Year: 2013

August 24, 2013 Leave a Comment
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Cisco Catalyst Instant Access Dramatically Simplifies Your Network

There are a lot of great technologies that have outstanding business benefits but are not widely deployed. For example, 802.1X for wired networks can determine appropriate network access based on user identity and additional contextual information. The technology is already built into the network to help customers improve their network security. If you ask your peers in the industry, however, you may hear that many of them have not turned on 802.1X on their switching network.  Why? Depending on who you ask, you might get different answers from different people. But one common response is that IT staff is too busy with so many burning issues on their network so they don’t have time for something like 802.1X. It’s not just about this technology. They never have enough time to do testing, troubleshooting and configuration changes. That’s why any solutions that can help simplify and streamline networks and IT operations will go a long way. Continue reading “Cisco Catalyst Instant Access Dramatically Simplifies Your Network”



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Steven Song

Business Manager

August 23, 2013 Leave a Comment
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Crumbling to the Cookiebomb

Recently we have seen a spate of government websites hosting malicious Cookiebomb JavaScript. We have observed URLs with the top level domains such as ‘.gov.uk’, ‘.gov.tr’, ‘.gov.pl’ and the website of a middle eastern embassy in the US become compromised and expose visitors to malware infection. For malicious actors, highly reputable websites are a valuable target to compromise. Politically motivated attackers, such as the Syrian Electronic Army, can use these websites to highlight their cause, to cause embarrassment to an adversary, or to spread malware, possibly as part of a watering hole attack. Profit motivated distributors of malware can use these websites to infect the steady stream of visitors who trust the website and who are unlikely to suspect that it has been compromised.
Continue reading “Crumbling to the Cookiebomb”



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Martin Lee

EMEA Lead, Strategic Planning & Communications

Cisco Talos

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Cisco Partner Weekly Rewind – August 23, 2013

Partner-Weekly-Rewind-v2

Every Friday, we’ll highlight the most important Cisco partner news and stories of the week, as well as point you to important, Cisco-related partner content you may have missed along the way. Here’s what you might have missed this week:

Off The Top

The annual XChange event was held this week in Washington, DC. Each year, industry experts and solution provider executives across the US and Canada, come together to discuss industry trends and strategies. Our very own Edison Peres was there, too! Read about his thoughts from the event, the partners we chatted with, and the awards Cisco won in his latest blog post.   Continue reading “Cisco Partner Weekly Rewind – August 23, 2013”



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Anna Sui

Social Media Strategist

Global Partner Marketing, Cisco

August 22, 2013 2 Comments
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Syrian Electronic Army Cracks ShareThis.com GoDaddy Account

ShareThis provides a mechanism for web surfers to share content online through a customizable widget.  According to the information on their website, ShareThis interacts with “more than 94% of U.S. Internet users across more than 2 million publisher sites and 120+ social media channels.” On the evening of August 21, 2013, ShareThis reported that their website was experiencing “technical difficulties.” They posted a follow-up tweet the morning of August 22 declaring that the service was functioning properly.  What ShareThis did not disclose however, was that their GoDaddy domain account was compromised by the Syrian Electronic Army.

ShareThis goes down Aug 21ShareThis regains control Aug 22

Continue reading “Syrian Electronic Army Cracks ShareThis.com GoDaddy Account”



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Jaeson Schultz

Technical Leader

Cisco Talos Security Intelligence & Research

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Visit Cisco at the ATA Fall Forum: Get Your Complimentary VIP Exhibit Hall Pass Now

American Telemedicine Association Fall Forum

If you are planning to attend the American Telemedicine Association Fall Forum at the Sheraton Centre in downtown Toronto, be sure to make time to visit the Cisco booth.  I will be on hand, along with key members of the Cisco Canadian healthcare team, and we look forward to discussing your upcoming telehealth projects.

You can even register for a complimentary VIP pass to the exhibit hall by using this code: EXHVIPFF2013.

Continue reading “Visit Cisco at the ATA Fall Forum: Get Your Complimentary VIP Exhibit Hall Pass Now”



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Shanti Gidwani

National Director, Healthcare

Cisco Canada Sales

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Partners Power Cisco to Wins at XChange 2013

CRN_ARC_Winner_4C_2013_outlinesThis week in Washington, DC, I attended XChange 2013, the largest independent channel industry event. This annual event brings together industry experts and over 1000 solutions provider executives from across the US and Canada to discuss the changes happening in the industry and strategies for the future. It is a great chance to network and it was great to see Cisco perform so well in the annual awards once again.

Each year at this event, UBM Channel, publisher of CRN, presents the Annual Report Card (ARC) Awards, which give partners the opportunity to rate their vendors in a number of categories.

I’m so proud of Cisco’s strong presence in the ARC awards. This year, we won the overall award for Converged Infrastructure Systems and all three sub-categories. We were also the overall winner in the Enterprise Networking Infrastructure category, claiming two sub-categories: product innovation and support. Continue reading “Partners Power Cisco to Wins at XChange 2013”



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Edison Peres

Senior Vice President, Worldwide Channels

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Third Step to Enterprise Mobility: The Division of Devices

This is the third post in a blog series featuring Vine-format videos focusing on the “Six Essential Steps for Unleashing the Power of Enterprise Mobility”. Be sure to read the first two blogs and watch the videos – First Step to Enterprise Mobility: Build the Mobile Structure and  Second Step to Enterprise Mobility: Go Virtual.

In this blog series, we’ve discussed two important steps enterprises can take unleash the power of enterprise mobility. We’ve covered how building a mobile structure can arm enterprises with the appropriate architecture to increase efficiency and revenue. In addition, we highlighted how enterprises can go virtual by implementing desktop virtualization.

Our third step – preparing for the division of devices – relies on both structure and a mobile workforce. How can enterprises enable and support the proliferation of employee-owned devices without burying their IT department and putting corporate data at risk? Here’s a quick checklist to help make it happen:

mobstep11. Use a unified network infrastructure that facilitates secure, virtual workspace delivery across wired, wireless, VPN, and cellular networks.

As wireless access becomes more pervasive, performance and reliability expectations are the same as what is expected from a wired network. Features such as reliable connectivity, application response times and voice, video and real-time collaboration solutions all depend on a seamless delivery for both wired and wireless devices. This fundamental shift demands that IT monitor and have a unified solution in place  (i.e. a single physical infrastructure) for both corporate wireless LAN (WLAN) and wired LAN. This converged infrastructure will enable the right quality of experience for users, independent of their devices.

A unified network infrastructure can also make sure that IT is able to identify each device connecting to the network and authenticate the person using it.

Continue reading “Third Step to Enterprise Mobility: The Division of Devices”



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Prashanth Shenoy

Vice President of Marketing

Enterprise Networking and Mobility

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Automating Virtual Network Services: Cisco Prime Network Services Controller at VMworld

Let’s face it – data center network management is a complex ordeal. IT infrastructure is even becoming more complicated as network virtualization, VM mobility, multiple networking models, multi-tenancy, hybrid cloud environments, and networking scalability evolve. But luckily for network admins, there are solutions to help simplify and solve these challenges by automating frequent changes to complex data center networks.

In previous blogs, we outlined the Nexus 1000V InterCloud solution for hybrid cloud networking and the Dynamic Fabric Automation solution for simplifying VM and physical server deployments in your data center network.

A key software component for each of these solutions is our control point for network services deployment, with template-oriented policy management. That control point and management interface is Cisco Prime Network Services Controller (formerly VNMC).

How does Prime Network Services Controller help?  The graphic below shows the vision and some of the key use cases for this software, including:

Slide11

  • Cisco Prime Network Services Controller is the main control point and management software for Nexus 1000V InterCloud, providing VM workload mobility between enterprise data centers (e.g. private clouds) and a cloud service provider (e.g. public clouds),
  • It is the interface for Cisco’s network security stack (including Nexus 1000V, ASA 1000V & Virtual Security Gateway [VSG] firewalls) using dynamic template-oriented policy management,
  • And finally, it controls network services insertion (e.g. firewalls, load balancers) when provisioning or migrating VMs.

If you are headed to San Francisco for VMworld U.S. next week, come visit the Cisco booth to see these solutions in action.  Here are some of the demos that we’ll be featuring:

  • Building Hybrid Clouds with Nexus 1000V InterCloud: We’ll be showcasing one of the most exciting features in the latest version of Prime Network Services Controller. Come see us deploy a secure network tunnel between your enterprise data center to the public cloud with this solution.
  • Network Services and Cisco Dynamic Fabric Automation: Here, Prime Network Services Controller provides network service automation by working with Cisco Prime Data Center Network Manager (DCNM).
  • Virtualized Network Services: This demo will feature Prime Network Services Controller and vPath integration with Citrix NetScaler 1000V and Imperva SecureSphere running on Cisco Nexus 1000V series switches (on VMware vSphere, of course).

And don’t miss our theatre session on August 27th, 5:00PM PST in the Cisco booth.

For a preview of what you’ll see, watch this video on Prime Network Services Controller with product manager Dedi Shindler from Cisco Live earlier this summer:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoEXeE7fa6A]

If you won’t be at VMworld in San Francisco, you can learn more about Cisco Prime Network Services Controller at www.cisco.com/web/go/services-controller

You can also follow the action and stay up to date by following our Twitter handle, @CiscoUM.

 



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Phillipe Han

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Cisco Network Threat Defense Training at SecTor 2013

UPDATE:  Due to low registration numbers for our training, Cisco Network Threat Defense, at SecTor 2013 we unfortunately had to cancel our course.  For those who registered, we appreciate your support and look forward to meeting and delivering the training to you at another venue in the near future.

SecTor 2013, the seventh annual security conference in Toronto, Ontario, CA, will be held October 7-9 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in downtown Toronto. The conference provides an unmatched opportunity for IT and Security Professionals to learn the latest security research and techniques.   My colleague, Joe Karpenko and I will present Network Threat Defense Hands-on Training on October 7.

Our training will help you learn about securely deploying network services and to detect, classify, and prevent threats targeting a network. You will use Cisco network devices to configure and deploy advanced IPv4 network threat defenses and countermeasures. Once these defenses and countermeasures have been implemented, you will then validate the effectiveness of the defenses and adjust them to changing network conditions and attack profiles. This will help you to verify, measure, and update your defenses for real world threats.

Cisco is a proud sponsor, as well as training provider, and can save you 10% using discount code ‘CISCO-2013’ or ‘CISCO-Expo2013’ for a free expo pass! Registering for the full conference also provides an additional $100 discount towards training courses.

Please join us at SecTor 2013 in October. Register soon for discounted pricing. Please reach out with questions and we look forward to seeing you in Toronto!



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Randy Ivener

Incident Manager, Applied Intelligence Team

Security Intelligence Operations