NETWORKING

If your computing environment is subject to a large ransomware attack, you will most certainly be enacting your disaster recovery (DR) plan. But before you begin restoring systems, you must first ensure you have stopped the infection, identified it, and removed it. Jumping too quickly to the restore phase could actually make things worse. To understand why this is the case, it’s important to understand how ransomware works. How ransomware spreads in your environment There…

As Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) deployments grow in popularity, Cisco has been one of the pioneers in bringing open networking tenets to the RAN space over more than four years through the O-RAN Alliance. In 2018, Cisco spearheaded the multivendor Open vRAN ecosystem at Mobile World Congress. In 2019 we led the architectural design and network build for the world’s first fully software-defined network, and in 2020 we were the first to collaborate with…

When it comes to combo meals, there are two types of people in the world: those who order the meal set as intended – e.g. a burger with fries and a soda – and those who attempt to customize it – e.g. pickles on the side, switch out fries for onion rings, or upgrade soda to a milkshake. I hate to say it, but I am often the latter. The “Sorry, no substitutions” fine-printed on…

Real time decision making is critical to customer success. Customers that don’t take the necessary steps to build next generation infrastructures and solutions will be stuck with the same basic applications – monitoring, reporting, and simple rules-based operations. They will be unable to transition to the data-driven economy, and at a later stage take part in the upcoming outcome economy. Partners are helping customers enable integration between OT and IT.  Seamless connectivity is realized by…

One of the hottest topics – and buzzwords – in networking today is “SASE,” or secure access service edge. But SASE has been defined differently by different SD-WAN vendors and security vendors. Even industry analysts don’t agree on a precise definition of SASE. As a result, there are a lot of opinions, misconceptions, and questions about SASE. Is SASE a replacement for SD-WAN? What are the various network and security functions that make up a…

Everyone knows that backups are important, but most of us tend to think of backups solely as the process of backing up our data files — not necessarily our applications, our passwords or our computers. And, when we run into a serious problem that threatens our ability to get our work done, it just might be time to rethink what “backing up” should involve. Even if you have more than one computer at your disposal,…

Now that the Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge 2021 winners have been officially announced, we are excited for you to learn more about each winning team and the story behind each innovation. The Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge is an annual competition that awards cash prizes to early-stage tech entrepreneurs solving the world’s toughest problems. Now in its fifth year, the competition awarded its largest prize pool ever, $1 million USD, to 20 winning teams from around the world. We…

Our continued commitment to support the marketing success of Cisco partners is steadfast, as we aim to enable them to become future ready. In my first blog, “Empowering Cisco partners to transform their marketing efforts is a top priority at Cisco,” I talked about our team’s goal of supporting partners as they chart that course. Today I am excited to introduce two new leaders joining our Cisco Global Partner Marketing team. They will play an…

If you’re an enterprise CIO, CFO, or network operations type, you’ve probably been reading about how this service provider or that cloud provider have saved up to 50% on network equipment by using generic “white-box” technology instead of proprietary routers and switches.  It’s hard not to wonder whether your own network budget could buy twice as much gear, and what projects might now meet their business case.  Could enterprises get in on the white-box revolution? …

If your enterprise has a website (and one certainly would hope so in 2021!), it also has subdomains. These prefixes of your organization’s main domain name are essential for putting structural order to the content and services on your website, thus preventing online visitors from instantly fleeing in terror, disdain, or confusion. Large enterprises can have thousands of subdomains. IBM, for example, has roughly 60,000 subdomains, while Walmart.com has “only” 2,132 subdomains. Whatever value subdomains…