Google Cloud adds networking, security features for enterprises

Google Cloud is rolling out new network and security features, including a service that provides Layer-7 security.The new offerings announced at Google Cloud Next also include firewall and web application-protection options aimed at advancing existing cloud connectivity and ensuring the security of cloud-based resources.“We are fundamentally enhancing our network fabric—which includes 35 regions, 106 zones and 173 network edge locations across 200-plus countries—and making it simpler and easier for organizations to migrate their existing workloads and modernize applications all while securing and making them easier to manage,” said Muninder Sambi, vice president and general manager of networking for Google Cloud.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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Network security depends on two foundations you probably don’t have

You’ve done everything to secure your network, and you still face threats. That’s what most enterprises say about their network security, and they’re half right. Yes, they still face threats, but they’ve not done everything to address them. In fact, most enterprises haven’t really implemented the two foundations on which real network security must be based.When I ask enterprises whether they’ve done a top-down analysis of network security, they usually say they do it every year. When I ask what’s involved in that assessment, they say they look for indications that their current strategies have failed. They build another layer, which is kind of like putting a second Band-Aid on a cut.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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Cisco moves Catalyst, Nexus management to the cloud

Cisco is taking a big step toward cloud-management of both its Catalyst campus and Nexus data-center equipment.At the Cisco Live customer event this week, the company rolled out two cloud-based management services that provide more options for enterprises to support hybrid workforces.
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Catalyst management in the cloud
The first service, Cloud Management for Cisco Catalyst, lets customers manage and troubleshoot Catalyst 9000 switching and wireless campus and branch devices from the company’s cloud-based Meraki dashboard, which can manage and troubleshoot a wide variety of devices and networks from a single screen. According to Cisco, Catalyst customers can run a CLI command with information about their organization, and it will move management of that device over to the Meraki cloud.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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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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Intel details IPU roadmap to free up CPUs

Intel is betting that future data-center operations will depend on increasingly powerful servers running ASIC-based, programable CPUs, and its wager rides on the development of infrastructure processing units (IPU), which are Intel’s programmable networking devices designed to reduce overhead and free up performance for CPUs.
Read more: SmartNICs set to infiltrate enterprise networksTo read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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4 lessons learned from the Atlassian network outage

Last month, software tools vendor Atlassian suffered a major network outage that lasted two weeks and affected more than 400 of their over 200,000 customers. The outage took down several of their products, including Jira, Confluence, Atlassian Access, Opsgenie, and Statuspage. While only a few customers were affected for the full two weeks, the outage was significant in terms of the depth of problems uncovered by the company’s engineers and the lengths they had to go to find and fix the problems.The outage was the result of a series of unfortunate internal errors by Atlassian’s own staff, and not the result of a cyberattack or malware. In the end, no customer lost more than a few minutes’ worth of data transactions, and the vast majority of customers didn’t see any downtime whatsoever.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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4 networking best practices learned from the Atlassian network outage

Last month, software tools vendor Atlassian suffered a major network outage that lasted two weeks and affected more than 400 of their over 200,000 customers. The outage took down several of their products, including Jira, Confluence, Atlassian Access, Opsgenie, and Statuspage. While only a few customers were affected for the full two weeks, the outage was significant in terms of the depth of problems uncovered by the company’s engineers and the lengths they had to go to find and fix the problems.The outage was the result of a series of unfortunate internal errors by Atlassian’s own staff, and not the result of a cyberattack or malware. In the end, no customer lost more than a few minutes’ worth of data transactions, and the vast majority of customers didn’t see any downtime whatsoever.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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Cisco urges software update to thwart counterfeit switches

Cisco is encouraging users of its popular Catalyst 2960X/2960XR switches to upgrade their IOS operating systems in an effort to combat counterfeiting.Because of the pervasiveness of these switches on the gray market, it’s imperative that customers enable the latest software release – IOS release 15.2(7)E4 or later – to validate the authenticity, security, and performance of their Catalyst 2960X/2960XR 24/48 port Gigabit Ethernet switches, Cisco stated in a notice to customers. To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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Fortinet tightens integration of enterprise security, networking controls

Fortinet has made available a new release of its core FortiOS software that includes features the vendor says will help enterprises more tightly meld security and networking controls.FortiOS 7.2, has 300 new features including AI support to help stop network threats more quickly, sandboxing to help fight ransomware threats, and improved SD-WAN, branch, and edge orchestration.How to choose an edge gateway
FortiOS is the vendor’s operating system for the FortiGate family of hardware and virtual components. FortiOS implements Fortinet Security Fabric and includes network security such as firewalling, access control, and authentication in addition to SD-WAN, switching, and wireless services. To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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What is NAC and why is it important for network security?

Network Access Control (NAC) is a cybersecurity technique that prevents unauthorized users and devices from entering private networks and accessing sensitive resources. Also known as Network Admission Control, NAC first gained a foothold in the enterprise in the mid-to-late 2000s as a way to manage endpoints through basic scan-and-block techniques.As knowledge workers became increasingly mobile, and as BYOD initiatives spread across organizations, NAC solutions evolved to not only authenticate users, but also to manage endpoints and enforce policies.How NAC works
NAC tools detect all devices on the network and provide visibility into those devices. NAC software prevents unauthorized users from entering the network and enforces policies on endpoints to ensure devices comply with network security policies. NAC solutions will, for instance, make sure that the endpoint has up-to-date antivirus and anti-malware protections.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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