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Innovation never stops in the mobile world, and that rule applies to security threats as well. Network attacks are becoming more sophisticated and even high-tech businesses with the most advanced security may find themselves in the crosshairs as we shift to more devices and anywhere access.

Just a few weeks ago, multiple leading social networking and large enterprises were hit with an attack when their employees visited a known and trusted website focused on mobile application development. Attackers used a method commonly referred to as “water-holing,” where they compromise a legitimate site commonly visited by employees of their target organizations. Using zero-day vulnerabilities and malicious code that change at a rapid rate, these attacks highlight the need to consistently enhance traditional defenses based on signatures or reputation with global and local context analysis.

This episode underscores how important security is in a more mobile, more connected world—attackers are paying attention, using these industry trends to create targeted and sophisticated attacks that can bypass traditional defenses. The Cisco 2013 Annual Security Report found that Android Malware grew 2,577 percent in 2012 alone. The Internet of Everything is taking shape and the number of online connections is soaring. According to Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013, 30 billion things will be connected by 2020.

Continue reading “Network Threats Are Hitching a Ride in Mobile Environments”



Authors

Michael Fuhrman

Vice President

Security Services and Cloud Operations

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 While more than 99 percent of things in the physical world today are still not connected to the Internet, the phenomenon called “The Internet of Everything” will soon wake up everything imaginable. As the network evolves and changes, becoming more sophisticated, the job roles and education requirements of network engineers also continue to change.

Gartner Research forecasts that worldwide IT spending will reach $3.7 trillion in 2013. In order to maximize the ROI of IT solutions, education is imperative. Companies require properly trained IT professionals to deploy, support and troubleshoot new and emerging technologies.

To enable our global community of partners and customers to realize the benefits of new networking solutions, we are pleased to announce the redesign of the Cisco Associate-level career certification programs and the evolution of the CCNA certification to CCNA Routing and Switching certification. Check out the video below to learn more about the changes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdeuArqolpU

Continue reading “Staying Ahead of the Curve With Next Gen Skills”



Authors

Jeanne Beliveau-Dunn

Vice President and General Manager

Cisco Services

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At Cisco, we take very seriously our ability to anticipate and catch market transitions. A few years ago, we saw a market transition that would affect our Service Provider customers in the area of Mobility. With 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi deployments rising, the world was clearly shifting from Coverage, Capacity to Services… and the importance of customer experience rising amongst operators worldwide. As a result, we set in motion a new strategy for our Service Provider Mobility Group (SPMG). The key to our strategy was to develop an architecture that would enable Service Providers to offer a differentiated experience to their customers.

Our Mobility CTO Paul Mankiewich refers to the new mobility operator requirements as “the Grand Challenge.” The inflection point is here. Not only do our key SP customers recognize it, but our competitors are also seeing the tremendous business opportunity represented by the “Grand Challenge,” especially as it relates to emerging Monetization use cases that are propelling the market’s rapid growth.

Our vision to Continue reading “Inflection Point: Cisco Sets the Pace of Mobility Innovation”



Authors

Kelly Ahuja

Senior Vice President

Service Provider Business, Products, and Solutions

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DSC_0942_2March 14 – 15 marked the National Finals Competition of CyberPatriot, the largest high school cyber defense competition in the United States.

With students crowded around laptops, routers and clocks counting down, teams were given a business scenario. Told that they were newly hired IT professionals managing the network of a small company, they were given 12 virtual machines that they had to wipe of the most vulnerabilities in the shortest amount of time.

Taking place just outside of Washington, D.C., as the teams raced to defend their networks from attack, the event resembled a scene out of the show 24. And if it showed us anything, it’s that our future cybersecurity workforce is bright. Continue reading “CyberPatriot Program Showcases Future of Cybersecurity Workforce”



Authors

Patrick Finn

No Longer at Cisco

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While many wish to prevent illness and combat health issues, Healthways is proactively promoting well-being through their commitment to “making the world a healthier place—one individual at a time.” Based in Franklin, Tennessee, Healthways has been operating for over 30 years in delivering health expertise to organizations and reducing health-related costs.

Customers use a web-based technology platform from Healthways called Embrace to collaborate and manage personalized health support. Since beginning, the number of users accessing Embrace has increased significantly – which means that Healthways must keep up with the demand. Rather than attempt to continue supporting their legacy infrastructure, Healthways decided to use Cisco® Technology to reinforce their infrastructure and get four times the capacity – therefore allowing access and providing services for all 10 million users.

In addition, by implementing the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (UCS), based on Intel® Xeon® processors, to increase capacity and strengthen the data center’s architecture, Embrace has realized an 18-20 percent reduction in power and cooling costs and a 20 percent decrease in hardware and licensing costs.

To learn more about their newly-found IT advantages, read Healthways’ story from Unleashing IT.

 



Authors

Adrian den Hartog

Senior Marketing Manager

Field Marketing US Commercial

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Just back from Varrow Madness 2013 (#VM13) in Durham, NC, a local event for me, and a great opportunity to connect with customers, partners, and cloud knowledge. Here are some highlights.

 Rusty Buzhardt (Cisco), Jason Nash (Varrow), Elijah Stukenborg (Chiquita)

Rusty Buzhardt (Cisco), Jason Nash (Varrow), Elijah Stukenborg (Chiquita)

Really enjoyed an inspirational keynote by VCE President Frank Hauck and the opportunity to learn about some new technologies that are emerging in the Data Center space. Look for upcoming #EngineersUnplugged episodes for some discussions around NetScaler, Flash Virtualization, and more.

Continue reading “Outtakes from #VM13 (Varrow Madness): Cloud Views, Chicken and Waffles, and More”



Authors

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Edu-Virtual-Forum 540x420 Cisco Now v3The Cisco Virtual Forum for Education Leaders, 2013 opened on March 19th to rave reviews by attendees from schools, colleges and universities from around the world. Here’s a sample of their feedback:

  • “Thanks to all the Cisco folks who put this together. It was informative, exciting and motivational!!!”
  • “Thank you so much for providing this virtual forum. What a GREAT way to share ideas and resources!”
  • “It was a pleasure speaking with everyone and hearing the marvelous presenters! Thank you Cisco!!!”
  • “Very informative. Good presenters. Fun and engaging.”
  • “I think you covered all the topics on technology and learning well.”
  • “I loved the “classroom of the future” presentation, is it available to share with other educators in my district?”

If you missed the opening day of the Virtual Forum, you’re in luck. All the sessions and content are now available on-demand. Registration is free!

Continue reading “Now Available On-Demand, The Cisco Virtual Forum for Education Leaders”



Authors

Gary Serda

Senior Strategic Partner Marketing Manager

Global Partner Marketing

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The network is emerging as the central nervous system for business in today’s hyper-connected world. As a result, it will be expected that people, things and sources of data are all connected and communicating with each other in real time. Today, I am pleased to announce Cisco’s intent to acquire SolveDirect, a privately held company headquartered in Vienna, Austria that provides innovative, cloud-delivered services management integration software and services.

The move towards multi-sourcing and cloud services is accelerating the development of large ecosystems of companies – from enterprise IT and manufacturing, to SaaS providers – that need to share data in a secure and scalable way. Most of the interactions between these service partners today require manual effort, growing cost and complexity for an organization as their number of service partners grows. SolveDirect’s cloud-based solutions offer enterprises and service providers a flexible way to integrate with service partners, and automate sharing of processes, data, and workflows in real-time by eliminating manual practices and bottlenecks, driving significant operational efficiencies. SolveDirect’s capabilities will enable Cisco to extend our portfolio of smart and connected IT services to our global ecosystem of customers, partners and resellers.

Acquisitions and investments are a key part of Cisco’s build, buy and partner innovation strategy. The SolveDirect acquisition aligns to Cisco’s goal of developing and delivering innovative solutions that streamline data and workflows across a unified network. The SolveDirect team will join the Cisco Services team, under the leadership of Mala Anand, senior vice president, Cisco Services Platforms Group. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will acquire all shares of SolveDirect. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to be complete in the fourth quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2013.



Authors

Hilton Romanski

No Longer with Cisco

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A number of you complained when blogs.cisco.com switched to requiring a social medial login to leave comments.

It turns out that you were not alone.

Industry-wide, it seems that many people do not want to associate their personal Facebook/Twitter/etc. logins with work-related social media (i.e., this effect was seen at more than just Cisco).  The social media gurus here at Cisco have therefore dropped the social media login requirement in order to leave comments on Cisco blogs.

You can now leave blog comments in the same way you used to — just provide your name and email address.

Yay!

Continue reading “Social media login no longer required for comments”



Authors

Jeff Squyres

The MPI Guy

UCS Platform Software