How to prepare for a data breach  

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  Michael Bruemmer's team is busy these days, and that's both good news and bad news for companies like yours. Bruemmer heads up the Data Breach Resolution group at Experian. This team provides the call center, notification and identity theft protection services to clients following a data breach.Over a span of 12 years, this arm of Experian has serviced nearly 17,000 breaches. In 2015, the group serviced 3,550 different incidents, from small breaches that affected just a few hundred people, to the headline-making breaches that affected tens of millions. The fact that Experian has been involved in responding to so many breaches is the bad news I alluded to.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to prepare for a data breach  

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  Michael Bruemmer's team is busy these days, and that's both good news and bad news for companies like yours. Bruemmer heads up the Data Breach Resolution group at Experian. This team provides the call center, notification and identity theft protection services to clients following a data breach.Over a span of 12 years, this arm of Experian has serviced nearly 17,000 breaches. In 2015, the group serviced 3,550 different incidents, from small breaches that affected just a few hundred people, to the headline-making breaches that affected tens of millions. The fact that Experian has been involved in responding to so many breaches is the bad news I alluded to.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BRKEWN-2011 – Managing An Enterprise WLAN With Cisco Prime Infrastructure

Presenter: Paul Lysander, Technical Marketing Engineer, Cisco

“How many of you are not using PI 3.x?” –Paul; perhaps 10-20% put up their hands.

Morning after the customer Appreciation Event. Good turnout. ?

Where does PI fit in the network? 

  • PI gets information from the network; it’s not the source of data
  • Sources include: wireless LAN controller, CMX, ISE

Side note: PI 3.1 maintenance release 1 (MR1) is coming next week. When released, it will be the generally recommended release for customers to run.

Create Sites and Location Groups before adding devices to the inventory. These groups are used throughout PI. Eg: a Site can be used with a Virtual Domain to provide role-based access to devices in the environment (Admin1 can’t see Admin2’s devices; Admin1 only session Campus1 and SuperAdmin sees all). Device membership in a site can be done statically or by policy.

  • Administration > Users > Virtual Domains (create and edit Virtual Domains)
  • Administration > Users > Users, Roles & AAA (map users to a Domain)

Config Templates:

  • Discovery: templates can be discovered by pulling in the config (or parts thereof) from an already configured WLC

New feature in 3.1: Plug and Play for Continue reading

Cybersecurity highlights from Cisco Live

Cisco is wrapping up its annual Cisco Live customer event. This year’s proceedings took over Las Vegas, occupying the Bellagio, Luxor, Mandalay Bay and MGM Grand hotel. At least for this week, Cisco was bigger in Vegas than Wayne Newton, Steve Wynn and even Carrot Top. While digital transformation served as the main theme at Cisco Live, cybersecurity had a strong supporting role throughout the event. For example, of all of the technology and business initiatives at Cisco, CEO Chuck Robbins highlighted cybersecurity in his keynote presentation by bringing the GM of Cisco’s cybersecurity business unit, David Goeckeler, on stage to describe his division’s progress. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Two men fall off San Diego cliff playing Pokemon Go, just as I predicted

On Monday, my brother who lives in San Diego sent me an email with the subject line: “Third time this week.” What had happened for the third time was that someone fell off the oceanside cliff near his home, something that happens there with frightening regularity. I asked my brother why this keeps happening. “Gravity,” was his reply. Me: “Ha-ha. I mean are they just trying to get a better look? Or flying one of those stupid flying things? Or playing Pokemon Go? (Oh, sweet heaven, that would be such a *great* rumor to start today even if it's not true.)” Two days later it’s true, though not at the exact same cliff.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft wins appeal over US government access to emails held overseas

A U.S. appeals court has quashed a search warrant that would have required Microsoft to disclose contents of emails stored on a server in Ireland, in a case that has broad ramifications for privacy, diplomatic relations and the ability of American companies to sell web services abroad."We think Microsoft has the better of the argument," said Circuit Court Judge Sarah Carney, in an opinion written for a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.The panel based its judgment on the 30-year-old U.S. Stored Communications Act. The act, Carney wrote, "does not authorize courts to issue and enforce against U.S.‐based service providers warrants for the seizure of customer e‐mail content that is stored exclusively on foreign servers." The opinion was posted Thursday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft wins appeal over US government access to emails held overseas

A U.S. appeals court has quashed a search warrant that would have required Microsoft to disclose contents of emails stored on a server in Ireland, in a case that has broad ramifications for privacy, diplomatic relations and the ability of American companies to sell web services abroad."We think Microsoft has the better of the argument," said Circuit Court Judge Sarah Carney, in an opinion written for a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.The panel based its judgment on the 30-year-old U.S. Stored Communications Act. The act, Carney wrote, "does not authorize courts to issue and enforce against U.S.‐based service providers warrants for the seizure of customer e‐mail content that is stored exclusively on foreign servers." The opinion was posted Thursday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ranking High Performance Interconnects

With the increasing adoption of scale-out architectures and cloud computing, high performance interconnect (HPI) technologies have become a more critical part of IT systems. Today, HPI represents its own market segment at the upper echelons of the networking equipment market, supporting applications requiring extremely low latency and exceptionally high bandwidth.

As big data analytics, machine learning, and business optimization applications become more prevalent, HPI technologies are of increasing importance for enterprises as well. These most demanding enterprise applications, as well as high performance computing (HPC) applications, are generally addressed with scale-out clusters based on large numbers of ‘skinny’ nodes. The

Ranking High Performance Interconnects was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

When COWs fly: An AT&T drone experiment

You might be familiar with the Cell on Wheels (COW) concept that carriers have deployed to bring temporary wireless service to busy venues or disaster relief areas. Now AT&T is giving the COW acronym a new high-flying meaning: Cell on Wings.The carrier at its Shape Tech Expo at AT&T Park in San Francisco this week provided an update on its drone (unmanned aerial vehicles) efforts, including what it calls flying COWs. John Donovan, chief strategy officer and group president for AT&T Technology and Operations, wrote in a blog post that AT&T this week was starting the trial phase of its national drone program.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Comparing Swarm, Swarmkit and Swarm Mode

One of the big features in Docker 1.12 release is Swarm mode. Docker had Swarm available for Container orchestration from 1.6 release. Docker released Swarmkit as an opensource project for orchestrating distributed systems few weeks before Docker 1.12(RC) release. I had some confusion between these three projects. In this blog, I have tried to put … Continue reading Comparing Swarm, Swarmkit and Swarm Mode

Juniper patches high-risk flaws in Junos OS

Juniper Networks has fixed several vulnerabilities in the Junos operating system used on its networking and security appliances, including a flaw that could allow hackers to gain administrative access to affected devices.The most serious vulnerability, rated 9.8 out of 10 in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System, is located in the J-Web interface, which allows administrators to monitor, configure, troubleshoot and manage routers running Junos OS. The issue is an information leak that could allow unauthenticated users to gain admin privileges to the device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Juniper patches high-risk flaws in Junos OS

Juniper Networks has fixed several vulnerabilities in the Junos operating system used on its networking and security appliances, including a flaw that could allow hackers to gain administrative access to affected devices.The most serious vulnerability, rated 9.8 out of 10 in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System, is located in the J-Web interface, which allows administrators to monitor, configure, troubleshoot and manage routers running Junos OS. The issue is an information leak that could allow unauthenticated users to gain admin privileges to the device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Juniper patches high-risk flaws in Junos OS

Juniper Networks has fixed several vulnerabilities in the Junos operating system used on its networking and security appliances, including a flaw that could allow hackers to gain administrative access to affected devices.The most serious vulnerability, rated 9.8 out of 10 in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System, is located in the J-Web interface, which allows administrators to monitor, configure, troubleshoot and manage routers running Junos OS. The issue is an information leak that could allow unauthenticated users to gain admin privileges to the device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cybersecurity is only as strong as your weakest link—your employees

You can have the most secure system in the world, but hackers will always seek out the path of least resistance. When your defenses are good, the weak link is often your employees. Data breaches are most likely to be the result of employee error or an inside job, according to the ACC Foundation: State of Cybersecurity Report.It’s good to focus on firewalls, malware defenses and data protection, but too often employees are an afterthought.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cybersecurity is only as strong as your weakest link—your employees

You can have the most secure system in the world, but hackers will always seek out the path of least resistance. When your defenses are good, the weak link is often your employees. Data breaches are most likely to be the result of employee error or an inside job, according to the ACC Foundation: State of Cybersecurity Report.It’s good to focus on firewalls, malware defenses and data protection, but too often employees are an afterthought.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The rise of captive centers: Is it the death knell for outsourcing?

I’m sure it has not gone unnoticed by those who keep a close eye on the industry: Several large companies have announced they will set up or expand captive centers in countries like India to take on new work or, in some cases, existing work from their outsourcing partners. The companies are from a range of industries, including financial services, retail and oil, and gas.Captive centers have long been considered a superior choice when the nature of certain work is proprietary, too complex to hand off to a third party, or requires a higher degree of control. It often means a company is weighing value over cost efficiency for a particular project or line of work.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GE and Microsoft team on IoT platform

GE's industrial Internet of Things platform, Predix, is going to be available on the Microsoft Azure cloud, but not immediately. It will be globally commercial available in the second quarter of 2017.GE believes that Predix needs to be a complete product, from the edge (the sensor on the shop floor) to the cloud, or Azure in this instance. The upshot: It will be easier to integrate tools such as Microsoft's Cortana, the intelligent personal assistant, with Predix.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here