Network Management

The SolarWinds Orion security breach is unfolding at a rapid pace, and the number of vendors and victims continues to grow. Each day brings new revelations as to its reach and depth. Of particular concern are the rate of infection and impact on government systems.In case you missed it, a backdoor was found in the SolarWinds Orion IT monitoring and management software. A dynamic link library called SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll, a SolarWinds digitally-signed component of the Orion software framework, was found to contain a backdoor that communicates via HTTP to third-party servers.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
After an initial dormant period of up to two weeks, the Trojan retrieves and executes commands, called jobs, that include the ability to transfer files, execute files, profile the system, reboot, and disable system services. In short, a total takeover of the machine.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

With the combined challenges of tight IT budgets and scarcer technical talent, it’s becoming imperative for enterprise network pros to embrace automation of processes and the way infrastructure responds to changing network traffic.Not only can automation help address these problems, they can also improve overall application-response time by anticipating and addressing looming congestion. Modern applications, such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and architectures that incorporate IoT and hybrid cloud have yet to reach their true potential because network capacity seems to always lag behind demand.  A common problem is that too much networking infrastructure is still manually maintained and managed, but major vendors are starting to addressing these  issues, as are startups that seek to break bottlenecks through automation.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

Most IT networking professionals are so busy with their day-to-day responsibilities that they don’t have time to consider taking on more work. But for companies with an industrial component, there’s an elephant in the room that is clamoring for attention. I’m talking about the increasingly common convergence of IT and operational technology (OT) networking and security.Traditionally, IT and OT have had very separate roles in an organization. IT is typically tasked with moving data between computers and humans, whereas OT is tasked with moving data between “things,” such as sensors, actuators, smart machines, and other devices to enhance manufacturing and industrial processes. Not only were the roles for IT and OT completely separate, but their technologies and networks were, too.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

Network packet brokers (NPB) have played a key role in helping organizations manage their management and security tools. The tool space has exploded, and there is literally a tool for almost everything. Cybersecurity, probes, network performance management, forensics, application performance, and other tools have become highly specialized, causing companies to experience something called “tool sprawl” where connecting a large number of tools into the infrastructure creates a big complex mesh of connections.Ideally, every tool would receive information from every network device, enabling it to have a complete view of what’s happening, who is accessing what, where they are coming in from, and when events occurred.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…