NextNine’s security platform helps to reduce industrial cyber risks

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  In October 2012, then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta gave a speech in which he warned that the United States was facing the possibility of a “cyber Pearl Harbor” and was increasingly vulnerable to foreign computer hackers who could dismantle the nation’s power grid, transportation system, financial networks and government. According to Panetta, the nation's adversaries have been acquiring technologies that could allow an aggressor nation or extremist group to gain control of critical infrastructure. “They could derail passenger trains, or even more dangerous, derail passenger trains loaded with lethal chemicals. They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware narrowing SDN gap with Cisco

VMware is closing the SDN gap with Cisco ever so slightly. Last fall saw Cisco with a 2:1 edge in customer adoption but the most recent numbers fall just a hair below 2:1.Even though Cisco’s second fiscal 2016 quarter saw switching revenue decline 4% and data center revenue dip 3% due to a pause in customer spending, the company actually gained Nexus 9000 and ACI customers in the quarter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Big Data as a Service delivers the analytics benefits without the grunt work

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.

As organizations work to make big data broadly available in the form of easily consumable analytics, they should consider outsourcing functions to the cloud. By opting for a Big Data as a Service solution that handles the resource-intensive and time-intensive operational aspects of big data technologies such as Hadoop, Spark, Hive and more, enterprises can focus on the benefits of big data and less on the grunt work.

The advent of big data raises fundamental questions about how organizations can embrace its potential, bring its value to greater parts of the organization and incorporate that data with pre-existing enterprise data stores, such as enterprise data warehouses (EDWs) and data marts.

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Einstein was right: Gravitational waves exist!

A ripple in the space-time continuumIn one of the great astronomical discoveries scientists today said they made direct observation of gravitational waves -- ripples in space-time foretold by Albert Einstein 100 years ago. Physicists said the detected gravitational waves were produced during the final fraction of a second of the merger of two black holes – that were about 29 and 36 times the mass of the sun, to produce a single, more massive spinning black hole. This collision which happened about 1.3 billion years ago, had been predicted but never observed, according to the National Science Foundation. The gravitational waves were detected on Sept. 14, 2015 at 5:51 a.m. EDT by both of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, located in Livingston, La., and Hanford, Wash.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A glance into host routes: Tenant networking & routing using Neutron (Openstack)


Software Defined Networks (SDN) and solutions have been making a lot of noise for a few years now. Rather slowly the networking industry has begun to notice this and affect change. Not only this but SDN has also become a pioneer - a big brother - a guide persona to other complementary technologies. We now have Software Defined - Storage, Data Center, Infrastructure and so on. It's Software Defined "everything" and Software Defined "anything". Software is slowly invading the big hardware only players and the sole reason being ease of customization and lower both; capex and opex. Networking in particular is very volatile and extremely configurable.

The neutron project of openstack is also fairly customizable bringing complexity with it. I recently ran into a requirement of having isolated networks talk to each other as well as some specific networks though isolated having access to the outside world (be it outside the cloud or the company WAN). This is what's giving rise to this particular blog post. I will lay out the premise of the discussion and then explain the solution. For networking experts out there, this might seem fairly obvious. I would suggest you stop right here and jump over Continue reading

With new startup, Check Point Software co-founder bets on perimeter-less security

The launch of cloud security startup Cato Networks by cybersecurity expert Shlomo Kramer reminded me of the episode of USA's Mr. Robot when Elliot Alderson explains why he chose his healthcare provider – limited security budget and limited security staff let him break through the perimeter defenses and change his medical records to cover up his lifestyle. In the real world, though, cyber threats are scaling faster than enterprises can respond. Like Elliot, Kramer is counting on enterprises with limited security staff and budgets turning to his new venture for end-to-end, perimeter-less security.According to a report by Reuters, Cato Networks is different because it asks customers to move all their traffic to its encrypted network. In other words, Cato is the opposite of Check Point Software Technologies, the company Kramer co-founded in 1998 that invented a perimeter defense used by almost all enterprises. The mobile internet has changed how the enterprise works. Large numbers of employees operate outside of the traditional security perimeter, necessitating a new way of looking at cyber defenses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Puppet and Powershell DSC

TL;DR: Your servers are no longer servers, they’re now just containers for functionality. Powershell DSC represented a huge step forward for configuration management on Windows, and Puppet’s DSC module compounds that step for both configuration management on Windows and the usefulness of Puppet.  This Puppet module means that you can now effectively control both Windows […]

The post Puppet and Powershell DSC appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Puppet and Powershell DSC

TL;DR: Your servers are no longer servers, they’re now just containers for functionality. Powershell DSC represented a huge step forward for configuration management on Windows, and Puppet’s DSC module compounds that step for both configuration management on Windows and the usefulness of Puppet.  This Puppet module means that you can now effectively control both Windows […]

The post Puppet and Powershell DSC appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Worth Reading: Net Ring Buffers

The problem with things like netmap is that it means the network hardware no longer is a shareable resource, but instead must be reserved for a single application. This violates many principles of a “general purpose operating system”. In addition, it ultimately means that the application is going to have to implement it’s own TCP/IP stack. That means it’s going to repeat all the same mistakes of the past, such as “ping of death” when a packet reassembles to more then 65536 bytes. This introduces a security problem. But these criticisms are nonsense. -via errata security

The post Worth Reading: Net Ring Buffers appeared first on 'net work.

Bringing Fast, Reliable and Secure Wi-Fi to the MDU

By: Wendy Stanton, Marketing Communications Manager In the multi-dwelling housing market, amenities are king! This message is consistent across the board within condos, student housing and assisted living management organizations where everyone understands that potential tenants want one thing: amenities....

Schneier: terrorists will switch to more secure alternatives to avoid encryption backdoors

A study shows that if the U.S. mandates backdoors to decrypt secret messages in order to help law enforcement, there would still be hundreds of alternative encryption products made outside the reach of U.S. law that terrorists and criminals could get their hands on. “Smart criminals and terrorists will easily be able to switch to more secure alternatives,” is the conclusion drawn by the study “A Worldwide Survey of Encryption Products”. The authors were Internet security authority Bruce Schneier of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, independent security researcher Kathleen Seidel, and Saranya Vijayakumar, a Harvard student.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Stock-market jitters have rocked network spending, Cisco says

The world's financial markets got off to such a rough start this year that some enterprises froze plans to upgrade their campus networks.After oil prices and stock markets around the globe plunged during the first trading days of the year, there was a slowdown in spending that hurt Cisco Systems results and colored its forecast for the current quarter, CEO Chuck Robbins said Wednesday."You see customers say, 'I want to just wait, see what's going on,'" Robbins said on a conference call about Cisco's fiscal second quarter, which ended Jan. 23.The report was a reminder that what happens in financial markets can echo in IT departments if business management fears shrinking sales or a falling stock price ahead. Cisco has a different financial calendar than most other IT companies and is one of the first to report on a quarter that spilled over into this calendar year. It's the world's dominant supplier of networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Which security products do enterprises expect too much from?

Enterprises rely on some security products too much while counting on others too little. One product category that companies place too much faith in is encryption, which has vulnerabilities. The OpenSSL web encryption technology’s infamous Heartbleed vulnerability is one example.Enterprises should assess their information security stance in light of the vulnerabilities that have actually given attackers a foothold and lead to costly breaches, whether for their organization or for their peers. Where an off-kilter reliance on some security products is the crack in these defenses, look at a more effective combination of tools. Don’t ignore tools that are effective yet limit some usability. Security products that enable a lot of usability while masking danger are among those that we do and will continue to count on too much.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to conquer the SQL Server 2005 migration challenge

If you still have SQL Server 2005 anywhere in your firm, you now have four months to get a migration program going before Microsoft pulls the plug on support for the aging database. April 12 will be the last day any patches or fixes will be issued. The product will still work, it just won't be fixed if a new flaw or exploit is found. As we discussed when we outlined the challenges of migration, it's believed most enterprises have long since moved off the old database in favor of something newer, either on-premises or possible in the cloud. At best, SQL Server 2005 has been relegated to simple report generation on noncritical data. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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