Amid the pandemic, using trust to fight shadow IT
With most workers scattered at home and trying to come up with their own ad-hoc IT workarounds, there’s an easy way for IT shops to build trust: communicate. (Insider Story) READ MORE HERE…
Software
How to deal with the impact of digital transformation on networks
Digital transformation has increased the importance of the network, particularly the edge, where customers, employees, cloud applications and IoT devices connect to the enterprise. The legacy static and non-differentiated network edge of years past is no longer sufficient for many reasons, so as companies embark on digital-transformation plans, their networks must evolve.Networking pros should be looking at, among other things, improving security and embracing software-defined networking (SDN) that supports propagating changes quickly across the network in order to accommodate the many challenges digital transformation creates.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…
What’s hot for Cisco in 2020
As the industry gets ready to gear up for 2020 things have been a little disquieting in networking land.That’s because some key players – Arista and Juniper in particular – have been reporting business slowdowns as new deals have been smaller than expected and cloud providers haven’t been as free-spending as in the past.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
Worldwide IT spending has been on the slow side, Gartner said in October that worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.7 trillion in 2019, an increase of 0.4% from 2018, the lowest growth forecast so far in 2019. The good news: global IT spending is expected to rebound in 2020 with forecast growth of 3.7%, primarily due to enterprise software spending, Gartner stated.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…
Gartner crystal ball: Looking beyond 2020 at the top IT-changing technologies
ORLANDO – Forecasting long-range IT technology trends is a little herding cats – things can get a little crazy.But Gartner analysts have specialized in looking forwardth, boasting an 80 percent accuracy rate over the years, Daryl Plummer, distinguished vice president and Gartner Fellow told the IT crowd at this year’s IT Symposium/XPO. Some of those successful prediction have included the rise of automation, robotics, AI technology and other ongoing trends.Now see how AI can boost data-center availability and efficiency
Like some of the other predictions Gartner has made at this event, this year’s package of predictions for 2020 and beyond is heavily weighted toward the human side of technology rather than technology itself. To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…
Microsoft issues fixes for non-supported versions of Windows Server
Microsoft took the rare step of issuing security fixes for both the server and desktop versions of Windows that are long out of support, so you know this is serious.The vulnerability (CVE-2019-0708) is in the Remote Desktop Services component built into all versions of Windows. RDP, formerly known as Terminal Services, itself is not vulnerable. CVE-2019-0708 is pre-authentication and requires no user interaction, meaning any future malware could self-propagate from one vulnerable machine to another.CVE-2019-0708 affects Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2008. It does not impact Microsoft’s newest operating systems; Windows 8 through 10 and Windows Server 2012 through 2019 are not affected.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…
Cisco forms VC firm looking to weaponize fledgling technology companies
Cisco this week stepped deeper into the venture capital world by announcing Decibel, an early-stage investment firm that will focus on bringing enterprise-oriented startups to market.Veteran VC groundbreaker and former general partner at New Enterprise Associates Jon Sakoda will lead Decibel. Sakoda had been with NEA since 2006 and focused on startup investments in software and Internet companies. [ Now see 7 free network tools you must have. ]
Of Decibel Sakoda said: “We want to invest in companies that are helping our customers use innovation as a weapon in the game to transform their respective industries.”To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…
Cisco patches a critical patch on its software-license manager
Cisco this week said it patched a “critical” patch for its Prime License Manager (PLM) software that would let attackers execute random SQL queries.The Cisco Prime License Manager offers enterprise-wide management of user-based licensing, including license fulfillment.RELATED: What IT admins love/hate about 8 top network monitoring tools
Released in November, the first version of the Prime License Manager patch caused its own “functional” problems that Cisco was then forced to fix. That patch, called ciscocm.CSCvk30822_v1.0.k3.cop.sgn addressed the SQL vulnerability but caused backup, upgrade and restore problems, and should no longer be used Cisco said.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…
10 of the coolest and wackiest tech stories of 2018
It’s not necessarily easy to pick the coolest and wackiest tech stories of the year, especially when you have so much to choose from. Rather than trying to be all- inclusive as we have done in the past, see (here and here and here) we have tried to more “exclusive.” Have fun!To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…
What will be hot for Cisco in 2019?
Software, software, and more software. That seems to be the mantra for Cisco in 2019 as the company pushes software-defined WANs, cloud partnerships, improved application programs, and its over-arching drive to sell more subscription-based software licenses.As the year closed on Cisco’s first quarter 2019 financials, the company was indeed touting its software growth, saying subscriptions were 57 percent of total software revenue, up five points year over year, and its application software businesses was up 18 percent to $1.42 billion. The company also said its security business, which is mostly software, rose 11 percent year over year to $651 million.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…
ICANN’s internet DNS security upgrade apparently goes off without a glitch
So far, so good. That’s the report from Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as it rolled out the first-ever changing of the cryptographic key that helps protect the internet’s address book – the Domain Name System (DNS) on Oct. 11.The change is central to ICANN’s project to upgrade the top pair of cryptographic keys used in the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) protocol — commonly known as the root zone key signing key (KSK) — which secures the internet’s foundational servers. This so-called root KSK rollover from the 2010 KSK to the 2017 KSK was supposed to take place almost a year ago but was delayed until Oct. 11 of this year because of concerns it might disrupt internet connectivity to significant numbers of web users.To read this article in full, please click here READ MORE HERE…