Cisco UCS Automation Series, Part I – Getting Started with UCS PowerTool

You WANT to Automate! But Where to Start?

You want to automate but not sure where to start or what tools to use or even what processes can be automated and if the thing you want to automate is even automatable. Does it offer an API? If it does, is there an SDK? Are there samples of what can be done? What has been done? How much can be done? A lot of questions typically bog down the process, mire you in indecision and eventually you give up!

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Thank You Cisco ISR G2 2900 and 3900 Series Routers

Over the past 9 years, the Integrated Services Router (ISR) G2 router portfolio has helped tens of thousands of Enterprise and Service Provider customers build, secure, grow, and transform their businesses. It has been the most successful router product line in the history of branch networking.

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Introducing executive dashboards in CTA

No security risk assessment is complete without the executive summary section. Something that can answer the high level questions security teams get asked including “how secure are we?”, “what threats are affecting our network today?” and “how healthy is our network?” We have recently revamped the Cognitive Threat Analytics dashboard to provide answers to these questions and more.

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Malware stealing gigabytes of your data as seen by Cognitive Threat Analytics

Overview

Recently, about 50 users across 20 companies were alarmed by the Cisco Cognitive Threat Analytics (CTA) about a malware that exfiltrates gigabytes of data from their computers. An example of such CTA detection:

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Cisco & MapR set a Software Defined Storage World Record

66 years in the making!

It sounds like a long time, but first we had to wait for a few milestones to precede us:

◈ 1951 – UNIVAC pioneers use of magnetic tape for storage
◈ 1993 – Severe Tire Damage is the first band to live stream
◈ 2007 – Netflix launches their streaming media business

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Analyzing Network Traffic with Encrypted Traffic Analytics

Today, knowing who is using your network is table stakes. What’s essential is knowing how the network is being accessed, what applications are being used, when they are used and most importantly, whether or not those applications are safe enough and compliant with your organization’s policies.

Independent testing company Miercom recently carried out a comprehensive set of tests to evaluate traffic analysis capabilities of Cisco’s Digital Network Architecture & Huawei’s Agile Solution along with a few other test areas.

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Cognitive Research: Learning Detectors of Malicious Network Traffic

Malware is constantly evolving and changing. One way to identify malware is by analyzing the communication that the malware performs on the network. Using machine learning, these traffic patterns can be utilized to identify malicious software. Machine learning faces two obstacles: obtaining a sufficient training set of malicious and normal traffic and retraining the system as malware evolves. This post will analyze an approach that overcomes these obstacles by developing a detector that utilizes domains (easily obtained from domain black lists, security reports, and sandboxing analysis) to train the system which can then be used to analyze more detailed proxy logs using statistical and machine learning techniques.

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The Race is On: Is Your Network 5G Ready?

The growing 5G momentum promises tremendous commercial opportunities for service providers, with estimates that the global 5G market will be worth US$12.3 trillion by 2035. To pursue these new untapped opportunities, service providers need to ramp up their network capabilities to support future 5G services.

As we move closer towards mainstream 5G adoption, mobile networks are increasingly expected to handle more data-intensive applications and deliver low-latency connectivity to more devices. How can service providers keep pace and get a leg up on the competition?

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Cognitive Threat Analytics: Turn Your Proxy Into Security Device

Some of us still intuitively believe that our extensively safeguarded corporate networks are safe from the risks we are exposed to when connecting directly to public Internet. Yet, evidence suggests that most companies now operate with significant persistent malware present in the network. At the same time, malware has also evolved, and we have witnessed a larger proportion of infections being brief with relatively low risk. But, even the seemingly low risk infections may open a pathway or potentially escalate into full-fledged attacks with serious business impact.­­­­­­­­­

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CMS Brute Force Attacks Are Still a Threat

Brute force attacks have existed long before the Internet. As a cryptanalytic attack, it started being used as an attempt to access encrypted data when there were no other options available. With the rise of the Internet, this type of attack was quickly adopted. In a nutshell, a brute force attack consists of systematically trying different credentials until the correct combination is found. It’s like trying to open a combination lock by going through all possible combinations: eventually, it will pop open.

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The Cisco ASR 9000 – Timeless Versatility for Future Growth

Cisco’s Aggregation Service Router 9000 (ASR 9k) has evolved into the cloud-scale, multi-service platform offering unprecedented flexibility, scale, programmability and security for Service Providers today.

When the ASR 9k was first announced in November 2008, it was a 6-slot and a 10-slot chassis—each of them capable of handling 3.2Tbps and 6.4Tbps of traffic, respectively.

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Viptela and Cisco Managed Services - Even Better Together

The Software-Defined Networking Movement

Cisco has been leading the charge into enterprise software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) with its industry-leading Intelligent WAN (IWAN) solution. A complementary Meraki-based solution addresses the SD-WAN needs of the smaller enterprise and commercial markets. Regardless of market segment, SD-WAN offers incredibly powerful transport capabilities between main offices and branch facilities. By providing alternate transport paths between offices, as opposed to expensive (and sometimes excessive and underutilized) dedicated circuits, SD-WAN enables the business to maximize existing investments in their networking infrastructure, creating a greater return on investment.

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Five to Thrive in a Disruptive Environment: Part 2

In my previous blog, I introduced the concept of Five to Thrive. These leadership tips can help you navigate a world of astounding change and mind-boggling opportunities. And, hopefully, avoid the risks and threats hiding around every corner.

To learn about the first three—Recognize the Source of Value, Take Action Against Blind Spots, and Stop Failing Fast—visit my previous blog. Today, I’m sharing No’s. 4 and 5 in Five to Thrive: Close the Loop on Technology Investments and Build a Listening Infrastructure.

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5 Reasons Why Customers Swear by Support Services

If you’re on the fence about whether to purchase (or renew) Cisco Support Services, I’ve got a story for you. I recently met with a group of Cisco Account Managers to better understand what customers are looking for in a protection policy.

As the team began to whiteboard all the reasons, I saw a pattern emerge. Every customer claim was about avoiding or reducing risk.

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Viptela and Cisco Managed Services Even Better Together

The Software-Defined Networking Movement

Cisco has been leading the charge into enterprise software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) with its industry-leading Intelligent WAN (IWAN) solution. A complementary Meraki-based solution addresses the SD-WAN needs of the smaller enterprise and commercial markets. Regardless of market segment, SD-WAN offers incredibly powerful transport capabilities between main offices and branch facilities. By providing alternate transport paths between offices, as opposed to expensive (and sometimes excessive and underutilized) dedicated circuits, SD-WAN enables the business to maximize existing investments in their networking infrastructure, creating a greater return on investment.

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Cisco Email Security is Top Solution

Billions of corporate messages flow back and forth on a daily basis. And with over 90% of breaches starting with an email, organizations today face a daunting challenge when choosing the best email security solution to stop emails with phishing links or malicious attachments that unleash ransomware, phishing or business email compromise attacks. Securing the most important business communication tool is a tall order indeed. This is why we’re proud to share that Cisco Email Security has been named Top Player on Radicati’s Market Quadrant for Secure Email Gateways 2017 for the second consecutive year.

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The Power of Role Models and a Good Book

My path to cybersecurity looks more like a winding road than a straight line, but it’s the influential role models and valuable information I consumed with every turn that paved my path towards a career in cybersecurity – specifically privacy.

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Cisco IT Helps TAC Team in Mexico Get Back Online Fast Following Major Earthquake

Our colleagues in the Mexico City office had a close call on September 19, 2017, when the magnitude 7.1 Central Mexico earthquake struck. They were already outside of their building, ironically, having been evacuated as part of a scheduled earthquake drill.

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Cisco Digital Network Architecture – An Overview of the Architecture Tools and Vision

At one of the projects that I’m currently working on, confusion was rising around the terms Cisco DNA, DNA Center and the implementation of Cisco DNA Center. It didn’t take me much effort to clear up the confusion but it does provide the need for an explanation on Cisco DNA, DNA Center, Software-Defined Access, Network Function Virtualization, Analytics, Automation and Smart Networks.

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Five to Thrive in a Disruptive Environment: Part 1

At last count, Gartner tracks more than 450 IoT platforms in the market. And that’s just today. It’s astounding the number of tools and the amount of technology continuously being invented and reinvented. The impacts and the stakes are extremely high.

Nine out of ten companies will experience a revenue stall - and yet only one of those companies will recover and survive. One. This is the highly competitive world we live in. Think about the time it took Wells Fargo 20 years to get to 25 million online banking customers. Now, compare that to SnapChat. They exceeded 200 million customers in four years.

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Miercom Agrees: Huawei is no Match for Feature-Rich Cisco

A modern-day enterprise Wi-Fi infrastructure has to be multi-faceted. It should be optimized, not only for high performance, but also in order for other areas to maintain a smooth flow of Wireless LAN operations. Enterprise Wi-Fi vendors offer various features to furnish the business requirements of the customers. However, not all products are the same, and the functionality of the features differs from vendor to vendor too.

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Disruption in Our Learning Cultures Develops Families as Learning Partners

Today, technology is a bullet train rapidly transforming every sector in society. Disruption is evident in companies like Airbnb and Lyft that have completely rearranged how we vacation and commute. This disruption not only shifts what we do, but impacts our mindset, as well. We think differently about lodging when we vacation now. Our boundaries and expectations change when we order a ride. So, when we think of the disruption technology has caused in education, we must ask ourselves: What is the mind shift that accompanies this change?

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Realizing a Multi-Vendor Virtualized RAN

It’s now been over 6 months since Cisco announced that it had joined the Open Air Interface (OAI) software alliance, with the aim of accelerating open, multi-vendor, RAN splits and the first week of November marks a milestone in that co-operation.

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Security as a Strategic Imperative

In the digital era, every company is considered a technology company. Whether you provide electricity, banking or public transportation, you are increasingly dependent upon the internet and network connectively. If all companies are technology companies, that means all companies need to prioritize cybersecurity as a strategic imperative to ensure they are connected, digitized and successful.

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Digital India: Driving the Next Wave of Innovation in Mass Scale Networking

India’s first ever Mobile Congress kicked off in New Delhi last month with the goal of fostering digital inclusion across the country. A number of government ministers, officials, as well as top industry executives from around the world, spoke at the inaugural event. I am writing to you today to share some of the key messages I conveyed during my keynote address at IMC.

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Miercom Proves: Cisco versus Huawei is No Contest

The three tests I want to focus on are:

1. Multi-Client, Multi-AP RRM Test
2. Voice and Video over Wi-Fi Test
3. Dataplane Encryption Test

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Filling the Cybersecurity Professionals Gap – with Women

Due to the high-profile data breaches, cybersecurity has become a household word. Think back to just one month ago, when the data breach at Equifax exposed the personal information for 145.5 million consumers – almost half of all Americans.

At Cisco, we know our customers and other business leaders are increasingly aware of this important issue and are taking steps to make their organizations more secure, but there are a lot of obstacles on the road to being prepared. One of the biggest is finding trained and certified security personnel.

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Creating Capacity for Innovation

Large organizations have a challenge that start-ups don’t have. They have unintended complexity, duplication, old processes, and work that exists simply because it has always been done that way. Most executives of large organizations know they need to embrace Digital Transformation, but they don’t know where to begin. They have operational commitments and responsibilities to stakeholders or shareholders, and no excess operational expense to invest in innovation.

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Securing the Campus

From student data and intellectual property, to reputation and grant funding…higher education institutions are at risk if cybersecurity is not a foundational element in their operations.

This fall, more than 20 million students returned to their college or university. Each student will walk on campus with at least three personal connected devices. At a university with roughly 40,000 students – that’s around 121,000 devices, not including all the sensors and devices across the campus that are school property. That’s 121,000+ opportunities for a security breach.

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Cisco Traffic Analysis & Encrypted Threat Analytics

Today, knowing who is using your network is table stakes. Knowing what users are consuming on the network is essential for analysis. What applications are being used, when they are used and most importantly are those applications are safe enough and compliant with your organization policies.

Independent testing company Miercom recently carried out comprehensive set of tests to evaluate traffic analysis capabilities of Cisco’s Digital Network Architecture & Huawei’s Agile Solution along with few other test areas.

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Secure, High Availability for Epic EHR Systems with Cisco ACI and Tetration

Since its initial release, Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) has been selected and deployed by many healthcare institutions around the globe.  ACI is the foundation for achieving these customer’s next generation application requirements for their complex environments and applications.

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Architecting a More Secure Future

The new age of innovation is providing a level of convenience and technological advancements that were once unfathomable. But with every breakthrough comes challenges, and more precisely these days, security challenges. We, in the security industry, are constantly faced with new threats emerging from vectors that didn’t even exist yesterday.

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Working Wherever: Digital Safety Beyond the Company Walls

Imagine you’re a business traveler at the airport with a little time to spare before your flight. You fire up your laptop, access the airport’s free wi-fi, log on to your bank account, and pay your credit card bill to free up credit for your trip. Efficient use of time, right? Well, also imagine that you chose the wi-fi access point that looked most likely to be the free airport network from the several options that popped up in your connector – except it’s not. It’s actually a look-alike set up by a hacker, who is now tracking your banking and credit card information, because you’re logged on to his network. Not so efficient, or safe.

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The Advantage of Remote PHY

In a recently published white paper, The TCO Advantage of Remote PHY, we compare the CAPEX and OPEX of a Remote PHY deployment with an Integrated CCAP/HFC deployment. A next-generation Distributed Access Architecture (DAA), Remote PHY moves access hardware from the headend to smaller hub sites or into the plant, providing cable operators with a number of benefits including a reduced footprint, lower operational costs and bandwidth growth.

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Putting the “Why” in Remote PHY

As cable operators continue to look at facing the ever-increasing onslaught of data demand from subscribers, we must ask ourselves, “Is there a better way to do things?” We all have heard the unofficial definition of “insanity” as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result,” we can’t just keep going forward blindly doing things like node splits forever as it is not a sustainable practice doing it the way it has been done for the last 5-10 years.

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The Time is Now for a More Strategic Approach to Innovation

The ability to consistently and effectively innovate is something many organizations find challenging. While the importance of innovation is widely acknowledged for long-term business health, surprisingly few can legitimately claim to be achieving powerful, repeatable results on a regular basis.

This is because innovation, much like any other business process, requires careful planning and management to be effective. Yet despite this, too many organizations still rely on a piecemeal, sporadic approach, resulting in short-term wins with little chance of repeat success.

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Introducing a New Era in Branch Routing

Why the ISR 1000 Series is a Really Big Deal.

Today Cisco is introducing a new addition to the Integrated Services Router (ISR) portfolio of branch routers. The ISR 1000 Series follows the new sleek design popping up across Cisco platforms, so it looks sexy, but that’s not why it’s so important. What’s so remarkable about the ISR 1000 Series is that for the first time it brings an architecture normally reserved for higher-end networking platforms down to a place accessible to branch offices of just about any size. Let me explain.

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“Pitching Packets” Game Teaches Cyber Security with Beanbags

This October, the 14th year of National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) focuses on educating consumers on Internet safety.  Consumers can be of all ages and backgrounds, so in the spirit of NCSAM, I’d like to share how beanbags and laundry baskets can be used to teach anyone the basics of Internet routing, security, and privacy.

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Building the Right Innovation Maturity Model for your Business

We discussed the important role that an innovation maturity model (IMM) plays in creating a strategic, repeatable framework for innovation excellence. In this second installment, we will look at the process of creating an effective IMM, drawing on Cisco’s own IMM as an example.

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Cisco CCNA Cyber Ops Scholarship: The Ins and Outs!

Cisco had developed a new certification in order to reduce the global cybersecurity skills gap that has been reported throughout various sources. This certification is called the CCNA Cyber Ops and it is along the lines of what a Security Analyst in a Security Operations Center (SOC) does. There are two exams associated with this certification: the SECFND 210-250 and the SECOPS 210-255. Cisco introduced the Global Cybersecurity Scholarship program where they invest $10 million into the program to increase the talent pool with cybersecurity proficiency.

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Refreshed Wireless and Design Certifications Offer Up-to-date Skills for IT Professionals

As the technology landscape continues its rapid transformation, those who work in the industry are faced with the constant challenge of keeping their skills up-to-date. To address the needs of professionals looking to build, assess and continually reinforce wireless technology or network design expertise throughout the spectrum of their career, we are announcing updates to three of our training and certification offerings: CCDA, CCDP and CCNA Wireless.

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7 Reasons to Zip Over to WebEx

It’s a sentiment even truer today than in his 17th-century writings. We all rely on others for survival. The ability to connect for a quick chat was much simpler in Donne’s era. Or was it?

Even if most of your employees are one place, it’s unlikely that all your partners, suppliers, and customers are within walking distance of your office. The ability to connect and collaborate, across town or across time zones, is becoming a standard business need.

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Cisco Intersight – A Transformative Evolution

Cisco recently introduced Cisco Intersight, a revolutionary cloud-based systems management platform. Intersight was designed to deliver significant benefits while being easy to use and simple for Cisco UCS and HyperFlex customers to transition.

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End-to-end Security Management for the Next-generation Data Center with Cisco ACI and AlgoSec

Introduction: The heart of the data center, today’s business applications are highly dynamic with connectivity between the various application components that are constantly changing to support business continuity and digital transformation initiatives. This constant state of flux increases the organization’s attack surface and creates gaps in the security infrastructure, which network and security operations teams are struggling to plug.

To address these challenges, we need a solution that supports visibility, agility, automation and extensibility, while not compromising on tight security and compliance requirements.

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CCleaner Command and Control Causes Concern

Introduction

Talos recently published a technical analysis of a backdoor which was included with version 5.33 of the CCleaner application. During our investigation we were provided an archive containing files that were stored on the C2 server. Initially, we had concerns about the legitimacy of the files. However, we were able to quickly verify that the files were very likely genuine based upon the web server configuration files and the fact that our research activity was reflected in the contents of the MySQL database included in the archived files.

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Cisco Security Connector: Built for iOS 11

Apple and Cisco have partnered to help businesses in every industry accelerate their mobile transformation. From seamless user experience with collaborative applications to Wi-Fi optimization, the partnership has been grounded in a tangible reality.

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How to Evolve Media Infrastructure, and Sleep Well at Night

Imagine you’ve made a decision to move out of your house—the one that’s faithfully served your needs in the past years—to a new one. You want your new house to be part of the digital world around you, and to enjoy all the benefits of modern technology, so you make it connected, smart, automated.

But then, you also think of the possible implications of this change. New risks that weren’t relevant to you before. What if someone uses a flaw in the smart front door lock to break in, undetected, and steal your valuables? What if someone accesses feeds from IP cameras in your home to gather private information about your family?

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Introducing the First Benchmark Standard for IoT

We have reached a point where virtually every electronic device can be connected to the internet and interact with its surrounding environment. The explosive growth of the Internet of Things shows no signs of slowing down, and in fact, may actually be speeding up. We have already seen new businesses created, existing ones destroyed, and new insights derived from analytics, creating a competitive advantage for organizations which can collect large datasets and parse them, to glean actionable insights. This process is transforming every industry.

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Will Driverless Cars Dream in Cisco Hues?

Google, Uber, Ford. They are the big names in driverless vehicles. But did you know Cisco is already empowering nearly every Connected Car on Earth? Through its cloud-based IoT platform, Jasper, Cisco has become a key player in Smart Car technology, helping Honda launch its connected car services across Europe and working with Hyundai to create a new concept for connected car data collection. Plus, Cisco is already partnering with communities like yours to deploy fog and speed sensors along public roads. So we can just imagine what the visionaries at Cisco have in store for driverless cars.

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Introducing a New Software Subscription for Cisco DNA

Today every business model transformation, every market shift is fueled by software. Software has become the key to innovation.

Let’s take an example of your user mobility requirements. Today it serves a purpose beyond just simple connectivity. Customers expect a flawless experience irrespective of where they are, which device they use.  IT has to stay ahead of the game and is expected to deliver exceptional wireless connectivity and performance for high-density environments, simplify deployments by automating based on intent, route traffic intelligently, personalize services for users based on their location, detect attacks proactively and remediate through automation. All of these outcomes driven by analytics , automation and security are possible with Cisco’s software solutions such as Identity Services Engine (ISE), Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX), Prime Infrastructure, DNA Advantage and Essentials.

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Cisco RV340 and RV345 Dual WAN VPN Routers

I thought it would be a good time to provide a quick update on our Cisco RV Series. As amazing as Rafael Nadal is as he took his 10th French Open yesterday at Roland Garros, our new RV340 Series models continue to amaze as they make their way to your local Cisco Partners!

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New Addition to Cisco SMB Switch Family

We made another big step in completing our full vision of next generation SMB switches. The Cisco Small Business Team is pleased to announce 19 new models in the successful 550X and 350X series switching product line. These new models provide Gigabit or Fast Ethernet with 10-Gigabit uplinks and advanced features to deliver unmatched value for Small and Midsize businesses.

Together with the full 10-Gigabit 550XG and 350XG models already available on the market, we now have a comprehensive portfolio to help customers upgrade to 10 Gigabit and ride the wave of digital economy at an affordable price.

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Segment Routing IPv6 – Interoperability demo is already there!

Who would have bet on a SRv6 interoperability demonstration at SIGCOMM 2017 conference this summer?

Very few of us actually… For those who are not familiar with the SIGCOMM 2017 conference, this is a highly respected conference where key networking innovations and orientations are being discussed every year by leading vendors, major web and service providers, and academic researchers.

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Prevent an Encryption Bottleneck on High-Speed Links

What if you had a car with a powerful, turbo-charged engine that could fly along at 130 mph —until you turned on the air conditioner and watched the max speed drop to 50? Pick up two friends, and it struggles to maintain 30 mph.

This would be depressing for you as a driver, but it does make a good analogy for IT managers trying to leverage Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) for high speed link encryption requirements. In this approach, the routers’ throughput capabilities are restricted to the IPSec encryption engine limits, rather than using an encryption solution that can leverage the maximum aggregate throughput capabilities of the router.

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Operators Can Bridge the Gap for New IoT Revenues

The market for Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks, particularly NB-IoT and CAT-M1, is heating up. More and more Mobile Network Operators are engaged in trials or have already launched commercial services. Manufacturers are adding NB-IoT and CAT-M1 support to their sensors, modules, and devices. To date, Operators have taken a “horses for courses” approach by deploying a range of LPWA network standards for varying IoT application needs. However, many are predicting that the market momentum will swing from the first-to-market unlicensed LPWA standards (e.g., LoRa, Sigfox) to the emerging licensed LPWA standards (e.g., NB-IoT, CAT-M1), which are forecasted to capture over two-thirds of the LPWA market by 2020, according to ABI Research.

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Stay Connected Wherever You Go with MTX Connect

So how many of you go on a business trip to another country only to find upon your return the shock of a lifetime, your phone bill? I know that I have and instead of the promises of lower prices from the big operators, you get hit with roaming surcharges and the like? C’mon you know that you have.

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Network Slicing in Action

One particular aspect of mobile network evolution that deserves attention is the idea of reducing round-trip time (RTT) between consumers of a service and the service source itself. So much so that in 5G, this concept has acquired its own unique 3GPP term: URLLC which is an acronym for Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications. Cisco envisions, as does AT&T among other leading carriers that low latency communications will enable a new class of network services characterized by tight control loops involving Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual reality (VR) and even haptic communications triggered by the immediate network response to a touch event. Cisco is excited about these possibilities and is pursuing an aggressive mobile network evolution strategy designed to deliver an end-to-end system architecture enabling low latency capabilities. But amidst all of this, it is probably worth unpacking the basics so that we can develop an understanding of what is truly needed and how we can help carriers realize the end-game.

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Cisco Accelerates Cloud Native vDRA and Scoops up Two North America Wins

People today use their mobile devices anytime, any place, and anywhere and According to the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) today there are still more than 800 mobile operators investing in LTE. There are also close to 600 additional LTE networks that have been commercially launched and another 60 are still being built out. Growth in LTE is being driven by all types of intelligent devices such as smartphones, tablets, PCs, and IoT Devices are some of the big growth drivers. Adoption of Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) and Voice-over-Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) is also extremely high and growing. This growth has caused a tremendous amount of new signaling traffic that needs to also be addressed with a new signaling architecture.

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Introducing New Enterprise Controls for Cisco Spark

Making the Impossible, Possible

Last year, one of my colleagues went to a start-up conference with 2,000 people. On stage, someone asked the audience how many were working on consumer apps. Almost everyone raised their hands. Then the person asked how many were working on enterprise apps. This time only three hands went up. Three.

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How Your Network Just Became the Smartest Student in the Class

The Network. Intuitive. is a complete transformation in hardware, software, and management that will change how networks operate, enabling them to adapt in real time with artificial intelligence (AI), and delivering the secure foundation for our digital world, faster and more  securely, all while driving down operational cost. This new era in programmable networking leverages machine learning and analytics to deliver a new level of intelligence at the core of any organization. So, what does that mean for the future of Digital Education?

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Service Provider Security Architecture – Part 2

In my earlier blog post, I described the need for pervasive security and architectural approaches to enable secure, agile services against increasingly sophisticated attackers. Pervasive security is critical to the Open Network Architecture (ONA).

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Service Provider Security Architecture – Part 1

There has never been a more interesting time to be a Service Provider.  Today, we are in the midst of a once in a generation transition in technology that we last saw with the birth of the internet.  Today, the exponential growth in hyper-connectivity, the services that evolve upon it and the dawn of the Internet of Things demand a next generation of flexible and dynamic infrastructure.  To power this new epoch in infrastructure, Service Providers are grappling with the promise and challenge of such technologies as virtualization and orchestration.   Compounding this challenge is the need to maintain the security of this critical infrastructure and the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the information that resides upon it.  Service Providers are well aware of this requirement and have traditionally built architectures that focused on enforcement of the security perimeter.

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Digital Transformation Taking Flight in ASEAN Region

We showcased our innovation at CommunicAsia in Singapore a week ago, highlighting the changing digital landscape and sharing insights on how companies should be ready for the future.

Our senior executives were on hand to address topics and trends impacting organizations across the region, from strategies to migrate to 5G, the importance of IoT/M2M in this transition and learning how to orchestrate network services in the age of the cloud.

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Cisco’s 3-Phase Plan for your 5G success

It is generally accepted that revenues for mobile service providers are trending flat to down. A recent ARPU report from Informa provides this picture in detail by country. Some mobile service providers have acquired content services as a way to boost this trend, but they admit that this too will eventually trend to flat again. What is needed is a new business model that goes beyond connectivity and bandwidth. There are a number of studies on digital transformation and 5G in particular that note the services for enterprise are strong growth opportunities between now the 2025 (and beyond). There is an in-depth 2016 report from the European Commission with a catchy title of “Identification and quantification of key socio-economic data to support strategic planning for the introduction of 5G in Europe” that projects a large growth in enterprise business for mobile service providers 5G network services between now and the 2025.

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Deep Dive into AMP and Threat Grid integration with Cisco Email Security

In this blog post, we are going to dive deeper and explain the workflows of AMP and Threat Grid integration with Cisco Email Security (applies to both Cloud Email Security and on premise Email Security Appliance), as well as help administrators refine security posture in their organizations. Let’s start with a quick recap of how file reputation, file analysis and file retrospection work together in general.

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Replace your AV with Next Generation Endpoint Security

If you’ve been to a security conference in the last year you’ve probably seen more than 20 different vendors all talking about endpoint security. Some might be talking about next generation anti-virus, endpoint detection and response, and even the much lauded machine learning. How do you cut through the clutter and noise to find what you are looking for?

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Capturing the Opportunity of Digital Transformation

Information is the fuel for the continuing transformation of healthcare, enabling a care system that can address the growing challenges of quality, equity and cost.  But as health systems and hospitals digitally transform, as they increase their ability to acquire and process clinical information, the question is how effectively are they using that information to drive improved care processes.  Are they fully leveraging the information opportunity that is before them?

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Shifting Perceptions in Technology to Drive Change in Learning

The cloud and mobility in our devices have caused industries the world over to rethink how they conduct business. Education is no exception to this shift in culture. How does a public service industry tasked with the education of minors and often an extremely limited budget create access to the technological revolution for their students?

Addressing access requires a two-pronged approach of technical and cultural change. Both of these require a new mindset where we question our preconceived notions, adapt our perceptions, and reexamine our biases.

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School’s In: Flexible Radio Assignment

If you are in IT, you’re being asked to support more wireless devices – both end user and non-user – as well as the ever growing applications they use. These applications, such as video and collaboration, are far more bandwidth intensive and add large amounts of traffic to the network. This high-density environment could create a bottleneck on your network. Users may carry three or more devices and will come and go at various times, creating an unpredicted high density scenario your network may not be ready for.

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Network Security in the Age of Hyperconnectivity: Pervasive, Proactive, and Persistent Protection is Essential to Thwart Cyberattacks

Securing today’s digital content has become more challenging, as there are more endpoints and wide area networks (WAN) to protect than ever before. There will be 27.1 billion networked devices/connections by 2021, up from 17.1 billion in 2016 globally (according to the latest Cisco Visual Networking Index).  The majority (51%) of those endpoints will be machine-to-machine (M2M) modules by 2021. As the Internet of Things (IoT) landscape continues to expand, digital domains and demands for access to applications and data by people and things will continue to increase.

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Cisco Command Line Interface CLI

After that, the router will allow us to type commands but in different modes we can only used specific commands. So in this tutorial we will learn about the Command Line Interface (CLI) and different modes in a Cisco router/switch.

Below lists popular modes in Cisco switch/router:

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Cisco adds new capabilities to its Infinite Broadband solution for Cable Access Networks

It’s hard to believe we’ve been shipping the Cisco RPHY (Remote PHY), standards based, products for two months already! It all started at ANGA.COM with the launch of Infinite Broadband, which included the cBR8 RPHY capability and a GS7000 RPD (Remote PHY Device).

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Threats with Escalating Impact: Announcing the Cisco 2017 Midyear Cybersecurity Report

It’s time again for our Midyear Cybersecurity Report (MCR), which offers updates on the security research and insights revealed in the recent Annual Cybersecurity Report. The unsettling news at this halfway point in the year is that the bad actors are adding new and sophisticated spins to their exploits. Their aim is not just to attack, but to destroy in a way that prevents defenders from restoring systems and data. We’ve coined a name for adversaries’ new goal: destruction of service (DeOS).

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Introducing Cisco CMX Engage

Enhancing customer experience to unlock the Business Value from Wireless Infrastructure

Wi-Fi is fast becoming an essential commodity, on par with air, food and water. In response, almost every known modern business across the world is attempting to offer free Wi-Fi to visitors. The next big question is “Can we offer a best-of-breed Wi-Fi infrastructure and help customers extract business?”

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For Women in Cybersecurity, Possibilities are Endless

When the public thinks of cybersecurity we often envision people sitting in dark rooms writing code and fighting hackers. Although those people exist and are necessary, cybersecurity as a career is much more expansive and is an excellent option for women looking for rewarding opportunities.

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Cisco Firepower NGFW Delivers Unparalleled Threat Defense in NSS Labs Testing

Real-World Testing to Inform Your NGFW Buying Decision

We’re excited to share with you the latest NSS Labs NGFW test results. In the most rigorous independent NGFW testing to date, Cisco outperformed eight competitors in security effectiveness, blocking 100% of evasions and surpassing four vendors by over 50 points. You can download the reports to get the details. For the fourth year in a row, Cisco Firepower NGFW earned a “Recommended” rating from NSS Labs.

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Cisco achieves 100% detection in Breach test

And why 100% detection is grossly misleading

It is with great pride that we received the latest Breach Detection Report from NSS Labs, in which Cisco achieved a 100% detection rate – we simply couldn’t be more pleased to have our products so well-represented and validated in the market, and we truly believe we have the best, most effective security products available today. You can get your complementary copy of the NSS Labs report here.

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What is the Body Language of Your Encrypted Network Traffic Really Saying?

Imagine this scenario – you walk into a meeting room with a colleague and they are sitting at the table with their arms crossed. You immediately think to yourself, this meeting is not going to go well, this person is already displeased with me and I have not said anything yet. However, you are making an assumption based solely on one aspect of their behavior. Why not consider other factors or possible explanations for their body language: Is the room highly air-conditioned and they are cold? Is it Winter and they just came in from outside? Behavioral body language of people is dependent upon multiple factors to gain visibility into a person’s state of mind.

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Cisco Introduces a New Era in Networking, Powered by Software Innovation and Subscription Buying

Introduction of Cisco DNA Advantage and Essentials subscription-based network software will transform how infrastructure software is bought and deployed in the new era of networking. These latest innovations reinforce Cisco’s commitment to transition its business to a software-centric, subscription-based model, while helping accelerate our customers’ digital transformation.

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Cisco Kinetic Unlocks the Power of Your IoT Data

In recent years, companies across the globe have embraced the idea of a hyper-connected, digital world. Now I’m starting to see a level of maturity within those companies, an understanding that they need to move beyond the test-and-learn phase to truly master IoT as a way to drive massive business growth.

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Announcing a new era of networking: Cisco DNA for Healthcare

The Network. Intuitive

Introducing an entirely new era of networking — constantly learning, constantly adapting, constantly protecting.  Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA) foundation enables digital transformation for healthcare. Its software-driven service that delivers faster innovation with actionable insights, lowers costs with network automation, and reduces risks with security everywhere. It provides the flexibility you need for accelerated transformation, which is at the heart of healthcare innovation.

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Cisco Hyperflex: The Time for HCI Compromise is Over

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) – it’s a bit of a mouthful but the truth is it’s not half as complicated as it sounds.

While the concept has only been mainstream for a few years, HCI is the fastest-growing segment of the market for integrated systems.

In fact, Gartner predicts it will grow from a niche industry in 2012 to a $5 billion industry by 2019[i], while a recent ESG Lab report states that 85% of businesses currently use, or are planning to use, HCI solutions.

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Cisco Small Business Update: New Wireless and Routers models announced!

The new the Cisco WAP125 Wireless-AC Dual Band Desktop Access Point with PoE is an entry-level, business-class desktop access point offering cost-effective 802.11ac connectivity for 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz clients. Delivering speeds up to 867 Mbps, this model has a single Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) Gigabit Ethernet port. The WAP125 is a do-it-yourself access point; delivering business-class features such as a captive portal for secure guest access, wireless access and control, and robust security to help safeguard business data and users. The Cisco WAP125 comes with a limited lifetime warranty.

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Miercom Report: Secured Network Infrastructure

Everyday networks are being hammered with multiple types of threats, coming from a variety of sources. To make matters worse, these threats often use sophisticated techniques to be undetected by traditional security methods. Proliferation of IoT devices increase these risks as most IoT devices often use non-standard protocols, non-standard stacks and limited or no support for supplicants.

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Transformation and the New Role of Managed Services

If you are a part of or even peripherally connected to an IT organization or managed services provider, you probably hear the word “transformation” daily, perhaps even more frequently.  Like other well-worn terms such as “Digitization,” “DevOps,” or “Agile,” transformation can mean a lot of different things depending on the specific organization, the team, or the individual person saying it or hearing it.  It’s a word that’s used so often that it can sometimes confuse rather than clarify discussions.  While not quite there yet, transformation threatens to enter the pantheon of over-used and “buzzy” corporate-speak that serves only as filler content to obfuscate specificity.

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Cisco Enterprise Agreement for Digital Transformation

We are excited to announce the completely refreshed Cisco Enterprise Agreement (EA), passionately built from scratch for our customers.

Customers are telling us they want a simpler way to consume technology. They need to easily manage software, respond to consistent changes, and get the most value from their investment. For these reasons, we are introducing the Cisco Enterprise Agreement. Nothing like this has ever been done before at Cisco.

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How is Cisco Digitally Transforming its Support?

Customers are now demanding much more from support services, and that is leading to a change in the support landscape. Customers want unified interactions using voice, video and email that helps to increase efficiency. They are looking for near time issue resolution to reduce costs, and they want to proactively detect and mitigate issues to minimize risk.

Cisco is transforming its support services to provide better customer satisfaction by making it connected, collaborative, and cognitive.

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The 5 Critical Components of a Secure Store

We discussed how the Cisco SAFE methodology can help you to implement a reliable security solution for your store. This approach can help you define and address each threat to the retail branch with corresponding security capabilities, architectures, and designs – guiding you to a complete security solution against everything from worms to ransomware attacks.

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The Innovation Funding Board Process in Action

I shared the key components needed for an Innovation Funding Board (IFB) to function effectively, including the importance of establishing what success will look like at the outset. Now, I’ll break down the innovation process itself—and the key stages needed to take a great idea from initial inception through to full implementation.

There are many ways that the innovation process can be approached, depending on the ultimate goals of those involved. The method described in this blog uses a build/test/learn approach to encourage a lean startup mentality amongst project teams. There are four main phases involved: Ideas; Rapid Evaluation; Incubation; and, finally, if a project is successful, Implementation.

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Managing the Complexities of Multicloud

Many of you are already working in multicloud environments – a combination of public and private clouds (i.e., AWS, Azure, Google, and on-premise IT). In fact, IDC found that 84% of IT executives surveyed expect to use multiple clouds from multiple cloud providers. Organizations are pursuing multicloud for a variety of reasons including increasing revenue, reducing costs, decreasing time to market, or simplifying IT infrastructure. While a mulitcloud approach can deliver tremendous benefits, it can also create complexity, exposing a gap between the business need for digitization and what IT can reliably and confidently support.

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Cisco ACI and Fortinet Joint Solution Enables Business Agility at Axians AB

Introduction: 

I am covering a customer success story featuring the Cisco ACI and Fortinet joint solution. Axians AB is a leading Swedish IT sourcing company, with multiple offices in the Nordics and employees across the globe. Axians offers hybrid IT services from datacenters and the public cloud to a diverse set of customers spanning private, government and service providers.

Axians’ Requirements:

With a rapidly growing customer base, Axians had a pressing need for a scalable and flexible infrastructure, one that would provide high utilization rates, simplified management and reduced costs. In particular for networking, Axians required an SDN architecture with programmability, accelerated application security delivery and time-to-market advantages. Further, Axians’ Service Provider business needed support for multi-tenancy and hybrid-cloud integration.

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Lessons from Hannover Messe: 5 Ways to Leverage IT for Your Industrial Ops

Our customers are already connecting thousands of intelligent devices and demanding new transparency from their vendors: They want to liberate plant floor data from operational silos and proprietary technologies. Only by doing this will they be able to adapt to the latest advances in automation, sensor technology, and machine learning… not to mention the economic imperative to get in front of tightening competition due to globalization.

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Introducing PnP Connect

What is Cisco Network Plug & Play?

Cisco Network Plug & Play (PnP) is a secure and scalable solution for simple day-zero provisioning across all Cisco Enterprise platforms (routers, switches and wireless access points). The PnP application runs on top of Cisco Enterprise SDN Controller – APIC-EM.

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VGA Cables and WiFi Access as Cloud Adoption Predictors

I spend most of my time educating channel partners, most of them Value-Added Resellers (VARs) on how Cisco CloudCenter can help them help their customers with a hybrid cloud strategy.  What I’ve noticed in my first year at Cisco after being part of the CliQr acquisition is that selling cloud services is very different than the traditional VAR box sale.

Instead of a large influx of capital funds that a salesperson can use to retire quarterly quota, cloud selling is much more about planting seeds in multiple accounts, some of which will grow exponentially and continue to feed revenue streams in perpetuity.  That lets a VAR build relationships with lots of different people within their accounts and there’s plenty of opportunity for hardware drag and services revenue in the short term, but it’s that long term relationship a VAR is really trying to build.

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Cisco SD-WAN Networking Service for Public Clouds

Enterprises across all verticals are migrating their applications to public cloud (IaaS) services and taking advantage of the great cost savings on compute hosting. But the cost benefits shouldn’t affect security, scalability or customer experience. Enterprises require the same level of secure network access, control and visibility in the cloud as they do with on-premise networks. Cloud providers offer basic network functions like IPSEC VPN, BGP routing, NAT. It’s a good enough solution to build a simple site-to-site VPN network with some routing, but enterprises could quickly face these challenges:

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Ten Technologies to Consider for Contact Centers in 2017: Part 2

Hybrid Services – Integrating cloud services with existing on-premises customer care services is currently a hot topic, not just in the contact center domain but throughout Unified Collaboration and other IT groups.   Hybrid Services architectures allow our Cisco IT teams to deploy some of the latest cloud technology, while knowing the investment made in the present premise environment can be leveraged.  Currently here in Cisco IT we’re exploring several options for our internal contact centers.

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Protecting Innovation: Update on ITC Enforcement Action

Opening statements for the ITC ‘944 investigation enforcement hearing began this afternoon, and the full evidentiary hearing should be complete tomorrow. In the ITC’s final decision last summer, Arista was found to infringe three Cisco patents, including our SysDB patent. While Arista claims to have redesigned its products to avoid Cisco’s SysDB patent, they declined to present the redesign to the Commission for review. The ITC now will determine in the enforcement proceeding whether Arista’s redesign continues to infringe Cisco’s SysDB patent and, if so, what the penalty should be for the ongoing infringement.

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Ten Technologies to Consider for Contact Centers in 2017

The line made famous by the Rolling Stones, “Time waits for no one”, is especially true for technology. A little over two years ago I wrote a blog titled “Ten Things to Consider for a Better Contact Center”. While all of the items mentioned are still relevant, the Contact Center technology space has gained significant investment in new capabilities since that blog was published. Contact Centers have expanded their technology reach and with that comes the importance of understanding how new technology improves customer service. Properly understanding and implementing the various new offerings may help to greatly improve the widely held corporate goal of increasing customer service, both quality and satisfaction.

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Cisco Distribution Sales Visibility: Another Step toward Ease of Doing Business

Last year, Cisco launched Distribution Sales Visibility (DSV) and began deploying it, country by country, across our distribution channel. Distis in Canada and the US are all now using DSV.

A Step toward EoDB

The whole point of DSV is to make Cisco easier to work with for our distributors and for the resellers they support. In most cases, it reduces the crediting of bookings to the Cisco sales team to hours vs. days, and removes the $100k order minimum. It also helps distributors leverage existing inventory and deliver the value-added services that give partners a competitive edge. It replaces Channel Bookings Neutrality (CBN) – a welcome change for many of us – and puts distribution ordering on equal footing with direct orders.

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