NETWORKING

It’s the time of year when most enterprises are involved in a more-or-less-formal technology review cycle, as a preparatory step for next year’s budgeting. They’ve done this for decades, and it’s interesting to me that in any given year, enterprises share roughly three of their top five priorities. It’s more interesting that over three-quarters of enterprises carry over at least two of their top five priorities for multiple years. Why aren’t they getting addressed? They…

As we ride the biggest digital wave in history, the internet has become fundamental to how society maintains livelihoods, conducts business, and stays connected. With it, come a constant evolution of risk. Phishing, service disruptions, ransomware, and other attacks hijack data, destroy sources of income, steal identities and invade privacy, derail nations, and change the course of history. Effectively managing the revolving door of risks calls for a new era of trust. More than just…

As organizations and individuals worldwide become more reliant on technology, there are more opportunities to connect and collaborate—but also more risks. Now in its 18th year, Cybersecurity Awareness Month continues to raise awareness about the importance of cybersecurity in the United States and other nations around the world. This year’s theme is “Do Your Part. #BeCyberSmart.” The theme encourages individuals and organizations to own their role in protecting their part of cyberspace, stressing personal accountability,…

Welcome to our blog series on the people behind Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at Cisco. Each blog in this series will highlight a different Cisco employee who works closely with CSR initiatives across the company. Cisco Meraki is a complete cloud-managed networking solution that integrates hardware, software, and cloud services. Besides its products, another distinct aspect of the Meraki business unit is that its employees are deeply engaged in community impact and volunteerism. Charlie Gebhardt is…

Q: How do you eat a whale? A: One bite at a time… or so the saying goes. Admittedly, I don’t know of anyone who eats whale one bite at a time (or any way otherwise for that matter). But we can all agree that breaking large problems into smaller pieces is a valuable arrow in the quiver of problem-solving techniques. It’s a practice that certainly applies in the world of programming. Once the problem…

There has never been a more important time to listen. “Seek first to understand,” is a lesson I picked up early in my career that has generally proved effective in many situations as a leader, colleague and employee. (Not to mention at home as a partner, father, and friend; it’s a versatile maxim.) Eighteen months into this pandemic, given that the experience and effects of COVID-19 are simultaneously something that is universally shared and individually…

When it comes to supporting the emerging hybrid workforce, getting the network and security right is top of mind among enterprise IT leaders. That’s one finding detailed in Cisco’s new Hybrid Work Index, which the company says will be updated quarterly to gauge how worker and technology habits are evolving as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Cisco says the index gleans information from anonymized customer data points culled from a number of its products, including Meraki…

“Time is money!” A quote that can’t be truer and more crucial for modern industrial networks where timing, precision, and synchronization pave the way for fast-paced current and future services. And in the middle of it all, PTP (Precision Timing Protocol) serves as one of the critical timing protocols making it all possible. It may be logical to think that protecting time, services, and revenue is the goal of building a resilient and secure infrastructure….

The apps we are building are becoming atomized: they are fracturing into microservices and ultra-specific APIs. I am excited that one of the most interesting and influential groups of developers working on these apps will be coming together to explore the paths forward in software next week at KubeCon + CloundNativeCon 2021. I’ll be there with the Cisco team and I want to give you a preview of what we’re looking forward to discussing…and announcing….

It is super exciting to see the rich set of features that Wi-Fi 6 has brought to the table. With the likes of high throughput, power optimization, and broadened security, Wi-Fi 6, as a technology that got enough to tempt the network upgrade. As a result, these promising capabilities could knock off an array of challenging access issues seen in the enterprise network.  In a typical enterprise setup, the network administrator is liable for leading…