Efficiency vs Effectiveness

I’ve been wondering about how we’re approaching networking change. We know we need to make things better. Are we changing the ‘right’ things? I’ve got a feeling that we’re not, but I suspect that we’re too constrained by higher-order systems.

Simon Wardley wrote a great post on Efficiency vs Effectiveness. He gave a slightly contrived example of an organisation that is optimising the wrong thing. They plan on using robotics to automate server modifications to fit their custom racks. The problem is that they miss the point altogether. Yes, they’re optimising their flow. But they should ask: Is this the right flow?

Cheques: Apparently people still use them?

Recently I came across the “Wells Fargo Mobile Deposit” application. It sounds good – a faster way to deposit cheques(checks):

Mobile Deposit is secure, easy to use, and convenient.

  • Deposit checks directly into your eligible account using your Android or Apple® mobile device or your Windows Phone.
  • Take photos of the front and back of your check and submit. It’s that easy.
  • Get confirmation on your device and by email for each successful deposit.
  • Save time with fewer trips to an ATM or store.

Except…did anyone tell them that cheques Continue reading

San Bernardino prosecutor raises concerns about ‘cyber pathogen’ in terrorist’s iPhone

The district attorney of San Bernardino County, Michael Ramos, has raised concerns about the possibility of a 'dormant cyber pathogen’ in the iPhone 5c used by a terrorist in attacks in the county on Dec. 2.Security experts are questioning whether such a thing as a cyber pathogen at all exists.The submission was made in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Eastern Division, which recently ordered Apple to help the FBI unlock by brute force the iPhone used by terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook. Apple has refused to help the FBI and raised privacy and security issues.The iPhone, owned by the San Bernardino county, may have connected to the county computer network, and “may contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that it was used as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino County’s infrastructure," according to the court filing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amazon disabled encryption on its tablets and phones because nobody used it

Amazon caught flack on Wednesday for disabling the encryption capabilities of its Fire phones and tablets with a software update. The company says its reasoning was simple: people didn't use it."In the fall when we released Fire OS 5, we removed some enterprise features that we found customers weren’t using," Amazon spokeswoman Robin Handaly wrote in an email.Those "enterprise features" included one that allowed users to encrypt their entire device with a PIN that would erase all their data if not entered correctly 30 times in a row. The issue surfaced recently because Amazon just allowed older tablets -- the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 and the Fire HD 6/7 -- to upgrade from Fire OS 4, the previous version of the company's Android fork. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US Marshals warn of ongoing nationwide telephone scam

Criminals continue to work the phones in nefarious ways – this time they are claiming to be US Marshals threatening arrest and fines for failing to report for jury duty.The US Marshals warned of the scam and said the fraudsters try to appear more credible, offering information like badge numbers and the names of actual federal judges and courthouse addresses.Victims have been told they can avoid arrest by paying a fine using a reloadable credit card, and were urged to call a number and provide their own credit card number to initiate the process, the law enforcement agency stated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Entropy, vacuums, and visibility…

In the vacuum of two network engineers arguing, there are non-existent ideal situations where networks are built, grow or shrink congruently, and never have bugs.  In perpetuity.  Forever and ever.  Amen. The Forces of Evil From the moment we conceive of a network and through the end of its life, there are numerous competing forces […]

The post Entropy, vacuums, and visibility… appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Entropy, vacuums, and visibility…

In the vacuum of two network engineers arguing, there are non-existent ideal situations where networks are built, grow or shrink congruently, and never have bugs.  In perpetuity.  Forever and ever.  Amen. The Forces of Evil From the moment we conceive of a network and through the end of it’s life, there are numerous competing forces […]

The post Entropy, vacuums, and visibility… appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Feds find $2.8B in data center consolidation savings – watchdog says could do better

The massive federal data center consolidation effort has seen $2.8 billion in cost savings and a shuttering or merging of some 3,125 sites but issues remain, according to a report from the watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office.According to the GAO, the 24 agencies participating in the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative have collectively made progress on their data center closures efforts. As of November 2015, agencies identified a total of 10,584 data centers, of which they reported closing 3,125 through fiscal year 2015.+More on Network World: In the face of relenting network attacks and it seems that the government’s chief weapon for combatting the assault lacks some teeth+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Feds find $2.8B in data center consolidation savings – watchdog says could do better

The massive federal data center consolidation effort has seen $2.8 billion in cost savings and a shuttering or merging of some 3,125 sites but issues remain, according to a report from the watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office.According to the GAO, the 24 agencies participating in the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative have collectively made progress on their data center closures efforts. As of November 2015, agencies identified a total of 10,584 data centers, of which they reported closing 3,125 through fiscal year 2015.+More on Network World: In the face of relenting network attacks and it seems that the government’s chief weapon for combatting the assault lacks some teeth+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hacking back will only get you in more trouble

The online theft of U.S. intellectual property (IP) by other nation states continues to be a big problem, a panel of experts agreed this week at the RSA conference in a session titled, “Responses to state-sponsored economic espionage.” That much is obvious – awareness of economic cyber espionage has reached the mainstream, with CBS-TV’s newsmagazine “60 Minutes” even doing a segment on it last month, labeling it, “the great brain robbery of America.” What to do about it is also a big problem. The panel agreed that the most tempting and instinctive response of “active defense” – more commonly known as “hacking back” – is not a good one.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware CEO Gelsinger talks exec changes, Dell deal and his big security focus

At this week’s RSA Conference, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger is positioning the company’s NSX network virtualization product as a tool for encrypting data in flight and at rest, in the public cloud or on premises.It’s an attempt to showcase NSX – one of the two major network virtualization platforms on the market along with Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) – as not just enabling software-defined networking (SDN), but being a serious security tool as well.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Why Martin Casado is leaving VMware | VIDEO: What you didn’t know about private cloud +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Putting to rest 3 persistent SDN myths

Although vendor-written, this contributed piece does not promote a product or service and has been edited and approved by Network World editors.What if your network was more than just a collection of hardware and cables strung together over the years to solve specific problems?  What if your network was agile enough to empower your business today and offer deep insight into the flow of information throughout your data center? What if this network could adapt to your changing business needs at the drop of a dime and help ensure no opportunity slips through the cracks?Sounds like a dream, but in fact its very much possible today.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Putting to rest 3 persistent SDN myths

Although vendor-written, this contributed piece does not promote a product or service and has been edited and approved by Network World editors.

What if your network was more than just a collection of hardware and cables strung together over the years to solve specific problems?  What if your network was agile enough to empower your business today and offer deep insight into the flow of information throughout your data center? What if this network could adapt to your changing business needs at the drop of a dime and help ensure no opportunity slips through the cracks?

Sounds like a dream, but in fact its very much possible today.

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

Worth Reading: Why Disaggregation?

White box networking and servers, Virtualization and cloud based computing. All of these are related to a single trend in the computer networking world: disaggregation, or rather the splitting of hardware from software. The buzz around this new trend is obvious once you connect all the pieces together, but the drivers behind the disaggregation movement might not be. Why disaggregate, and why now?

This is my first post over at LighTALK, the official blog of ECI.

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