Network Management

EXPERT ADVICE

The Lighter Side of IT Consumerization

You've probably heard the term "consumerization of IT." Some of the network and security pros reading this probably think this is yet another meaningless industry buzzword with little or no value. However, to dismiss it as such is to potentially miss out on what is both a very powerful concept ...

EXPERT ADVICE

Does Your IaaS Environment Have Sleeper Cells?

As many active users of IaaS can tell you, IaaS, whether implemented by an external service provider or provided by an internal service provider team, arguably grants you much more control of the underlying technology "substrate" than other cloud deployment models. In some cases, this is a good thin...

EXPERT ADVICE

When in the Cloud, Trust - but Verify

Quite a lot has been written about the importance of due-diligence in a cloud environment. Sometimes the importance of security and compliance-related vetting in the cloud is easy to justify, like when you're evaluating an off-premises public cloud hosted at a new service provider. Other times, exe...

EXPERT ADVICE

A Strategy for Post-Virtualization Security

Virtualization has been one of the most rapidly and widely adopted technologies in recent memory. It's huge, and it's here to stay. And as security professionals know, setting up a virtual environment securely isn't easy. Significant effort goes into tasks like evaluating off-premise service provid...

EXPERT ADVICE

Website Scaling, Part 2: The Metrics of Measuring

Measuring Web scalability is a critical component of website scaling. The way you do this in a testing environment is, of course, called "load testing." But what you might not know about load testing is how it relates to Little's Law: "The average number of things in the system is the product of the...

The stories of websites that fell over and died when they got unexpected traffic are legion. A recent example of what not to do would be Target's introduction of a low-priced Missoni collection. The site attracted so much traffic that Target.com was swamped for several hours on Sept. 13, 2011, leadi...

EXPERT ADVICE

The Nitty Gritty of the Virtualized Data Center

In 2012, we will see the rise of the data center fabric. Within the year, multiple Ethernet fabric technologies will mature into shipping products. This is very timely because server virtualization is now giving rise to a whole new set of data center challenges that traditional switching technologie...

Over a year ago, we presented a list of the top 10 worst practices that you should avoid if you want to maintain the performance and uptime of your Microsoft Exchange email system. Since then, some things have changed, while others have not. So here's a revised Top 10 List of "Don'ts" to point out w...

Access to data has never been easier than it is today. With a few easy steps, it's possible to uncover just about any type of information you can imagine, even data that is supposedly legally protected, such as personal, financial, healthcare and government records. However, individuals with nefario...

Everybody knows that the cloud -- in particular, the security of cloud deployments -- is a huge pain point industry-wide. And as is the case with any new endeavor with such broad-sweeping impact, there's no shortage of well-meaning advice about how to secure it. But I confess to finding much of t...

EXPERT ADVICE

Data Integration in the Cloud - or Not

Data integration is critical for companies that need to combine systems and databases after a merger or acquisition, or need to link legacy systems to new business applications. This need is vast throughout commercial and public industries, and the task can be daunting, especially for CIOs and IT ma...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

The Cybersecurity Money Pit

Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars the U.S. federal government spends on cybersecurity, it seems that shoestring-budget attackers are still often able to get a foot in the door. At a security colloquium in North Virginia on Monday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency told reporter...

While the image that the high-tech industry has adopted for the source of services delivered over a remote network -- the cloud -- conjures thoughts of airy skies where quasi-magical things happen, the actual cloud is firmly anchored to the ground in data centers bristling with computer servers. As ...

Facebook is planning to build a massive new data center in the industrial town of Lulea in Swedish Lapland, about 70 miles from the Arctic Circle. The data center will consist of three buildings, the first of which will cover about 33,000 square yards, Facebook spokesperson Alex Kirschner told TechN...

EXPERT ADVICE

Next-Gen Firewalls Make Old Arguments New Again

The last few years have brought us arguably the most significant change in firewall technology in decades. Ever since "stateful inspection" was introduced by Check Point in the late 1990s, firewall administrators and information security officers have been defining security policies based primarily ...

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