U.S. patent numbers decline; IBM retains top spot in IFI ranking

The number of U.S. patents granted declined for the first time since 2007, ending a seven-year run of increases.According to IFI Claims Patent Services, there were 298,407 utility patents granted during the 2015 calendar year. That represents a decrease of almost 1% compared to 2014, when patent grants hit 300,674 and surpassed the 300,000 threshold for the first time. IFI, which specializes in patent analysis, tracks utility patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and each year it releases its annual ranking of the top 50 recipients.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

6 Ways IT Pros Can Generate Revenue

Generating revenue is a surefire way to increase the value and influence of your IT work in your organization. Here's 6 tips to help get you started.

The post 6 Ways IT Pros Can Generate Revenue appeared first on Packet Pushers.

6 Ways IT Pros Can Generate Revenue

Generating revenue is a surefire way to increase the value and influence of your IT work in your organization. Here's 6 tips to help get you started.

The post 6 Ways IT Pros Can Generate Revenue appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Microsoft fixes critical flaws in Windows, Office, Edge, IE and other products

Microsoft has released the first batch of security updates for 2016 and they include critical fixes for remote code execution flaws in Windows, Office, Edge, Internet Explorer, Silverlight and Visual Basic.The company has also fixed remote code execution and elevation of privilege vulnerabilities in Windows and an address spoofing flaw in Exchange Server, that were rated important, not critical, due to various mitigating factors.In total, Microsoft issued 9 security bulletins covering patches for 24 vulnerabilities.According to Wolfgang Kandek, the CTO of security firm Qualys, administrators should prioritize the MS16-005 security bulletin, especially for systems running Windows Vista, 7 and Server 2008.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GIT Bootcamp: Getting things started with GIT

What is GIT?

GIT is a distributed VCS (Version Control System). In a few words, this means that is a system that allows you to keep track of changes made to a file. The files are stored on a server and each contributor has a local copy of them. Most of the times it’s used when dealing with software development environments, because there is usually a team that works on the same set of files. If it weren’t for GIT (or any other similar tool) everyone would probably overwrite changes that everyone else did to the code and madness would break loose. Still, if you’re not a code developer, you can use GIT to help you keep track of your own files, changes, etc. and keep your head clean!

First time I ran into GIT I had absolutely no idea what it was. For some time, until I had the time to ding into it, I had a note with commands and “what does it do” for each command. This is a “don’t do it like this”-like story. Most definitely, it’s a mistake to take this path because you’ll get to the point where you’ll screw things up so badly Continue reading

SDN pioneers gain visibility, control over bandwidth

Public school teachers in Enfield, Conn., are active grant-getters. But while the technologies they bring into the classroom from those grants, such as lab carts with Apple iPads, are beneficial to students, they can also wreak havoc on network resources.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

15 big data and analytics companies to watch

Making sense of dataJust as practically every startup these days claims to be a cloud company or an IoT company, they’re all big data and analytics firms, too. Well, not really, but they at least toss the hot terms into their company descriptions. We’ve tried to pull out the real big data and analytics companies to highlight them here, listed alphabetically. Most focus on helping companies make sense of their oodles of data, sometimes for customer service, sometimes for IT purposes and sometimes for security reasons. And not all of them are brand new firms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Flexible, secure SSH with DNSSEC

If you read this blog on a regular basis, you probably use the little tool called SSH, especially its ubiquitous and most popular implementation OpenSSH.

Maybe you’re savvy enough to only use it with public/private keys, and therefore protect yourself from dictionary attacks. If you do then you know that in order to configure access to a new host, you need to make a copy of a public key available to that host (usually by writing it to its disk). Managing keys can be painful if you have many hosts, especially when you need to renew one of the keys. What if DNSSEC could help?

CC BY 2.0 image by William Neuheisel

With version 6.2 of OpenSSH came a feature that allows the remote host to retrieve a public key in a customised way, instead of the typical authorized_keys file in the ~/.ssh/ directory. For example, you can gather the keys of a group of users that require access to a number of machines on a single server (for example, an LDAP server), and have all the hosts query that server when they need the public key of the user attempting to log in. This saves Continue reading

CCDE – MPLS-TE Auto Tunnels

This post will briefly discuss the challenges of manually setting up MPLS-TE tunnels and how Auto Tunnels can lessen the burden of MPLS-TE tunnels.

One of the main challenges with traffic engineering and MPLS-TE is the number of tunnels that will be needed. To setup tunnels between all PE’s may not be a scalable solution. For a provider with 200 PE’s, 199 tunnels would have to be configured on each PE and that is if only one traffic class is used. This would mean that 39800 tunnels would be present in the network. If you then want to add a tunnel for voice at each PE you end up with 398 tunnels per PE and a total of 79600 tunnels.

Another option is to enable tunnels only on the P routers. If the number of P routers are 20, then each P router would need 19 tunnels and we would have 380 tunnels in total or 760 if adding an extra tunnel for voice. This is a much more reasonable number. It would require to enable LDP over the tunnels if MPLS L3VPNs are in use to have an end to end LSP. With the P to P tunnels we Continue reading

The Problem With SDN

Doing right in the VAR role!

This post is my follow-up on a recent discussion on twitter.

Working for a VAR (Value Added Reseller) is not always the glamours life some make it out to be.

Working as a consultant, what you are really doing, is being the CEO of your own service company.
What you are selling, is basically your own services. The fact that your paycheck is being signed by someone else doesnt/shouldnt really matter.

The customer is building a relationship with you, as much as the company you are working for.
On top of that, you are continually building rapor in the networking world, so in my opinion, I would rather leave the customer with a good solution, rather than having to stick with the insane budgets that sales people end up shaving a project down to, just to get the contract.

So what can you do to create the outcome that is beneficial for all parties concerned (The customer, Your employer and yourself)?

Well, what I have tried in the past, is try and emphasize the importance of leaving the customer with the right solution based on his/her requirements and constraints. This discussion should involve both the technical side of things, as Continue reading

ADVA Acquires Overture Networks for Carrier Ethernet NFV

Carrier Ethernet gets some SDN/NFV love.

Upcoming Events: Troopers 2016

Last autumn’s SDN roadtrip left me totally exhausted – at the moment it’s so bad that I can’t push myself to work on non-urgent things – but there are some conferences are that so awesome that I wouldn’t skip them no matter what.

Troopers 16 (March 14th – 18th in Heidelberg, Germany) is a must-go-to security conference. Past events were fantastic, and when Enno Rey asked me what I’d like to talk about this year it wasn’t hard to come up with three interesting topics:

Fortinet’s 2014 Security Hole Gets Rediscovered

On the heels of Juniper's firewall incident, programmers spot a hole in FortiOS.

EFF says Cisco shouldn’t get off the hook for torture in China

Cisco Systems built a security system for the Chinese government knowing it would be used to track and persecute members of the Falun Gong religious minority, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation technology rights group.Falun Gong practitioners alleged the same thing in a lawsuit that a federal judge in Northern California dismissed in 2014. That case is being appealed, and on Monday the EFF, Privacy International and free-speech group Article 19 filed a brief that supports the appeal.The case highlights the risks technology companies take by selling software and hardware to customers around the world. Some of those customers may use the technology in ways that raise objections in other countries, creating legal problems or just tarnishing a vendor's reputation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EFF says Cisco shouldn’t get off the hook for torture in China

Cisco Systems built a security system for the Chinese government knowing it would be used to track and persecute members of the Falun Gong religious minority, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation technology rights group.Falun Gong practitioners alleged the same thing in a lawsuit that a federal judge in Northern California dismissed in 2014. That case is being appealed, and on Monday the EFF, Privacy International and free-speech group Article 19 filed a brief that supports the appeal.The case highlights the risks technology companies take by selling software and hardware to customers around the world. Some of those customers may use the technology in ways that raise objections in other countries, creating legal problems or just tarnishing a vendor's reputation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Android malware steals one-time passcodes

One-time passcodes, a crucial defense for online banking applications, are being intercepted by a malware program for Android, according to new research from Symantec.The malware, called Android.Bankosy, has been updated to intercept the codes, which are part of so-called two-factor authentication systems.Many online banking applications require a login and password plus a time-sensitive code in order to gain access. The one-time passcode is sent over SMS but also can be delivered via an automated phone call.Some banks have moved to call-based delivery of passcodes. In theory, that provides better security since SMS messages can be intercepted by some malware, wrote Dinesh Venkatesan of Symantec in a blog post on Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Robotic falconry to foil unwanted drones

Described as “Robotic Falconry”, a new way to deal with drones that need to be removed from the air has been demonstrated by Michigan Tech. What’s so neat about this solution to controlling unwanted drones in your airspace is that the system, which uses a net that is fired at the target drone from another drone, snags the intruder and then hauls it away to a secure area so that any payload (for example, drugs or explosives)  can be dealt with. Here's the system in testing:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

PQ Show 70 – The HPE-Aruba Networks Merger – How Is That Going To Work?

HPE and Aruba Networks are merging their businesses. What does this mean for customers?

The post PQ Show 70 – The HPE-Aruba Networks Merger – How Is That Going To Work? appeared first on Packet Pushers.

PQ Show 70 – The HPE-Aruba Networks Merger – How Is That Going To Work?

HPE and Aruba Networks are merging their businesses. What does this mean for customers?

The post PQ Show 70 – The HPE-Aruba Networks Merger – How Is That Going To Work? appeared first on Packet Pushers.