Cisco’s DevNet certifications emphasize network programing, automation, and application-development skills.

Software skills are becoming increasingly desirable for network engineers and architects, and the uptick in Cisco’s DevNet certification program reflects the trend. According to Cisco, there’s been more than 50% growth in the number of DevNet certifications awarded in the past year.

Cisco says it no longer gives out specific numbers, but in 2020, nearly 8,000 participants earned some 10,500 DevNet certifications, including DevNet Associate, DevNet Professional and DevNet Specialist. These DevNet certifications focus on coding, automation, network access, IP connectivity, security and application development on Cisco platforms, as well as what developers need to know about network doctrines.

Most recently, Cisco announced a new expert-level DevNet certification: Cisco Certified DevNet Expert. Exam topics for DevNet Expert are focused on software skills and include software development, deployment, and design; infrastructure as code; containers, network programmability and automation; and security.

“While CCIE topics have delved deep into the realm of protocol interaction, network design, and reliable and scalable infrastructure, with automation as part of that, the DevNet Expert takes a solid software-first approach as it pertains to the network engineer,” wrote Joe Clarke, a distinguished customer experience engineer at Cisco, in a blog announcing the new certification level.

The DevNet Expert exam is geared for network engineers who are working with new, automation-driven networks that lead to digital transformations across all industries, according to Clarke. “To deliver secure, agile networks, support the future of work, and provide capabilities at the edge, you need people who are experts at wielding software and automation to harness and shape the power of the network,” Clarke said.

Those who earn DevNet Expert certifications will be able to design and deliver the necessary automation solutions to transform a traditional network into one that enables digital transformation; they’ll also be able to build and lead a team to transform the culture of an organization into one that embraces automation as the way to do networking, Clarke stated.

“You don’t want to keep touching things manually. You want to build a nice hierarchy with a single source of truth that has a very clear picture of what the network should look like,” Clarke said. “And then you want to automate not only the deployment of that, but the testing of that, so that you can get more confidence with the configuration changes you’re making. So maybe everything is not fully software defined, but it’s becoming more software driven.”

At the same time, the need for cloud networking, mobility and observability capabilities is also on the rise.

“The idea of total observability – to know that all of your services are healthy and how those applications are performing – is a hot topic right now,” Clarke said. “Nothing happens without APIs and touch points, and as we move more toward the cloud and more remote users, it will be more important to have network engineers be able to develop centralized policies for all those users to have the same experience.”

Data analytics and the ability to extract and make sense of key data from large data sets are growing requirements, too, Clarke said.

DevNet skills can also help network engineers to handle the cloudification of the enterprise.

“With fewer people actually in the office, the requirement is that everyone still needs secure access to files and applications. How do we handle that?” Clarke said. “There are DevNet skills that give you the ability to know the network and tie together cloud elements in an effective way for the business.”

The first day that candidates can test for the DevNet Expert lab exam is expected to be May 2 of this year.

Courtesy of: Michael Cooney

When Bromium made its debut on the inaugural CNBC Disruptor 50 list in 2013, its pitch was that fighting malware with traditional fire is a losing battle and the only way to wage and win a new war against cyber attackers is to isolate viruses rather than try to keep them out entirely.

“Disruption occurs when customers in a mature market are presented with a fundamentally different, and far more effective, way to solve a problem. Ultimately, the new markets and value networks created by disruptive products overtake and displace existing market,” Bromium CEO Gaurav Banga told CNBC at the time. “As the market embraces this innovative approach, we are able to move towards our ultimate objective — to restore trust in computing.”

For Bromium, founded in 2011 by former Citrix engineers, it was the same approach to endpoint protection that resulted in HP’s acquisition of the company six years later. Though it was not a straight line up for the company in terms of success or market valuation. In 2016, Bromium’s valuation was nearly cut in half after a failed attempt to raise additional funding, which was also around the same time that its growth and profitability were reported to be in the single digits.

Still, analysts at the time described the move as a safe, likely inexpensive bet. No acquisition price was disclosed, but HP had been a reseller of Bromium software since 2017 (its isolation technology was used in HP Sure Click to protect endpoints from malware introduced through email attachments, infected links, web browsers, or downloadable files) and endpoint security market consolidation was occurring quickly, with other players including Carbon Black and Symantec in deals with larger tech companies. Rival Dell announced a partnership with another CNBC Disruptor, CrowdStrike, a few months before the HP deal, leading analysts to speculate that HP’s acquisition of Bromium was a move in response to the competitive threats including Dell’s newest partnership, according to a 2019 report from TechTarget.

Today, Bromium’s technology serves as part of HP’s proprietary malware protection, which is a staple of the computer giant’s cybersecurity offerings, covering products from commercial PCs to printers.

The competition has only intensified in the years since, due in large part to a new cycle of investments in cybersecurity amid increasing high-profile attacks from both nation-state actors and criminal hacking organizations with more advanced versions of malware in the category known as ransomware targeting key supply chains and infrastructure. The massive move to the cloud by companies across all sectors of the economy, further accelerated by the pandemic, also has heightened the need for a stronger suite of cyber tools from technology vendors for remote workers and operations.

As tensions between Russia and the West intensify, it’s put the cybersecurity preparedness of institutions back in the spotlight, while also highlighting cybersecurity deals like the 2019 tie-up between HP and Bromium as timely bets.

Last week, Alphabet made its second-biggest acquisition ever, a $5.4 billion deal for cybersecurity firm Mandiant. Alphabet chief financial officer Ruth Porat told Wall Street the price tag on the deal reflects the growing need to compete on cyber for its clients and against larger rivals in the cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. Microsoft had reportedly been a suitor for Mandiant previous to the deal.

With cloud customers demanding more artificial intelligence and automation, Alphabet is also seeing more demand for better, faster threat detection, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said in a blog post about the deal.

Bromium founder Gaurav Banga has since founded another cybersecurity firm, Balbix, with John Chambers among his investors, who noted in a blog post earlier this month that his firm increased its investment.

Last year was a record-setter for cyber M&A, according to advisory firm Cyber Momentum, with 286 transactions totaling $77 billion, an increase of nearly 300%. There was also more than $21 billion in venture capital invested last year, an increase of roughly 145% compared to 2020, according to data compiled by Crunchbase, including the largest funding round ever for a security start-up, Lacework’s $1.3 billion in November at a valuation of $8.3 billion.

The deals are occurring in all markets, with SentinelOne’s June IPO surpassing CrowdStrike’s $6.7 billion mark in 2019 to make it the highest-valued cybersecurity IPO in history, and two of the biggest deals taking companies private – McAfee being acquired by an investment consortium for more than $14 billion in November, and Proofpoint being acquired by Thoma Bravo for $12.3 billion in April. 

Courtesy of: Riley de Leon

Encrypted messaging service Telegram is proving a valuable asset to both sides in Russia’s war on Ukraine

Encrypted, cloud-based chat, voice-over-IP (VoIP) and videoconferencing service Telegram is emerging as key source of information for both Ukrainians and a growing anti-war Russian constituency as Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine enters its eighth day amid allegations of war crimes against humanity.

According to monitoring by Check Point Research, on Thursday 24 February – the day the invasion began – there was a sixfold increase in Telegram groups themed on the war. It said 71% of these groups were pushing newsflashes of unedited information, 23% were to some extent organising direct action against Russian targets by hacktivists, and 4% were soliciting cryptocurrency donations for Ukraine.

“Telegram has become a digital forefront of the conflict, where people are choosing sides online,” said Oded Vanunu, Check Point’s head of products vulnerabilities research. “We’re seeing people from all corners of the world organising themselves and resources to support either Russia or Ukraine.

“Some groups are coordinating cyber attacks to target Russia. Other groups are serving as information and news hubs to report a raw side of the war. And other groups are requesting funds to either support Ukraine or commit fraud.”

Vanunu added: “I strongly recommend people to watch their Telegram activity closely and the types of people you may come in contact with. There’s a side on Telegram looking to take advantage of supporters of either Ukraine or Russia. Right now, we’re sharing what we see on Telegram and our initial observations. We’ll continue to monitor Telegram activity in the weeks ahead.”

Check Point said that some of these groups – particularly those used by hacktivists – already boast more than 250,000 users. Hacktivist groups are populated by lone hackers, IT “fans” and even cyber security professionals, and are being used to coordinate cyber attacks and decide targets, with group members helping each other to carry out attacks, mostly distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and sharing their results.

The smaller number of cryptocurrency donation groups tend to be scams, said Check Point, which warned users to stay well away from these, even though it has found many examples with tens of thousands of users.

‘You are being deceived’

News and information groups, which form the largest number of the groups observed by Check Point, are being used by people in Ukraine and Russia to spread both accurate news and disinformation.

Flashpoint, which has also been tracking Telegram usage in the region, found multiple Telegram channels spreading pro-Russian messaging, one of which had more than 180,000 subscribers. It had added a “z” to its name, which denotes pro-Russian sympathies in context, and included an anti-Ukrainian slur in its pinned message.

Ukrainians, meanwhile, are exploiting Telegram to share pictures and videos of peaceful resistance, Russian troop movements, and potential war crimes. The “Ukraine Witness” channel, which boasted more than 100,000 subscribers as of 1 March, has been highly active in collecting such footage.

Group members are also reaching out to Russian soldiers and their families on the platform to share footage of supposedly captured Russian personnel. One such message read: “Listen to your fellow captured citizens who ask you to end the war. You are being deceived, you are being used.”

Telegram intimately linked to Russian opposition

Telegram was created by Russian brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov in 2013 after they left their previous project, social network VK, claiming it had been compromised by the Putin regime. They used the money raised from the sale of their stake in VK to develop Telegram, which is registered as a company in the British Virgin Islands and as an LLC in the United Arab Emirates, where it is now largely based.

The platform is based on a proprietary, symmetric encryption scheme called MTProto, which was developed by Nikolai and his development team, and is based on 2560bit symmetric AES encryption, 2048-bit RSA encryption, and the Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

The service rapidly gained popularity on launch and now boasts millions of users around the world, who are attracted to its privacy features. It was extensively used in Belarus in 2020 by opposition activists to organise protests against the rigged elections that kept long-standing president Alexander Lukashenko, himself a puppet of Vladimir Putin, in power.

Nevertheless, because the Durovs have withstood Russian government pressure to keep Telegram free to use, and free of oversight, Telegram has become a viable alternative to social media platforms that regulate or censor content, or succumb to government pressure to deplatform users. In Russia alone, it has a far larger footprint than either Twitter or Facebook, with a 2021 Deloitte study finding that up to 61% of Russians may be regular users.

While its highly secure nature is clearly a motivating factor behind high take-up in Russia and lately Ukraine, it has also been criticised for not doing enough to stop its use by Islamist terror organisations, neo-Nazis and other far-right activists, and child sex abusers.

Be cautious

If you choose to dip your toes into Telegram during the current war, you should, in any case, take standard cyber security precautions.

You should be especially careful not to click on suspicious or random links; be alert to suspicious requests, particularly if they play on your heightened emotional state; think twice before donating money to unknown sources and instead seek out known charities to donate to Ukraine; and verify the sources of the news content you consume.

Courtesy of: Alex Scroxton

While today may not be the right time for enterprises to fully transition to Wi-Fi 6E, now IS the right time to prepare for the shift and ensure that they aren’t left behind.

Enterprise CTOs and CIOs continually monitor the market for cutting-edge technology advancements that can set their business apart. Find the right technology, and an organization can leapfrog the competition. On the other hand, it could be taking an unnecessary risk that increases infrastructure costs and provides little benefit. But waiting too long could mean falling behind. Timing is everything. One of the next major decision points for enterprise leaders in the coming year will be around when and how aggressively to transition over to Wi-Fi 6E.

The promise of Wi-Fi 6E is significant. Significantly boosted bandwidth (more channels) and hence less RF congestion will help wireless networks keep pace with soaring numbers of mobile and IoT devices as well as enable new and emerging applications like augmented reality, all while keeping each connected device performing at an optimum level. It’s the ultimate in Wi-Fi performance. Wi-Fi 6E (along with 5G for the WAN) is the future of wireless networking for the foreseeable future, but the question of when and how to adopt the technology is more difficult to answer.

The potential of Wi-Fi 6E to clog networks

With its higher speeds, Wi-Fi 6E will increase the access point uplink requirements and necessitate IEEE 802.3bz connectivity to the access layer switching infrastructure. Although 2.5-, 5-, and 10-Gbps capabilities already exist on current access switches, there hasn’t been a real-world need for more than 1 Gbps uplinks to Wi-Fi access points to date outside of low density or controlled environments.

While the prior generation, Wi-Fi 6, boosted the efficiency of airtime utilization thanks to features such as OFDMA and MU-MIMO, along with BSS Coloring, it didn’t address the continuously increasing congestion in the limited RF spectrum available for Wi-Fi in the 2.4- and 5-GHz bands. With the limited spectrum, or channels, even in high traffic environments, it’s rare to see sustained uplink throughput at or above 1 Gbps.

Thanks to the move to the 6 GHz spectrum, more RF spectrum, and hence channels, will become available, and this will lead to a massive spike in the peak throughput of the network. Additionally, since Wi-Fi 6E will not have any legacy protocol support or backwards compatibility mechanisms, every device will have access to its own super-speed lane, opening traffic for all devices.

The potential for Wi-Fi 6E is obvious, but only in the context of an end-to-end transition. While some leading organizations have already begun to implement enterprise Wi-Fi 6E access points, client devices lag behind. It won’t be long before a very small number of “Wi-Fi 6E enabled” devices appear in the market, but a mass migration to 6 GHz networks likely won’t occur for a number of years. And when that happens, the network infrastructure must be up to the task.

Device manufacturers, such as Apple, help drive the demand, and most workstations and laptops currently in circulation in the enterprise are not capable of supporting 6E. That will continue to be the case in many places, as network refresh cycles are often tied to 3- to 5-year intervals.

Additionally, 6 GHz is a brand-new RF spectrum band, and there are already potential hardware complications to consider, such as investing in new access points. CTOs and CIOs must be sure that the infrastructure they deploy will not degrade performance for the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz clients because it will be years until the bulk of clients in the average network have 6 GHz radios. Another challenge is that with increased frequency comes reduced ability for signals to travel through walls and solid objects.

Preparing for a new world of wireless

Based on these considerations, decision-makers must be prudent in their investment strategy. Wi-Fi 6E is an important change, so it’s important that technology leaders take the time needed to make sure the change is made thoughtfully and correctly the first time. With that goal in mind, here are four simple steps enterprises can take in 2022 to help prepare for the eventual migration to Wi-Fi 6E:

1. Eliminate Legacy Bottlenecks. Many networks have legacy technology bottlenecks in the network, such as Wi-Fi controllers, that will cause complications when migrating to a 6 GHz network. Beginning to rework the architecture of the network today is a good step towards enabling the shift to Wi-Fi 6E in the near future.
2. Conduct Testing in High Traffic Areas. The shift to Wi-Fi 6E includes major implications for network traffic as a whole, but there isn’t a requirement to change the entire network overnight. Enabling Wi-Fi 6E in major traffic areas, such as a large conference room or classroom, one section of a stadium, or one terminal in an airport, is a good way to test and learn the technology and better estimate its impact before making large-scale decisions.
3. Transition to Cloud Wi-Fi and a decentralized dataplane. Wi-Fi fully managed through the cloud will be required to bring the simplicity and intelligence needed to realize the full benefits promised by Wi-Fi 6E. Additionally, with the soaring speeds at the edge, it is even more critical that enterprises start to shift away from the legacy model of centralizing the dataplane with all traffic routing through a WLAN controller as this can be a serious throughput and reliability bottleneck. Enterprises that still heavily rely on on-prem boxes in the NOC should begin transitioning to a cloud solution before it becomes absolutely necessary to ensure they’re ready for the shift to Wi-Fi 6E without delays when it becomes ubiquitous.
4. Re-evaluate Your Wi-Fi Network as a Whole. As stated, this is potentially a monumental change for enterprises on the scale with the introduction of Wi-Fi 6E at large. Now is the right time for an organization to evaluate its network and test new solutions, either with an existing technology provider or by exploring new vendors. A best practice for enterprises in these early days is to start to deploy Wi-Fi 6E infrastructure in areas of their buildings that have the highest density and hence the most pressing requirement for Wi-Fi 6E as clients become available. This will enable enterprises to gain experience with Wi-Fi 6E while balancing the cost and risk of refreshing the infrastructure.

While today may not be the right time for enterprises to fully transition to Wi-Fi 6E, now IS the right time to prepare for the shift and ensure that they aren’t left in the wake of their competitors at the beginning of a new era of wireless networking.

Courtesy of: Christian Gilby