NETWORKING

Co-Authored with Renee Patton The Heart of the Village In education institutions around the world, smaller classroom sizes have long been correlated with increased effectiveness and impact – particularly in primary schools. Small schools and colleges are a force to be reckoned with: not only do they provide learning experiences for students, but they also have critical social and cultural implications in their surrounding communities.  In a 2019 article on small, rural schools in Nordic countries, Gunilla Karlberg-Granlund called…

As technology advances, we need to develop our teams’ skills to keep pace. This is especially true now, as we are supporting a new kind of work environment, with the majority of workers at home, not in the office. Recently, even our software has left the office: For many businesses, the majority of workloads have moved to the cloud. Fortunately, with today’s networking products, we can now manage and control entire fabrics of equipment and…

A recent IDC market perspective “Five Key Enterprise Networking Trends to Watch in 2020” confirms what I’ve been hearing from customers. SD-WAN simplicity and savings are just the start. Delivering a better experience and security from edge to cloud are the real rewards, and looking deeper within the branch on how to use wired and wireless context are foundational going forward. Cost Savings with Improved Visibility Many organizations are turning to SD-WAN to reduce costs and increase…

This year has taught us a number of lessons. We’ve learned agility, patience, and to always check video settings during work meetings. The global pandemic has caused a shift to a work from home culture for most businesses. But the situation has left many companies wondering about work from home productivity. Supporting a remote workforce is a big change for some organizations. But it can offer significant business value because having the option to work…

The recent breach of major cybersecurity company FireEye by nation-state hackers was part of a much larger attack that was carried out through malicious updates to a popular network monitoring product and impacted major government organizations and companies. The incident highlights the severe impact software supply chain attacks can have and the unfortunate fact that most organizations are woefully unprepared to prevent and detect such threats. A hacker group believed to be affiliated with the…

One of the sillier, but still fun, tools available on Linux is called “cowsay”. It’s used to display a phrase along with an ASCII art image of a cow. The cowsay command allows you to create messages that are less likely to be overlooked and might come across as just a little friendlier than the other thousand or so messages most of us get every day. For example: $ cowsay This is cowsay! _________________ <…

Cisco Blogs / Security / Threat Research / Threat Advisory: SolarWinds supply chain attack Cisco Talos is monitoring yesterday’s announcements by FireEye and Microsoft that a likely state-sponsored actor compromised potentially thousands of high-value government and private organizations around the world via the SolarWinds Orion product. FireEye reported on Dec. 8 that it had been compromised in a sophisticated attack in which state-sponsored actors stole sensitive red team tools. Upon investigating the breach further, FireEye…

As is often true with new security concepts, vendors are quickly adopting the new terminology to showcase their products’ capabilities. This is where things get confusing and tricky. Some vendors are using XDR (Extended Detection & Response) as a marketing strategy for their existing EDR (Endpoint Detection & Response) or NDR (Network Detection & Response) products, others are launching new products or just rebranding existing products explicitly as “XDR”. Some vendors have built both EDR…

We’ve got a real good treat for you! Now you can get hands-on with a real Cisco industrial switch, the Cisco Catalyst IE3400, from your home. The switches in this rugged series can be DIN-rail mounted with IP30 or even IP67 (IE3400 Heavy Duty) providing protection against dust and submersion in water. Hardened for vibration, shock and surge, the most robust switch model can operate under extreme temperatures of (–40°C to 75°C [–40°F to 167°F])….

Workplace from Facebook and Cisco are Joining Forces to Improve Communication For All Organizations Building and maintaining connection and community depends upon authentic, transparent leadership across the workforce. This is a huge challenge at this time with most people working remotely, and while some offices are reopening, a hybrid work environment with a mixture of on-site and remote employees is here for the foreseeable future. At Cisco’s WebexOne event, we announced the partnership of Cisco…