Fast Friday Thoughts From Security Field Day

It’s a busy week for me thanks to Security Field Day but I didn’t want to leave you without some thoughts that have popped up this week from the discussions we’ve been having. Security is one of those topics that creates a lot of thought-provoking ideas and makes you seriously wonder if you’re doing it right all the time.

  • Never underestimate the value of having plumbing that connects all your systems. You may look at a solution and think to yourself “All this does is aggregate data from other sources”. Which raises the question: How do you do it now? Sure, antivirus fires alerts like a car alarm. But when you get breached and find out that those alerts caught it weeks ago you’re going to wish you had a better idea of what was going on. You need a way to send that data somewhere to be dealt with and cataloged properly. This is one of the biggest reasons why machine learning is being applied to the massive amount of data we gather in security. Having an algorithm working to find the important pieces means you don’t miss things that are important to you.
  • Not every solution is going Continue reading

Progressive Delivery on OpenShift

Hai Huang Hai is a research scientist at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. He is a contributing member of Kubernetes, Istio, Iter8 and TPM. We are accustomed to having high expectations of our apps. We want a constant stream of new features and bug fixes, and yet, we don’t want these updates to affect our user experience adversely. As a result, these expectations put a tremendous amount of pressure on developers. This is where

Cloudflare for SaaS for All, now Generally Available!

Cloudflare for SaaS for All, now Generally Available!
Cloudflare for SaaS for All, now Generally Available!

During Developer Week a few months ago, we opened up the Beta for Cloudflare for SaaS: a one-stop shop for SaaS providers looking to provide fast load times, unparalleled redundancy, and the strongest security to their customers.

Since then, we’ve seen numerous developers integrate with our technology, allowing them to spend their time building out their solution instead of focusing on the burdens of running a fast, secure, and scalable infrastructure — after all, that’s what we’re here for.

Today, we are very excited to announce that Cloudflare for SaaS is generally available, so that every customer, big and small, can use Cloudflare for SaaS to continue scaling and building their SaaS business.

What is Cloudflare for SaaS?

If you’re running a SaaS company, you have customers that are fully reliant on you for your service. That means you’re responsible for keeping their domain fast, secure, and protected. But this isn’t simple. There’s a long checklist you need to get through to put a solution in your customers’ hands:

  • Set up an origin server
  • Encrypt your customers’ traffic
  • Keep your customers online
  • Boost the performance of global customers
  • Support vanity domains
  • Protect against attacks and bots
  • Scale for growth
  • Continue reading

Video: Introduction to AI/ML Hype

In May 2021, Javier Antich ran a great webinar explaining the principles of Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning and how they apply (or not) to networking.

He started with a brief overview of AI/ML hype that should help you understand why there’s a bit of a difference between self-driving cars (not that we got there) and self-driving networks.

Watch the video
You need Free ipSpace.net Subscription to access this webinar.

Video: Introduction to AI/ML Hype

In May 2021, Javier Antich ran a great webinar explaining the principles of Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning and how they apply (or not) to networking.

He started with a brief overview of AI/ML hype that should help you understand why there’s a bit of a difference between self-driving cars (not that we got there) and self-driving networks.

Watch the video
You need Free ipSpace.net Subscription to access this webinar.

AWS Networking Fundamentals: A Practical Guide to Understand How to Build a Virtual Datacenter into the AWS Cloud

 Table of Content


Table of Contents


Chapter 1: Virtual Private Cloud - VPC 1

VPC 1

VPC Introduction 1

The Structure of Availability Zone 2

Create VPC - AWS Console 4

Select Region 4

Create VPC 7

DHCP Options Set 9

Main Route Table 10

VPC Verification Using AWS CLI 12

Create VPC - AWS CloudFormation 16

Create Template 17

Uppload Template 17

Verification Using AWS Console 18

VPC Verification using AWS CLI 21

Create Subnets - AWS Console 23

Create Subnets 24

Route Tables 29

Create Subnets – AWS Console 30

Create Subnets - AWS CloudFormation 37

Create Network ACL 40


Chapter 2: VPC Control-Plane 43

VPC Control-Plane – Mapping Service 43

Introduction 43

Mapping Register 43

Mapping Request - Reply 44

Data-Plane Operation 45

References 46


Chapter 3: VPC Internet Gateway Service 47

Introduction 47

Allow Internet Access from Subnet 48

Create Internet Gateway 49

Update Subnet Route Table 54

Network Access Control List 57

Associate SG and Elastic-IP with EC2 59

Create Security Group 59

Launch an EC2 Instance 65

Allocate Elastic IP address from Amazon Ipv4 Pool 71

Reachability Analyzer 81

Billing 85



Chapter 4: VPC NAT Gateway 87

Introduction 87

Create NAT Gateway and Allocate Continue reading

Gartner: Top strategic predictions for 2022 and beyond

Expect the unexpected – that’s just one of the core premises IT leaders need to embrace in the next few years, according to Gartner's top strategic predictions for 2022 and beyond.IT leaders need to be able to move in multiple strategic directions at once, said Daryl Plummer, distinguished research vice president and Gartner Fellow, to the virtual audience at the firm’s IT Symposium/Xpo Americas, held this week.Network certs: Significant raises for the right ones “Resilience, opportunity and risk have always been components of good business strategy, but today these issues hold new meaning,” Plummer said. “This year’s predictions embody how resilience must be built in more non-traditional ways, from talent to business modularity, while opportunity and risk must be viewed with a greater sense of urgency.”To read this article in full, please click here

Gartner: Top strategic predictions for 2022 and beyond

Expect the unexpected – that’s just one of the core premises IT leaders need to embrace in the next few years, according to Gartner's top strategic predictions for 2022 and beyond.IT leaders need to be able to move in multiple strategic directions at once, said Daryl Plummer, distinguished research vice president and Gartner Fellow, to the virtual audience at the firm’s IT Symposium/Xpo Americas, held this week.Network certs: Significant raises for the right ones “Resilience, opportunity and risk have always been components of good business strategy, but today these issues hold new meaning,” Plummer said. “This year’s predictions embody how resilience must be built in more non-traditional ways, from talent to business modularity, while opportunity and risk must be viewed with a greater sense of urgency.”To read this article in full, please click here

Workload access control: Securely connecting containers and Kubernetes with the outside world

Containers have changed how applications are developed and deployed, with Kubernetes ascending as the de facto means of orchestrating containers, speeding development, and increasing scalability. Modern application workloads with microservices and containers eventually need to communicate with other applications or services that reside on public or private clouds outside the Kubernetes cluster. However, securely controlling granular access between these environments continues to be a challenge. Without proper security controls, containers and Kubernetes become an ideal target for attackers. At this point in the Kubernetes journey, the security team will insist that workloads meet security and compliance requirements before they are allowed to connect to outside resources.

As shown in the table below, Calico Enterprise and Calico Cloud offer multiple solutions that address different access control scenarios to limit workload access between Kubernetes clusters and APIs, databases, and applications outside the cluster. Although each solution addresses a specific requirement, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

 

Your requirement Calico’s solution Advantages
You want to use existing firewalls and firewall managers to enforce granular egress access control of Kubernetes workloads at the destination (outside the cluster) Egress Access Gateway Security teams can leverage existing investments, experience, and training in firewall infrastructure and Continue reading

IPv6 Buzz 087: How Merit Network Used Carrots Over Sticks To Drive IPv6 Adoption

Merit Network is a non-profit ISP that provides network and security services for universities, K-12 schools, libraries, and other educational communities in Michigan. On today's IPv6 Buzz we speak with Lola Killey, Infrastructure and Research Support Analyst, about how Merit encouraged IPv6 adoption and what other institutions can learn from that effort.

The post IPv6 Buzz 087: How Merit Network Used Carrots Over Sticks To Drive IPv6 Adoption appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Creating Reusable Kuma Installation YAML

Using CLI tools—instead of a “wall of YAML”—to install things onto Kubernetes is a growing trend, it seems. Istio and Cilium, for example, each have a CLI tool for installing their respective project. I get the reasons why; you can build logic into a CLI tool that you can’t build into a YAML file. Kuma, the open source service mesh maintained largely by Kong and a CNCF Sandbox project, takes a similar approach with its kumactl tool. In this post, however, I’d like to take a look at creating reusable YAML to install Kuma, instead of using the CLI tool every time you install.

You might be wondering, “Why?” That’s a fair question. Currently, the kumactl tool, unless configured otherwise, will generate a set of TLS assets to be used by Kuma (and embeds some of those assets in the YAML regardless of the configuration). Every time you run kumactl, it will generate a new set of TLS assets. This means that the command is not declarative, even if the output is. Unfortunately, you can’t reuse the output, as that would result in duplicate TLS assets across installations. That brings me to the point of this Continue reading

InfluxDB Cloud


InfluxDB Cloud is a cloud hosted version of InfluxDB. The free tier makes it easy to try out the service and has enough capability to satisfy simple use cases. In this article we will explore how metrics based on sFlow streaming telemetry can be pushed into InfluxDB Cloud.

The diagram shows the elements of the solution. Agents in host and network devices are configured to stream sFlow telemetry to an sFlow-RT real-time analytics engine instance. The Telegraf Agent queries sFlow-RT's REST API for metrics and pushes them to InfluxDB Cloud.

docker run -p 8008:8008 -p 6343:6343/udp --name sflow-rt -d sflow/prometheus

Use Docker to run the pre-built sflow/prometheus image which packages sFlow-RT with the sflow-rt/prometheus application. Configure sFlow agents to stream data to this instance.

Create an InfluxDB Cloud account. Click the Data tab. Click on the Telegraf option and the InfluxDB Output Plugin button to get the URL to post data. Click the API Tokens option and generate a token.
[agent]
  interval = "15s"
  round_interval = true
  metric_batch_size = 5000
  metric_buffer_limit = 10000
  collection_jitter = "0s"
  flush_interval = "10s"
  flush_jitter = "0s"
  precision = "1s"
  hostname = ""
  omit_hostname = true

[[outputs.influxdb_v2]]
  urls = ["INFLUXDB_CLOUD_URL"]
  token =  Continue reading

Reimagining ‘Show IP Interface Brief’

Welcome back! In my first post here on Packet Pushers (Applying A Software Design Pattern To Network Automation – Packet Pushers) we explored the Model View Controller (MVC) software design pattern and how it can be applied to network automation. This post will go a little deeper into how this is achieved and the mix […]

The post Reimagining ‘Show IP Interface Brief’ appeared first on Packet Pushers.

How to right-size edge storage

Edge computing is shaping up as the most practical way to manage the growing volume of data being generated by remote sources such as IoT and 5G devices.A key benefit of edge computing is that it provides greater computation, network access, and storage capabilities closer to the source of the data, allowing organizations  to reduce latency. As a result, enterprise are embracing the model: Gartner estimates that 50% of enterprise data will be generated at the edge by 2023, and PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts the global market for edge data centers will reach $13.5 billion in 2024, up from $4 billion in 2017. To read this article in full, please click here

How to right-size edge storage

Edge computing is shaping up as the most practical way to manage the growing volume of data being generated by remote sources such as IoT and 5G devices.A key benefit of edge computing is that it provides greater computation, network access, and storage capabilities closer to the source of the data, allowing organizations  to reduce latency. As a result, enterprise are embracing the model: Gartner estimates that 50% of enterprise data will be generated at the edge by 2023, and PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts the global market for edge data centers will reach $13.5 billion in 2024, up from $4 billion in 2017. To read this article in full, please click here

Fine tuning a T5 text-classification model on colab

One of the most interesting recent developments in natural language processing is the T5 family of language models. These are transformer based sequence-to-sequence models trained on multiple different tasks. The main insight is that different tasks provide a broader context for tokens and help the model statistically approximate the natural language context of words.

Tasks can be specified by providing an input context, often with a “command” prefix and then predicting an output sequence. This google AI blog article contains an excellent description of how multiple tasks are specified.

Naturally, these models are attractive to anyone working on NLP. The drawback, however, is that they are large and require very significant computational resources, beyond the resources of most developers desktop machines. Fortunately, google makes their Colaboratory platform free to use (with some resource limitations). It is the ideal platform to experiment with this family of models in order to see how their perform on a specific application.

As I decided to do so, for a text-classification problem, I had to pierce together information from a few different sources and try a few different approaches. I decided to put together a mini tutorial of how to fine-tune a T5 model Continue reading

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