Like all IT certification exams, Cisco 300-430 ENWLSI has special traits and particularities that anyone aspiring to take this exam requires to take notice of, be it someone, anywhere in the world.
These involved peculiarities are not just essential in taking the final exam but evenly important to receiving a flying score on the first attempt and finally attaining the associated certifications.
First, let me say how we take notes and what tools we use are admittedly a personal preference and decision. Hopefully, we are doing it, however!
Most of us are creatures of habit and comfort – we want it simple and effective. When we put that developer hat on as part of our DevOps/SRE or AppDev roles it’s optimal when we can combine our code development environment, or IDE, with a tool that we take notes in. I’m sure most of us are using Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code app as we write Python or Go-based scripts and applications during our network programming and automation work. I probably knocked out 4,500 lines of Python in support of the CiscoLive Network Operations Center (NOC) automation earlier this summer and VS Code was integral to that.
Financial institutions have to be vigilant in the face of a continually evolving cybersecurity threat landscape. As these have attacks have evolved, regulatory bodies have updated their regulations to account for the increasing threat of cyber risk. In 2015, following a significant increase in nation state and hacktivist attacks on U.S. financial institutions, the FFIEC released new guidance and a Cybersecurity Assessment Tool for institutions to self assess their risks and determine their cybersecurity maturity. This was revised in 2017, and this consistent framework is intended to be able to help leadership and the board assess their preparedness and risk over time. This framework is especially relevant given the recent FFIEC Architecture and Operations update and the Executive Order on Cybersecurity from 2021.
The purpose of this blog is to assist our IT based customers and partners with a concise and high level understanding of the FFIEC Cybersecurity Assessment Tool and derivative impacts on their current and future day to day operations. It is part of a multipart blog series on financial regulations and how to manage them architecturally, geared towards IT leadership.
The Cybersecurity Assessment Tool is fairly intuitive to use and the exercise should not be arduous for an organization to complete. The assessment applies principles of the FFIEC IT Handbook and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. The intention here was to be complimentary to existing frameworks and supportive of existing audit criteria. The FFIEC has released a mapping of the Cybersecurity Assessment Tool and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework to the FFIEC IT Handbook.
The assessment itself involves two primary components: an institution first creates an inherent risk profile based upon the nature of their business, and determining cybersecurity maturity. The inherent risk profile is an institution’s analysis of its key technologies and operations. These are mapped into categories and include:
1. Technologies and Connection Types
2. Delivery Channels
3. Online Mobile Products and Technology Services
4. Organizational Characteristics
5. External Threats
The tool itself provides guidance on criteria to sell assess risk based on the different characteristics of an organization, which simplifies completion as well as consistency. By having explicit guidance on how to self assess into different risk categories, the leadership for the institution can ensure they have a consistent understanding of what the risk entails.
Below is a snippet of the inherent risk profile, of note is the intuitive and consistent guidance on how to classify risk within each domain.
Wireless connections are ubiquitous and have become a part of our daily lives no differently than electricity. Planning, maintaining, and troubleshooting WiFi networks, optimized for today’s radio coverage and capacity requirements, may not be a simple task for an otherwise seasoned wireless network engineer.
Read More: 350-801: Implementing Cisco Collaboration Core Technologies (CLCOR)
While wireless technologies are ubiquitous, they interact steadily with the physical environment. Architecting the best wireless coverage for a specific environment depends on many different physical factors like obstacles (walls, doors, windows), building geometry, furniture, and materials as well as the user density and intended usage. Different environments encounter a wide range of complexity across different verticals. For example, covering a moderate sized enterprise-office space could be as simple as correctly placing some APs (Access Points) with omni-directional antennas, while covering space with high ceiling such as a warehouse necessitates directional antennas to optimally cover the space and requires more engineering to get it dialed-in right. The challenge is that RF, unless visualized somehow, is invisible. Providing the “super-power” to view the RF in sufficient context to determine the correct angles, power, coverage, and capacity needs requires innovation using specialized and outstanding tools.
Cisco Wireless 3D Analyzer goal is to address challenges like these and enable RF design like never before possible! Cisco customers had access to this innovation starting with Cisco DNA Center release 2.2.3 providing features like the following:
As part of our digital transformation, my Cisco colleagues and I were getting trained on business agility in our ONEx organization. Any transformation needs an effective way to measure the success at the end and throughout, and as part of our initiative, I could see there was enough awareness and emphasis given to metrics and measurements.
The training also addressed some points from the book “Measure What Matters,” which peaked my curiosity and inspired me to start reading it. It is a fantastic book with the origin of the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) concept and how companies have leveraged the framework. I wanted to share a bit here about how Cisco also embraces this framework – and more – in our organization, in a slightly customized and enhanced way, and how it can be extended further.
Although the OKR framework has generated more interest in recent decades, goals and metrics themselves have long been the foundation to any company to identify, set and succeed. As with technology, our approach to goals and metrics has also evolved over the time, namely to include a couple key concepts: MBO or Management by Objectives, and VSE or Vision, Strategy & Execution, extension of this, VSEM, to include Metrics.
Vision
The Vision has represented the true north-star of what the company wants to achieve. If we time box it, perhaps, 3 to 5 years or beyond, Vision does not change often unless the company goes through a major transformation or change of business. However, at an organization level or function level, it could change a bit but still align to the overall company vision. And, as you can imagine, there is still a healthy internal debate about whether one should have ONE single vision for all or a vision at each lower of functional levels – and different companies handle it in different ways.
Strategy
While Vision is a starting point, we need other elements to take it further. Strategy is the next level of Vision – how you plan to accomplish the vision. This could be multiple levers (or initiatives or methods or ways) to achieve the vision: A strategy, approach, or means to plan for the execution of it and, finally, deliver the desired outcome or results.
Execution
If Vision is the desired outcome, and Strategy is the big plan, then Execution is the detailed plan. The key to Execution is measurement, and thus it is often broken into smaller chunks – goals or objectives – which are easier to accomplish and show progress.
In the process of transforming our operations I’ve found several things to be true, and helpful, during this endeavor:
1. As Peter Drucker said, “What cannot be measured, cannot be improved“, but even before improving upon a thing, identifying and establishing the right set of metrics is key for any goal. Drucker also observed, “A manager should be able to measure the performance and results against a goal.” However, truly effective organizations must not limit measurements to the management level, but instead, equip employees at every level to identify and track meaningful metrics. These metrics could be milestones or KPIs and can be annual, quarterly, or even monthly. Some of these metrics could be in multiple systems (say ERP or CRM or ITSM) or Project Portfolio Management tools. The goals and objectives can be (and in some cases should be) inherited either vertically or across the organization or cross-functionally beyond the organization for shared goals.
2. When employing new measurement metrics within a company, the ideal scenario would be to integrate, automate, and bring all of these metrics into one single dashboard. A one-stop shop for metrics viewing simplifies the process, ensuring that there is minimal manual work involved in updating these metrics periodically. Several of the SaaS solutions provide APIs that can be used to easily integrate and get the needed metric and based on a set threshold, can even provide indicators about whether metrics have been achieved, and communicate that critical information in real-time to impacted teams.
3. Although Goals & Results could be separately reviewed from employee performance review discussions, the ideal would be to review them together.
4. WHAT was achieved should be equally evaluated with HOW it was achieved. Equally important to the Vision are the types of behaviors that were exhibited to accomplish these results, and they should be reviewed to ensure that we understand and agree with the methods and the values represented in the achievement.
5. It’s critical that metrics and measurements are looked at holistically and together. Operationalization of the entire framework, process, or activity makes it efficient for the organization, but defining and setting meaningful metrics cannot be a one-time activity. Putting a structure and defining these annually is a good start but this is just the beginning – goals need to be measured, reviewed, revisited, and adjusted as needed.
Clear visibility of device compliance is key for network operations. One of the biggest challenges though is to agree upon the definition of compliance since different environments have different requirements. The purpose of this blog is to share the current compliance capabilities in Cisco DNA Center that will help network administrators to keep the infrastructure safe and consistent.
The current version of Cisco DNA Center, looks at device compliance from five different lenses in a non-SD-Access network: startup vs. running-config, network profiles, application visibility, software image, and critical security advisories.
Posts
All Comments
