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The Power of Continuing Education on Certifications

I’m about six months away from recertifying my CCIE and even though I could just go Emeritus now I’m working on completing some continuing education at the end of the year to push it out another three years. I am once again very thankful that Cisco has this as an option instead of taking a test over and over again as the only option to renew my certifications.

As I embark on another journey to keep myself current in the networking community, I realize that the flexibility that education credits offer is more important that just passing a test or learning a new skill. Employers should also be thrilled that knowledge workers have the ability to work on other skills and be recognized for them. Because there are two different paths that this can lead to.

To Be The Best

One of the things that most professionals recognize with continuing education is that you can leverage your skills to race through things. If you’re already an expert at something like BGP or spanning tree why not take courses to improve the depth of your knowledge? This is part of the reason why there are a number of double CCIEs that Continue reading

Closing out 2022 with our latest Impact Report

To conclude Impact Week, which has been filled with announcements about new initiatives and features that we are thrilled about, today we are publishing our 2022 Impact Report.

In short, the Impact Report is an annual summary highlighting how we are helping build a better Internet and the progress we are making on our environmental, social, and governance priorities. It is where we showcase successes from Cloudflare Impact programs, celebrate awards and recognitions, and explain our approach to fundamental values like transparency and privacy.

We believe that a better Internet is principled, for everyone, and sustainable; these are the three themes around which we constructed the report. The Impact Report also serves as our repository for disclosures consistent with our commitments for the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), and UN Global Compact (UNGC).

Check out the full report to:

Explore how we are expanding the value and scope of our Cloudflare Impact programs
Review our latest diversity statistics — and our newest employee resource group
Understand how we are supporting humanitarian and human rights causes
Read quick summaries of Impact Week announcements
Examine how we calculate and validate emissions data

As fantastic as 2022 has Continue reading

Everything you might have missed during Cloudflare’s Impact Week 2022

And that’s a wrap! Impact Week 2022 has come to a close. Over the last week, Cloudflare announced new commitments in our mission to help build a better Internet, including delivering Zero Trust services for the most vulnerable voices and for critical infrastructure providers. We also announced new products and services, and shared technical deep dives.

Were you able to keep up with everything that was announced? Watch the Impact Week 2022 wrap-up video on Cloudflare TV, or read our recap below for anything you may have missed.

Product announcements

Blog	Summary
Cloudflare Zero Trust for Project Galileo and the Athenian Project	We are making the Cloudflare One Zero Trust suite available to teams that qualify for Project Galileo or Athenian at no cost. Cloudflare One includes the same Zero Trust security and connectivity solutions used by over 10,000 customers today to connect their users and safeguard their data.
Project Safekeeping – protecting the world’s most vulnerable infrastructure with Zero Trust	Under-resourced organizations that are vital to the basic functioning of our global communities (such as community hospitals, water treatment facilities, and local energy providers) face relentless cyber attacks, threatening basic needs for health, safety and security. Cloudflare’s mission Continue reading

Data center networking trends to watch for 2023

Hybrid and multicloud initiatives will continue to shape enterprise IT in 2023, and the impact on data-center networking will be felt across key areas including security, management, and operations. Network teams are investing in technologies such as SD-WAN and SASE, expanding automation initiatives, and focusing on skills development as more workloads and applications span cloud environments.“The most important core trend in data centers is the recognition that the hybrid cloud model – which combines current transaction processing and database activities with a cloud-hosted front-end element for the user interface – is the model that will dominate over time,” said Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp. and a Network World columnist. The industry is seeing a slow modernization of data center applications to support the hybrid-cloud model, Nolle says, “and included in that is greater componentization of those applications, a larger amount of horizontal traffic, and a greater need to manage security within the hosted parts of the application.”To read this article in full, please click here

Data center networking trends to watch for 2023

Weekend Reads 121622

Today, we released the latest issue of The Domain Name Industry Brief, which shows that the third quarter of 2022 closed with 349.9 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains, a decrease of 1.6 million domain name registrations, or 0.4%, compared to the second quarter of 2022.

Since 2019, unpatched ESXi servers have been targets of ongoing in-the-wild attacks based on two vulnerabilities in the ESXiâ€s OpenSLP service: CVE-2019-5544 and CVE-2020-3992.

In many cases, once a high-risk security vulnerability has been identified in a product, a bigger challenge emerges: how to identify the affected component or product by its assigned name in the National Vulnerability Database (NVD).

A developer’s cryptographic signing key is one of the major linchpins of Android security. Any time Android updates an app, the signing key of the old app on your phone needs to match the key of the update you’re installing.

Hashing is one of the pillars of cybersecurity. From securing passwords to sensitive data, there are a variety of use cases for hashing.

Cloud gaming needs wide access to 5G networks to thrive. Performance requirements for streaming the latest AAA titles on mobile devices are already high and Continue reading

What is Cloud Computing? According to ChatGPT.

DALL-E picture generated from the answer.

I was curious, given all the ChatGPT love, what it would make of some of our favorite topics. I was both impressed and unimpressed.

Impressed. ChatGPT instantly generated an response that might make a good answer in a Miss Universe contest. You know, the kind of answer delivered with a radiant smile calculated to offend no one yet still sounds comprehensive and deep.

Unimpressed. The answers are a mile wide and an inch deep. There's not a lot of insight. It's more of a zeitgeist oracle. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't think we'll be unemployed soon. It's as many have predicted about AI/ML. These are tools to augment us, flawed humans, not replace us...yet.

Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed today.

You're welcome! I'm happy to answer any questions you have. Please go ahead and ask your first question.

Explain cloud computing to me at a professional level?

Cloud computing is a model of computing that delivers computing services over the internet, including storage, data processing, and networking. It allows users to access and use shared computing resources, such as servers, storage, and applications, on demand and without the need Continue reading

BrandPost: How AI, Automation, and Zero Trust Can Improve Enterprise Networks

The cyberthreat landscape weighs heavily on the minds of business and IT leaders — and for good reason. Statista reports that in this year’s third quarter alone, nearly 15 million data records were exposed worldwide.The risk of data breaches places intense pressure on IT and security teams to ensure corporate networks are not only protected, but also kept up to date. That’s a tall order given the increasingly complex network architectures that mix on-premises and cloud infrastructure. In addition, hybrid workforces have created multiple paths for data and apps traffic that must be secured.To read this article in full, please click here

BrandPost: Seize AI-driven Opportunities to Solve Hybrid Work Challenges

Sixty-two percent of organizations are planning to guarantee flexible work options to remain competitive in the marketplace, according to Foundry’s 2022 Future of Work Study. That’s causing some concerns around effective collaboration, IT staff and employee burnout, and the ability to maintain secure systems and processes.But a network driven by artificial intelligence (AI) can help address these issues. Technologies including automation, machine learning, and natural language processing are used to gather data, analyze it, and then deliver insights or proactive recommendations for a more efficient, robust, and secure network.To read this article in full, please click here

oneAPI 2023: One Plug-In To Run Them All

Intel has a lot at stake with its oneAPI software stack. …

oneAPI 2023: One Plug-In To Run Them All was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

Data Clean Rooms: Enabling Analytics, Protecting Privacy

Data clean rooms offer a way for organizations to collaborate with and share data in a protected environment that preserves privacy and governance. Here's why they are on the rise now.

Azure Host-Based SDN: Part 1 – VFP Introduction

Azure Virtual Filtering Platform (VFP) is Microsoft’s cloud-scale virtual switch operating as a virtual forwarding extension within a Hyper-V basic vSwitch. Figure 1-1 illustrates an overview of VFP building blocks and relationships with basic vSwitch. Let’s start the examination from the VM vm-nwkt-1 perspective. Its vNIC vm-cafe154 has a synthetic interface eth0 using a NetVSC driver (Network Virtual Service Client). The Hyper-V vSwitch on the Parent Partition is a Network Virtual Service Provider (NetVSP) with VM-facing vPorts. Vm-cafe154 is connected to vPort4 over the logical inter-partition communication channel VMBus. VFP sits in the data path between VM-facing vPorts and default vPort associated with physical NIC. VFP uses port-specific Layers for filtering traffic to and from VMs. A VFP Layer is a Match Action Table (MAT) having a set of policy Rules. Rules consist of Conditions and Actions and are divided into Groups. Each layer is programmed by independent, centralized Controllers without cross-controller dependencies.

Let’s take a concrete example of Layer/Group/Rule object relationship and management by examining the Network Security Group (NSG) in the ACL Layer. Each NSG has a default group for Infrastructure rules, which allows Intra-VNet traffic, outbound Internet connection, and load balancer communication (health check, etc.). We Continue reading

How Cloudflare advocates for a better Internet

We mean a lot of things when we talk about helping to build a better Internet. Sometimes, it’s about democratizing technologies that were previously only available to the wealthiest and most technologically savvy companies, sometimes it’s about protecting the most vulnerable groups from cyber attacks and online prosecution. And the Internet does not exist in a vacuum.

As a global company, we see the way that the future of the Internet is affected by governments, regulations, and people. If we want to help build a better Internet, we have to make sure that we are in the room, sharing Cloudflare’s perspective in the many places where important conversations about the Internet are happening. And that is why we believe strongly in the value of public policy.

We thought this week would be a great opportunity to share Cloudflare’s principles and our theories behind policy engagement. Because at its core, a public policy approach needs to reflect who the company is through their actions and rhetoric. And as a company, we believe there is real value in helping governments understand how companies work, and helping our employees understand how governments and law-makers work. Especially now, during a time in which many Continue reading

The unintended consequences of blocking IP addresses

In late August 2022, Cloudflare’s customer support team began to receive complaints about sites on our network being down in Austria. Our team immediately went into action to try to identify the source of what looked from the outside like a partial Internet outage in Austria. We quickly realized that it was an issue with local Austrian Internet Service Providers.

But the service disruption wasn’t the result of a technical problem. As we later learned from media reports, what we were seeing was the result of a court order. Without any notice to Cloudflare, an Austrian court had ordered Austrian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block 11 of Cloudflare’s IP addresses.

In an attempt to block 14 websites that copyright holders argued were violating copyright, the court-ordered IP block rendered thousands of websites inaccessible to ordinary Internet users in Austria over a two-day period. What did the thousands of other sites do wrong? Nothing. They were a temporary casualty of the failure to build legal remedies and systems that reflect the Internet’s actual architecture.

Today, we are going to dive into a discussion of IP blocking: why we see it, what it is, what it does, who it affects, Continue reading

Introducing Cloudflare’s Third Party Code of Conduct

Cloudflare is on a mission to help build a better Internet, and we are committed to doing this with ethics and integrity in everything that we do. This commitment extends beyond our own actions, to third parties acting on our behalf. Cloudflare has the same expectations of ethics and integrity of our suppliers, resellers, and other partners as we do of ourselves.

Our new code of conduct for third parties

We first shared publicly our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics during Cloudflare’s initial public offering in September 2019. All Cloudflare employees take legal training as part of their onboarding process, as well as an annual refresher course, which includes the topics covered in our Code, and they sign an acknowledgement of our Code and related policies as well.

While our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics applies to all directors, officers and employees of Cloudflare, it has not extended to third parties. Today, we are excited to share our Third Party Code of Conduct, specifically formulated with our suppliers, resellers, and other partners in mind. It covers such topics as:

Human Rights
Fair Labor
Environmental Sustainability
Anti-Bribery and Anti-Corruption
Trade Compliance
Anti-Competition
Conflicts of Interest
Data Privacy and Continue reading

Helping build a safer Internet by measuring BGP RPKI Route Origin Validation

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the glue that keeps the entire Internet together. However, despite its vital function, BGP wasn't originally designed to protect against malicious actors or routing mishaps. It has since been updated to account for this shortcoming with the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) framework, but can we declare it to be safe yet?

If the question needs asking, you might suspect we can't. There is a shortage of reliable data on how much of the Internet is protected from preventable routing problems. Today, we’re releasing a new method to measure exactly that: what percentage of Internet users are protected by their Internet Service Provider from these issues. We find that there is a long way to go before the Internet is protected from routing problems, though it varies dramatically by country.

Why RPKI is necessary to secure Internet routing

The Internet is a network of independently-managed networks, called Autonomous Systems (ASes). To achieve global reachability, ASes interconnect with each other and determine the feasible paths to a given destination IP address by exchanging routing information using BGP. BGP enables routers with only local network visibility to construct end-to-end paths based on the arbitrary preferences of Continue reading

The latest from Cloudflare’s seventeen Employee Resource Groups

In this blog post, we’ll highlight a few stories from some of our 17 Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), including the most recent, Persianflare. But first, let me start with a personal story.

Do you remember being in elementary school and sitting in a classroom with about 30 other students when the teacher was calling on your classmates to read out loud from a book? The opportunity to read out loud was an exciting moment for many of my peers; one that made them feel proud of themselves. I, on the other hand, was frozen, in a state of panic, worried that I wouldn’t be able to sound out a word or completely embarrass myself by stuttering. I would practice reading the next paragraph in hopes that I wouldn’t mess up when I was called on. What I didn’t know at the time was that I was dyslexic, and I could barely read, especially out loud to a large group of people.

That is where I began to know the feeling of isolation. This feeling compounded year after year, when I wasn’t able to perform the way my peers did. My isolation prevailed from elementary school to middle school, through high Continue reading

Working to help the HBCU Smart Cities Challenge

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a proud member of the HBCU (Historically Black College or University) alumni. The HBCU Smart Cities Challenge invites all HBCUs across the United States to build technological solutions to solve real-world problems. When I learned that Cloudflare would be supporting the HBCU Smart Cities Challenge, I was on board immediately for so many personal reasons.

In addition to volunteering mentors as part of this partnership, Cloudflare offered HBCU Smart Cities the opportunity to apply for Project Galileo to protect and accelerate their online presence. Project Galileo provides free cyber security protection to free speech, public interest, and civil society organizations that are vulnerable to cyber attacks. After more than three years working at Cloudflare, I know that we can make the difference in bridging the gap in accessibility to the digital landscape by directly securing the Internet against today’s threats as well as optimizing performance, which plays a bigger role than most would think.

What is an HBCU?

A Historically Black College or University is defined as “any historically black college or university that was established prior to 1964, whose principal mission was, and is, the education of black Americans, and Continue reading

Heavy Networking 660: Writing The Manual – An Insider’s View Of Product Documentation

On today’s Heavy Networking we get inside the process of technical writing and product documentation from a person deep in the trenches of creating docs. We also talk about why writing as a skill might be worth cultivating even if you aren’t responsible for creating the manual.

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