Worth Reading: Understand Your Single Points of Failure

I’ve been saying the same thing for years, but never as succinctly as Alastair Cooke did in his Understand Your Single Points of Failure (SPOF) blog post:

The problem is that each time we eliminated a SPOF, we at least doubled our cost and complexity. The additional cost and complexity are precisely why we may choose to leave a SPOF; eliminating the SPOF may be more expensive than an outage cost due to the SPOF.

Obviously that assumes that you’re able to follow business objectives and not some artificial measure like uptime. Speaking of artificial measures, you might like the discussion about taxonomy of indecision.

Worth Reading: Understand Your Single Points of Failure

I’ve been saying the same thing for years, but never as succinctly as Alastair Cooke did in his Understand Your Single Points of Failure (SPOF) blog post:

The problem is that each time we eliminated a SPOF, we at least doubled our cost and complexity. The additional cost and complexity are precisely why we may choose to leave a SPOF; eliminating the SPOF may be more expensive than an outage cost due to the SPOF.

Obviously that assumes that you’re able to follow business objectives and not some artificial measure like uptime. Speaking of artificial measures, you might like the discussion about taxonomy of indecision.

Controversial Reads 042321


The Court ruled that Google did not violate copyright law when it included parts of Oracle’s Java programming code in its Android operating system—ending a decade-long multibillion dollar legal battle.


Today, however, choice is fast becoming an empty mantra as consumers face the iron law of compatibility. Forced to “opt in,” users submit to a relentless schedule of upgrades and updates among the ever-proliferating gadgets and technologies that bring us so much while governing our lives more and more.


I like my colleagues, but I’ve never met them in person. I found my own doctor; I cook my own food. My manager is 26 — too young for me to expect any parental warmth from him. When people ask me how I feel about my new position, I shrug: It’s a job.


Another day, another horrific Facebook privacy scandal. We know what comes next: Facebook will argue that losing a lot of our data means bad third-party actors are the real problem that we should trust Facebook to make more decisions about our data to protect against them.


Cookies are dying, and the tracking industry is scrambling to replace them. Google has proposed Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), TURTLEDOVE, and Continue reading

Weekend Reads 042321


The average software application depends on more than 500 open source libraries and components, up 77% from 298 dependencies in two years, highlighting the difficulty of tracking the vulnerabilities in every software component, according to a new report from software management firm Synopsys.


Ambient computing is a broad term that describes an environment of smart devices, data, A.I. decisions, and human activity that enables computer actions alongside everyday life, without the need for direct human commands or intervention.


The emergence of new protocols such as DNS-over HTTPS (DoH) has resulted in some browsers changing security critical behaviour without explaining the implications to users.


In early March 2021, a hacker group publicly exposed the username and password of an administrative account of a security camera vendor. The credentials enabled them to access 150,000 commercial security systems and, potentially, set up subsequent attacks on other critical equipment.


Security automation for posture assessment has been difficult to achieve even though many standards-based and proprietary solutions have been developed. The primary problem is the complexity of solutions requiring customisation by each enterprise.


In this study, we investigate DoT using 3.2k RIPE Atlas home probes deployed across more than 125 countries in July Continue reading

Worth Reading: The Insider’s Guide To Evangelizing Good Design

Scott Berkun wrote another great article that’s equally applicable to the traditional notion of design (his specialty) and the network design. Read it, replace design with network design, and use its lessons. Here’s just a sample:

  • Convincing people is a social process
  • Aim for small wins, not conversions of belief systems
  • Allies matter more than ideas
  • Design maturity grows one step at a time.

Worth Reading: The Insider’s Guide To Evangelizing Good Design

Scott Berkun wrote another great article that’s equally applicable to the traditional notion of design (his specialty) and the network design. Read it, replace design with network design, and use its lessons. Here’s just a sample:

  • Convincing people is a social process
  • Aim for small wins, not conversions of belief systems
  • Allies matter more than ideas
  • Design maturity grows one step at a time.

Organizations need to patch Pulse Secure VPNs

Organizations using Pulse Secure’s mobile VPN should patch vulnerabilities reportedly being exploited in the wild, possibly by a “Chinese espionage actor”.The patch–available here–is considered important enough that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) gave federal agencies a deadline of April 23 to apply them.Backup lessons from a cloud-storage disaster CISA’s guidance states that federal users of Pulse Connect Secure VPNs must use the company’s free utility to ascertain whether their devices are vulnerable.To read this article in full, please click here

Organizations need to patch Pulse Secure VPNs

Organizations using Pulse Secure’s mobile VPN should patch vulnerabilities reportedly being exploited in the wild, possibly by a “Chinese espionage actor”.The patch–available here–is considered important enough that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) gave federal agencies a deadline of April 23 to apply them.Backup lessons from a cloud-storage disaster CISA’s guidance states that federal users of Pulse Connect Secure VPNs must use the company’s free utility to ascertain whether their devices are vulnerable.To read this article in full, please click here

Heavy Networking 574: Get HIP With Zero Trust And Tempered Networks (Sponsored)

Today's Heavy Networking podcast, sponsored by Tempered Networks, dives into how Tempered builds a software-defined perimeter with native zero trust, leveraging the Host Identity Protocol (HIP), Tempered's Airwall software, cryptographic identities, and secure overlays. Our guests from Tempered are Jeff Hussey, Founder and CEO; and Bryan Skene, CTO.

The post Heavy Networking 574: Get HIP With Zero Trust And Tempered Networks (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

In the Dominican Republic IX.DO Begins Silent Production, with Several Committed Members

The Dominican Republic’s new Internet Exchange Point (IXP) already has 24 members, three of which began exchanging traffic in November 2020. Another four will start this quarter – including the largest operators in the country. The IX.DO was born after frustrated attempts. A government-led initiative in 2007 never became operational and the data center NAP […]

The post In the Dominican Republic IX.DO Begins Silent Production, with Several Committed Members appeared first on Internet Society.

Racing On the Edge of Burnout

Exhibit A:

It’s been a year and more and I think a lot of us are on the ragged edge of burning out completely. Those that think they are superhuman and can just keep grinding away at things without acknowledging what’s going on are kidding themselves. I know I’m feeling it too even though I have a pretty decent handle on what’s going on. Let’s explore some of the ways it’s impacting us and what should be done, if anything can even be done.

Creativity Black Hole

I don’t feel like doing anything remotely creative right now. The cooking will get finished. The dishes will be done. The things in my floor will be picked up and put away. But beyond that? Good. Luck. I’m not feeling any kind of drive to do anything beyond that.

Remember when everyone was picking up quarantine skills? Baking, cooking, knitting, crocheting, home improvement, or even an instrument? Those were fun days filled with massive uncertainty and a need to distract ourselves from what might be coming next. However, those skill pickups are things that need Continue reading

Data-center outages: Causes are changing, report says

A new survey by the Uptime Institute found that power issues are becoming less of a problem for data center operators, but networking and software issues are emerging as an increasingly bigger problem.The Uptime Institute's third Annual Outage Analysis notes that while improvements have been made with technology and availability, outages remain a major industry, customer, and regulatory concern. The report also shows that the overall impact and direct and indirect cost of outages continue to grow. When asked about their most recent significant outage, more than half of respondents reported an outage in the past three years and estimated its cost at more than $100,000; among those respondents, almost one-third reported costs of $1 million or above.To read this article in full, please click here

Backup lessons from a cloud-storage disaster

The largest cloud provider based in Europe, OVHcloud, suffered a catastrophic fire last month that destroyed one of its data centers and smoke-damaged a neighboring one. OVHcloud customers with data in the burned-out data cener who had their own disaster recovery measures in place or who purchased the off-site backup and disaster-recovery services offered by OVHcloud have been able to resume operations. Those who did not lost data that will never come back.Some losses were complete, such as those described on Twitter by rounq.com who is still waiting for backups and redundancy that he thought were already in place, according to his tweets. Companies that had some type of off-site backup seemed to be up and running again, such as Centre PompidouTo read this article in full, please click here

Data-center outages: Causes are changing, report says

A new survey by the Uptime Institute found that power issues are becoming less of a problem for data center operators, but networking and software issues are emerging as an increasingly bigger problem.The Uptime Institute's third Annual Outage Analysis notes that while improvements have been made with technology and availability, outages remain a major industry, customer, and regulatory concern. The report also shows that the overall impact and direct and indirect cost of outages continue to grow. When asked about their most recent significant outage, more than half of respondents reported an outage in the past three years and estimated its cost at more than $100,000; among those respondents, almost one-third reported costs of $1 million or above.To read this article in full, please click here

Backup lessons from a cloud-storage disaster

The largest cloud provider based in Europe, OVHcloud, suffered a catastrophic fire last month that destroyed one of its data centers and smoke-damaged a neighboring one. OVHcloud customers with data in the burned-out data cener who had their own disaster recovery measures in place or who purchased the off-site backup and disaster-recovery services offered by OVHcloud have been able to resume operations. Those who did not lost data that will never come back.Some losses were complete, such as those described on Twitter by rounq.com who is still waiting for backups and redundancy that he thought were already in place, according to his tweets. Companies that had some type of off-site backup seemed to be up and running again, such as Centre PompidouTo read this article in full, please click here

1 … 689 690 691 692 693 … 3,785