By Biren Mehta, Senior Marketing Manager, SP Marketing in Routing and Switching, Cisco

Cloud computing brings a significant shift in how IT services will be deployed, delivered and consumed.  This promises to bring significant benefits to both consumers and suppliers in terms of agility, automation, and cost.  However, security remains a key barrier to realizing these advantages as enterprises question data security, trust, visibility, and control issues over the provider’s network.

Last week, Read More »

Tags: carrier network, cloud, cloud infrastructure, infrastructure, Service Provider

There is still time to register for the upcoming FIRST Technical Colloquium April 2-3 2013. The event has a very exciting program covering, bitsquatting, webthreats, RPZ, Passive DNS, Real-world monitoring examples, Spamhaus, SIE, Cuckoo Sandbox, Malware Analysis and many more current issues facing the incident response community.

The event’s line-up includes notables from Cisco Security Intelligence Operations (SIO), Internet Systems Consortium, Shadowserver foundation, KPN-CERT, NATO, MyCert and ING amongst others. Program details can be found here.
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Tags: CSIRT, FIRST, Gavin Reid, KPN-CERT, malware, Malware Analysis, MyCert, NATO, security, security intelligence operations, sio, TRAC

I was delighted to attend in the last few weeks two extremely interesting conferences, both of them hosted in Dubai, my home city. The first was the Iraq Education and Technology Summit, which ran from 23-24 February at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

This conference brought together a very interesting group of senior people from the Iraqi Government, NGOs and the private sector.  Among the speakers was H.E. Ali Al-Adeeb, Iraq’s Minister of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MoHESR) and Mr Ali Musa’ad Al-Ibrahimi, Iraq’s Deputy Minister of Education.

The background of the summit was the fact that Iraq’s Parliament is in the process of passing a new Infrastructure Law, which will become a key component of Iraqi Government strategy. The summit aimed therefore to establish and strengthen relationships between the Iraq Government and leading international organisations which can help accelerate Iraq’s development in technology, training and management skills.

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English poet John Donne said, “No man is an island, entire of itself.” The same could be said for a man’s — or woman’s — home network, which today is no longer his or hers alone. Friends and family increasingly expect to be able to connect their growing number of mobile devices to the Internet when they are at someone else’s home. In response, service providers (SPs) are creating Wi-Fi communities to enable users to connect safely and seamlessly to SPs’ Wi-Fi networks from other customers’ locations. Not only do SPs understand that there is pent-up customer demand for this sort of “community Wi-Fi” — they also realize that this model makes good business sense. This sort of service will enable them to expand the size of their Wi-Fi network quickly, differentiate their broadband offerings, acquire new customers, and manage customer churn.

Many SPs are now trying to understand how they can create a community Wi-Fi network among their broadband customers and reap new business benefits. However, there has been very little information available on customer behaviors to help SPs design a winning program and build the business case for further investment. To learn more, the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) conducted a survey of 1,060 Canadian mobile users to understand their needs and behaviors, their Read More »

Tags: broadband, broadband offerings, Cisco, community network, community users, community Wi-Fi, IBSG, internet, mobile devices, mobility, Service Provider, Wi-Fi network

The Internet of Everything is all around us. People are connecting on the go in new ways, and they expect fast, secure network connections that follow them anywhere and everywhere —at work, at home, at play, at the mall, at the gym, or even at the ballpark.

Not so long ago, getting on the Internet was a static experience. It was a desktop PC tethered to the company network, or for the elite the “double, double, toil and trouble” of a modem firing up, followed by a long wait for a sluggish home connection.

The new era of mobility takes computing beyond the PC’s limitations, surpassing it by a long shot. It’s becoming less about devices than what you can do as the workspace evolves, offering adaptability and choice based upon who you are, where you are, and what you need to accomplish. Whether it’s a quick phone call, a web conferencing session, instant messaging, or file sharing, removing the limitations of location and devices lets organizations work together better and make decisions faster.

What is driving these changes? When people think of mobility, they usually focus on the devices used to access the net. Slick new smart phone displays, multi-touch tablet screens, and futuristic industrial designs are definitely eye-catching. Consumers are snapping up these new devices, and companies are embracing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) programs. But what’s happening behind the scenes and on the screens is just as important—if not more important.

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Tags: byod, Cisco, collaboration, Internet of Everything, IoE, IT, management, mobility, network, security, unified access, wired, wireless