A Baker’s Dozen, 2015 Edition

As is our annual tradition, this blog provides a year-end review of how the Internet providers at the top of our Internet Intelligence – Transit global rankings fared over the previous year.  The structure and performance of the Internet remains a huge blind spot for most enterprises, even those critically dependent on it for business operations.  Whether it’s the next 3 billion people coming online, poor performance due to suboptimal routing, impaired connectivity due to natural disasters or sabotage, slow DNS performance, routing leaks, or security breaches of a trust-based Internet infrastructure, Dyn provides critical insight into the structure and performance of the Internet, both real-time and historical, via its Internet Intelligence product suite.  More importantly, our services help our customers make the changes necessary to optimize Internet availability, reliability, and reach in a very dynamic environment.

Back in 2008, we chose to look at the 13 providers that spent at least some time in the Top Ten that year, hence the name “Baker’s Dozen“.  We repeated that exercise in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014.  During the past 8 years, I’ve Continue reading

Jigsaw crypto-ransomware deletes more files the longer you delay paying

Understanding how to buy bitcoins and pay ransomware authors for decryption keys is hard enough, yet some cybercriminals now expect their victims to do it in under an hour if they want all of their files back.A new ransomware program dubbed Jigsaw encrypts users' files and then begins to progressively delete them until the victim pays the equivalent of $150 in Bitcoin cryptocurrency.The ransomware deletes one file after the first hour has passed and then increases the number of files it deletes in every 60-minutes cycle. If no payment has been made within 72 hours, all remaining files will be deleted.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 6 simple tricks for protecting your passwords "Try anything funny and the computer has several safety measures to delete your files," the program's creators warn in their ransom message that's accompanied by a picture of the Jigsaw killer's mask from the horror film series Saw.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Jigsaw crypto-ransomware deletes more files the longer you delay paying

Understanding how to buy bitcoins and pay ransomware authors for decryption keys is hard enough, yet some cybercriminals now expect their victims to do it in under an hour if they want all of their files back.A new ransomware program dubbed Jigsaw encrypts users' files and then begins to progressively delete them until the victim pays the equivalent of $150 in Bitcoin cryptocurrency.The ransomware deletes one file after the first hour has passed and then increases the number of files it deletes in every 60-minutes cycle. If no payment has been made within 72 hours, all remaining files will be deleted.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 6 simple tricks for protecting your passwords "Try anything funny and the computer has several safety measures to delete your files," the program's creators warn in their ransom message that's accompanied by a picture of the Jigsaw killer's mask from the horror film series Saw.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

With few options, companies increasingly yield to ransomware demands

Faced with few options, companies are increasingly giving in to cybercriminals who hold their data hostage and demand payment for its return, while law enforcement officials struggle to catch the nearly invisible perpetrators.The risks to organizations have become so severe that many simply pay their attackers to make them go away -- a strategy that may only embolden the crooks.It's a case of asymmetric electronic warfare. Ransomware, which encrypts files until a victim pays to have them unlocked, can be devastating to an organization. Barring an up-to-date backup, little can be done aside from paying the attackers to provide the decryption keys.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

With few options, companies increasingly yield to ransomware demands

Faced with few options, companies are increasingly giving in to cybercriminals who hold their data hostage and demand payment for its return, while law enforcement officials struggle to catch the nearly invisible perpetrators.The risks to organizations have become so severe that many simply pay their attackers to make them go away -- a strategy that may only embolden the crooks.It's a case of asymmetric electronic warfare. Ransomware, which encrypts files until a victim pays to have them unlocked, can be devastating to an organization. Barring an up-to-date backup, little can be done aside from paying the attackers to provide the decryption keys.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Box goes international with AWS and IBM-powered Zones feature

Box is trying to make it easier for companies outside the U.S. to comply with regulatory requirements on where their data is stored with a new feature that lets them pick a variety of new countries in which they can house their data.Starting next month, companies will be able to pay for a new Box Zones feature that will let them store data in Germany, Ireland, Japan and Singapore, while using Box's content and management services as though they had kept that information in the company's U.S. datacenters.That's important for companies that have to meet data sovereignty requirements in order to comply with their country's laws. Depending on the specific requirement, they may be prevented from storing some or all of their data in another country, which would until now have precluded them from working with Box.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Enterprise Sticking With Private Cloud

This slide was posted on Twitter this morning rom Sam Charrington:   This matches with what I hear and see in the market. Most enterprises will build private clouds They have so much data in their existing DCs that migrating is impossible/impractical That OpenStack (not VMware SDDC) is the preferred platform Some key market points that I […]

The post Enterprise Sticking With Private Cloud appeared first on EtherealMind.

Host-to-Network Multihoming Kludges

Continuing our routing-on-hosts discussions, Enno Rey (of the Troopers and IPv6 security fame) made another interesting remark “years ago we were so happy when we finally got rid of gated on Solaris” and I countered with “there are still people who fondly remember the days of running gated on Solaris” because it’s a nice solution to host-to-network multihoming problem.

Quoting RFC1925, “It’s easier to move a problem around than to solve it” and people have been extremely good at moving this particular problem around for decades.

Read more ...

IDG Contributor Network: Datera emerges from stealth to offer another take on cloud scale-out storage

Stealthy startup Datera is launching today with its promise to bring an Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud-type of offering to large enterprises and service providers.If that sounds like an offering you might have heard before, it's probably because for the past six to eight years, a number of vendors, seeing the traction that AWS has gained, have jumped on the bandwagon and offered a value proposition in the same area. There have been broad cloud operating system offerings, including OpenStack, CloudStack and Eucalyptus, more specialist storage platforms such as Ceph, Gluster, SimpliVity and Nutanix and hyperconverged offerings form the likes of VMware, Dell and Hewlett Packard. It's a busy space and one that is hanging off incredible growth in awareness and adoption of cloud offerings.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco Live 2016 – Everything Is Coming Together

It seems that Cisco Live is about the only thing I blog about in the last…well, few years.  At least I’m still writing, even if it is twice a year.  :)

Here’s a summary about Cisco Live for those who live in a dark hole.  It’s July 10 – 14, 2016, in Las Vegas.  If you do anything with Cisco, you should go.  If you do anything with technology that isn’t Cisco, you should go.  Bring your significant other.  There’s plenty to do for everyone.  Anyway, on to the details for this year’s show.

The Mandalay Bay’s South Convention Center will be our campgroun this year.  This is the same place from back in 2011, but with quite a few updates to the layout.  I can’t remember the numbers from the last time, but I imagine that number will be close to double this year.  I have all confidence that the convention center can handle us, though.  They did such a wonderful job last time.  I hope the food is as good as I remember; it’s been pretty poor going the last few years in Orlando, San Continue reading

My Current IWAN Analogies

I use analogies. Just how my brain works…. and how I sometimes learn and teach.  Token-ring source-route bridging analogy was “breadcrumbs thru the network”. Analogy for DLSw+ was a boat getting the breadcrumbs over water between 2 islands.

I think I like analogies cause…. to be superbly honest… when I came to work at Cisco back in 1996 I only knew SNA.  I did NOT know IP.  I was quickly immersed into learning IP. But I mean seriously… using acronyms to explain other acronyms you don’t understand? Don’t get me started!

Ready to play? Yea yea… my brain jumps around with varying analogies. If one doesn’t hit ya maybe the next will.  :)  Happy nerding!

 

Waze on Steroids

wazeImagine you own a rental car agency with 2 locations across town from each other. Your employees are constantly driving the cars back and forth between the two locations to balance out inventory.

If the employees hit issues during the drive (potholes, glass, mud, sand, dirt, major traffic, construction) this is going to cost your company.

So you can see how knowing what is going on via the varying paths between your locations is critical to your Continue reading

Microsoft’s ‘blue screen of death’ is getting more descriptive with QR codes

The Windows Blue Screen of Death isn't known for being particularly descriptive, but Microsoft may be looking to change that in a future version of Windows 10.  A Reddit user posted a picture last week that shows a new version of the dreaded blue screen, one with a QR code and a link where users can get more information about the error that caused their computer to crash.  Right now, the code and the link take users to a webpage that discusses generic fixes for errors that might cause a crash. In the future, though, Microsoft could provide a QR code that leads to more specific information about what caused the computer freeze up.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft endorses EU-US Privacy Shield data sharing pact

Microsoft is throwing its weight behind the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield agreement, which is intended to safeguard the privacy of European Union citizens when their personal information is exported to the U.S. for processing.But a document leaked late last week suggests the proposed agreement does not have the backing of EU data protection authorities, who are meeting this week to finalize their position on it.Microsoft will seek approval to conduct data transfers under the agreement, its Vice President for EU Government Affairs, John Frank, wrote in a blog post Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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