The Ansible Basics: Why Automation Matters Today in IT

IT-AutomationYour development team has completed weeks of work, delivering their masterpiece-an application-to IT for  deployment, but it doesn’t work.

See, the developers made use of a different port, that now needs to be opened on the firewall so end users can communicate with the software. IT changed the firewall rule, but didn’t tell development, so they never even knew it was an issue. Later, they create another application with the same issue, except this time, it will be deployed in a different environment.

No procedure or policy was created to capture all of the changes necessary to successfully deploy the app, so the same thing happens again. It’s a vicious cycle.

IT departments struggle to manage thousands of configurations and hundreds of applications with everyone working in silos. Teams  who develop the apps frequently are  not on the teams that use them.  Meanwhile, operations teams deploy apps they didn’t write and have to convey to the development team when changes need to be made in order for them to work in this new and foreign-to-development thing called "a production environment".

Sound familiar?

Today’s IT environments are extremely complex. In the past, applications and hardware were closely connected. Apps came from Continue reading

First software update for Apple Watch includes security fixes

You might not be used to the idea of a watch endangering your digital life, but you should: Apple’s first update for Watch OS includes 14 security patches, and they’re not trivial.Watch OS 1.0.1, released Tuesday, brings several performance improvements and support for additional languages, but it also fixes 13 vulnerabilities that could enable arbitrary code execution, information disclosure, denial of service, traffic hijacking, privilege escalation and other attacks, and also updates the list of root CA certificates trusted by default on the device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Wednesday, May 20

U.S. charges six from China with stealing wireless technologyThree men who studied at the University of California and then went on to work at U.S. tech companies are among six Chinese citizens charged with economic espionage by the Department of Justice on Tuesday. The technology that the men allegedly stole from companies that employed two of them, Avago Technologies and Skyworks Solutions, is used in wireless devices to filter out unwanted signals and has both commercial and military applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Verizon (probably) dominates U.S. wireless service providers

The numbers filed with the SEC seem pretty inarguable. Verizon dominates the U.S. wireless carrier industry, both in terms of total subscribers and in a key metric called ARPU, or average revenue per user. AT&T is maintaining its position in second place, Sprint is headed south in a hurry, and T-Mobile is making some un-profits in its new role as the un-carrier, but showing signs of a recovery. But the picture of a leader, a runner-up and two also-rans is more complicated than it seems. A saturated market with fewer new customers to compete for means that the big four’s relative positions in terms of size are increasingly stratified. + ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Verizon's acquisition of AOL is a move to disrupt the TV market | Apple, Google urge Obama to reject encryption back doors +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Verizon (probably) dominates U.S. wireless service providers

The numbers filed with the SEC seem pretty inarguable. Verizon dominates the U.S. wireless carrier industry, both in terms of total subscribers and in a key metric called ARPU, or average revenue per user. AT&T is maintaining its position in second place, Sprint is headed south in a hurry, and T-Mobile is making some un-profits in its new role as the un-carrier, but showing signs of a recovery.But the picture of a leader, a runner-up and two also-rans is more complicated than it seems. A saturated market with fewer new customers to compete for means that the big four’s relative positions in terms of size are increasingly stratified.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Verizon's acquisition of AOL is a move to disrupt the TV market | Apple, Google urge Obama to reject encryption back doors +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NFV Terminology and Architecture from ETSI

Well, if you thought SDN introduced a lot of terminology, you’ll love NFV! The good news is that ETSI, which defines NFV, does a great job documenting NFV, with extensive term and acronym lists to support other documents about the details of NFV architecture. Several of the ETSI NFV docs provide some great stepping-stones for understanding the basic concepts and terminology, which is where we’ll go in this post.

This is the last in a related series! The other posts:

A Brief Big Picture of NFV

One of the challenges with this blog is figuring out how much prior knowledge to assume. If you don’t know much at all about NFV, read this section for a quick intro. Otherwise, skip to the next heading.

Briefly…

Think of every networking device used in the IT world. Those include routers, switches, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, load balancers, and so on. Traditionally, those devices have indeed been devices – purpose built hardware, running some OS that performed the networking function.

While you’re thinking of the old way to network, Continue reading

Do We Need NAC and 802.1x?

Another question I got in my Inbox:

What is your opinion on NAC and 802.1x for wired networks? Is there a better way to solve user access control at layer 2? Or is this a poor man's way to avoid network segmentation and internal network firewalls.

Unless you can trust all users (fat chance) or run a network with no access control (unlikely, unless you’re a coffee shop), you need to authenticate the users anyway.

Read more ...

Tech companies ask Senate to pass NSA reform bill

Reform Government Surveillance, an organization that represents large technology companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft, on Tuesday pressed the U.S. Senate not to delay reform of National Security Agency surveillance by extending expiring provisions of the Patriot Act.The House of Representatives voted 338-88 last week to approve the USA Freedom Act that would, among other things, stop the controversial bulk collection of phone records of Americans by the NSA, including by placing restrictions on the search terms used to retrieve the records.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

St. Louis Federal Reserve forces password change after DNS attack

A branch of the U.S.’s central bank is forcing a password reset after a cyberattack briefly redirected visitors to parts of its website to bogus Web pages.The Federal Reserve of St. Louis found on April 24 that DNS (domain name system) settings had been changed to redirect people to fake Web pages. The bank didn’t name its DNS provider. Those who visited those pages may have been exposed to malware or had their login credentials stolen.“If you attempted to log into your user account on that date, it is possible that this malicious group may have accessed your user name and password,” an advisory said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New encryption flaw, LogJam, puts Web surfers at risk

Computer security experts said they’ve found a new encryption flaw closely related to one found earlier this year that puts Web surfers’ data at risk.The flaw, called LogJam, can allow an attacker to significantly weaken the encrypted connection between a user and a Web or email server, said Matthew D. Green, an assistant research professor in the department of computer science at Johns Hopkins University.About 7 percent of websites on the Internet are vulnerable to LogJam along with many email servers. A website has been set up with more information.Green was part of a team including experts from the University of Michigan and the French research institute Inria who found LogJam a few months ago.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dropbox unleashes ‘universal app’ for Windows phones and tablets

Early this year, Dropbox released its cloud storage service on Windows phones and tablets, and on Tuesday the company followed up with a universal app that fleshes out the features for both types of devices.The update automatically adapts to the user’s screen size and delivers a number of new features, including the ability for Windows Phone users to upload videos directly from their devices.In the interests of multitasking, Windows Phone users can also now upload multiple files at once. And they can download files straight to their device or SD card, making it available for offline access; there’s a way to mark files as favorites for offline use as well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CSC to split in two, spin off US public sector work

IT services vendor Computer Sciences Corp. plans to separate its $4.1 billion U.S. public sector business to form a new company, it said Tuesday.The move is the latest step in a restructuring that began three years ago and will see CSC’s mission divided between U.S. government clients and all others.The U.S. public sector business, expected to be operational by October, will target federal, state and defense customers and employ 14,000 people. That business generated $4.1 billion in revenue last year.CSC’s remaining 51,000 employees will focus on commercial customers, and public sector organizations outside the U.S. That business recorded revenue of $8.1 billion last year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Critical vulnerability in NetUSB driver exposes millions of routers to hacking

Millions of routers and other embedded devices are affected by a serious vulnerability that could allow hackers to compromise them.The vulnerability is located in a service called NetUSB, which lets devices connected over USB to a computer be shared with other machines on a local network or the Internet via IP (Internet Protocol). The shared devices can be printers, webcams, thumb drives, external hard disks and more.NetUSB is implemented in Linux-based embedded systems, such as routers, as a kernel driver. The driver is developed by Taiwan-based KCodes Technology. Once enabled, it opens a server that listens on TCP port 20005 for connecting clients.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Energy Dept. wants big wind energy technology in all 50 states

Bigger wind turbines and towers are just part of what the United States needs to more effectively use wind energy in all 50 states. That was the basic thrust of a future wind energy call to arms report called “Enabling Wind Power nationwide” issued this week by the Department of Energy which details new technology that can reach higher into the sky to capture more energy and more powerful turbines to generate more gigawatts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tutorial: Email server for a small company – including IMAP for mobiles, SPF and DKIM

For best article visual quality, open Tutorial: Email server for a small company – including IMAP for mobiles, SPF and DKIM directly at NetworkGeekStuff.

email_iconA few months back my wife started a small business. Of course I was the one to build the “IT stuff” here that included a website, some reservation system on it for customers (php programming here), local network in the office and customer area and other things. Most of that was all pretty common tasks for me with the exception of one, building an email system for a company emails. So I built it and since it was new and interesting experience for me, I will share here a quick tutorial (or better call this a cookbook?) to replicate the very minimum system.

Now also let me state here that I really missed somehow in my life running a real email system so far. And it was a little challenge to setup it properly for the first time. I always thought in the past that installing SMTP daemon in linux and activating it for all local users was all that I will ever need (because up to this point my needs were only to receive Continue reading

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