Before you leave for vacation, make sure your network admins get this message: As you’re away, your enterprise network is still in the IT closet breaking a sweat to keep your organization’s business going 24/7. Holiday or not, IT has to go on, and business demands high availability, performance and consistency. Have you got your network covered for the holidays?
Network problems are always a handful – outages, latency, network bandwidth crunch, QoS issues, firewall and network device config changes, IP address conflicts, wireless break-ins, and more. You can’t just leave behind your network unmonitored. Here are 10 tips to ensure that you can enjoy your holiday time off without having to stress over whether or not you have your network covered.

10 geek tips for securing your network over the holidays

1. Ensure there is constant visibility into your network’s performance, and that metrics are constantly monitored and captured.
2. Even though you are out on vacation, you need to be alerted should there be a major network management mishap. If not you, make sure that at least the next person in charge is alerted and that issues are escalated until the problem is fixed.
3. All network activity and events should be logged and captured so you can come back and examine any irregularities in network and user behavior.
4. Make sure failover plans are in place for disaster recovery in case there is business discontinuity due to network issues.
5. For some, the holiday season actually means a big increase in network load. You might have customers trying to get their last minute orders in, and your business teams must process them. Outages always come at a cost; but in the busiest buying season of the year, it’s an even bigger issue. Effective WAN optimization could be the key to tackle spikes in network load.
6. Application or service interruption need not always have network roots, and could possibly stem up from an application or server failure issue, or could be the cause of a virtualization defect. You need to ensure your network gets the granular visibility to sift through these faults and identify the root cause quickly – especially when you are not around.
7. Employees bringing personalized devices into the network can cause wireless and network traffic problems. BYOD traffic and endpoint activity must be tracked and captured for compliance analysis and security. Plus, factor in the new smartphones and gadgets that your employees get for the holidays. Make sure you have a good baseline for monitoring, and that you can easily identify and resolve the impact of the new iPads, wireless helicopters, and everything else joining the network or using the same frequencies so they don’t impact your business.
8. Large organizations across multiple locations are more likely to have unauthorized configuration changes on firewalls and other network devices. You need all of these changes recorded when you get back. If any change needs to be reverted, you should be allowed to do it. In addition, be sure to implement any organization network policy for not authorizing config changes during the holidays so nothing gets meddled with when most IT folks are out.
9. Avoid network emergency issues by spending a little extra time reviewing your infrastructure before you take off. It’s best to make sure all your devices with dual-power supplies are actually plugged in, your UPS batteries are fully charged and not faulty, and you don’t have any failed disks in a RAID that have not been replaced, etc.
10. Your enterprise network spans across your LAN, VLAN, WLAN and WAN. Install effective network safeguarding mechanisms to protect them all when you are off duty.

If you are the type who works even during the holidays, it’s better to monitor your network on-the-go. Having the right software for network management in place is the best bet. You may not know what’s going to happen and when. “Monitoring is better than repair” is the new adage that applies perfectly to evolving enterprise networks.

A week’s worth of vacation may be a week’s worth of network disaster unless you have the right network monitoring infrastructure setup to tackle issues in your absence. You may be out for the holidays, but you don’t want your network to be out!

For additional information, tips and best practices on network troubleshooting and monitoring, you can read the Network Troubleshooting and Problem Identificationwhitepaper or watch the Mastering Network Troubleshooting and Monitoring with SolarWinds webcast.

Have happy network-hassle-free holidays!

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So your IT team orders the latest and greatest and feels like they’re doing a good job by future proofing your network. However, many companies make the mistake of buying more before they really need it. Below are three simple things you can do to make sure that you have optimized your existing network assets before you invest in new capacity:

1. Understand real utilization

If you use a Network Management Software (NMS), look at the historical usage and growth of usage over time. Are your users regularly exceeding 80% of their bandwidth? No? Then you probably don’t need to invest in more capacity at this point. Were users at 10% last year but 70% this year? Maybe. Before you take this as proof that you should upgrade, you really need to understand why the growth occurred. If it’s because they are streaming movies all day, it’s probably a bad bet. If you don’t use an NMS or aren’t monitoring end user ports, make sure to take advantage of the utilization information you already have on your switch. For example, with Cisco switches, when you do a show interface you can quickly see the output rate. By default this is 300 seconds (5 minutes). For the purpose of better understanding the real utilization, try changing this to a larger value like 600 seconds.

2. Distribute backplane port traffic

Now, to be fair, sometimes you really do need the new hardware and you have bottlenecks that are hard to identify. One that still gets overlooked is the backplane utilization. For example, on a Cisco 6500 blade, the ports are in groups of 8 ports on a shared bus to a backplane. You can see how busy your backplane is by running the show system command and looking at the Traffic and Peak values. Next to the Peak value you will also see Peak-Time. This is an easy way to see when your network is really under a high load. If you have heavy traffic on one of your groups, you should consider better distributing them to minimize the impact of the backplane oversubscription. This is a great way to squeeze some extra performance out of your existing infrastructure.

3. Snapshot to Evaluate WAN traffic use

For most admins, the LAN isn’t really the problem. The WAN is the more expensive and limited connection. This is where you need to really understand what’s going on. Many companies regularly upgrade their connections to the Internet because when they look at the utilization information, it’s always extremely high. You have probably heard about NetFlow and how everyone wants you to buy a product to collect the flows so you have a long term picture of what’s going on in your network. However, don’t overlook what you already have. If you just need some quick information, many platforms will give you a quick snapshot of what type of traffic is flowing through. For example, the Cisco ADSM is a great tool to get short term information about what exactly is going across the wire. It’s better to investigate a long term collector so get deeper analysis and alerting, but the built in ones will do in a pinch (or an outage).

There are many ways to get the most out of what you have. The key is to understand the technology you already have available to you and really spend the time documenting what’s going on. Don’t wait for the last minute budget crunch or network crunch to try to put something together. Monitor your network bandwidth and resources to understand what normal usage and growth is so you can make the best decisions about when and where to spend your precious upgrade dollars.

About the author: This post was submitted by Mac Turner, Group Product Manager for Solar Winds.

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Would you bet your own money that your network won’t be breached in the next year?

More than half wouldn’t take the bet, according to the survey by folks at Phone Factor (which makes a phone-based authentication solutions).

What’s causing this massive case of the jitters among security professionals?

The survey found:

• More than two-thirds (70.3%) of respondents are only somewhat confident or not at all confident that an unauthorized person could not gain access to their network.
• Only one-quarter (25.7%) of respondents are very confident that they would know that their network had been infiltrated, and
• When asked if an expert hacker would be capable of infiltrating their network, 84.4% thought it was at least possible, with 23.1% answering that an expert hacker could definitely gain access to their corporate network.

Some of the top reasons respondents feel their network may be vulnerable are:

• Malware, including root-kits, zero day exploits, and man-in-the-browser attacks (55.4%)
• Use of personal devices to access company resources (45%)
• Sheer volume of attacks (35.2%), and
• Widespread use of remote network access (32.6%).

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Most IT pros and the finance chiefs who supervise them aren’t in the habit of seeking out bad news.

But this is a case where they probably should. As both state and local governments get more strict about data breach notification laws and as hackers become even more adept at circumventing traditional protections most business rely on, knowing when you’ve been hacked and taking fast action to limit the damage is becoming more important.

This was the message delivered recently to the Congressional House Intelligence Committee by Kevin Mandia, CEO of information security vendor Mandiant, who testified on the growing trend of undetected attacks and ways companies can prevent data breaches.

Of the last 50 breaches Mandiant investigated for clients, 48 of the businesses involved weren’t aware they had been attacked until they were informed of the incidents by law enforcement agencies.

How are so many businesses failing to detect security breaches? Mandia told legislators a lot of the problem has to do with the fact that attackers have simply gotten better at conducting stealth hacks, InformationWeek reports.

And as the FBI and other federal agencies have been more closely following cybercrime organizations, it’s more likely they’ll know about the attackers’ activity before many of their victims do.

That creates obvious problems, as the longer it takes to discover a breach, the more damage attackers can cause.

What can your IT folks do to stay vigilant? Penetration testing — a simulated high tech attack your tech pros can perform — is a good place to start to find the weaknesses hackers will attempt to exploit.

There are also monitoring tools available — many of them open source or very low cost — that you can invest in to help you keep an eye on your electronic assets.

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As tech experts, IBM’s in a prime position to accommodate the challenges of workers using many — if not all — of the smartphone, tablet, laptops and desktop computers available today.

The way the IBM program will work: Employees choose and pay for the device of their choice. They’ll also pay for their own monthly service plan.

What IBM will do is allow those devices to connect to company networks, which have been fortified to accommodate the variety and number of devices they expect to contend with as part of the program. The company will also offer workers guidance and support for those devices.

Users will have to load IBM’s agent software on their gadgets for secure access to IBM’s systems, email and other functions.

IBM also will let employees to choose from hundreds of smartphone and tablet apps available on public application storefronts. Workers can also get software from IBM’s WhirlWind app storefront.

WhirlWind features about 400 third-party apps approved for IBM use, along with 100 apps built internally for IBM employees.

It appears that IBM has found a solution to what many IT folks see as an inevitable wave of personal devices being used to access business networks — whether or not they’re permitted.

A recent Forrester survey found that despite company prohibitions on the practice, many workers are finding a way around the rules and using the technology of their choice rather than company-sanctioned devices.

What’s your plan for BYOD? Let us know in the comments section below.

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And that means the cost of the mishap may wind up costing Sony itself a cool $1.5 billion.

This news comes on top of some unpleasant testimony into hearings on the Sony flub-up.

In recent congressional testimony, Dr. Gene Spafford of Purdue University said Sony was using outdated software on its servers — and knew about it months in advance of the recent security breaches that allowed hackers to get private information from over 100 million user accounts.

According to Spafford, security experts monitoring open Internet forums learned months ago that Sony was using outdated versions of the Apache Web server software, which “was unpatched and had no firewall installed.” The issue was “reported in an open forum monitored by Sony employees” two to three months prior to the recent security breaches, said Spafford.

Spafford made his comments in a hearing convened by the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade. Sony was invited to participate in the hearing, but declined to attend. In a letter to the committee, Sony said it has added automated software monitoring and enhanced data security and encryption to its systems in the wake of the recent security breaches.

“If Dr. Spafford’s assessment is accurate, it’s inexcusable that Sony not only ran obsolete software on servers containing confidential data, but also that the company continued to do so after this information was publicly disclosed,” said Jeff Fox, Consumer Reports Technology Editor.

Who’s being hit hardest by the breach? Credit card lenders could spend about $300 million just for the costs of having to replace credit card numbers for the folks whose info was stolen.

One way customers can protect themselves from companies that don’t protect account data properly is to use a disposable credit card number. Citibank, Discover, and Bank of America all offer this service which creates a one-time use credit card number each time you want to use it for an online transaction.

You can also check out these tips from Consumer Reports.

As for companies that make and store this data: Be sure your IT team is keeping your network up to date and fully patched. It may be a good idea to ask about their process for this and find out how they’re backing it up.

Meanwhile, Sony’s taking the “firmly close barn door after horse is in another hemisphere” mode of response: CNET reports that the Japanese electronics giant is considering offering a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the attackers.

The post Sony breach fallout: Stolen credit card price plummets appeared first on Finance Tech News.

Sam Chihlung Yin, 34, used his insider knowledge of administrative passwords along with a simple-to-create VPN connection to disrupt network operations at Gucci for months after he was fired.

He shut down e-mail, destroyed files, disrupted servers and generally harassed the company network for weeks before being discovered and arrested.

While the company’s now safe from his antics, they’ll never recover some of the lost data or sales he managed to scuttle.

That’s why HR and IT need to be very cautious and thorough when letting IT staff go. The process needs to be well coordinated and planned, security must be vigilant and remaining staff need to be aware of what’s happening when an IT worker leaves your organization.

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Network coverage — long a weak spot for AT&T — will likely get better as the two link up. Customers of both get the network resources of the combined company.

But now that there will be only three big U.S. carriers, there will be less competition for service and that usually makes for higher prices. It’s likely, say most analysts, that data charges will jump now that there are only so many places a customer can go for service.

That means higher revenue for the company, but if it makes customers abandon the new joint venture, that’ll hurt the bottom line.

The post What do consumers get from AT&T/T-Mobile deal? appeared first on Finance Tech News.

Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times insist that Verizon will get Apple’s iPhone early next year — giving truth to the rumors that have been floating for months about a marriage between the popular smartphone and the well-respected network provider.

But why would Apple create a version of its phone that runs on a Verizon-used technology that the rest of the world shuns?

It’s all about the money. Apple stands to gain 10 million new iPhone customers with the move, analysts say. That tidal wave of customers could staunch the flow of folks who have flocked to the Android phone that Verizon sells.

The problem with a Verizon iPhone? It would have to run on code division multiple access, or CDMA, a technology that Verizon and Sprint use for their cellphones. Other carriers, including AT&T and most providers around the globe, use Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) technology. This means you can’t use your Verizon phone to run on networks in other countries that use CDMA.

There are dual mode phones, but word from the WSJ is that Apple won’t be making one of those. They’ll make a strictly CDMA phone for Verizon’s U.S. subscribers.

Why believe this new spate of rumors about the iPhone? For one, they’re coming from some classic news sources that are tremendously cautious about printing scuttlebutt that hasn’t been checked out.

But also because Apple is now in a position where it has to do something dramatic if it’s going to hang onto its share of the exploding smartphone market.

Android phones have begun nipping at the iPhone’s powerful heels, and Microsoft is set to release its own phone shortly. By limiting itself to a single U.S. carrier — AT&T — with a dubious reputation for network infrastructure and capacity, Apple will have boxed itself into an uncomfortable corner.

In the end however, it will be about the money pot that comes with 10 million new subscribers. Revenue from sales of phones to those folks: an estimated $32.4 billion.

The post Sorting through the latest iPhone/Verizon rumors appeared first on Finance Tech News.

It was unreliable, inefficient and needed too much down time for our end users. So we decided to switch to networked storage.

Of course, we wanted to make the upgrade in the cheapest way possible – that still met performance needs. After doing some research, we found that iSCSI SAN was the most affordable way to network.

But we also read a lot of industry reports saying that iSCSI wasn’t so hot when it comes to performance. Problem was, most of the benchmark research out there is directed at huge companies with huge storage needs.

But we just needed something that was enough for our small business. So we found a free open source tool that measured the total throughput in our data center.

We ran the app on a typical production day, and it turned out that the iSCSI connectors we were looking at had more than enough capacity.

By testing our system ourselves instead of relying on other people’s research, we avoided buying a lot of unnecessary technology.

(John Anderson, CTO, Interdent,  El Segundo, CA)

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