IDG Contributor Network: 5 myths about data encryption

It's a heartache, nothing but a heartache. Hits you when it's too late, hits you when you're down. It's a fools' game, nothing but a fool's game. Standing in the cold rain, feeling like a clown.When singer Bonnie Tyler recorded in her distinctive raspy voice "It's A Heartache" in 1978, you'd think she was an oracle of sorts, predicting the rocky road that encryption would have to travel.Just a year earlier in 1977 the Encryption Standard (DES) became the federal standard for block symmetric encryption (FIPS 46). But, oh, what a disappointment encryption DES would become. In less than 20 years since its inception, DES would be declared DOA (dead on arrival), impenetrable NOT.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Are your biggest security threats on the inside?

The now infamous Ashley Madison website has had a pretty successful run at helping its clientele be disloyal. So perhaps some would view it as poetic justice if the website became one of the most scandalous breaches in history at the hands of one of its own. At least that is the conclusion of IT security analyst John McAfee, who noted recently “yes, it is true. Ashley Madison was not hacked – the data was stolen by a woman operating on her own who worked for Avid Life Media.” If true, the fact that the Ashley Madison breach was due to an internal, and not external, threat shouldn’t come as too big a surprise. Many IT security studies this year have pointed to the growing threat of insider data theft and corporate breaches. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook goes down and Twitter lights up

Facebook crashed for at least 10 minutes today and then struggled to fully come back online.When users tried to open or refresh their Facebook pages a little after 12:30 p.m. ET today, they were greeted not with their news feed but with a largely blank screen that simply said, "Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can."The site began to come back online around 12:50 p.m., though some users reported still having trouble loading the site until about 1 p.m.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers Facebook did not return a request for information on what caused the problem.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: IoT security will soon be common in the enterprise, Gartner says

A fifth of all businesses will have deployed IoT-related security by the end of 2017, analyst Gartner thinks.Dedicated digital security services that are committed to "protecting business initiatives using devices and services in the Internet of Things" will be in place by then, the research and advisory company says.Gartner made the statement in a press release on its website in relation to a security and risk management summit earlier this month in Mumbai.'Reshape IT' "The IoT redefines security," Ganesh Ramamoorthy, research vice president at Gartner, said in the press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Docker containers vs. OpenStack clouds

Matt Asay has a smart piece over on InfoWorld about some ongoing struggles with OpenStack, as evidenced by Red Hat’s most recent earnings call.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: What broke Amazon's cloud +It begs the question: Are containers to blame?Here’s Asay: As big as the community behind OpenStack has been, [Red Hat CEO Jim] Whitehurst declared Docker the “single biggest topic that comes up among ... [Red Hat’s] leading [customers].” In fact, Whitehurst noted that he hears more from customers about Docker than OpenStack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

ZingBox: Startup brings Cisco, Stanford pedigree to IoT security

ZingBox, an Internet of Things security startup whose founders have ties to Cisco and Stanford University, is working on software that guards IoT devices from threats on the Internet. May Wang The year-old company’s focus is upgrading routers and gateways with intelligence to detect when IoT devices are behaving abnormally, indicating that they might be compromised, says May Wang, CTO of the company and a co-founder who spent 14 years at Cisco in its office of the CTO where she was a principal architect.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Real Jobs for Real Robots

Real Jobs for Real RobotsImage by REUTERS/Issei KatoIt’s quite possible someday soon that robots may deliver food to your table in a restaurant or gather up your laundry and bring it to the laundry room – that is if some of the machines featured in this slideshow make it out of the research labs and into the real world. Here we take a look at 18 robots that are already functioning in a variety of real life jobs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The 25 most powerful enterprise networking companies

The bosses are here It’s the 25 companies that have the biggest effects on how U.S.-based enterprise networks operate. They’re a diverse bunch – some make switches, others chips. Some are big carriers, others are big fish in little ponds. And plenty aren’t, technically speaking, networking companies at all. Nevertheless, these are our picks for the biggest influencers on the network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New malware program infects ATMs, dispenses cash on command

Security researchers have discovered a new malware program that infects automated teller machines (ATMs) and allows attackers to extract cash on command.The program is dubbed GreenDispenser and was detected in Mexico. However, it's only a matter of time until similar attacks are adopted by cybercriminals in other countries, researchers from security firm Proofpoint said in a blog post.GreenDispenser is not the first malware program to target ATMs. In October 2013, security researchers from Symantec warned about a backdoor called Ploutus that could infect ATMs when a new boot disk is inserted into their CD-ROM drives.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dell expands campus, data center switches

Dell this week expanded its campus and data center switching lineup with products designed simplify topologies and support new data rates.In the campus, Dell unveiled the C9010 Network Director switch and the C1048P Rapid Access Node. These new switches are intended to flatten network topologies into two tiers but with logical connectivity to make those two tiers appear as one.+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Dell celebrates disaggregation’s first anniversary+The switches are based on Broadcom’s Trident II silicon, which incorporates a tagging mechanism for node-to-director connectivity and virtual grouping into a single management and administrative domain. Dell says this provides a single management view from access to core, and a single point of control for quality of service, policy provisioning, software upgrades, and programming software-defined attributes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Breach Presumption

The hipster view of data loss seems to be a shrug of the shoulders these days. As a society, we give up financial data to people that steal it so often that we barely care. We shrug our shoulders, sigh at the inconvenience, set up a new account or two, and move on. Yes, sometimes the damage is more serious than unauthorized charges on our Visa cards, but that’s rare enough to avoid societal outrage. Rather, we’ve simply gotten used to the breaches. via ethan banks

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Geek Speak Round Up – Network Management

Thwack Community

I mentioned a few months ago that I had been asked to write some thought-provoking blogs on the subject of network management for the Solarwinds Thwack Community “Geek Speak” area. I’ve now finished my six posts, and while they won’t be reproduced on movingpackets.net, I’m linking to them here as I think they touch on some subjects close to my Software Defined Heart.

Click da pic to read the article.

1. Do You Monitor Your Network Interfaces?

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2. The Perils of High Speed Logging

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3. Could SNMP Please Just Die Already?

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4. Keeping Your Secrets Secret

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5. DHCP As A Configuration Tool

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6. Network Management Isn’t Enough Any More

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I hope you find something to think about or react to there. I’ve tried to blend some hyperbole with a tablespoon of annoyance and a light dash of technical reality. If you have any specific comments on any of these posts, the right thing to do would be to login to Thwack and comment there, but I’ll take any feedback you want to give, wherever it is.

 

 

Disclosures

I am participating in the Solarwinds Thwack Ambassador program on a paid basis for July-September 2015. My posts Continue reading

Ransomware pushers up their game against small businesses

After extorting millions from consumers over the past few years, file-encrypting ransomware creators are increasingly focusing their attention on victims who are more likely to pay up: small and medium-sized businesses.Throughout June and July, over 67 percent of users who clicked on malicious links in CryptoWall-related emails were from the SMB sector, researchers from antivirus vendor Trend Micro found. An additional 17 percent were from within large enterprises.CryptoWall is one of the most widespread ransomware programs, infecting nearly 625,000 systems between March and August 2014 and many more since then. Researchers estimate that it has earned well over $1 million for its creators.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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