Networking

As the coronavirus spreads, public and private companies as well as government entities are requiring employees to work from home, putting unforeseen strain on all manner of networking technologies and causing bandwidth and security concerns.  What follows is a round-up of news and traffic updates that Network World will update as needed to help keep up with the ever-changing situation.  Check back frequently!UPDATE: 3.26
Week over week (ending March 23) Ookla says it has started to see a degradation of mobile and fixed-broadband performance worldwide. More detail on specific locations is available below. Comparing the week of March 16 to the week of March 9, mean download speed over mobile and fixed broadband decreased in Canada and the U.S. while both remained relatively flat in Mexico.
What is the impact of the coronavirus on corporate network planning? Depends on how long the work-from-home mandate goes on really. Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp. takes an interesting look at the situation saying the shutdown “could eventually produce a major uptick for SD-WAN services, particularly in [managed service provider]    Businesses would be much more likely to embark on an SD-WAN VPN adventure that didn’t involve purchase/licensing, favoring a service approach in general, and in particular one with a fairly short contract period.”
Statistics from VPN provider NordVPN show the growth of VPN usage across the globe.  For example, the company said the US has experienced a 65.93% growth in the use of business VPNs since March 11. It reported that mass remote working has contributed towards a rise in desktop (94.09%) and mobile app (0.39%) usage among Americans. Globally, NordVPN teams has seen a 165% spike in the use of business VPNs and business VPN usage in Netherlands (240.49%), Canada (206.29%) and Austria (207.86%) has skyrocketed beyond 200%. Italy has had the most modest growth in business VPN usage at just 10.57%.

UPDATE: 3. 25:To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

Digital innovation is disrupting businesses. Data and applications are at the hub of new business models, and data needs to travel across the extended network at increasingly high speeds without interruption. To make this possible, organizations are radically redesigning their networks by adopting multi-cloud environments, building hyperscale data centers, retooling their campuses, and designing new connectivity systems for their next-gen branch offices. Networks are faster than ever before, more agile and software-driven. They’re also increasingly difficult to secure. To understand the challenges and how security needs to change, I recently talked with John Maddison, executive vice president of products for network security vendor Fortinet.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

Digital innovation is disrupting businesses. Data and applications are at the hub of new business models, and data needs to travel across the extended network at increasingly high speeds without interruption. To make this possible, organizations are radically redesigning their networks by adopting multi-cloud environments, building hyperscale data centers, retooling their campuses, and designing new connectivity systems for their next-gen branch offices. Networks are faster than ever before, more agile and software-driven. They’re also increasingly difficult to secure. To understand the challenges and how security needs to change, I recently talked with John Maddison, executive vice president of products for network security vendor Fortinet.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

Cisco has issued another batch of security warnings that include problems in its Firepower firewall (FXOS),  Unified Computing System (UCS) software and Nexus switch operating system (NX-OS) .Network pros react to new Cisco certification curriculum
The firewall and UCS vulnerabilities all have a severity level of “high” on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System and include:To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

Juniper is filling out its enterprise security portfolio this week by integrating support for its Mist wireless customers and adding the capability for customers to gain better visibility and control over encrypted traffic threats.With the new additions, Juniper is looking to buttress its ability to let users secure all traffic traversing the enterprise network via campus, WAN or data center. The moves are part of Juniper’s grand Connected Security platform that includes a variety of security products including its next-generation firewalls that promise to protect networked resources across infrastructure and endpoints.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

Cisco has unveiled a cloud-based security platform it says will go a long way in helping customers protect their far-flung networked resources.Cisco describes the new SecureX service as offering  an open, cloud-native system that will let customers detect and remediate threats across Cisco and third-party products from a single interface. IT security teams can then automate and orchestrate security management across enterprise cloud, network and applications and end points.Network pros react to new Cisco certification curriculum
“Until now, security has largely been piecemeal with companies introducing new point products into their environments to address every new threat category that arises,” wrote Gee Rittenhouse senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Security Business Group in a blog about SecureX.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…