Year: 2015

February 18, 2015 Leave a Comment
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Equation Coverage

Cisco Talos is aware of the public discourse surrounding the malware family dubbed “The Equation Family”. As of February 17th the following rules (33543 – 33546 MALWARE-CNC Win.Trojan.Equation) were released to detect the Equation Family traffic. These rules may be found in the Cisco FireSIGHT Management Console (Defense Center), or in the Subscriber Ruleset on Snort.org. Talos security researchers have also added the associated IPs, Domains, URLs, and hashes to all Cisco security devices to provide immediate protection across the network. Talos will continue to monitor public information as well as continue to independently research to provide coverage to this malware family.

coveragetable
Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) is ideally suited to prevent the execution of the malware used by these threat actors.

CWS or WSA web scanning prevents access to malicious websites and detects malware used in these attacks.

The Network Security protection of IPS and NGFW have up-to-date signatures to detect malicious network activity by threat actors.

While email has not been observed as an attack vector, ESA is capable of blocking the malware used in this campaign.

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Talos Group

Talos Security Intelligence & Research Group

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Making Programmable Networks Easier to Achieve (and for Free!)

making programmable networks easier to achieveThe “P” in EPN stands for “Programmable,” as in “Evolved Programmable Network” and Cisco has just made the “P” easier to achieve to help drive services to the cloud. We’ve now contributed Basic ConfD, a free version of our powerful ConfD by Tail-f management agent software to the networking industry. Tail-f joined Cisco last summer and this announcement demonstrates Cisco’s commitment to not only embrace but also drive open standards in the best interest of the entire ecosystem. Continue reading “Making Programmable Networks Easier to Achieve (and for Free!)”

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Greg Smith

Sr. Manager, Marketing

Cisco Solutions Marketing

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New Must-Know Security Research for Midsize Organizations

Midsize organizations are among the earliest adopters of new technologies. In general, they conduct much of their business over the Internet and are quick to embrace new apps, online payment systems, cloud, and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) technologies. Fast adoption of innovations helps them to compete against larger organizations by meeting customer demands more cost effectively. But these business enablers are also creating security vulnerabilities that adversaries are exploiting for financial gain.

Adversaries aren’t just targeting prized assets like customer and employee data, invoices, and intellectual property. Cybercriminals also recognize that smaller companies are a vector into the networks of larger corporations. A 2013 study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers on behalf of the UK Government Department for Business, Innovation and Skills found that 87 percent of small businesses had been compromised, up 10 percent from the previous year. Many small and midsize companies are now mandated by partners to improve their threat defense. Regardless of size, organizations have legal and fiduciary responsibilities to protect valuable data, intellectual property, and trade secrets.

Continue reading “New Must-Know Security Research for Midsize Organizations”

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Carrie Baker

Manager, Security Go-to-Market

Security Marketing

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Competition Inspires Young People to Change the World with Connected Technology

The world is faced with overwhelming social issues, from climate change to poverty. Students and young entrepreneurs are taking advantage of the growing number of devices connected to the Internet, turning them into products that will one day solve these global problems.

A competition developed by Cisco France employees in 2014 aims to harnesses this innovative spirit. Now in its second year, Le Defi Cisco (The Cisco Challenge) invites university students and young entrepreneurs to develop solutions to social and environmental challenges using the Internet of Everything – the connection of people, processes, data, and things

Students collaborate during the Le Defi Cisco Competition, brainstorming new ways to apply technology to global social issues
Students collaborate during the Le Defi Cisco Competition, brainstorming new ways to apply technology to global social issues

Continue reading “Competition Inspires Young People to Change the World with Connected Technology”

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Natacha Comar

Project Coordinator

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The Power of a Complete Data and Analytics Strategy

This week, I’ll join my Cisco colleagues and industry peers at Strata + Hadoop World in San Jose. Participating in conferences such as this is one of my favorite parts of my job, because it gives us an opportunity as an industry to share information, learn from each other, and tackle challenges collectively with creative Data and Analytics solutions.

Cisco created an Analytics 3.0 architecture that enables data and analytics solutions in the Data Center, the Cloud, and at the network edge, and has made substantial investments in each of these areas as a company. As we have the opportunity to meet and collaborate at Strata + Hadoop World, the Cisco team can tell you all about our substantial investments in these areas. More importantly, you will hear about how Cisco is delivering solutions in partnership with innovative companies who are leaders in big data, analytics and business intelligence.

Speaking of innovative partnerships, today, I am excited to share the announcement of a joint Data Warehouse Optimization solution with Informatica. The solution provides a single platform for offloading processing and storage from data warehouses to Hadoop and enables organizations the ability to integrate and analyze more data and types of data. If you are attending the conference this week, I encourage you to visit the Cisco booth (#831) to hear more about this exciting new solution.

By bringing the best software, hardware and services from Cisco together with innovative and market leading capabilities of our partners, Cisco is enabling powerful solutions to the very real data problems our customers are facing. Data Virtualization is a key part of Analytics 3.0, because it allows you to connect multiple different data sources, make all the data appear as if it’s all in one spot, and serve it up with a consistent shape and format to an application and eventually to an end user. Take data from traditional data warehouses, Hadoop clusters, lots of edge places and make it all look to an application like its sitting in the data center in one central data base. This also saves application developers from re-writing applications to take advantage of data that lives at the edge. They can simply write applications as they always have and we can pull that data together wherever it lives – all across the network, in the cloud, and between clouds. Powerful on its own…even more powerful together with our partners.

Continue reading “The Power of a Complete Data and Analytics Strategy”

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Mike Flannagan

No Longer with Cisco

February 17, 2015 35 Comments
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IoT, The Oppressed Project

IoT, The Oppressed Project

We are now in the era of IoT “Internet of Things”. It’s a concept that not only has the potential to impact how we live but also how we work. And as things become more connected, people become more concerned about their security and privacy. I have gone through a lot of technical conversation about IoT and realized how paranoid people are about their connected devices and appliances.

Why paranoid?

The future Internet will be an IPv6 network interconnecting traditional computers and a large number of smart objects or networks such as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). By 2020 there will be over 26 Billion connected devices and some estimate this number to be more than 100 Billion connected devices. This includes mobile phones, Smart TVs, washing machines, wearable devices, Microwave, Fridges, headphones, door locks, garage door openers, scales, home alarms, hubs for multiple devices, remote power outlets and almost anything else you can think of like your car and airplane jet engines.

Ways of securing the traditional Internet networks have been established and tested. The IoT is a hybrid network of the Internet and resource-constrained networks, and it is, therefore, reasonable to explore the options of using security mechanisms standardized for the Internet in the IoT.

What will we do about managing the usernames and passwords of every single connected device? What about our privacy? What if some hacker was able to control our video cameras? More and more questions are being asked and more security concerns are being escalated. Do we really have to be paranoid about IoT? Continue reading “IoT, The Oppressed Project”

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Maher Abdelshkour

Sr. Network Engineer

Information Security Analyst III

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Community Manager: Digital Maven

The expectations on the modern marketer are ever-increasing. 

The list of skills required includes the classics:

  • market research
  • creative writing
  • attractive branding
  • engaging event management
  • seamless customer support

Add these relatively newer skills:

  • crisp digital photography
  • smooth video
  • webpage coding
  • real-time social media listening
  • business analytics
Community Manager Appreciation Day
Cisco Community Managers sharing selfies on Community Manager Appreciation Day. #CMADselfie

The community managers behind the brands you continue to support are able to do all of the above.  Otherwise, you wouldn’t be happy with the brand.  Branding is all about making you happy.

Continue reading “Community Manager: Digital Maven”

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Silvia Karina Spiva

No Longer at Cisco

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Show off your innovation with the Business Outcomes Contest

In today’s ever-connected, IoT world, innovation is the key to success.

In fact, that’s exactly why Cisco has been developing Internet of Everything Innovation Centers around the world. These centers encourage IoE innovation and development, bringing together customers, industry partners, startups, government organizations and universities to catalyze this ongoing innovation. It’s also why we continue to enrich our Solution Partner Program.

As part of Cisco’s ongoing dedication to enabling and promoting innovation, we’re looking to highlight those partners whose solutions are transforming customers’ business. We want to share your great innovation stories, but not just share them, celebrate them.

We’ll be doing this through our new Business Outcomes Contest, designed to showcase and reward the great strides our solution partners are making.

Learn more about the Cisco Solution Partner Program Business Outcomes Contest, and in my video below:

https://youtu.be/AmItxb7xKjI Continue reading “Show off your innovation with the Business Outcomes Contest”

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Traci Soward

Cisco Solution Partner Program Strategist

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Seven Ways to Move to the Cloud

While cloud computing is based on a number of technology innovations, I’m going to write for the non-technical person who I think needs to understand this major shift.  In the end, cloud computing will affect every business, every industry.  I’ll start this blog by sharing a story.

A few years ago, I was in a meeting with six CIOs of one of the largest healthcare providers. I asked each a question as they introduced themselves: “What are you working on?”

The first CIO, Bill, replied, “I’m working on a strategy to move to cloud.”

Next, I asked Mary, “What do you do?” Mary also said she was working on a strategy to move the cloud.

We got through every one of them and every one of them had the same answer.

I asked, “So what does that mean, working on a strategy to move to the cloud?”

They collectively said, “We’re really not sure, but we’re working on it.”

I wasn’t actually there to talk to them about cloud computing, but I said, “Give me 10 to 15 minutes to help you think about what it might mean to move to the cloud.”

I’d like to share an abbreviated view of this discussion in this blog, beginning with reviewing my cloud-computing framework.
Continue reading “Seven Ways to Move to the Cloud”

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Timothy Chou

Lecturer at Stanford University