has 50 workbenches where engineers design, build and test their protptype hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Slideshow: Take a peek inside ‘Area 404,’ Facebook’s brand new hardware lab

Facebook's Silicon Valley headquartersImage by Martyn WilliamsFacebook used to design its servers and other hardware at labs scattered across the company, but they've now been consolidated in a state of the art facility at its Menlo Park, California, headquarters. The new lab is called Area 404, a play on the 404 error message seen on the web and, presumably, the U.S. military's Area 51 research base. It covers 22,000 square feet and has 50 workbenches where engineers design, build and test their protptype hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Deploying VMware VSAN in minutes with Big Cloud Fabric

Dropbox Paper is now available to all as an open beta

Ten months after Dropbox first unveiled Paper, the collaborative writing tool entered open beta on Wednesday and is getting mobile versions for iOS and Android.Paper allows teams to work on documents together in the cloud. It makes it easy to add text, images, and embedded videos from YouTube, Google, or Dropbox itself. Users can also add programming code, which gets formatted automatically. And they can create to-do lists and assign tasks on those lists using the @ symbol. Since its debut in private beta, Paper has been used to create more than a million documents for tasks like brainstorming ideas and capturing meeting notes, Dropbox said. Based on lessons learned along the way, Dropbox has improved the software with better tables and image galleries, more powerful search, and notifications via desktop and mobile.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows 10 moves closer to smart-home centerpiece with IoT deal

Lazy people will love Windows 10 and its ability to automate home tasks, and the operating system's smart-home credentials are getting a serious boost with a recent internet of things pact.Microsoft wants to put Windows 10 at the center of smart homes. The company wants users to be able to tell the operating system's Cortana voice assistant to switch on a light, open a door, release food for a cat, and even check the contents of a refrigerator.For Windows 10 to be successful, the OS will have to work with a wide range of smart home and IoT devices, and that goal has taken a big step forward thanks to a recent agreement between standards bodies the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) and the Thread Group. The two organizations will work together on improving interoperability between smart home and IoT devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

First Look: Firefox 48

Firefox 48Image by PixabayFirefox, for years now, has been an also-ran in large chunks of the browser market – yet, in terms of its technology, has been catching up to the bigger players fast. Firefox 48 continues the process of making the browser more streamlined, robust and powerful. Take a look.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Could this hacker’s tool slow down phishing?

At the BSides Las Vegas event (a precursor to Black Hat), CSO's Steve Ragan sat down with a hacker named Munin to chat about a tool that could help administrators defend their networks from phishing attacks and other threats.