IBM is rolling out a new AI-powered cloud service designed to help companies get a better grip on their increasingly messy networks. IT environments are becoming harder to manage, as networks comprise of a mix of on-premises data centres, private clouds, multiple public clouds, and SaaS apps. IBM’s new service, called Network Intelligence, tries to […]
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Alibaba says its new low-level software has reduced network outages, lowered load balancing costs, and improved SmartNIC performance by shifting workloads to underused infrastructure. As reported by The Register, the company outlined its results in three research papers it plans to present at the SIGCOMM conference next week. One of the papers introduces a system […]
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O2 Telefónica in Germany, in partnership with Nokia, has made a groundbreaking move by deploying 5G standalone core software on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This marks a significant milestone as it is the first instance of an existing mobile operator shifting its core network to a public cloud. Traditionally, telecom networks have migrated IT and other… Read more »
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Cisco has unveiled its vision for Cisco Networking Cloud, an integrated management platform experience for both on-prem and cloud operating models. Building a Better Future for Cisco Customers and PartnersManaging networks in today’s era of connecting everyone, everywhere is hard. According to Cisco’s State of Global Innovation report, 85% of IT professionals indicate they value… Read more »
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Listen to GreenPages’ network expert, Bobby Mazzotti, discuss how next gen firewalls go beyond basic threat management to deliver advanced intrusion protection capabilities and provide companies with superior visibility and control of their network. By inspecting traffic packets coming in from the host, next gen firewalls provide the extra layer of security necessary to protect businesses from modern threats such as ransomware and backdoor trojans. Check out the video below to learn more:
By Jake Cryan, Digital Marketing Specialist
Just over a year and a half ago, GreenPages posted a video and of Nick Phelps (below) and held a webinar discussing how it’s not VMware NSX vs. Cisco ACI, but the synergistic benefits of running both VMware NSX and Cisco ACI simultaneously which was, at the time, a bit “science-fiction-y.” Fast forward to present day and the tech world has had plenty of time to test how these two products work together. Check out Nick’s update on why using both technologies together can create “a beautiful orchestra of automation!”
As a vendor agnostic solutions provider, GreenPages is in a perfect position to help you evaluate and deploy the best tech depending on your unique business goals. Please reach out to us or your account manager to get started.
By Jake Cryan, Digital Marketing Specialist
Strengthening Network SecurityStrengthening network security is vital to your organization. Check out the tips below to ensure you are well protected.
Any and every device capable of wired or wireless access with an IP address should be known in your environment. This goes beyond desktops, laptops, servers, printers, IP phones, and mobile devices. The “Internet of Things” presents a larger potential footprint of hosts including environmental monitoring and control devices, security cameras, and even things like vending machines. IoT devices all run operating systems that have the potential to be compromised by hackers and used as a platform for performing reconnaissance of your network for more valuable assets. Ensure inventory lists are valid by performing routing network scans to identify unknown devices.
Knowing the culture and habits of users, like when and where they work, is important for establishing baseline behavior patterns. Also, the types of work they do online such as researching, downloading software, and uploading files will vary greatly by industry. For example, users at a law firm are not going to have the same internet usage behavior as users at a software development company. Even within an organization, there will be differences between administrative and technical engineering user behavior. Knowing the behavior of your users will make it easier to identify what is normal versus abnormal network traffic.
The network traffic patterns in your organization should represent the usage of critical business applications that users need to do their job. Understanding these traffic flows is critical to building effective security policies for ACLs, stateful firewall policies, and deep packet inspection rules on network security devices. This applies to traffic within your internal private networks, what is allowed in from the outside, and especially the type of traffic allowed to leave your organization.
The more applications and services running on a host, the more potential for exposure to software vulnerabilities. Software updates are important for bug fixes and new features but security related fixes to applications are critical. Limit the types of applications users may install to reputable software vendors that take security updates seriously. Staying current with operating system security updates is even more important. Situations when legacy applications require older EOL operating systems to run on your network should be monitored very closely and if possible should be segmented to dedicated VLANs.
Know your data & control your data
Understand the data that is critical to your business and classify that data into different levels of sensitivity. You must ensure that encryption is used when transmitting highly sensitive data across the network as well as limit access to sensitive data to only those who require it. It is important to implement effective logging on all devices that store and transmit sensitive data and perform routine checks of your backup solutions to ensure the integrity of critical data backups.
Monitor and control your perimeter (egress too!!)
The network perimeter of your organization includes Internet and WAN connections but also wireless access points. All three of these perimeter pathways need to be protected with the highest levels of access restrictions. Next-generation security appliances should be deployed on all perimeter segments to provide deep packet inspection, content filtering, and malicious URL inspection. Centralized logging of network and security devices using a security information event management (SIEM) solution is vital for analysis and correlation of logging data.
Train your users: they are your weakest link and your best defense
Deliver routine end-user security awareness training to keep users up to date on ways to recognize suspicious email content and websites. Perform routine experimental phishing campaigns to determine how well users are able to identify suspicious emails. Review policies with users on how to manage sensitive data. Make sure users are aware of non-technical methods used by hackers such as social engineering tactics to extract information about your organization.
Implement strong authentication controls
Use multifactor authentication for wireless and VPN remote access whenever possible. Restrict the usage of local user accounts and require complex passwords that must be changed regularly. Implement 802.1x security on wireless LANs as well as wired network connections that are accessible to common areas in your facility.
Utilizing the tips above can go a long way in strengthening network security, reach out to your account manager or contact us to find out more about strategies to strengthen your network.
By Kevin Dresser, Solutions Architect
Today we can’t imagine our life without information technology. Access to all this data wouldn’t be possible the actual network connection. Almost all the modern devices nowadays have a way to connect to the the network. Your Mac and Parallels Desktop virtual machine are no exception! There are several network modes in Parallels Desktop which we covered is one […]
The post Network Troubleshooting your Parallels Desktop VM appeared first on Parallels Blog.
In May of 2015, we did a video around VMware NSX vs. Cisco ACI. As part of that video, we made the prediction that VMware NSX and Cisco ACI would not be an either/or discussion in the future (I also did a webinar on the topic that you can download here). At the time, the common question we were getting from clients was if they should be using NSX or ACI. My opinion was that Cisco ACI quite well complimented the feature sets of VMware NSX and that one could really support the other.
Now let’s fast forward to last month (February 2016) to Cisco Live Berlin where an announcement was made that supported just that idea. In sessions at the conference, they talked about a number of overlay networks in Cisco ACI and specifically mentioned VMware NSX. So what are these use cases? I’m planning on doing a series of videos to explore the topic further. The next video will discuss heavily utilizing Cisco ACI with an overlay of VMware NSX. After that, we’ll look at the opposite – more heavily leveraging the feature sets of NSX on top of the fabric automation feature sets that exist in ACI.
Watch on GreenPages’ YouTube channel
Download Nick’s on-demand webinar, VMware NSX vs. Cisco ACI: When to Use Each, When to Use Both
By Nick Phelps, Moonrock Consulting, a GreenPages Alliance Partner
Cisco Systems is to form a joint venture with Chinese server maker Inspur, selling networking and cloud computing products in China. Cisco and Inspur will jointly invest $100 million in the project.
The partnership comes in the face of mutual suspicion between the US and Chinese government amid claims and counter claims of state sponsored cyber security threats.
In June Cisco was forced to remove several of its senior executives in China, amid reports of falling sales slide and Chinese government fears about the foreign ownership of networking equipment.
Cisco’s China sales fell 20 per cent on the previous year in the quarter ending on April 25 at a time when its global revenue gained 5.1 per cent. As its share of the Chinese router market fell from 21.2 per cent to 9.4 per cent the lost sales went to local rival Huawei Technologies, according to Bernstein Research.
Direct selling became more challenging, The Wall Street Journal has reported, after US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden said the NSA put surveillance tools in US technology products sold overseas.
US-Chinese technology company partnerships are growing in number and Microsoft announced on Thursday an alliance with Baidu and the Chinese state-owned private investment firm Tsinghua Unigroup on cloud technology. Last week Dell unveiled plans to invest $125 billion over five years in China. Earlier this year, IBM pledged to help develop China’s advanced chip industry with a ‘Made with China’ strategy, while chipmakers Intel and Qualcomm are developing chips with smaller Chinese companies.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s arrived in Seattle this morning on a state visit to the US.
Chinese officials have said the partnerships will follow the pattern of car manufacturing agreements in the past, with foreign technology firms granted market access in return for shared technology and co-operation with Chinese industry.