In a little less than a month, the 2017 ANGA COM Conference will kick off and this year’s Congress Agenda is packed full of great panel discussions and topics, including Cisco Service Provider leader Yvette Kanouff and Cisco Fellow and Cable CTO John Chapman. If you haven’t already made plans to attend, registration is still open. To find out more, visit ANGA COM.
Make Sure You Stop by and See Us in Hall #7, Booth E10
At the 2017 ANGA COM Exhibition, we take you through our step-by-step evolution path across key technology areas including infrastructure, virtualization, management and automation, as well as sharing our long-term vision.
For these technology areas we will show you how:
Next-generation converged cable access platforms (CCAP), DOCSIS 3.1, and Remote PHY to deliver Gigabit service tiers and drive down operating costs.
Virtualized cable modem termination systems (CMTS) and other functions can enable you to elastically scale and reposition resources to meet changing demand.
Management and automation tools can be used to monitor network health proactively and automate provisioning end-to-end.
How you can support the revolutionary cable technologies of the future, including full duplex, digital fiber and much more.
The theme for this year’s event is “There’s Never Been a Better Time to Transform Your Network,” and we’ll show you how Cisco’s commitment and leadership in next generation cable and our vision for evolving your cable access network can help you to drive down network complexity and operating costs, unlock profitable growth by delivering a broader mix of services, and, bring innovative, differentiated new experiences to your customers faster.
Live Demonstrations
We have a great lineup of demos this year, be sure to stop by and see some of these in action:
Remote PHY Node – See the industry’s first standards based RPHY Node in action and learn how the RPHY Node architecture can transform the HFC network in a multiservice standards based platform setting the stage for incremental growth for MSO’s
Remote PHY Shelf – See how the industry’s first standards based RPHY Shelf enables CCAP and DOCSIS 3.1 capabilities in small Hubs enabling hub site consolidation reducing TCO.
OpenRPD – Come and see the industry’s first OpenRPD products and learn how our the OpenRPD software initiative fosters rapid development of interoperable RPHY solutions
CCAP Core – Learn how the cBR8 can act as a CCAP-Core for integrated or RPHY, providing DOCSIS 3.1 downstream and upstream over RF or RPHY, full CCAP VoD and Broadcast convergence over RF or RPHY and Cloud-Native CMTS (cCMTS) for RPHY with Cisco’s virtualized cCMTS solution.
RPD Automation – Find out how our SDN Orchestration & Automation solution supports zero-touch provisioning of RPDs, integration of RPD automation in end-to-end network orchestration, simplified video services provisioning.
DOCSIS FDX – See our next-gen cable access platform with DOCSIS Full-Duplex in action and learn how Cisco RPHY provides a foundation for FDX.
PNM & D3.1 Services – Find out how you can deliver Proactive Network Maintenance (PNM) as a Service, identifying upstream and downstream impairments on your DOCSIS footprint. See how our D3.1 capacity planning capabilities can be used to enable a successful DOCSIS 3.1 launch.
Meet with Cisco Executives and Subject Matter Experts
ANGA COM is a great time to meet with Cisco executives and subject matter experts. Our team will be available to meet with you to discuss your current challenges and opportunities. To request a meeting, contact your Cisco account manager.
Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between April 21 and April 28. As with previous round-ups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highlighting key behavior characteristics, indicators of compromise, and how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.
As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of date of publication. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your FireSIGHT Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net. Read more »
“In a world that’s changing so quickly, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk.”
– Mark Zuckerberg
Digital transformation is no longer a buzzword, it’s happening today and in every industry. According to research from the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation, an IMD and Cisco initiative, 40 percent of the top industry incumbents will be displaced within 5 years.
To succeed in digital transformation, retailers need a digital ready network that is simple, intelligent, automated, and secure. With Cisco’s Digital Network Architecture (DNA) for Retail, you can centrally manage your entire network – whether you are providing access to your shoppers, store associates, or corporate employees. Cisco DNA helps retailers innovate faster, reduce cost and complexity, optimize their business, and lower risk – all while improving customer experience and associate productivity.
Fast innovation with enhanced insights
Increasingly rapid changes in technology advancements continues to transform the retail landscape. Today’s tech-savvy shoppers want the same digital tools and experience they have online, at the physical store. And, although ecommerce and mcommerce is growing significantly, customers still prefer to shop in physical stores. Ninety-two percent of groceries are purchased in store, followed by 77 percent of consumer packaged goods and 76 percent of clothing and apparel [Entrepreneur].
Because of this, gathering insights from an intelligent network has never been more critical and important to retailers looking to reinvent their business models to deliver frictionless shopping experiences. Having real-time analytics and insights about your customers’ shopping preferences and purchase history empowers you and your employees to deliver the personalized experiences that your customers want.
Lower complexity and costs with automation
In a world where thousands of connected devices are trying to join your network, it’s vital that retailers deliver a highly reliable, secure, and predictive network that is always on. With Cisco DNA for Retail, you can roll out and update your network faster for improved customer experience and reduced day-to-day operational and network management costs with automation, management, and application assurance. IT can now manage services via automation across hundreds of devices and sites, delivering a more dynamic network that provisions, expands, and reallocates services quickly across different platforms with no service calls.
Reduce risks with security everywhere
As new digital interactions from shoppers and the business at large make it through the network, retailers are more vulnerable to cyberattacks and cyber criminals. In one attack in 2015, cyber criminals accessed the personal data of nearly 15 million individuals, including names, birthdates, Social Security numbers, addresses and more. And according to Cisco’s 2017 Cyber Security Annual Report, one in three retailers have suffered revenue losses as a result of a cyberattack.
To protect against these threats, retailers need to implement a more effective approach to security. This entails deploying a secure network to help you see more, protect better and respond faster to attacks. Having the right security strategy in place will help you accelerate your digital journey faster.
Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA) for Retail is the foundation technology that enables digital transformation of your stores and corporate offices. There’s never been a better time to digitally transform the shopping experience – now is the time for action!
Click here to assess your digital readiness today.
This post was written by guest blogger Dennis C. Frezzo, PhD, Learning Scientist and Consulting Engineer, Cisco
As we embark on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it is clear that technology will play a central role in nearly all aspects of our lives. Research by the World Economic Forum estimates that 65% of children entering primary school will find themselves in occupations that today do not exist.
Additionally, by 2020, it is estimated there will be 1.5 million new digitization jobs across the globe. At the same time, 90% of organizations currently have an IT skills shortage, while 75% of educators and students feel there is a gap in their ability to meet the skills needs of the IT workforce. To prepare the talent needed for the digital economy, education must adapt as fast as the demand for IT skills is growing and evolving.
Recently, insights into the influence of psychological, social, cultural and environmental factors on how we learn are emerging from “the new science of learning.” This approach to understanding education argues that in our complex and rapidly evolving world today, academic models based on interdisciplinary research are necessary to create effective teaching and learning environments.
Learning science’s expanded viewpoint is therefore uncovering new approaches to education. For example, research by professor and leading scientific expert on creativity and learning, R. Keith Sawyer, emphasizes the power of technology to influence and enhance academia by providing experiences that lead to deep learning, such as allowing students to learn collaboratively, test out and redesign models, and articulate their knowledge both visually and verbally.
Imagine a classroom infrastructure that includes wireless technologies, remotely accessible switches and routers, and collaboration tools to create an “intelligent” environment for the invention of real-world Internet of Things (IoT) products, services, and experiences by students.
Creation takes place in different venues, for example, in the classroom during project-based learning or alongside passionate technology peers via hackathons. Students model the networks they create in a simulator and prototype with cloud-based technology at home. Instructors are empowered with a customizable learning management platform while collaborating with peer instructors across the world.
Learning science’s interdisciplinary insights are uncovering new approaches to education. For example, the power of technology to influence and enhance academia. Visit the full Science of Learning infographic here.
The most exciting piece is, this is all achievable now. By applying learning science insights to IT education, we can create a dynamic, digital, and hands-on learning experience that is tailored, flexible, and relevant, developing the talent needed to power the digital economy.
Understanding Learning Science’s Impact on Education
To illustrate how the science of learning informs digitally enhanced learning, we present three learning science concepts – distributed cognition (dCoG), the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), and formative assessment – all of which emphasize how humans learn through activity.
Distributed cognition (dCoG) is a theory introduced by Edwin Hutchins, who describes how people, their environment, and artifacts (or tools) can be regarded as one cognitive system. Educators can view human learning through the lens of dCoG to design digitally enhanced learning experiences that facilitate the interaction of people (e.g. students, teachers, mentors), their environment (e.g. classrooms, workplace learning, informal settings) and tools (e.g. hands-on activities, simulators, games).
For example, Cisco Networking Academy, a world-leading IT skills and career building program, applies dCog and learning via activity to develop deeper, transferable problem-solving skills. Leveraging collaboration technology, students and teachers can interact face-to-face or virtually to strategize, create and test digital solutions. The learning environment is flexible and diverse, offering face-to-face instructor-led courses, online classes rich with video and interactivity, in-person labs, and blended classroom experiences.
The program utilizes various tools to support learning by doing such as Cisco’s Packet Tracer (PT), an innovative network simulation and visualization tool for the IoT era that offers a multitude of opportunities and applications for the teacher and learner. Packet Tracer is free to anyone in the world who registers and allows for student-directed, open-ended networking building and guided practice in designing, configuring, and troubleshooting networks. Additionally, through hackathons, boot camps, and hands-on lab challenges Networking Academy students can collaborate, create, and problem solve in real time.
Distributed cognition (dCoG), a key science of learning theory, recognizes people, their environment and artifacts (or tools) as one cognitive system. Here an example of dGoG in action: an instructor from Cisco Networking Academy guides a student through Packet Tracer, an innovative simulation tool that provides guided practice in designing, configuring, and troubleshooting networks.
Another concept central to learning science is Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), and the related idea of scaffolding.ZPD represents the skill level just outside a learner’s comfort and mastery, while scaffolding refers to any type of instructional support, such as quizzes, games, instructions, tutoring, that facilitate learning within the student’s ZPD. By building learning experiences that use scaffolding to adjust to a student’s ZPD, we can hone in on the activity that will optimize a student’s capability to learn new material, as well as the balance between their current ability and the challenge presented.
Adding digital tools expands the options and reach of personalized teaching and scaffolding. For example, complementing the power of in-person and online teachers, learning and assessment enhanced with networked digital tools can be very effective. Applying frequent formative assessments (a formal and informal practice with continual and real-time feedback) the U.S. Navy’s Digital Tutor system demonstrates how digital solutions result in a scalable educational environment that has created IT experts in months rather than years.
Through its Education Dominance pilot, the U.S. Navy developed an artificial intelligence based tutoring system to replicate the behaviors of exceptional tutors. Simulation technology and hands-on labs drive this system with student outcomes equivalent to, or surpassing, those using the human tutor. The platform is also scalable in a way not afforded by in-person tutors
Additionally, digital-based assessments enable Cisco Networking Academy, and its global community of educators, to pursue an agile continuous improvement process that target a learner’s optimal pace and material. A spectrum of online quizzes, chapter and final exams, practice Certification experiences, and online skills exams, coupled with options for instructor customization, create a “digital ocean” of data on learning patterns and progress, for students, instructors, and the program. Cisco Packet Tracer also has a formative assessment mode with scaffolding enabled via instructions, timing, grading and feedback to allow student practice within their ZPD. To date, more than 170 million exams have been taken online through Networking Academy’s continuously refreshed assessment bank.
Applying learning science insights to IT education, educators can create a dynamic, digital, and hands-on learning experience that is tailored, flexible, and relevant, developing the talent needed to power the digital economy.
Fueling Educational Innovation Critical in the Digital Economy
While experts believe that the human psychology behind learning has not changed vastly over time, the external factors affecting how we comprehend, retain and receive new material are constantly evolving. As the digital revolution accelerates, technology provides us exciting opportunities to shape learning experiences and achieve learning goals.
For example, Networking Academy’s digital platform has enabled expansion into more countries than Cisco itself has operations. Additionally, the “learning science DNA” insights generated from Cisco’s design-based research, are being used to create a variety of learning tools, courses, bootcamps, and academic programs in IoT and big data.
At the same time, it is important to recognize the role that a human teacher will always play in the classroom. They have a unique and personal insight into each learner’s progress, serving as a role model and local expert, and providing inspiration in a way technology itself cannot.
Combining the learning sciences with digital innovation, we can leverage the best of what digitally enhanced and human-driven education have to offer, creating learning experiences that keep pace with the digital skills demanded by the market. In turn, affecting individual lives, supporting business and transforming global communities.
Learn more about the Cisco Networking Academy by visiting netacad.com today.
There was recent news of a multi-billion dollar start-up that utilized an actual customer’s network environment for sales demonstrations. To make matters worse, the practice went on for years, without the customer’s (which happened to be a medical facility) permission or knowledge (which had the potential of violating The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). It is understandable for a company to want to demonstrate their products or services in a life-like manner, but data privacy and customer confidentiality are legal and regulatory obligations. There are ways, however, to demonstrate products and services using data that is close to production while protecting your customer’s data, complying with your own company’s legal and regulatory obligations, and still produce a quality demo.
First, let us take a quick look at some of the reasons why maintaining the confidentiality of customer data is so important. Beyond ethical and contractual reasons, there are also regulatory regimes and frameworks that span the globe that require the protection of personal data, such as HIPAA, Japan Personal Information Protection Act, OECD Guidelines, EU General Data Protection Regulation, and the APEC Privacy Framework. In addition to legal and regulatory obligations, customers have become more ‘privacy aware’ in recent years, with increased attention to what data is collected, how it is used, who it is shared with, whether it’s sold or rented, and its eventual destruction. A step to minimize privacy risk and exposure would be to de-identify or anonymize the data and set up a demo environment.
Anonymizing or de-identifying data prevents an observer from directly, or by aggregation and/or inference, identifying the actual person about whom the data relates (i.e., the data subject). Properly anonymized data would no longer be Personally Identifiable Information (PII) if it were not possible to identify any individual data subjects. De-identification, on the other hand, replaces PII with pseudonyms or alternative identifiers leaving only authorized users with the ability to re-identify the data subjects.
With a few simple steps, a company can anonymize or de-identify data to protect their customers, data subjects, and themselves. For example, in Excel, a team can leverage formulas such as RIGHT(), REPT(), and LEN() to randomize or redact a social security number to show only the last 4 digits. A macro can also be written to overwrite the original data for more complete anonymization. The VBA code examples are also published on the internet and easily accessible to programmers. Generalization is another way to accomplish this for data. An example of generalization is taking specific data, such as household incomes $175,234, $64,502 and $32,324 and make them ranges “more than $150,000”, “between $100,000 and $50,000” and “less than $35,000”. Other techniques include:
Data swapping: swap data across the table to make the original data locations and linkages randomized.
Randomization: using a mathematical formula to mix the data with random numbers or values.
Perturbation or Noise: add random values and mismatched data to overwrite and confuse the original data.
Redaction: suppressing or removing identifying data fields from the data set.
Anonymization or de-identification can provide your sales teams with data that is robust enough to give customers as realistic operation of the offering while fulfilling your legal and regulatory obligations and customer expectations of privacy and confidentiality. The National Institutes of Standards and Technologies (NIST) has a robust guideline as well on de-identification: http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2015/NIST.IR.8053.pdf
This vulnerability was discovered by Aleksandar Nikolic of Cisco Talos.
Overview
Talos has discovered a vulnerability in the Randombit Botan library. A programming error exists in a way Botan library implements x500 string comparisons which could lead to certificate verification issues and abuse. A specially crafted X509 certificate would need to be delivered to the client or server application in order to trigger this vulnerability. A security advisory was published on the Randombit website to inform users the vulnerability is now fixed in versions 2.1.0 and 1.10.16.
This year’s Marketing Velocity 2017 event has concluded, but one of the highlights was awarding our partners for their incredible work. We recognized seven partners for how they used digital, social and omnichannel approaches in their marketing campaigns. From multi-touch approaches to blending traditional with digital, they see the value of digital marketing.
These are the recipients of the Cisco Marketing Velocity Innovator Award:
Dimension Data Australia, won for Asia Pacific and Japan region, partnered with Cisco and Apple to create multi-touch campaign that delivered a memorable and immersive experience for customers.
Softchoice, from Canada, created a viable Marketing campaign and training series with an innovative “comic book” element that was embraced by their field and sales teams.
SWS Computersysteme AG, won for the Europe, Middle East, Africa & Russia region designed and delivered an onmichannel campaign using a mix of social, digital and traditional marketing to successfully reach new a target audience.
Beijing Wafer New Century Information Tech. Ltd., was the winner from Greater China delivered a campaign that seamlessly integrated traditional and digital marketing, aligned Cisco Collaboration and Wireless solutions and contributed to incremental growth in SQL new bookings.
Dimension Data, the winner for Global Strategic Partner, increased brand awareness with a beautiful story of conservation through technology. Partnering with Cisco, this awareness campaign created a potential readership of 713.6 million via the global print, online, and broadcast media.
EVOX, the winner from Latin America, developed a long-term strategy to focus on new Lines of Business. This strategy generated brand awareness in other technology areas and as a result EVOX was able to create success stories to promote themselves to other partners and customers.
OneNeck IT Solutions, the winner for the United States, created a thorough campaign that was both data driven and digital, comprehensive and innovate from start to finish. The campaign had strong strategy and execution along with solid metrics.
Please help me congratulate these partners for their incredible efforts. We are so proud of their accomplishments and cannot wait to see what the future brings. To learn more about what the Marketing Velocity program could offer you visit the Market page, and remember, There’s Never Been a Better Time to Become a Digital Believer.
At the 2017 Hannover Messe this week, I talked with dozens of manufacturing execs trying to figure out how to move forward their platforms, teams, and philosophies to enable Industrie 4.0 outcomes at scale.
Our customers are already connecting thousands of intelligent devices and demanding new transparency from their vendors: They want to liberate plant floor data from operational silos and proprietary technologies. Only by doing this will they be able to adapt to the latest advances in automation, sensor technology, and machine learning… not to mention the economic imperative to get in front of tightening competition due to globalization.
To take full advantage of new technologies now hitting manufacturing – like predictive analytics, cloud computing, mobility, and collaboration – it’s critical to align operation technology goals with company IT teams. It is time to unite the Operational and the IT tribes so we can succeed together in enabling Industrie 4.0, beyond paper projects.
As I learned at Hannover, there are 5 major issues that manufacturing execs are thinking about as they work to integrate their various industrial systems with each other and with IT’s.
Here they are:
We Need Open Data Platforms
Contemporary machine learning technology means that we are getting new capabilities to see patterns and signals in data that we used to discard as noise, that we can use to improve operational efficiency.
Currently, many shop floors run legacy protocols designed for command and control; they were not designed to feed bits into a data warehouse. Without a way to collect, collate, and store data from different systems, the opportunity to harvest this data is lost.
(This is why we build switches like the IE 4000 line that support multiple protocols and standards which is the first step is bringing the data streams together. CAM for IOT Intelligence helps to connect and organize all the new streams of IOT diagnostic data for business improvement whether from sensors, machines, IP cameras, or asset and people location tags.)
We Must Move Beyond Computing Silos
The massive increase in the data flows we will be processing means that we also need to look at where and how we are doing that processing. The old client/server model, with designated machines working on particular projects, isn’t manageable and does not scale. We’ve got to get our data and our processing out of silos. We need processing at the “edge,” the interface between shop floor machines and the data centers that are archiving their information.
I’ve seen how rigid compute platforms don’t work, and I’ve also seen how they do. One of our partners, for example, provides software libraries for our IoT edge Gateways. The software speaks many industrial protocols and interfaces to dozens of PLCs and automation devices. It makes it possible for switching hardware to be used as data protocol translators, helping liberate data from those silos.
Device Management is About to Get Unmanageable
With all these new devices and sensors coming online and getting put on a common network, we need a way to keep them all monitored and updated. Most current management structures aren’t going to be able to handle this.
We’re going to need new products to manage this network infrastructure. Our Industrial Network Director and our Fog Director are two unique solutions. They will make it possible to manage the devices and to perform statistical analysis at the edge of the network to slim down the data sets sent on for further business analysis and archiving.
Security is Keeping People Awake at Night
There is a massive risk to putting industrial equipment on a network shared with IT and connected to the global Internet: IT will also be free to share all its malware and hacker attacks. Unfortunately, the practice of keeping the industrial network safe by simply keeping it isolated is coming to an end.
IT personnel are accustomed to large attack surfaces. It’s a constant game of cat and mouse in which, for the most part, the good guys manage to keep slightly ahead. But the tools that IT uses to protect data networks don’t always apply to industrial systems. You can’t just take one machine offline at a random time to patch its operating system, for example – no matter how critical the security issue.
I listened to several concerned industrial experts and customers at Hannover who wanted to learn from Cisco’s IT leaders about factory floor security and how to better protect connected operational environments. We’ve been learning from industrial leaders for years and our current products bring together the best security practices from both sides.
Conclusion: Aligning Industry with Information Technology
Industrial technology projects are driven by business, not back-office needs. Everything we do with data on the shop floor is aimed at directly improving product quality, boosting manufacturing speed, lowering direct cost, or some other process that directly goes to the bottom line. Operational necessity is the driver of our digital transformation.
While industry has been hardening its machine-to-machine networking to exist in physically punishing environments, IT has built systems that can process massive amounts of information and (for the most part) stay secure and globally connected at the same time. Merging the disciplines is difficult, but both groups have a lot to learn from each other and the new combined industrial/IT networks will be much stronger for it, and more powerful for businesses, too.
Today’s data centers are complex in nature. Reduced agility, system outages, security threats, data storage migration, lost or misplaced data add to this complexity.
Also the adoption of the cloud services is increasing and many platforms and applications continue to co-exist, thus creating a management challenge within the data centers. Moreover, Data centers coupled with cloud services are transforming into pools of virtualized functions. Virtualized functions and new on-demand services are amplifying the need for strong overlays to achieve higher agility.
Cisco Virtual Topology System
To keep pace with this increased demand and overcome the challenge, Cisco developed the Virtual Topology System (VTS) – an SDN Controller that is designed to help resolve the technical and business challenges for building and managing cloud services. Virtual Topology System can help Service Providers build a resilient cloud, easily deployable NFV service chains, and ensure the high availability that all cloud services need.
This SDN controller helps build a powerful clouds infrastructure and NFV service chains that can be easily deployed, managed and updated, implementing a high availability cloud deployed/operated from a single pane of glass view.
Benefits of VTS
Scalable multitenant networks: Ensures segmentation and agility of cloud infrastructure.
Fabric automation: supports faster, agile network provisioning through hardware & software end points.
Programmability: Provides an open, well-documented REST-based northbound API, that allows integration with an external orchestration or cloud management system
Also offers extensive southbound integration through platform APIs (Cisco NX-API) or NETCONF YANG
To learn more, join special webinar on May 2nd (replay also will be available for viewing on demand) in which our NFV and VTS experts explain Cisco’s VTS solution and how it addresses Service Provider, Data Center Virtualization and NFV requirements by delivering agility, scalable multi-tenancy, and programmability to the cloud-enabled data center.
This post was written by guest blogger Dennis C. Frezzo, PhD, Learning Scientist and Consulting Engineer, Cisco
