2013 - Page 216 of 232

January 30, 2013 1 Comment

Streamline Your Data Center with Three Key Optimized Security Measures

The data center is at the heart of promoting IT transformation. Mobility initiatives have created a need for increased connections; power initiatives have created a need for greater efficiency; and the increased need for real-time workload processing are driving that change. I see these as “signature” trends in 2013 and also highlighted these in my earlier post this year. Conventional IT security approaches often add complexity and usually impede efficiency gains. What’s needed is an approach that does not introduce latency or require the data center to be reconfigured to accommodate security. Neither should it introduce a myriad of new of tools, new reports, and new processes.

Very few vendors can claim to provide an end-to-end architecture where security is a key programmable element of the underlying data center fabric. This capability not only accelerates the adoption of virtualization and cloud technologies but also mitigates the complexity associated with disparate and siloed security technologies. The benefits are increased business agility backed by assured security posture, strong alignment of business function to security and reduced operational costs. In this paradigm, data center and IT executives will no longer be forced into making tradeoffs between business function and security to ensure newer and more capable services.

Continue reading “Streamline Your Data Center with Three Key Optimized Security Measures”

Evelyn de Souza

Cloud Data Governance Leader

Chief Technology and Architecture Office

Multiscreen Video Delivery: Tangled Solutions, Smoothed by the Cloud

Chris Osika

By Bill Gerhardt, Director, IBSG Service Provider

Online video is growing at a rapid — if not explosive — pace, with innovation and disruption spreading across all areas of the value chain. Some of the greatest innovation is currently occurring around multiscreen delivery and related services.

To better understand the climate for video consumption, in March, 2012 the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) surveyed 1,152 U.S. broadband consumers between the ages of 13 and 75+ to gain a better understanding of how they watch video: their habits, preferences, and the devices they use.

The study found that consumers spend more time watching Internet video today than watching DVDs/Blu-ray Discs, video on demand (VoD), or live premium cable channels — and they want to watch streaming video across a variety of screens. In the future, multiscreen delivery will take on greater importance as laptops, tablets, and smartphones advance and become even better video devices.

Service providers must address these Continue reading “Multiscreen Video Delivery: Tangled Solutions, Smoothed by the Cloud”

Chris Osika

Senior Director, Global Lead

Service Provider Practice Internet Business Solutions Group

Cisco NRF 2013 — Cisco Remote Expert Smart Solution for Retail Demonstration

Andrew Lach

“Great show!” That’s what we’ve been hearing from retailers who visited Cisco’s booth and attended our Big Ideas Sessions at NRF 2013.

I led the demonstration of the Cisco Remote Expert Smart Solution for Retail in our booth. This solution transforms how you connect and interact with your customers. It offers a superior video and collaboration experience between shoppers and remote experts from any location within your store. It can help you entice shoppers to buy and more easily up-sell additional products and services while improving customer service.

Our retail customers were engaged and excited by this demo. Every time a live video call was placed to our Remote Expert in the booth, they immediately began discussing how this solution could be applied in their store environments to enhance the customer experience and train employees. Multiple customers returned to the demo several times, each time bringing different colleagues to re-experience the demo and discuss options for deploying it in their stores.

Visit our recently launched Cisco Remote Expert Smart Solution for Retail at www.cisco.com/go/retail-remoteexpert for more information:

Read more about the solution in our brochure.

Watch the video of our NRF demonstration and share it with your colleagues:

Andrew Lach

MARKETING MANAGER

Marketing Management, Manufacturing Industry

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Managing #Cloud-Based #Collaboration IT Solutions

Sheila Jordan

Cloud-based collaboration IT solutions are a hot topic among my peers – with questions such as how do you make the transition to cloud, what solutions do you host in the cloud, how do you address security, and how do you manage legacy systems on premises in tandem with cloud solutions?

These are just a few of the discussion points that I addressed today in a media and analyst event with my Cisco colleague Eric Schoch, VP and GM, Cisco Cloud Collaboration, and two of our Cisco customers – the City of Charlotte, North Carolina and D+M Group.

Here are Eric’s cloud predictions and my tips for IT leaders:

1. Prediction: In 2013, we’ll see the cloud conversation shift to flexibility and agility as primary drivers of adoption.

Tip #1

The perfect trifecta is collaboration in the cloud as it delivers big benefits, large reach and low risk.

Or to state it another way: mobile and social meet cloud. Think about how collaboration is delivered – the consumption model is different.

Tip #2

Think cloud data center: this is another area of significant cost savings while offering flexible workloads – improving delivering of infrastructure services from weeks to minutes.

Flexibility and agility are very significant to IT professionals. IT will always be held to the total cost of ownership and reducing cost wherever it makes sense. And, we also have to deliver solutions and services faster. Cloud is the delivery mechanism to do this over time.

Continue reading “Managing #Cloud-Based #Collaboration IT Solutions”

Sheila Jordan

January 29, 2013 Leave a Comment

Cisco VXLAN Innovations Overcoming IP Multicast Challenges

Gary Kinghorn

At Cisco Live! in London this week, Cisco is demonstrating some enhancements to its Nexus 1000V virtual switch that greatly ease some of the challenges in deploying VXLAN in large scale cloud networks. VXLAN was designed to solve the problem of setting up traditional virtual networks (VLANs) in large multi-tenant cloud environments: the limited ID range for VLAN tags was quickly exhausted and a larger ID pool was needed for larger shared infrastructures. VXLAN thus becomes the foundation for a virtual network tunnel or virtual network overlays on top of physical networks. And unlike VLANs, VXLANs are designed to act as L2 virtual networks over L3 physical networks. For a more in-depth refresher on VXLAN, start here.

[Note: Join Cisco for a Live Announcement Webinar on Cloud Innovations on February 5: Register Here]

While VXLANs have certainly enabled a whole new level of scalability for virtual networks, one of the challenges in deploying VXLAN is its use of IP Multicast to implement the L2 over L3 network capability. Why is this? VXLAN is a MAC-in-IP encapsulation protocol in a UDP frame. The virtual switch that acts as the VXLAN termination (in Cisco’s case, the Nexus 1000V virtual switch) takes the L2 packet from the VM, wraps it in a L3 IP header, and sends it out over UDP. But the challenge is that there’s no way to determine which IP address should be used for the destination host (VXLAN termination point) at which the desired MAC address can be found. In other protocols, this can be accomplished within the network control plane and some MAC to IP mapping protocol, but the VXLAN specification indicates there should be no reliance on a control plane or a physical to virtual mapping table.

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Gary Kinghorn

Sr Solution Marketing Manager

Network Virtualization and SDN

Acquisition of Cognitive Security Bolsters Cisco’s Cyber Threat Defense Capabilities

Chris Young

In a world where malware and advanced cyber threats are enterprises’ greatest concern, the need for innovation in security is at an all-time high. Mobility and cloud are drastically changing the IT security paradigm, and our attackers are radically increasing the sophistication of their attack methods. Cisco has been listening to our customers’ concerns and we are investing in threat intelligence and defense.

As part of our investment to strengthen the network with more analytics and intelligence to target today’s complex and disruptive threats, Cisco has announced the intent to acquire Cognitive Security, a privately held company headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic. Cognitive provides security software that is focused on applying artificial intelligence techniques to detect advanced cyber threats.

When Cognitive’s technology is combined with traditional firewalls, network security, content security, and Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems, it provides a complete detection and mitigation solution that enables customers to protect against advanced attacks and zero day attacks in near real-time.

Why is this important? Well, think of this simple use case: An employee’s own personal device is infected outside the perimeter of the enterprise. Once the employee brings that device on to the network, the enterprise’s perimeter defense solution cannot protect against the threat because the device has already been infected. This can cause a full range of negative impacts on the enterprise and the data center. With Cognitive’s technology integrated in to existing security tools, unknown abnormal network behavior is quickly and automatically identified and subjected to further analysis and enforcement.

The Cognitive software will be integrated in to Cisco’s Security Intelligence Operations (SIO), bringing together global security intelligence from the cloud with local intelligence on a customer premise to protect against advanced cyber threats.

The acquisition of Cognitive supports Cisco’s focus and investment in security and is integral to all three key components of our security strategy: 1) Cloud-based threat intelligence and defense; 2) Common policy management and context; and 3) Network enforced policy – where we truly make the Network part of the security paradigm, as opposed to sticking yet another security “box” in the network and expecting it to do all the work for us.

I am delighted to welcome the Cognitive team to the Cisco family and look forward to working with them to ensure that we are delivering always on, integrated security that empowers our customers to realize the benefits of a mobile, cloud enabled business.

Chris Young

1 Comment

Cisco “Bowled Over” by Success of Marathon Cricket in Australia

Linda Horiuchi

Cricket is an institution in Australia, with hundreds of thousands of people attending matches this season all over the country as the visiting South African, Sri Lankan and West Indian teams do battle with the Aussies. This is why Cisco Australia is so excited to have partnered with the Primary Club to sponsor “Marathon Cricket”. The epic fundraiser event saw 520 players and umpires participate in 30 hours of cricket at the famous Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG), commencing at 7am and running through to 10pm on Thursday 24th and Friday 25th of January.

Primary Club’s aim is to raise money for disabled sports charities and the latest Marathon Cricket raised upwards of $100,000 for its charities. One of this year’s major beneficiaries is the Sargood Centre at Collaroy; the residential learning centre for people recovering from spinal cord injuries. Sargood also entered a team in the Marathon Cricket event, captained by former Australian Rugby Union coach, Rod Macqueen.

Continue reading “Cisco “Bowled Over” by Success of Marathon Cricket in Australia”

Linda Horiuchi

Senior Manager, Australia and New Zealand PR

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Breaking the Broadband Bottleneck: NTIA Spectrum Sharing Report

Mary Brown

Last week, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released a report to Congress concerning proposals to expand commercial spectrum sharing opportunities with government and other systems operating at 5 GHz. This is a direct result of landmark Congressional action last year, when it directed the NTIA and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to examine whether government might be able to open nearly 200 MHz of additional spectrum to sharing by unlicensed devices.

The proposed spectrum footprint for unlicensed devices would permit operation over a contiguous block of spectrum, from 5150 MHz to 5925 MHz, providing significant new spectrum for Gigabit Wi-Fi, the next gen Wi-Fi technology capable of multi-gigabit throughput speeds. Among its many benefits, Gigabit Wi-Fi would be a major leap forward, opening the door to real time HD video in hundreds of applications.

The NTIA report represents a tremendous step toward understanding the radio environment presented by government and other systems in the expansion bands, and is a positive contribution to the technical examination that needs to happen before devices can be allowed to operate in the expansion bands. We are looking forward to working with the NTIA and participating in the upcoming FCC rulemaking next month to address the technical issues about how unlicensed equipment can share spectrum with incumbent users successfully.

We are very pleased that NTIA has reached this important milestone in the examination of whether additional spectrum can be made available for unlicensed devices at 5 GHz. The new Gigabit Wi-Fi technologies that we are deploying at 5 GHz represent tremendous advancements in radio technology, and will accelerate the use of high definition video in a range of new applications. In hospitals, manufacturing, education and throughout the economy, Gigabit Wi-Fi promises to break new ground in delivering high quality video imaging. And it is just as important that Wi-Fi is becoming the off-load technology of choice – carrying an estimated 60% of all Internet traffic at the edge by 2016.

Wi-Fi is becoming the default way in which devices connect to the Internet and is now incorporated into everything from smart phones and tablets to cars and smart grid technologies. Adding wireless capacity is a years-long effort. If policymakers don’t act now, America faces a serious supply-demand imbalance in the near term. More spectrum must be made available for connectivity and innovation to continue supporting America’s job growth.

Mary Brown

Cisco

2 Comments

Cisco to Boost Network Security Platform with Acquisition of Cognitive Security

Hilton Romanski

Today, I am pleased to announce Cisco’s intent to acquire Cognitive Security, a privately-held company headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic. Cognitive Security is focused on taking cutting edge research in the field of network security and applying artificial intelligence techniques to detect advanced cyber threats. Cognitive Security’s solution integrates a range of sophisticated software technologies to identify and analyze key IT security threats through advanced behavioral analysis of real-time data.

Mobility and cloud are drastically changing the IT security landscape, where traditional security approaches aren’t enough to protect customers against an evolving threat landscape. Today’s threats are more targeted, complex, and disruptive than ever before. Cognitive Security’s technology identifies and detects security anomalies, and when coupled with the network for mitigation, allows Cisco to uniquely address our customers’ security requirements.

Cisco’s security vision is to provide always on, integrated security to empower customers to realize the benefits of a mobile, cloud-enabled business. Cisco’s cloud-based global threat intelligence and Cognitive Security’s real-time behavioral analytics, will integrate to a common policy engine that controls distributed network enforcement in an intelligent network and mitigates advanced cyber threats.

Cognitive Security has a long-standing collaboration with the Czech Technical University (CTU), benefitting from CTU’s scientific contribution to the field of network security through a joint research program. Cisco and Cognitive Security plan to continue to expand on this relationship going forward.

Cognitive Security’s employees will join Cisco’s Security Technology Group under the leadership of Senior Vice President Chris Young. The acquisition of Cognitive Security is expected to close in the third quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2013, subject to customary closing conditions.

Year: 2013

Streamline Your Data Center with Three Key Optimized Security Measures

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