“A security advisory was just published! Should I hurry and upgrade all my Cisco devices now?”

This is a question that I am being asked by customers on a regular basis. In fact, I am also asked why there are so many security vulnerability advisories. To start with the second question: Cisco is committed to protecting customers by sharing critical security-related information in a very transparent way. Even if security vulnerabilities are found internally, the Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) – which is my team – investigates, drives to resolution, and discloses such vulnerabilities. To quickly answer the first question, don’t panic, as you may not have to immediately upgrade your device. However, in this article I will discuss some of the guidelines and best practices for responding to Cisco security vulnerability reports.

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Tags: advisories, CVSS, cybersecurity, exploits, incident response, malware, psirt, security advisories, security advisory, security notice, security notices, security top of mind, vulnerability

Today, many encrypted networks use insecure cryptography. Attackers exploiting weak cryptography are nearly undetectable, and the data you think is secure is less safe every day. Legacy encryption technology can’t keep up with current advances in hacking and brute force computing power. Additionally, legacy solutions are increasingly inefficient as security levels rise, and perform poorly at high data rates. In order to stay ahead of this challenge, encryption needs to evolve.

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Tags: 1105 Media, David McGrew, encryption, Mike Danseglio, NGE

By Jason Kohn, Contributing Columnist

In most developed economies, people can be forgiven for taking banks for granted. After all, an ATM machine is rarely more than a couple blocks away with easy access to funds. People can easily connect with their banks online to pay bills without ever handling cash, and loans and lines of credit are readily available.

In much of the developing world, however, this infrastructure simply doesn’t exist. Thabiso Mochiko recently laid out the latest statistics on the issue at Business Day:

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Tags: africa, economic development, M-Pesa, mobile banking, mobile commerce, VNI-SA, Vodacom

Once again this year, Cisco is a proud to sponsor the EG 7 Conference in Monterey, California, April 18-20, 2013. The theme this year is Everything is Learning — and Learning is Everything,  and many of the world’s leading inventors, explorers, educators, entertainers, artists and entrepreneurs are coming together to probe these frontiers.  The content is truly inspirational.

Everything is learning… and in higher education, the sea change has become a tsunami: Stanford-born Udacity and Coursera are racing with edX from Harvard and MIT to flood university curricula online.  Will this be the most significant transformation of universities to date?  After all, these thrusts aspire to reach billions of learners — anywhere, anytime.

At EG this year, the founding CEO’s of all these movements are speaking: Sebastian Thrun, Daphne Koller, and Anant Agarwal.  This is a revolution in the way higher education is purveyed.  How it affects learners around the world — the billions who may someday benefit — remains to be seen.

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Tags: Coursera, education, edX, elearning, highered, MOOCs, Udacity

Protecting Your Business in an “Any to Any” World

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. Read More »

Tags: byod, Internet of Everything, IoE, mobility, security, unified access, wired, wireless