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“For years, patent assertion entities – otherwise known as patent trolls – have been targeting businesses large and small with frivolous lawsuits, threat letters, and intimidation tactics.  Lately, the problem has been getting worse, with 60% of new lawsuits filed by patent assertion entities, up from 25% in 2007.

Today, the House Judiciary Committee took a significant step toward curbing the worst patent troll abuses when it approved the Innovation Act by a strong bipartisan vote of 33-5.

The legislation is sponsored by Chairman Bob Goodlatte and is co-sponsored by fellow Judiciary Committee members Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and George Holding (R-NC), as well as Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA), among others.  The legislation dries up the financial incentives that have allowed patent trolls to thrive and significantly increases transparency.

Let me thank the House Judiciary Committee members for their leadership.  Cisco stands ready to work with our leaders in Congress as the bill moves to the House floor and the ultimately over to the Senate for consideration.”



Authors

Mark Chandler

Retired | Executive Vice President

Chief Legal and Compliance Officer

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It’s fitting that we’re in NYC this week, talking about energy management during Cisco’s Internet of Everything tour. And that’s because it’s an issue that’s left $24.60 billion worth of energy savings on the table – enough to power NYC for 5 years!

The issue at hand revolves around the lack of visibility into IT environments and connected devices, specifically on much energy is being consumed when something isn’t actually being used. In Cisco’s Internet of Everything vision, connectivity within the energy management sector will help automate a process that’s too cumbersome to execute manually. This includes everything from turning off computers when they’re not used to powering down ATM machines when there’s no foot traffic.

Speaking of ATMs

Joining us at the event this week was Sparkasse, one of the largest banks in Germany with more than 400 locations, 350,000 employees and 3 trillion Euros in assets. At first, Sparkasse leveraged energy management technology to turn on and off PCs in accordance with when banks were open – it has since expanded to many other IT devices, including ATM machines. After deploying energy management across its networks, ATMs across the country were optimized to power down during hours when they were not in use, specifically within indoor areas where closing hours are involved. Sparkasse didn’t need to physically touch any of the machines or install software individually. All of this was done automatically over the network. Savings have been in the millions annually, cutting down both overall energy consumption and the bank’s carbon footprint.

Schools and Hospitals

On October 31, Cisco held an energy management roundtable with customers from both the education and healthcare verticals. On hand was Mark Hennessee, District Energy Manager for the Hammond School District (Indiana, K-12), who talked about how visibility into his districts’ plug load has resulted in 35% less power consumption and annual projected savings of $31,500 – even more when you include an incentive check from the local utility provider.

Jan Pieter Evenhuis, IT Consultant of the Nij Smellinghe Hospital located in the Northern Dutch town of Drachten was also in attendance to talk about the challenges of energy management in the context of a 24/7 operation like a hospital. The level of visibility that was provided into their IT environment drove upwards of 30% in energy consumption reduction.

The Road Ahead

As we continue to explore the issue of energy management, enterprise IT environments and devices is the start of a plethora of other verticals that face this problem. As we saw with Sparkasse, it’s often things you don’t expect – like the ATM machines at your local bank. In a world where connected “things” can be choreographed to power on and off at the most optimal times, you open up the opportunity to make the world a little greener and help organizations of all sizes save money.



Authors

Tom Noonan

General Manager EnergyWise Suite

EnergyWise Suite

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We all know we need it, but no one wants to talk about. Today, we break through that taboo. Secure the Infrastructure! This bold declaration brought to you courtesy of Matthew Brender (@mjbrender) and Mike Foley (@mikefoley) as they talk about how to use a hardening guide, and how to execute security in the real world. This is a great discussion about people, policy, and how not to be “the person who puts ‘no’ in innovation.”

Roll the video:

And it wouldn’t be Engineers Unplugged without a unicorn, in this case a security unicorn. Please do not try this at home.

Matthew Brender and Mike Foley with a secure unicorn, complete with ninja star and high kicks. We all feel more secure now.
Matthew Brender and Mike Foley with a secure unicorn, complete with ninja star and high kicks. We all feel more secure now.

What are you seeing in the industry? Agree or disagree, post a comment, send a tweet, follow along using one of the methods below!

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

Join the behind the scenes by liking Engineers Unplugged on Facebook.



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In today’s world of the Internet of Everything (IoE), we are changing the expectations of customer experiences. Through wearable technology, wireless location-based services and even video analytics, companies can customize every interaction with the information provided to the customer.

We aren’t just talking about tangible products. Think about a concert venue where thousands of people come together for their favorite music artist. Continue reading “The Venue That Stole the Show”



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The HIPAA Omnibus Final Rule is now in effect and audits will continue in 2014. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights has stated several times that both Covered Entities and Business Associates will be audited.  And the scope of Business Associates has greatly expanded.  I wrote another blog directed towards these new Business Associates.  This final blog of this series focuses on covered entities that work with business associates.

  1. HIPAA Audits will continue
  2. The HIPAA Audit Protocol and NIST 800-66 are your best preparation
  3. Knowledge is a powerful weapon―know where your PHI is
  4. Ignorance is not bliss
  5. Risk Assessment drives your baseline
  6. Risk Management is continuous
  7. Security best practices are essential
  8. Breach discovery times: know your discovery tolerance
  9. Your business associate(s)must be tracked

The HIPAA Omnibus Final Rule changed the Business Associate definition, and also makes Business Associates obligated to comply with HIPAA.  You most likely will have more business associates than previously, and those business associates that have access to your network and/or your PHI data are obligated to be HIPAA compliant.    The Ponemon Institute’s Third Annual Benchmark Study on Patient Privacy and Data Security (December 2012), reveals that 42% of the breaches involved a third party “snafu”.

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Continue reading “9 of 9 HIPAA Network Considerations”



Authors

Terri Quinn

Security Solutions Manager

Security Technology Group

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The web browsing behaviour of users changes as the end of the year approaches. The holiday season can provide a large distraction from work duties that may need to be managed. Equally, even during periods when the office is closed, there will be some individuals who cannot resist accessing work systems. Managing these changes in behaviour is difficult for network administrators unless they know what to expect.
Continue reading “Christmas Packets: Web Browsing and the Festive Period”



Authors

Martin Lee

EMEA Lead, Strategic Planning & Communications

Cisco Talos

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Cisco’s newest 802.11ac product, the Aironet 3700 Series Access Point is now orderable and shipping in the next few weeks.  The AP 3700 features an integrated 11ac radio with a 4×4 architecture and Cisco’s High-Density Experience (HDX) Technology.  HDX is a suite of features specific to the AP 3700 that delivers the best possible user experience, especially in high client density networks.  HDX is enabled by a combination of  hardware and software features on the AP 3700, features including:

  • CleanAir 80 MHz – Interference detection and mitigation
  • ClientLink 3.0 – RF link quality
  • Smart Roam – Intelligent roaming handoff
  • Turbo Performance – Performance with high client density

Aruba recently launched their 802.11ac access point, the AP-220 series, featuring a 3×3 design.

Miercom recently published a third-party evaluation of the performance between the AP 3702i and the AP-225.  The report consists of a diverse range of test cases meant to gauge real-world performance of the access points.  The tests include; multi-client performance, single client rate vs. range, performance in the presence of interference, and performance on reduced power.  Here are some of the highlights from the report.

Multi-Client Performance

The AP 3700 performed very well in the multi-client performance test, thanks impart to HDX Turbo Performance.  With 60 clients, the AP 3702i had a 6x performance advantage over the AP-225.  The AP-225 struggled to serve all the clients and only mustered 40 Mbps total.  The AP 3702i was able to transmit a healthy 236 Mbps, while maintaining fair throughput to each client.

The test consisted of 60 11ac clients, all associated to the 5 GHz radio.  The clients used were 10 Dell E6430 laptops with Broadcom 4360 three spatial-stream chips, 20 Apple Macbook Air two spatial-stream laptops, and 30 Dell E6430 laptops with Intel 7260 two spatial-stream chips.  Clients were setup in an open office environment surrounding the AP.  Distances varied from 10’ to 50’.

1-Mulit-Client Continue reading “Miercom: Cisco Aironet AP3702i”



Authors

Wes Purvis

Technical Marketing Engineer

Cisco’s Enterprise Networking Group

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This was the title of a November 19 2013 panel that I had moderated in Washington D.C. at the MPLS-SDN Isocore Conference.

The abstract for this conference was designed to be a bit provocative, specifically:

“ Virtualization as a concept is not new. However, in the context of Software Defined Networking,the virtualization discussion has been focusing on overlay functions e.g networking. What about virtualization overlays and interworking with existing architectures?   What are the implications to performance and management?   Are we speaking the same language?

The panelists will have an opportunity to articulate the virtualization problem space for the industry and the opportunity for the industry to address.”

My panelists included the following individuals: Continue reading “Virtualization: Can We Deconstruct the Problem and Opportunity?”



Authors

Monique Morrow

CTO-Evangelist

New Frontiers Development and Engineering

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Securing the Critical Internet Infrastructure is an ongoing challenge for operators that require collaboration across administrative boundaries. Last September something exceptional happened in Ecuador, a small South American country. The entire local network operation community got together to be pioneers in securing its local Internet infrastructure by registering its networks in the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) system and implementing secure origin AS validation. This project is a great example on how a global technology change can be accelerated by maximizing its value to local communities.

The global inter-domain routing infrastructure depends on the BGP protocol that was initially developed in the early 90s. Operators know that a number of techniques are needed to improve BGP security (a good reference can be found here). Although these improvements, it is still possible to impersonate the entity with the right of use of Internet resources and produce a prefix hijack as the famous attack in 2007. The IETF, vendors and Regional Internet Registries have been working inside the SIDR working group to create technologies that allow the cryptographic validation. The initial outcomes of this effort have been the RPKI and the BGP origin AS validation; two complementary technologies that work together to improve inter-domain routing security.

Continue reading “Securing Critical Internet Infrastructure: an RPKI case study in Ecuador”



Authors

Roque Gagliano

Technical Leader

Corporate Technology Group (CTG)