So here we are, in the middle of March Madness. Lots of people that don’t normally follow college basketball, but still a great social environment and an opportunity to get together and pretend we know the teams we all picked in our brackets. Sometimes we pick based on “loyalty” and other times there are other reasons. We all have various “borders” we deal with every day.
So, bring onBorderless Networks. In the manufacturing area we still tend to think of a “border” between the factory and the business. After all, how can those people in the front office know what we need in the factory, right? Well, that separation gets smaller and smaller every day. Why? Because we’ve blurred the border. Sure, there are appropriate firewalls and security between the various layers. But every day we run into people that tell about needing data from the plant, from the machine, from the supplier, from the sales force, from the channel, from the customer. And sometimes we’re not in the office, we may be at home, at a different supplier, in an airport, at a concert or ball game with our kids.
The point becomes, there is data there and I am not there but I need to make a call and affect my plant productivity or answer a question from my CEO because there is a big opportunity or a major customer disappointment about to happen.
While Cloud Computing is getting the majority of the headlines within the IT industry, it could easily be argued that no industry is going through as much change as Healthcare. Whether it’s Healthcare reform in the United States, the rollout of Telemedicine solutions (by corporations and municipalities), or online collaboration to educate and discuss outbreaks and crisis, the business of keeping people well is going through radical change. Not only are the economics of Healthcare being forced to change, but so to is the technology that allows doctors to deliver care, medical records to be stored and researchers to find the next cure.
This past week I had the opportunity to present at the NCHICA “Health Information in the Cloud” along with experts from industry, technology, law and standards-bodies. The conference focused on many aspects of Healthcare + Cloud, including HIPPA standards, Legal and Compliance considerations, Security, Deployments in Public vs. Private Clouds, offerings from Managed Service Providers and real-world case studies (presentations can be found here and here). The presentation we gave focused on the infrastructure required to build Private Cloud.
In the previous installment of our series of IPv6 posts, we covered some of the ways ICMP has changed in IPv6 compared to IPv4. In this post, we’ll talk about how addressing has changed in IPv6 compared to IPv4.
While IPv4 addresses are 32 bits log, the IPv6 address space has been extended to 128 bits, which will make it virtually impossible to remember the numeric representation of the address for a given host. This will definitely lead to more reliance on DNS. It will be difficult to operate even very simple test networks without relying on DNS to resolve host names to IPv6 addresses. Because of this, more attacks will be targeted against your DNS servers. Making sure your DNS configuration and servers are secure will be very more important in IPv6. DNS will also be targeted by attackers to attempt to locate systems on the network by trying to resolve “common host names,” since scanning a remote IPv6 network is essentially impossible due to the size of the IPv6 address space.
Last week at the ODVA Annual Conference--as part of ODVA’s announcement of a new energy initiative and white paper--Cisco’s Bryce Barnes roused a packed-house audience representing ODVA’s ~200 industrial and automation suppliers with a compelling speech on the immediate need for Optimization of Energy Usage (OEU™) in the Production domain. Energy consumption statistics for the industrial sector are staggering, most estimates suggesting half of the world’s total delivered energy, and that amount is projected to increase by 40% over the next 25 years. For Manufacturers, energy typically constitutes the first or second highest portion of product variable costs, and most manufacturing companies now report as part of their governance a sustainability strategy that is core to their overall business strategy. Furthermore, volatility of energy markets--closely linked to the stability of governments, international relations and policies--raises the risk profile for continuity of supply, production and satisfaction of customers. Optimizing energy consumption, minimizing energy costs and mitigating energy risks are clearly top of mind business imperatives for the Manufacturing CEO.
Mark Wylie discusses the importance of energy optimization to sustainable manufacturing operations. Check out Mark’s December blog on factory energy management.
Securing your network is a journey of ongoing vigilance to stay one step ahead of the latest threats, changing technologies.
There’s no such thing as a static network. Just as your company is evolving, your small business network is constantly changing—and your network security must be equally adaptable. Installing a firewall and anti-virus software is just the first step in keeping malicious traffic, hackers, and other security threats out of your network.
Security is a journey. You must continuously monitor your infrastructure so you can adjust to changes in your company’s business, changes in technology, and changes in employee behavior. It’s important to remember that any conversation about security doesn’t usually start with a security issue. It starts with your next business objective.
