IBM upgrades its Big Iron OS for better cloud, security, and AI support

IBM continues to fine-tune its mainframe to keep it attractive to enterprise users interested in keeping the Big Iron in their cloud and AI-application development plans.The company released a new version of the mainframe operating system—z/OS V2.5—that includes beefed-up support for containers, AI, and security.Chip shortage will hit hardware buyers for months to years
According to IBM, applications are at the heart of transactional and batch workloads running on z/OS. Fundamentally, developing new applications while modernizing existing applications is part of the digital transformation occurring in many enterprises.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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Ransomware recovery: Plan for it now

If your computing environment is subject to a large ransomware attack, you will most certainly be enacting your disaster recovery (DR) plan. But before you begin restoring systems, you must first ensure you have stopped the infection, identified it, and removed it. Jumping too quickly to the restore phase could actually make things worse. To understand why this is the case, it’s important to understand how ransomware works.How ransomware spreads in your environment
There are many articles such as this one that describe what ransomware does, but it’s important to emphasize that the goal of ransomware is rarely to infect just one system. Modern ransomware variants will immediately attempt to identify and execute various operating system vulnerabilities to gain administrative access and spread to the rest of your LAN. The attack will be coordinated via command-and-control (C&C) servers, and contacting these servers for instructions is the first thing that every ransomware variant does. They key in responding to an active ransomware attack is stopping further communications with C&C servers, as well as further communications between infected systems and the rest of your network.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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Don’t let subdomains sink your security

If your enterprise has a website (and one certainly would hope so in 2021!), it also has subdomains. These prefixes of your organization’s main domain name are essential for putting structural order to the content and services on your website, thus preventing online visitors from instantly fleeing in terror, disdain, or confusion.Large enterprises can have thousands of subdomains. IBM, for example, has roughly 60,000 subdomains, while Walmart.com has “only” 2,132 subdomains.What is DNS and how it works
Whatever value subdomains bring to enterprises–and they bring plenty–they present more targets for bad actors. Why, just last year the subdomains of Chevron, 3M, Warner Brothers, Honeywell, and many other large organizations were hijacked by hackers who redirected visitors to sites featuring porn, malware, online gambling, and other activities of questionable propriety.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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10 competitors Cisco just can’t kill off

In compiling this iteration of our list of competitors Cisco can’t kill off, one thing is clear: The competition is fierce amongst the bigger players.Nearly all the networking giant’s competitors have refreshed their product lines or bought into technology to compete more closely with Cisco. But that’s not to say Cisco has been sitting still by any means.The 10 most powerful companies in enterprise networking 2021
The company has expanded and refreshed its core Catalyst, Nexus and Silicon One networking gear and made major strides in security and software. Going forward, it wants to lead the industry in network-as-a-service.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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Cisco completes purchase of security risk-management firm

Cisco continues to bulk-up its security portfolio, this week closing the deal on risk-based management company Kenna Security for an undisclosed amount.Kenna’s Risk-Based Vulnerability Management system collects and analyzes security data to provide security teams with information about threats so they can prioritize remediation and better understand risks.
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The technology will become part of Cisco’s SecureX service that integrates numerous security components. Cisco says the service is an open, cloud-native system to detect and remediate threats across Cisco and third-party products from a single interface. The SecureX dashboard shows operational metrics, triggers alerts to emerging threats, and accelerates threat investigations and incident management by aggregating and correlating global intelligence and local context in one view.  To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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Why the cloud will never eat the data center

Sometimes it’s hard to see gradual changes in technology paradigms because they’re gradual.  Sometimes it helps to play “Just suppose…” and see where it leads. So, just suppose that the cloud did what some radical thinkers say, and “absorbed the network”. That’s sure an exciting tag line, but is this even possible, and how might it come about?Companies are already committed to a virtual form of networking for their WAN services, based on VPNs or SD-WAN, rather than building their own WANs from pipes and routers.  That was a big step, so what could be happening to make WANs even more virtual, to the point where the cloud could subsume them?  It would have to be a data-center change.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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Open-source: Get SLAs to protect network apps with open-source components

The continuous influx of open-source software (OSS) into enterprise IT departments is, in many ways, an enormous boon to both vendors and users. For the former, the ability to use open source components means getting rid of a great deal of duplicative effort—rather than having to design every part of, say, an IoT sensor and monitoring product from scratch, a vendor can adopt a well-understood, well-supported open source library for its networking stack, and focus more of its attention on the sensing and data analysis features that will set the product apart from its competitors.For end-users, one of the chief advantages is—at least in theory—the improved security that’s part of the usual sales pitch for open source software. The idea here is that the open nature of a piece of software—and the fact that anyone can look at it to discover and correct security flaws—means that it’s generally going to be more secure than a proprietary equivalent.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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Make sure your laptop backups can handle ransomware

With increasingly mobile workforces, it’s important to effectively backup corporate data that resides on laptops, which requires a unique set of features not found in traditional backup systems used for desktops attached to corporate LANs.Laptops have all the functionality of desktops, but are readily lost or stolen, have limited bandwidth for connectivity to corporate resources, and can spend unpredictable spans of time disconnected or turned off. So it’s important to find backup options that meet these challenges, which can also include ransomware attacks.Backup lessons from a cloud-storage disaster
Backing up laptops properly also makes upgrading them much easier, especially in the world of remote work. A good backup system can restore a user’s profile and data, and makes replacing a laptop much simpler for both the IT department and the person whose laptop is being replaced. With the right system in place, all you have to do is ship them a new laptop.  They can restore their own profile and data without IT intervention, saving time, effort, and a lot of money.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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Palo Alto Networks pushes enterprise zero trust

Palo Alto Networks bolstered its security portfolio with products that target enterprise network users looking to make the move to a zero-trust environment.The new capabilities focus on a number of zero trust mechanisms—including  SaaS, cloud and DNS that will be available in June—and will make it significantly easier for organizations to adopt zero-trust security across the enterprise, according to Anand Oswal, senior vice president and general manager with Palo Alto.
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As more people are working from anywhere, they require fast and always-on access to data and applications in the distributed cloud, regardless of location, Oswal said. “An all-encompassing zero-trust approach to network security is critical for safeguarding productivity in the new reality of remote, mobile, and hybrid work,” he said.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…

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