Big Chain Deep Dive on Software Gone Wild

A while ago Big Switch Networks engineers realized there’s a cool use case for their tap aggregation application (Big Tap Monitoring Fabric) – an intelligent patch panel traffic steering solution used as security tool chaining infrastructure in DMZ… and thus the Big Chain was born.

Curious how their solution works? Listen to Episode 58 of Software Gone Wild with Andy Shaw and Sandip Shah.

Surveillance reform measure blocked in the wake of Orlando killings

The U.S. House of Representatives voted down an anti-surveillance amendment after some of its members expressed concern about its impact on the fight against terrorism, in the wake of Sunday’s massacre at a nightclub in Orlando.The measure was proposed by Congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Congresswoman Zoe Lofrgren, a Democrat from California, as as an amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act.It would prevent warrantless searches by law enforcement of information on Americans from a foreign intelligence communications database and prohibit with some exceptions the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency from using any funds appropriated under the Act to require that companies weaken the security of their products or services to enable surveillance of users.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Surveillance reform measure blocked in the wake of Orlando killings

The U.S. House of Representatives voted down an anti-surveillance amendment after some of its members expressed concern about its impact on the fight against terrorism, in the wake of Sunday’s massacre at a nightclub in Orlando.The measure was proposed by Congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Congresswoman Zoe Lofrgren, a Democrat from California, as as an amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act.It would prevent warrantless searches by law enforcement of information on Americans from a foreign intelligence communications database and prohibit with some exceptions the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency from using any funds appropriated under the Act to require that companies weaken the security of their products or services to enable surveillance of users.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco Tetration analytics

Cisco Tetration Analytics: the most Comprehensive Data Center Visibility and Analysis in Real Time, at Scale, June 15, 2016, announced the new Cisco Tetration Analytics platform. The platform collects telemetry from proprietary agents on servers and embedded in hardware on certain Nexus 9k switches, analyzes the data, and presents results via Web GUI, REST API, and as events.

Cisco Tetration Analytics Data Sheet describes the hardware requirements:
Platform Hardware
Quantity
Cisco Tetration Analytics computing nodes (servers)
16
Cisco Tetration Analytics base nodes (servers)
12
Cisco Tetration Analytics serving nodes (servers)
8
Cisco Nexus 9372PX Switches
3

And the power requirements:
Property
Cisco Tetration Analytics Platform
Peak power for Cisco Tetration Analytics Platform (39-RU single-rack option)
22.5 kW
Peak power for Cisco Tetration Analytics Platform (39-RU dual-rack option)
11.25 kW per rack (22.5 KW Total)

No pricing is given, but based on the hardware, data center space, power and cooling requirements, this brute force approach to analytics will be reassuringly expensive to purchase and operate.

Update June 22, 2016: See 451 Research report, Cisco Tetration: a $3m, 1,700-pound appliance for network traffic analytics is born, for pricing information.
A much less expensive alternative is to use industry Continue reading

Salesforce also bid for LinkedIn, but lost out to Microsoft

Microsoft surprised everyone Monday when it announced plans to acquire LinkedIn for more than $26 billion. But it wasn't the only suitor: Salesforce wanted in, too. The San Francisco-based software-as-a-service vendor was interested in LinkedIn primarily for its recruiting business, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told Recode on Thursday. The company gave LinkedIn a "solid look" but was unable to match Microsoft's huge offer.Salesforce's interest makes sense: information from the business-focused social network could have proved useful to people working with Salesforce products. Microsoft has similar ambitions for LinkedIn, which it sees as a potential boon to its Dynamics CRM and Office offerings in particular. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Samsung’s Joyent buy is a swipe at AWS and Microsoft Azure

The Internet of Things is as much about computing as it is about the "things" themselves, and that's why Samsung Electronics is buying Joyent.At first glance, a maker of smartphones, home appliances and wearables doesn’t seem like it would need a cloud computing company. But so-called smart objects rely on a lot of number-crunching behind the scenes. A connected security camera can't handle all its video storage and image analysis by itself, for example, and that's where cloud services come in.The real money in IoT will be in the services more than the devices themselves, research firm Gartner says. It’s not entirely up to Samsung to deliver services its devices, but the company sees an opportunity there.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pro-ISIS hacker pleads guilty to stealing data on US military personnel

A 20-year-old Estonia man has pleaded guilty to stealing data on more than 1,300 U.S. military and government personnel and providing it to the Islamic State.Ferizi’s goal was to “incite terrorist attacks,” the U.S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday.Ferizi once led a hacking group called Kosova Hacker’s Security, or KHS, which claims to have defaced over 20,000 websites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pro-ISIS hacker pleads guilty to stealing data on US military personnel

A 20-year-old Estonia man has pleaded guilty to stealing data on more than 1,300 U.S. military and government personnel and providing it to the Islamic State.Ferizi’s goal was to “incite terrorist attacks,” the U.S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday.Ferizi once led a hacking group called Kosova Hacker’s Security, or KHS, which claims to have defaced over 20,000 websites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Webinar – Challenges Delivering Apps The Modern Way

I'm hosting a webinar with Citrix about application deployment in the context of a modern data center -- containers, NFV, etc. They are bringing nerds, and I am going to ask them questions. There's a live demo at the end, so they've promised me. You should register and attend via http://bit.ly/1XSHvgU. The event is soon - Wednesday, June 22, 2016.

Five signs an attacker is already in your network

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

According to some estimates, attackers have infiltrated 96% of all networks, so you need to detect and stop them before they have time to escalate privileges, find valuable assets and steal data. 

The good news is an attack doesn’t end with an infection or a take-over of an endpoint; that is where it begins. From there an attack is highly active, and the attacker can be identified and stopped if you know how to find them. These five strategies will help.

* Search for the telltale signs of a breach.  Look for port scans, excessive failed log-ins and other types of reconnaissance as an attacker tries to map out your network.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Five signs an attacker is already in your network

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.According to some estimates, attackers have infiltrated 96% of all networks, so you need to detect and stop them before they have time to escalate privileges, find valuable assets and steal data. The good news is an attack doesn’t end with an infection or a take-over of an endpoint; that is where it begins. From there an attack is highly active, and the attacker can be identified and stopped if you know how to find them. These five strategies will help.* Search for the telltale signs of a breach.  Look for port scans, excessive failed log-ins and other types of reconnaissance as an attacker tries to map out your network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Five signs an attacker is already in your network

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.According to some estimates, attackers have infiltrated 96% of all networks, so you need to detect and stop them before they have time to escalate privileges, find valuable assets and steal data. The good news is an attack doesn’t end with an infection or a take-over of an endpoint; that is where it begins. From there an attack is highly active, and the attacker can be identified and stopped if you know how to find them. These five strategies will help.* Search for the telltale signs of a breach.  Look for port scans, excessive failed log-ins and other types of reconnaissance as an attacker tries to map out your network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Fed watchdog raises questions about FBI facial recognition accuracy, privacy

The FBI needs to get a better handle on accuracy and privacy issues its facial recognition technology has brought to the law enforcement community. Congressional watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office this week said the current FBI use of face recognition technology “raises potential concerns regarding both the effectiveness of the technology in aiding law enforcement investigations and the protection of privacy and individual civil liberties.” + More on Network World: Quick look: Cisco Tetration Analytics | Cisco platform lets IT rein-in disruptive data center operations, security, applications +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Fed watchdog raises questions about FBI facial recognition accuracy, privacy

The FBI needs to get a better handle on accuracy and privacy issues its facial recognition technology has brought to the law enforcement community. Congressional watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office this week said the current FBI use of face recognition technology “raises potential concerns regarding both the effectiveness of the technology in aiding law enforcement investigations and the protection of privacy and individual civil liberties.” + More on Network World: Quick look: Cisco Tetration Analytics | Cisco platform lets IT rein-in disruptive data center operations, security, applications +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

30 days in a terminal: Day 1 — The essentials

Day 1 of my "I'm a ridiculous person who is going to use nothing but a Linux terminal for 30 days" experiment is complete. And it was not an easy day. Not bad. Just... challenging.The day started as I expected it to. I fired up a terminal window and made it full screen and launched tmux—a terminal multiplexer. (I'm keeping a traditional desktop environment running in the background for a few days as a safety net while I get things working just right.)For those new to the concept of a terminal multiplexer, think of it like a tiled window manager (multiple windows arranged in a non-overlapping fashion)—only just for terminals. That way you can have multiple shell sessions (and multiple applications) running at the same time within the same terminal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

ContainerX steps into the limelight with a new container platform for enterprises

Enterprises interested in tapping container technology now have a brand-new option for managing it: ContainerX, a multitenant container-as-a-service platform for both Linux and Windows.Launched into beta last November by a team of engineers from Microsoft, VMware and Citrix, the service became generally available in both free and paid versions on Thursday. Promising an all-in-one platform for orchestration, compute, network, and storage management, it provides a single "pane of glass" for all of an enterprise's containers, whether they're running on Linux or Windows, bare metal or virtual machine, public or private cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here