Cisco observability: What you need to know

Observability may be the latest buzzword in an industry loaded with them, but Cisco will tell you the primary goal of the technology is to help enterprises get a handle on effectively managing distributed resources in ways that have not been possible in the past.The idea of employing observability tools and applications is a hot idea. Gartner says that by 2024, 30% of enterprises implementing distributed system architectures will have adopted observability techniques to improve digital-business service performance, up from less than 10% in 2020.“Today’s operational teams have tools for network monitoring, application monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, call monitoring, and more, but they rarely intermingle to provide a cohesive view of what’s going on across the enterprise,” according to Carlos Pereira, Cisco Fellow and chief architect in its Strategy, Incubation & Applications group.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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SolarWinds’ Observability offers visibility into hybrid cloud infrastructure

SolarWinds, the maker of a well-known and widely used suite of IT management software products, announced this week that it’s expanding to the cloud, with the release of Observability, a cloud-native, SaaS-based IT management service that is also available for hybrid cloud environments.The basic idea of Observability is to provide a more holistic, integrated overview of an end-user company’s IT systems, using a single-pane-of-glass interface to track data from network, infrastructure, application and database sources. The system’s  machine learning techniques are designed to bolster security via anomaly detection.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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Juniper upgrades management platform, adds a switch

Juniper Networks has upgraded its cloud-based management platform and introduced a new switch family for campus and branch networks.On the management side, Juniper says the goal is to simplify network operations for organizations with a mix of campus, branch, micro-site, and remote-worker settings, and it is doing that by adding features to its Mist AI/ML cloud-based management platform and its Marvis virtual network assistant.
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What is Nmap and why do you need it on your network?

Nmap, short for Network Mapper, is a free and open source tool used for vulnerability checking, port scanning and, of course, network mapping. Despite being created back in 1997, Nmap remains the gold standard against which all other similar tools, either commercial or open source, are judged.Nmap has maintained its preeminence because of the large community of developers and coders who help to maintain and update it. The Nmap community reports that the tool, which anyone can get for free, is downloaded several thousand times every week.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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Center for Internet Security: 18 security controls you need

The Center for Internet Security has updated its set of safeguards for warding off the five most common types of attacks facing enterprise networks—web-application hacking, insider and privilege misuse, malware, ransomware, and targeted intrusions.In issuing its CIS Controls V8 this month, the organization sought to present practical and specific actions businesses can take to protect their networks and data. These range from making an inventory of enterprise assets to account management to auditing logs.In part the new version was needed to address changes to how businesses operate since V7 was issued three years ago, and those changes guided the work. “Movement to cloud-based computing, virtualization, mobility, outsourcing, work-from-home, and changing attacker tactics have been central in every discussion,” the new controls document says.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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Water-authority network upgrade spots problems faster

The Albuquerque water authority says recent network upgrades give it greater visibility and control over its remote sites and makes for faster responses to leaks and other problems.The Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority manages more than 3,000 miles of water-supply pipeline covering more than 650,000 users. The authority manages 135 remote locations, which include well sites, tanks, and pump stations, all of which have programmable logic controllers (PLC) connected to a dedicated, fixed-wireless network running at 900MHz back to the core network.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
“The [main treatment] plant was built [about] 15 years ago,” said Kristen Sanders, the authority’s chief information security officer. “So if a piece of equipment went out, replacing it would be about shopping on eBay.” Also the authority’s fiber backbone that connects the sites with the main plant was past it’s service life and had to be replaced.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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5 free network-vulnerability scanners

Though you may know and follow basic security measures on your own when installing and managing your network and websites, you’ll never be able to keep up with and catch all the vulnerabilities by yourself.Vulnerability scanners can help you automate security auditing and can play a crucial part in your IT security. They can scan your network and websites for up to thousands of different security risks, producing a prioritized list of those you should patch, describe the vulnerabilities, and give steps on how to remediate them. Some can even automate the patching process.Though vulnerability scanners and security auditing tools can cost a fortune, there are free options as well. Some only look at specific vulnerabilities or limit how many hosts can be scanned but there are also those that offer broad IT security scanning.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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SolarWinds Trojan: Affected enterprises must use hot patches, isolate compromised gear

Hot patching and isolating potentially affected resources are on the IT response schedule as enterprises that employ SolarWinds Orion network-monitoring software look to limit the impact of the serious Trojan unleashed on the platform.The supply-chain attack, reported early this week by Reuters and detailed by security researchers at FireEye and Microsoft involves a potential state-sponsored, sophisticated actor gained access to a wide variety of government, public and private networks via Trojanized updates to SolarWind’s Orion network monitoring and management software. This campaign may have begun as early as spring 2020 and is ongoing, according to FireEye and others.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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‘Credible threat’: How to protect networks from ransomware

(Editor’s note, Oct. 29, 2020: With the FBI and US Department of Homeland Security recently warning of credible cyberthreats to healthcare facilities including ransomware, it’s a good time to review the steps outlined in this article that enterprises can take to guard against such attacks.)Ransomware attacks are becoming more rampant now that criminals have learned they are an effective way to make money in a short amount of time.Attackers do not even need any programming skills to launch an attack because they can obtain code that is shared among the many hacker communities. There are even services that will collect the ransom via Bitcoin on behalf of the attackers and just require them to pay a commission.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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