When Cisco introduced the Cisco SecureX Architecture at the 2011 RSA Conference in San Francisco, it aimed to provide network security practitioners the following benefits of a security architecture:
Contextual awareness
Comprehensive visibility
Scalable control
Dynamic adaptability to new threats
Data and application protection
What exactly does this mean? What does it do? How is it implemented? Which products are needed to achieve the benefits of a Cisco SecureX Architecture?
These are just some of the questions we hear when consulting with people tasked with the protection of an organization’s information and providing appropriate security controls around current and/or new business initiatives.
Around business initiatives, joint research conducted by IBM developerWorks and the IBM Center for Applied Insights has reported four information technologies (mobile technology, business analytics, cloud computing, and social business) that are rapidly reshaping how enterprises operate. This joint research has been published in the 2012 IBM Tech Trends report and security has been identified as a threat to innovation and a top barrier to adopting business-critical technology.
“Mobile technology, business analytics, cloud computing, and social business are rewriting strategic playbooks across industries. In these spaces, new business possibilities are emerging faster than many organizations can act on them, with significant IT skill shortages and security concerns threatening progress. Yet, some companies are equipped to innovate at the front edges of these fast-moving technology trends and drive strategic advantages for their organizations.” -- 2012 IBM Tech Trends pdf
With that introduction of how security relates to business innovation, the aim of this blog post is to raise awareness that the Cisco SecureX architecture is beyond marketing and that in the background, Cisco and our partners are developing products, technology, services, and learning curricula—to help practitioners deploy cyber security architectures using models such as the Cisco Security Control Framework—so that a security architectural blueprint can be in place to allow organizations to have the confidence and agility to accelerate business transformation.
Randy Pond is Cisco Executive Vice President of Operations, Processes, and Systems
Today is the United Nations’ Human Rights Day and it was not so long ago that we witnessed the role of the social media revolution in the Arab Spring. This example of Internet-enabled communication in driving change illustrates the evolving impact of technology on human rights, and casts light on both the opportunities and the challenges the industry will face — the world celebrated the flow of information that facilitated change, while at the same time showing concern over efforts of governments to use the very same infrastructure to try to shut down and control communications. Over the past 20 years, we have transformed from a world communicating through paper and face-to-face interaction into communities that can share information within seconds — and innovation continues at a dramatic rate.
At Cisco, we embrace innovation, and the opportunity to expand use of the Internet as a positive force for human development. We do this primarily by working to build each of our products on open, global standards — standards that we believe are critical to overcoming censorship and keeping the world connected — and by developing architectures for using our products aimed at particular needs, such as healthcare, education, and energy efficiency.
We are also committed to not customizing our products in any way that aids repression or censorship. To provide a consolidated view of our approach to these issues, we have included a new human rights policy and roadmap in this year’s eighth annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report. With the help of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) and in conformance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council, the roadmap was developed to concentrate on our human rights policy, and also establish a governance model, provide training, and create an effective mechanism to review our actions on an ongoing basis.
In addition to the new policy and roadmap, Cisco’s commitment to human rights includes several additional initiatives and partnerships, such as a successful engagement with the Business and Human Rights Resource Center; our continued work with the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (which we helped to found) to promote a common code of conduct among electronic manufacturers, software firms, IT firms, and manufacturing services providers; and engagement with NGOs concerned with human rights.
As we approach 2013, it will be important to continue addressing the impact of technology on human rights. Challenges to global freedom of expression through the Internet will continue, and will become more complex as innovation advances. Our long-term view and ongoing implementation of Cisco’s human rights roadmap will guide Cisco’s human rights efforts going forward and will help drive a safe Internet well into the future.
Don’t miss our own product managers Jagdish Girimaj and Mark Denny take a deep dive with NSA Show hosts Blake Krone and Samuel Clements into the technology behind enhancing wireless with the Cisco Mobility Services Engine (MSE) and Wireless Security & Spectrum Intelligence (WSSI) AP3600 module.
Since we started shipping theNexus 3548with AlgoBoostto our customers in the beginning of November, there has been more and more interest in testing and verifying the switch’s latency in different traffic scenarios. What we have found so far is while network engineers might be well experienced in testing the throughput capabilities of a switch, verifying the latency can be challenging, especially when latency is measured in the tens and low hundreds of nanoseconds!
I discussed this topic briefly when doing a hands-on demo for TechWise TV a short time ago.
The goal of this post is to give an overview of the most common latency tests, how the Nexus 3548 performs in those tests, and to detail some subtleties of low latency testing for multicast traffic. This post will also address some confusion we’ve heard some vendors try to emphasize with the two source multicast tests.
Unicast Traffic
The most common test case is to verify throughput and latency when sending unicast traffic. RFC 2544 provides a standard for this test case. The most stressful version of the RFC 2544 test uses 64-byte packets in a full mesh, at 100 percent line rate. Full mesh means that all ports send traffic at the configured rate to all other ports in a full mesh pattern.
Figure 1 – Full Mesh traffic pattern
The following graph shows the Nexus 3548 latency results for Layer 3 RFC 2544 full mesh unicast test, with the Nexus 3548 operating in warp mode.
Figure 2 -- Layer 3 RFC 2544 full mesh unicast test
We can see that the Nexus 3548 consistently forwards packets of all sizes under 200 nanoseconds at 50% load, and less than 240 nanoseconds at 100% load.
Turn on the TV. Open a newspaper. Jump on the Internet. Today Cisco is launching its new brand—and it’s happening around the world. Look for us in print ads, commercials, and online banners.
But don’t just look. Get involved.
This is the biggest brand update Cisco has experienced in a very long time. And it’s all designed to help elevate the conversation with our customers to the “Internet of Everything.” This is a huge transition occurring in the market now, where we bring together people, process, data, and things to make connectivity more relevant and valuable than ever before.
How can you get involved? Starting now, leverage the power of the new campaign as you talk with customers.
You can begin by sharing that today more than 99 percent of things in the physical world are unconnected. But that’s about to change. Amazing things will happen and amazing experiences will be created because of the Internet of Everything.
But what’s our role? What’s your role? That’s easy. Only Cisco, along with its partners, can connect the unconnected with an open standard, integrated architecture from the cloud to end devices. In fact, the network plays a critical role in the Internet of Everything. It must provide an intelligent, manageable, secure infrastructure that can scale to support billions—that’s right, billions—of context-aware devices.
