Geek-themed Meme of the Week: Blame Game

Our next installment of “Geek-themed Meme of the Week” comes courtesy of the Twitter account of INE, Inc., and will be familiar to all network professionals. INE via Twitter How familiar? https://twitter.com/SDNgeek/status/723644359099322369 If you’d like to catch up on past “Geek-Themed Memes of the Week,” you can find the archive here.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IoT Security Worries IT Pros

IDG Contributor Network: Zscaler provides secure remote access without the need for a VPN

Traditionally the way an organization gives its remote employees access to corporate applications is via a Virtual Private Network (VPN). VPNs have never been a whole lot of fun to use, but as the world moves to ever higher numbers of discrete applications and a huge variety of access devices, the traditional VPN model is looking tired.Zscaler aims to change that with Zscaler Private Access, a new service that promises organizations to provide access to internal applications and services while ensuring the security of their networks.Zscaler is an internet security company. The company offers a secure web gateway, fully from the cloud. In doing so, Zscaler is helping to move security further out into the internet backbone. Indeed, Zscaler is operated from over 100 data centers globally. Zscaler covers a host of security needs, including internet security, next-generation firewall, web security, sandboxing/advanced persistent threat (APT) protection, data loss prevention, SSL inspection, traffic shaping, policy management and threat intelligence.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Zscaler provides secure remote access without the need for a VPN

Traditionally the way an organization gives its remote employees access to corporate applications is via a Virtual Private Network (VPN). VPNs have never been a whole lot of fun to use, but as the world moves to ever higher numbers of discrete applications and a huge variety of access devices, the traditional VPN model is looking tired.Zscaler aims to change that with Zscaler Private Access, a new service that promises organizations to provide access to internal applications and services while ensuring the security of their networks.Zscaler is an internet security company. The company offers a secure web gateway, fully from the cloud. In doing so, Zscaler is helping to move security further out into the internet backbone. Indeed, Zscaler is operated from over 100 data centers globally. Zscaler covers a host of security needs, including internet security, next-generation firewall, web security, sandboxing/advanced persistent threat (APT) protection, data loss prevention, SSL inspection, traffic shaping, policy management and threat intelligence.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

U.S. efforts to build next-gen supercomputer take shape

For decades, the U.S. took for granted the doubling of supercomputing power every 10 years, roughly in line with Moore's Law. But once a petascale system was reached in 2008, it gradually became clear that the next leap -- a system 1,000 times more powerful -- would be difficult.Initially, some believed such a system -- an exascale computer -- was possible in 10 years, or by 2018. But problems emerged. It took too much power, and it required new approaches to applications to utilize an almost unimaginable level of parallelism involving hundreds of millions of cores. Another problem to solve was the need for resilience, or an ability to continue to working around multiple ongoing hardware failures expected in a system of this size.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

U.S. efforts to build next-gen supercomputer take shape

For decades, the U.S. took for granted the doubling of supercomputing power every 10 years, roughly in line with Moore's Law. But once a petascale system was reached in 2008, it gradually became clear that the next leap -- a system 1,000 times more powerful -- would be difficult.Initially, some believed such a system -- an exascale computer -- was possible in 10 years, or by 2018. But problems emerged. It took too much power, and it required new approaches to applications to utilize an almost unimaginable level of parallelism involving hundreds of millions of cores. Another problem to solve was the need for resilience, or an ability to continue to working around multiple ongoing hardware failures expected in a system of this size.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 tips for defending against advanced persistent threats

The aptly named advanced persistent threat (APT) is a type of network attack in which an attacker selects a specific target, uses social engineering and advanced technologies to break into a network and then focuses on that target for weeks, months or years until the attack has successfully played out (or been thwarted). Once inside a network, the attacker's goal is to remain undetected while using some type of malware to capture confidential information, which is ultimately sent to a different location for analysis and then sold on the black market.APTs are highly organized, sometimes with a complete staff, and have plenty of monetary and technological resources. Although APTs may use common hacker tools, they more often employ sophisticated, customized software that's less likely to be picked up by a security protection system. Types of APTs or delivery mechanisms include zero-day attacks, phishing, advanced malware and a variety of Web compromises.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

5 tips for defending against advanced persistent threats

The aptly named advanced persistent threat (APT) is a type of network attack in which an attacker selects a specific target, uses social engineering and advanced technologies to break into a network and then focuses on that target for weeks, months or years until the attack has successfully played out (or been thwarted). Once inside a network, the attacker's goal is to remain undetected while using some type of malware to capture confidential information, which is ultimately sent to a different location for analysis and then sold on the black market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Enterprises fall behind on protecting against phishing, detecting breaches

The ninth annual Verizon Data Breach Report came out this morning with bad news on multiple fronts, including click-through rates on phishing messages, how long it takes companies to detect breaches, and even whether companies spot the breaches at all.Phishing emails continued to be a primary starting point for attacks, said Bryan Sartin, executive director, global security services at Verizon.The number of phishing email messages that were opened hit 30 percent in this year's report, up from 23 percent last year.In addition, 12 percent of users don't just open the email but open the attachment as well, while 11 percent follow links in the email to online forms where they then input sensitive data such as login credentials.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Enterprises fall behind on protecting against phishing, detecting breaches

The ninth annual Verizon Data Breach Report came out this morning with bad news on multiple fronts, including click-through rates on phishing messages, how long it takes companies to detect breaches, and even whether companies spot the breaches at all.Phishing emails continued to be a primary starting point for attacks, said Bryan Sartin, executive director, global security services at Verizon.The number of phishing email messages that were opened hit 30 percent in this year's report, up from 23 percent last year.In addition, 12 percent of users don't just open the email but open the attachment as well, while 11 percent follow links in the email to online forms where they then input sensitive data such as login credentials.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

8 WLAN Security Best Practices

Dropbox wants to stretch desktop file storage to infinity

Dropbox has a futuristic vision for how its users will be able to share massive files and have quick access to them on their computers, without their hard drives overflowing.The cloud storage company announced a new initiative at its Open conference in London on Tuesday called Project Infinite. It's a push to create a new Dropbox interface that allows users to see all of the files they've stored in the cloud in their computer's file explorer without requiring them to keep local copies of each document, image, spreadsheet or other file. With Project Infinite, users will be able to manage their files in the cloud by moving them around inside the Mac OS X Finder or Windows File Explorer, just like they would any local files that are taking up space on their hard drives.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OpenStack and Amazon’s cloud: Friends or foes?

Four years ago tensions between OpenStack and Amazon Web Services were at a high. The open source cloud computing platform was being developed as an alternative to AWS’s and members of the community spoke despairingly about the public cloud behemoth. Fast-forward to today, and the relationship between these two cloud platforms seems quite undefined.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Nokia to buy connected health gadgets firm Withings for $191 million

Nokia is paying 170 million euros (US$191 million) to acquire French fitness gadgets company Withings in a bid to get into the digital health market.For the Espoo, Finland company, which sold its handset business to Microsoft two years ago, and has been since mainly in the area of selling telecom equipment, the acquisition marks a strong push into connected healthcare and home products, ranging from activity trackers, weighing scales, thermometers, blood pressure monitors, and home and baby monitors.Nokia's brand, which is still well-regarded in many consumer markets, may aid the company as it enters new segments and starts what it describes as a "new chapter."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Optimize Your Data Center: Virtualize Your Servers

A month ago I published the video where I described the idea that “two switches is all you need in a medium-sized data center”. Now let’s dig into the details: the first step you have to take to optimize your data center infrastructure is to virtualize all servers.

For even more details, watch the Designing Private Cloud Infrastructure webinar, or register for the Building Next-Generation Data Center course.

BetterBack: How to fix your bad back

There’s one activity that dominates the athletic activities of pretty much everyone in IT and that activity is inactivity. Whether it’s in a car seat, a train, a bus, or in front of a computer, most of us are locked into a chair for 6 or more hours every day and what does this cost us? Along with all of the other health consequences (heart disease, muscle degeneration, strained necks, limp glutes (yewww), tight hips, … I could go on but it's pretty gruesome), sitting for long periods of time ruins our backs. We sit there every day squinting at our screens, slumped into postures that nature never intended us to hold for hours at a time then we wonder why we ache.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

For the remotest IoT gear, cellular and satellite are coming together

Many enterprises are looking to the Internet of Things to monitor and control assets they can't physically reach. Building networks that can cover all those assets is one of the big challenges of industrial IoT.Cellular networks cover people well, at least in developed countries, but total land area not as well. LPWANs (low-power wide-area networks) are emerging as an alternative for reaching endpoints over longer distances, thanks to their lower speed and power levels and designs optimized for IoT. But for truly global connectivity, satellite is really the only game in town. (And, more importantly, far out of town.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

For the remotest IoT gear, cellular and satellite are coming together

Many enterprises are looking to the Internet of Things to monitor and control assets they can't physically reach. Building networks that can cover all those assets is one of the big challenges of industrial IoT.Cellular networks cover people well, at least in developed countries, but total land area not as well. LPWANs (low-power wide-area networks) are emerging as an alternative for reaching endpoints over longer distances, thanks to their lower speed and power levels and designs optimized for IoT. But for truly global connectivity, satellite is really the only game in town. (And, more importantly, far out of town.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Verizon Likes Pod Architecture for Data Centers

Big Switch, Dell, and Red Hat are its partners.

OpenStack cloud’s “killer use case”: Telcos and NFV

AUSTIN, Texas – Today, 114 petabytes of data traverse AT&T's network daily, and the carrier predicts a 10x increase in traffic by 2020. To help manage this, AT&T is transitioning from purpose-built appliances to white boxes running open source software. And according to AT&T Senior Vice President of Software Development and Engineering Sarabh Saxena, OpenStack has been a key part of this shift.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: OpenStack Director: Why open source should be the core of your cloud | Cool products from OpenStack Summit +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here