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There is no sphere of life today that is not impacted by information and communication technology (ICT). ICT fuels innovation, efficiency, and economic growth, both in the ICT-producing and ICT-using sectors – in other words, the whole interconnected world.

The ICT industry is complex and forward-thinking by its very nature. From a standardization perspective, this means that any document developed needs to at once respond to and anticipate the needs of a multitude of different industries and applications operating on a global scale. The effectiveness and growth of the industry are dependent upon the ability of the many component parts and systems to inter-operate, work reliably and efficiently, and meet diverse needs.

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World Standards Week 2013 is September 30th – October 4th in Washington, DC. Subjects like this will be discussed.
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The International Organization for Standardization / International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) Joint Technical Committee (JTC) 1, Information Technology, has addressed the standardization needs of the ICT industry around the world since 1987. ISO/IEC JTC 1 is the place where the basic building blocks of new technologies are defined and the foundations of ICT infrastructures are laid.

JTC 1 works to address the standardization needs of the global ICT industry, speeding the developmental process and the wide deployment of relevant standards. The U.S. plays a leading role in JTC 1, with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) holding the secretariat. ANSI member and accredited standards developer the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) serves as the ANSI-accredited U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) Administrator to JTC 1.

JTC 1 is one of the largest and most prolific technical committees in the international standardization community. With over 2,600 published standards under the broad umbrella of the committee and its 19 subcommittees, including ISO/IEC JTC 1/ SC 17, Cards and personal identification (credit cards/contactless cards), ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 27, IT Security Techniques (common criteria/identity management); and, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 29, Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information (MPEG/JPEG).

JTC 1 makes a tremendous impact on the ICT industry worldwide. The issues that JTC 1 deals with affect everyone – from the computers and credit cards that we use each day to the signaling systems that control our transportation infrastructure. Of all major industries, ICT carries the largest umbrella. Continue reading “ISO/IEC JTC 1 Leads Global Innovation through ICT”



Authors

Joe Bhatia

President and CEO

American National Standards Institute (ANSI)

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Earlier this year, Los Angeles Unified School District announced a $30 Million deal with Apple to distribute iPads to every single one of their estimated 650,000 students. This marks a milestone in public education as the first ever school district to deploy this kind of device to each and every student. Over the past several years there have been many pilots and test classes involving the oft-named ‘one to one’ approach to technology in the classroom; one device for each learner, however there has not been a rollout of this scale, anywhere.school childern using ipad

How does this shape the future of education for LAUSD students, and more importantly, how does this reflect on the evolution of the classroom for the 21st century student? Continue reading “Los Angeles Unified School District – iPads for Everyone!”



Authors

Rob Coote

System Analyst

Northern Alberta, Canada

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I’ve been having great conversations with our partners about the Internet of Everything (IoE), especially since Partner Summit. The biggest takeaway is that IoE is not a new solution or new market; it truly is much bigger than that. IoE is a complete market shift that will touch the lives of each and every one of us.

And because the IoE value is so great, as in $1.2 billion this year alone, we are committed to enabling our partners to make the most of these opportunities. Here is what we’ve tackled so far to help you capture the IoE value:



Authors

Sherri Liebo

Vice President

Global Partner Marketing

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For quite some time now, I’ve been thinking about writing a book. A book about social media. A book about what I’ve seen and learned. A book about things I would like to see. A book about strategy – I love strategy. I’ve started writing it several times. But every time I sit down at my keyboard, doubts take over. “Why do I want to write a book? Why shouldn’t I just blog about it?” Oh, that four-letter word always wins out and the bolded text (“Chapter 1”) on my screen quickly becomes a blog title. So while I continue to contemplate whether or not to embark on this journey, I would like to leave you with a few pages from my unwritten book….in slide deck format. I had the pleasure of presenting yesterday on social media planning. The first presentation covered basic enablement, listening and intelligence, engagement and measurement. The second presentation highlighted advanced listening and intelligence, engagement, advocacy and measurement practices. Today, I’m sharing the first chapter. Hope you find it useful.

Continue reading “A Chapter from My Unwritten Book: Social Media Planning (Part 1)”



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Welcome back to the final episode of Engineers Unplugged, Season 3! It’s been quite a ride. This week, we take another viewpoint on the hot topic of software defined storage with Mike Slisinger (@slisinger) and Vaughn Stewart (@vstewed). Starting from the application owner’s perspective, this is a great 101 on the choices made on the road to the data center of the future. Let’s listen in:

Better stick to storage, not unicorns! Art by Mike Slisinger and Vaughn Stewart.
Better stick to storage, not unicorns! Art by Mike Slisinger and Vaughn Stewart.

Welcome to Engineers Unplugged, where technologists talk to each other the way they know best, with a whiteboard. The rules are simple:

  1. Episodes will publish weekly (or as close to it as we can manage)
  2. Subscribe to the podcast here: engineersunplugged.com
  3. Follow the #engineersunplugged conversation on Twitter
  4. Submit ideas for episodes or volunteer to appear by Tweeting to @CommsNinja
  5. Practice drawing unicorns

How far up the unicorn scale is your data center in regard to software defined storage? Post a comment below!

Thanks for your viewership and support of Engineers Unplugged. We’ll be on site at VMworld Barcelona, camera and whiteboard markers in hand. If you’ve got show ideas or questions, tweet me @CommsNinja.



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Next week at Oracle OpenWorld, I will be giving an abbreviated theater presentation on how Cisco UCS is changing the economics of the datacenter (full presentation below). If you will be at OOW, please stop by the Cisco booth (#1021 – Monday 9/23 @ 12:30pm, Tuesday 9/24 @ 4pm, & Wednesday 9/25 @ 2:30pm) for the presentation or anytime the exhibit hall is open to discuss how the Cisco Unified Computing System is the best platform for your Oracle environment.

For a complete rundown on what else Cisco will be doing at OpenWorld, visit our Cisco at Oracle OpenWorld portal.

Hope to see you there!
 

 

For the latest news on Cisco Data Center please follow us on Twitter at @ciscodc.
 
Follow @HighTechBill



Authors

Bill Shields

Senior Marketing Manager

Product and Solutions Marketing Team

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It’s that time of year again—consider this post your friendly T-7 notice to start preparing for the final Cisco IOS Software Security Advisory Bundled Publication of 2013! As a reminder, the Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) releases bundles of Cisco IOS Software Security Advisories on the fourth Wednesday of March and September each calendar year. As is the case with the vast majority of our advisories, vulnerabilities scheduled for disclosure in these upcoming Security Advisories will normally have a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Base Score from 7.0 to 10.0.  Cisco security publications that disclose vulnerabilities scoring lower than 7.0 are described in our Cisco Security Vulnerability Policy. Continue reading “7-Day Forecast: Bundle Up!”



Authors

Erin Float

Project Manager

Security Research and Operations Group

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It’s certainly true that voice isn’t my favorite technology. Not that is bad or that I dislike it…it just doesn’t hold my interest like routing and switching or data center or even wireless. Man I just fall all over myself on that stuff!! When we are asked to do a TechWiseTV episode, the first thing I do is go back and watch any previous shows that we had before. After watching the Contact Center shows I came to one glaring conclusion; I don’t get it.

<insert ego here> Sure I understand the technology well enough. Also how to implement it and really support it like an IT geek should. I just didn’t understand WHY things like Social Miner, Stats, Desktop deployment were any more important than anything else. So for example; if desktop layout is so important, use a thin client and roll ‘um out. Or if stats and tracking is so important then buy a projector, write script and display that stuff on the wall man. Why is this a real selling feature?

So I contacted a peer of mine that works in a Call Center and I volunteered to work an eight hour shift (from 7PM to 4AM…Yowza…)  to see what it’s like and how users actually use the product in a production environment. I wanted to work in a non Cisco environment to get an untainted experience so that I would be better prepared to really analyze what we did and did not do.  He gladly took me in and after about an hour of online training and two hours of strictly supervised mentorship, I added my name to the “score board” and logged in as “Jimmy Ray” with a dreams off earning a green up arrow showing that I was moving up the leader board.

Wholly smokes! What an eye opening experience. First off, the turnover rate of staff is huge. I had three new folks also starting with me.  It’s not because of the management. Heck, they are actually very cool. Giving out bonuses, prizes right on the spot. Anything to keep their employees happy. I was impressed and surprised because I was expecting to be yelled at, hard drove to stay on the phone all the time, stick to the script, but no folks worked hard to win stuff and compete with each other.  The team of folks that manage the phones come from all walks of life. In one shift I met folks fresh off divorces, two laid off PhD’s from a medical company up the road, a few recent college grads, former educators, etc…basically, high quality folks looking to take a Mulligan and move on to the next phase of life.

To sum up my phone experience, it’d go like this; being yelled at, hung up on, cursed at, air horns and whistles  blew into the phone and loathed more than the United States Congress. Why? because I’m interrupting their chillin’ at home and sometime work life and boy howdy they like me know real quick by not be friendly or patient. Hey I worked as a product developer, a presales engineer and was in the United States Navy so I can handle rejection and being cussed at well. But man alive hearing not just “No” but some tasty cuss words can take its toll on your attitude and overall morale.

Wow! Now I get it. Certainly 8 hours does not make me an expert. It did really change my viewpoint. On the drive back to the Code Cave, I called Robb and woke his butt out of bed and told him we need to reformat this show.  He mumbled something about gummy bears driving on the A10 in Norwich then hung up the phone. I understand why call center users need to have a dynamic desktop that we can update with apps as skill levels/responsibility changes. I understand why an IT department wants to have a solution they can tweak on the fly without calling in a bus load of consultants. I understand why managers know that a call center is expensive to a company and the need to have customized reports in a ton of different formats to show success or failure. Even the ability to scale and add features with limited servers I knew would be important on really any network discipline.  However, in a normal call center solution takes 17+ servers with a strict mandate of “Don’t Touch These” from the consultants that seemed to be more like staff and consultants to be honest. Reminded me a lot of the old main frame days. Come on man!!

Take a look at this episode of TechWiseTV.  It airs on Thursday 19Sep2013. It’s a little different based upon me coming off this experience.  Robb and I formatted this show not based on an all IT experience, but a true usability story. The Contact Center team is really a great group of folks. I have had the pleasure of working with a lot of teams in our seven years of doing TechWiseTV. Without a doubt, the Contact Center team is one of my favs. The team is great, they honestly listen to customer feedback with a pencil to see what they can change. Although Cisco is a large company, this team moves with the nimbleness of a small startup. Watch this episode and even attend our follow on workshop http://www.ciscoworkshops.com If you need a call center solution, I betcha you’d really like the solutions package and licensing they come up with.

Oh…and if your phone rings during suppertime…cut ‘um a little slack…it’s a tough gig for sure.

Jimmy Ray Purser

Trivia File Transfer Protocol

Clarence Birdseye founded his frozen food empire with $7. It bought him an electric fan, cakes of ice, and buckets of brine.



Authors

Jimmy Ray Purser

Former Co-Host of TechWiseTV

No Longer at Cisco

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Beginning in early May, Cisco TRAC has observed a number of malicious redirects that appear to be part of a watering-hole style attack targeting the Energy & Oil sector. The structure consists of several compromised domains, of which some play the role of redirector and others the role of malware host.

Observed watering-hole style domains containing the malicious iframe have included:

  1. An oil and gas exploration firm with operations in Africa, Morocco, and Brazil;
  2. A company that owns multiple hydro electric plants throughout the Czech Republic and Bulgaria;
  3. A natural gas power station in the UK;
  4. A gas distributor located in France;
  5. An industrial supplier to the energy, nuclear and aerospace industries;
  6. Various investment and capital firms that specialize in the energy sector.

Encounters with the iframe-injected web pages resulted from either direct browsing to the compromised sites or via seemingly legitimate and innocuous searches. This is consistent with the premise of a watering-hole style attack that deliberately compromises websites likely to draw the intended targets, versus spear phishing or other means to entice the intended targets through illicit means.

Continue reading “Watering-Hole Attacks Target Energy Sector”



Authors

Emmanuel Tacheau

Malware Researcher

Cisco Talos Security Intelligence & Research Group