Most powerful Internet of Things companies

Billions of devices, lots of opportunityThe Internet of Things (IoT) is still nascent, but growing quickly. Research firm IDC predicts it will become a $1.46 trillion international market by 2020, up from $700 billion last year. A trillion-dollar market means a lot of companies will want a slice. So who are the leaders of the IoT? We consulted with some of the leading analysts to find out. (Note: Companies are listed in alphabetical order.) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WiFi security 4 dummies

Customer site, their security policy for WiFi is an SSID with a secret PSK: the IT manager type the password on my PC to allow me to access the network. Maybe he’s not aware of my keylogger or that the password con be easily retrieved in cleartext. Let’s see how. Windows 10: retrieve the WiFi […]

Data and Identity: Two New Security Perimeters

CISOs tend to spend the bulk of their cybersecurity technology budgets on endpoint, server, and network security controls.  Okay, this makes sense from a historical perspective but these IT assets are in a state of flux today.  Endpoints are often mobile devices rather than Windows PCs while servers are virtual or cloud-based workloads.  Meanwhile, networks are also moving to a virtual model composed of public and private network segments.It’s clear that organizations embracing new cloud and mobile infrastructure have less control of some IT assets than they did in the past.  What does this mean for security?  One CISO I spoke with a while ago gave me a very succinct answer to this question: “As I lose control over IT infrastructure, I better make sure I have tight control over two other areas – sensitive data and user identity.”  In this security executive’s mind, data security and identity and access management (IAM) are rapidly becoming new security perimeters.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Creating a Pure Play Networking Company for the Digital Transformation Era

Today Brocade and Ruckus Wireless have taken an important step toward our joint vision of creating a new type of networking company - a company with the strategy, products, talent, and focus needed to deliver the solutions that customers need in order to thrive in today’s era of digital transformation. We’re very excited to let you know that this morning we announced Brocade’s intention to acquire Ruckus, a pioneer in the wireless infrastructure market.

The combination of Brocade and Ruckus will create a pure-play networking company that has market-leading solutions spanning from the most critical part of the data center to the wireless network edge. Wireless technology is a critical element in modern, New IP network architectures. Ruckus’ wireless networking solutions will add a high-growth and highly complementary product category to Brocade’s current storage, data center, campus and mobility networking solutions. The combined company will be better positioned to deliver networks that are platforms for innovation for our customers.

The new company will start with an impressive leadership position in highly strategic areas that we plan to build from:

  • #1 in storage area networking
  • #1 in service provider Wi-Fi
  • #1 in hospitality Wi-Fi
  • #2 in data center networking
  • #3 in Continue reading

Ethernet Roadmap 2016 – Ethernet Alliance

The IEEE 802.3 committee isn’t very good at getting standards work completed so there is a pre-standards body called the Ethernet Alliance. Its like a “pre-meeting meeting” (yes, we have all had those) for Ethernet standards where vendors thrash out most of the obvious stuff so that the committee has less work to consider and, theoretically, should […]

The post Ethernet Roadmap 2016 – Ethernet Alliance appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Ethernet Roadmap 2016 – Ethernet Alliance

The IEEE 802.3 committee isn’t very good at getting standards work completed so there is a pre-standards body called the Ethernet Alliance. Its like a “pre-meeting meeting” (yes, we have all had those) for Ethernet standards where vendors thrash out most of the obvious stuff so that the committee has less work to consider and, theoretically, should […]

The post Ethernet Roadmap 2016 – Ethernet Alliance appeared first on Packet Pushers.

White House IT overhaul an antique roadshow

The New York Times yesterday had an account of an ongoing effort to modernize the IT infrastructure and end-user equipment relied upon by those whose workplace address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In a sense, the story was rather alarming, as it turns out the White House was in sore need of just about new everything.There were a couple of networking nuggets worth noting in the story.First was the matter of old cabling … lots and lots of the stuff. One of his first tasks was trying to map the miles of Ethernet cables and phone wires inside the walls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The team of technicians eventually discovered and removed 13,000 pounds of abandoned cables that no longer served any purpose.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

It takes two to ChaCha (Poly)

Not long ago we introduced support for TLS cipher suites based on the ChaCha20-Poly1305 AEAD, for all our customers. Back then those cipher suites were only supported by the Chrome browser and Google's websites, but were in the process of standardization. We introduced these cipher suites to give end users on mobile devices the best possible performance and security.

CC BY-ND 2.0 image by Edwin Lee

Today the standardization process is all but complete and implementations of the most recent specification of the cipher suites have begun to surface. Firefox and OpenSSL have both implemented the new cipher suites for upcoming versions, and Chrome updated its implementation as well.

We, as pioneers of ChaCha20-Poly1305 adoption on the web, also updated our open sourced patch for OpenSSL. It implements both the older "draft" version, to keep supporting millions of users of the existing versions of Chrome, and the newer "RFC" version that supports the upcoming browsers from day one.

In this blog entry I review the history of ChaCha20-Poly1305, its standardization process, as well as its importance for the future of the web. I will also take a peek at its performance, compared to the other standard AEAD.

What Continue reading

So, you want to be a security pro? Read this first

Of all the high-demand areas in IT, security stands out at the top. According to DICE, the number of security jobs skyrocketed by more than 40% from 2014 to 2015, to 50,000 openings, compared with 16.8% growth the year before. “Security jobs are growing at a far more rapid pace than other areas of technology, which are also growing rapidly,” says Bob Melk, president at DICE. Meanwhile, in a 2015 survey by ISC2, 62% of respondents said they lacked adequate security staff, and 45% cannot find qualified candidates. In five years, the organization says, the shortfall in the global information security workforce will reach 1.5 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

New products of the week 4.4.16

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.kiteworks (Microsoft Office 365 Enhancements)Key features: Accellion’s content platform, kiteworks, now extends Microsoft Office Online to content stored on-premise and in the cloud without having to duplicate files. These capabilities are largely enabled by Accellion’s ongoing collaboration with Microsoft and reflect a common interest in making enterprise employees productive and more secure. Features include full text search for documents (folder, name and contents), real-time collaboration editing / co-authoring for Office Online documents stored across the cloud and on-premise systems, and office online integration with access to files stored on SharePoint, Documentum, OpenText, Microsoft OneDrive, Box, Dropbox and other content systems. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 4.4.16

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.kiteworks (Microsoft Office 365 Enhancements)Key features: Accellion’s content platform, kiteworks, now extends Microsoft Office Online to content stored on-premise and in the cloud without having to duplicate files. These capabilities are largely enabled by Accellion’s ongoing collaboration with Microsoft and reflect a common interest in making enterprise employees productive and more secure. Features include full text search for documents (folder, name and contents), real-time collaboration editing / co-authoring for Office Online documents stored across the cloud and on-premise systems, and office online integration with access to files stored on SharePoint, Documentum, OpenText, Microsoft OneDrive, Box, Dropbox and other content systems. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Most notable 2016 college commencement speakers from tech and science

Techiest speakersMaybe Bradley University in Illinois has the right idea in announcing it will not have any outside commencement speakers, in an effort to move things along. But at least those schools that have chosen technology-related speakers might teach new grads a thing or two before they head off into the wider world. Here’s a look at some of the techiest commencement speakers:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here