Tag: Azure

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) version 3.3

On By MikeIn AWS, Azure, Cisco, Cloud, SecurityLeave a comment

 

Simplified Operations

 

New Split Update: Upgrading Cisco ISE has never been easier. With the new Split Upgrade feature, customers now have complete control over the upgrade process from the UI, allowing them to upgrade specific ISE nodes in parallel, with multiple iterations, at their convenience without experiencing any downtime. Say goodbye to complex and time-consuming upgrades.

 

Control Application Restart: Minimize Downtime, Maximize Efficiency. Downtime during certification renewals can be disruptive. Cisco ISE 3.3 introduces Controlled Application Restart, which allows customers to plan the renewals of the ISE administrative certificate, eliminating the need to reboot the entire ISE deployment at once without control. Schedule updates during low network usage periods, ensuring a smoother security update process without impacting operations.

 

Navigation improvement: ISE admins use the ISE UI in order to perform their job. ISE 3.3 introduces a new and improved navigation, allowing ISE admin to faster perform their tasks, with fewer clicks and without hiding their screen while navigating throughout ISE pages. Each ISE admin can now save the pages he or she is using most frequently on ISE and reduce the time it takes them to access those pages. 

 

IPv6 Support: in addition to the RADIUS, TACACS+, and ISE management over IPv6, customers can now enable additional services over IPv6: the ISE guest portal can now be accessed over IPv6 address and serve guests on the IPv6 network. profiling of IPv6-enabled endpoints and doing posture checks is also available for IPv6-enabled endpoints. 

 

Enhanced Platform Security

 

TPM Chip: Strengthen Security with the TPM Chip Security is paramount. Cisco ISE 3.3 with SNS-3700 (or virtual machines supporting VTPM) introduces the TPM Chip, a dedicated and secure storage location for sensitive information. With true random number generation for key generation, the TPM Chip enhances the security of stored data, providing you with peace of mind.

ISE Cipher Control: By allowing ISE admins to disable unwanted and weak ciphers manually, ISE 3.3 helps customers to meet compliance and regulations without the need to wait for the next release or a patch. 

 

TLS 1.3 for ISE admins: ISE admins can now connect to ISE UI over TLS 1.3. TLS 1.3 provides enhanced security and improved performance by reducing latency and eliminating outdated cryptographic algorithms, ensuring stronger encryption and more efficient communication between clients and servers. 

Certificate-Based Authentication for API calls: ISE 3.3 supports Certificate-based authentication for API calls. Certificate-based authentication offers stronger security by eliminating the vulnerabilities associated with traditional username and password authentication methods. It provides robust protection against credential theft, unauthorized access, and phishing attacks, ensuring a higher level of trust and authentication for users accessing sensitive systems or resources.

 

Visibility and Compliance

 

AI/ML based Profiling: Effortlessly Identify Unknown Endpoints with AI/ML Profiling Unidentified endpoints on the network can be a challenge. Cisco ISE 3.3 employs AI/ML Profiling and multi-factor classification (MFC) to swiftly identify clusters of similar unknown endpoints. This cloud-based ML engine helps customers categorize these devices accurately, making it easier to determine their nature and apply appropriate policies.

 

Unlock Valuable Insights with Wi-Fi Edge Analytics 

Our exclusive Wi-Fi Edge Analytics feature enables customers, who use the Cisco Catalyst 9800 wireless controllers, to exchange data between ISE 3.3 and the controller and get profiling information from Apple, Intel, and Samsung devices, enhancing endpoint profiling. 

This information includes endpoint-specific attributes such as model, operating system version, and firmware. 

 

Multi Factor Classification: ISE 3.3 introduces a new way to profile endpoints on the network. The profile is no longer a descriptive string of the endpoint. Instead of that ISE uses MFC – Multi Factor Classification which breaks the profile into 4 categories: Manufacturer, Device Type, Model and OS. This allows our customers to build more granular policies, based on the different MFCs. 

 

Posture for ARM based Windows: for customers who move to computers based on ARM processor, ISE 3.3 can now perform posture checks in order to check compliance status before letting those endpoints access to the network. 

 

Cloud Availability 

 

ISE 3.3 is going to be available on all the supported platforms: AWS, Azure, and Oracle Cloud. Release dates depend on the different cloud vendors:

ISE 3.3 on Azure  – Already available

ISE 3.3 on OCI – Already Available

ISE 3.3 on AWS – Already Available

 

ISE 3.3 Resources:

 

ISE 3.3 download page

ISE 3.3 release notes

Cisco acquired Valtix: What is Valitx?

On By MikeIn Cisco, CloudLeave a comment

Valtix is a cloud-native network security company that provides next-generation firewall and web application firewall (WAF) solutions for businesses looking to protect their cloud-based infrastructure. The company was founded in 2018 by seasoned technology executives who recognized the need for a modern approach to network security in the cloud.

Valtix’s cloud-based approach to network security is designed to be both scalable and flexible, allowing businesses to secure their cloud-based infrastructure without having to worry about the complexities of managing hardware or software. By leveraging cloud-native security technologies, Valtix enables businesses to deploy security policies that can be enforced consistently across their entire infrastructure, regardless of the cloud provider or network topology.

One of the key benefits of Valtix’s approach to network security is its ability to provide real-time threat detection and response capabilities. Using advanced machine learning algorithms, Valtix can analyze network traffic in real-time, identifying potential threats and responding quickly to mitigate any risks. This helps businesses stay ahead of the constantly evolving threat landscape and ensure their infrastructure remains secure.

In addition to its advanced threat detection and response capabilities, Valtix also provides businesses with granular control over their network security policies. This allows businesses to tailor their security policies to their specific needs, ensuring that their infrastructure is protected in the most effective way possible. With Valtix, businesses can easily manage their security policies from a centralized dashboard, making it easy to enforce policies consistently across their entire infrastructure.

Valtix’s cloud-based approach also makes it easy for businesses to scale their network security as their needs evolve. Whether they need to protect a small cloud environment or a large, complex infrastructure, Valtix can provide the necessary security solutions to meet their needs. This flexibility allows businesses to focus on growing their business, rather than worrying about managing their network security.

Finally, Valtix’s cloud-native approach to network security is designed to be highly automated, which helps businesses reduce the burden of managing their network security. By automating many of the routine tasks associated with network security, Valtix enables businesses to free up their IT resources to focus on more strategic initiatives.

In conclusion, Valtix is a cloud-native network security company, recently acquired by Cisco that provides businesses with advanced threat detection and response capabilities, granular control over their security policies, and the flexibility to scale their security solutions as their needs evolve. With its cloud-based approach and automated processes, Valtix helps businesses stay ahead of the constantly evolving threat landscape while reducing the burden of managing their network security.

https://valtix.com/blog/ciscos-intent-to-acquire-our-journey-and-why-it-matters/

Mike

Apronomics: March, 2023

On By MikeIn ApronomicsLeave a comment

Apronomics, is a play on the word ‘macroeconomics’ which seeks to provide a general perspective in three specific domains. Cloud, Digital Transformation, and Web3. This is monthly and sometimes twice a month TL;DR “too long; didn’t read” digital glance that serves as a quick consumption style for those looking for hot topics in Cloud, Digital Transformation, and Web3.

Apronomics-March-2023Download

CLOUD

  • Google: Announces the general availability of Dataplex data lineage — a fully managed Dataplex capability that helps you understand how data is sourced and transformed within the organization. (Link)
  • Google: Opens access to Bard, an early experiment that lets you collaborate with generative AI. Bard is powered by a research large language model (LLM), specifically a lightweight and optimized version of LaMDA. (Link)
  • Azure: Announce that GPT-4 is available in preview in Azure OpenAI Service. AI models—including GPT-3.5, ChatGPT, and DALL•E 2. (Link)

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

  • Cisco: Announce its intent to acquire Lightspin Technologies Ltd. a privately-held cloud security software company. Lightspin’s lightweight agentless solution quickly scans your AWS, Azure, and GCP environments and Kubernetes clusters covering virtual machines, containers, and serverless. (Link)
  • SAP: SAP and DataRobot announced a joint partnership to enable customers to train ML models on their data residing in SAP HANA Cloud and SAP Data Warehouse Cloud. As a result, enterprises can now get powerful insights and predictive analytics from their business data. (Link)
  • OpenAI: Released GPT-4, a newer natural language processing (NLP) model that can render both images and text and produce text outputs. GPT-4 still suffers from similar limitations as earlier GPT models. Most notable is that it “hallucinates” facts and makes reasoning errors. (Link)

WEB3

  • Web3 Games Collective: The members of W3GC include Yield Guild Games (YGG), Game7, Magic Eden, and Fenix Games formed the Web3 Games Collective to leverage their expertise in creating a wave of breakout blockchain games. (Link)
  • Chainlink: A web3 services platform, is launching a self-service, serverless platform to help developers connect their decentralized applications (dApps) to any Web 2.0 API, like an AWS or Meta service. (Link)
  • Bitcoin NFTs: Bitcoin supports on-chain (native) support for NFTs, known as ordinal NFTs. Ordinals use an arbitrary but logical ordering system called ordinal theory to give each individual Bitcoin satoshi a unique number. (Link)

Mike

Apronomics: January, 2023

On By MikeIn ApronomicsLeave a comment

Apronomics, is a play on the word ‘macroeconomics’ which seeks to provide a general perspective in three specific domains. Cloud, Digital Transformation, and Web3. This is monthly and sometimes twice a month TL;DR “too long; didn’t read” digital glance that serves as a quick consumption style for those looking for hot topics in Cloud, Digital Transformation, and Web3.

apronomics-jan-2023-1Download

CLOUD

  • AWS: Expected to reach 100B in 2023, despite economic uncertainty. AWS will announce its fourth-quarter earnings on Feb 2, 2023. A breakdown of AWS 12mo earnings in 2021, Q1:18.44B, Q2:19.74, Q3:20.54, Q4:17.78. (Link)
  • Azure: Multiyear, Multibillion dollar partnership with OpenAI, best known for ChatGPT, to accelerate AI breakthroughs. As the exclusive cloud provider powering OpenAI, Azure will look to commercialize OpenAI and offer the technology in its native Azure services. (Link)
  • Snowflake: Acquires Myst, a time series forecasting company. Myst offers an AI platform that helps index a sequence of data points over a period of time. This allows historical data to forecast future behaviors. (Link)

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

  • Meta: Confirms that it is acquiring Luxexcel, a smart eyewear company. Meta will likely leverage the company’s technology to produce AR glasses. This acquisition aligns with Meta’s corporate strategy when it comes to AR and VR advancements. (Link)
  • Amazon: Sidewalk, Amazon’s long-range, low-bandwidth IoT mesh network has four new device manufacture partners to bring smart devices to offer developers. (Link)
  • Microsoft: Acquires Fungible, a company that offers scale-out capabilities for data center infrastructure with low processing power also known as low-power data processing units (DPU). (Link)

WEB3

  • Ava Labs: Has partnered with AWS to support its Web3 node operations. Ava Labs makes it simple to deploy high-performance solutions for Web3. (Link)
  • Polygon: $MATIC Completes a hard fork upgrade to minimize gas fees. Although gas fees will continue to increase during peak demand, they will be aligned with Ethereums gas dynamics. (Link)
  • U.S. Gov: The U.S. government seeks to set a basis for legislative and regulatory control of cryptocurrencies. One way the U.S. government considers jurisdiction over cryptocurrencies is through the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, not the SEC. (Link)

Mike

Apronomics: December, 2022

On By MikeIn Apronomics1 Comment

Apronomics, is a play on the word ‘macroeconomics’ which seeks to provide a general perspective in three specific domains. Cloud, Digital Transformation, and Web3. This is monthly and sometimes twice a month TL;DR “too long; didn’t read” digital glance that serves as a quick consumption style for those looking for hot topics in Cloud, Digital Transformation, and Web3.

apronomics-dec-2022Download

CLOUD

  • AWS: Secured a $723,878,930 five-year fixed-prices agreement with the Department of Navy (DoN). This agreement provides DoN access to AWS’s Commercial Cloud environment, AWS Profession Services, and AWS training and certifications courses (Link)
  • AWS: AWS re:Invent 2022 delivered to a different audience. With possible recession fear looming, AWS aimed their success stories and use cases at the C-suit hoping the executives would invest their traditional computing dollars in AWS. Operations could be exponentially cheaper however, AWS needs to tell the customer how to do it not just talk about it (Link)
  • Oracle: “triple-digit” bookings growth in IaaS and will invest $2.4 Billion quarterly to meet future growth. Oracle had acquired Cerner to focus on the healthcare sector which helped contribute to their growth alongside their Fusion Cloud and NetSuite businesses (Link)

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

  • HPE: Hewlett Packard Enterprise express interest to buy Nutanix. Nutanix offers customers a software-defined hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) which competes with the HPE solution, SimpliVity (Link)
  • PAN: Palo Alto Networks recently announced its intent to acquire Cider Security for $195M. Cider’s App Sec Platform “InCider” secures a customer’s code from source to deployment offering risk identity and vulnerability across a company’s code, IAC, and supply-chain. PAN may be looking to expand Ciders offering as part of Prisma Cloud (Link)
  • Cisco: Cisco announces three security enchantments for AWS Security Lake, AWS Verified Access and AWS Control Tower

WEB3

  • Fleek: A Web3 developer platform has raised $25 Million in Series A funding. Funds will allow Fleek to focus on building out edge networks, bringing content closer to the user via their decentralized content delivery network (CDN) (Link)
  • Yuga Labs: A blockchain technology company responsible for the Board Ape Yacht Club and Otherside will appoint Activision Blizzard President and COO Daniel Alegre as new CEO beginning the first half of 2023 (Link)
  • Solidity and Clarity: As the demand for Web3 picks up developers are shifting their development stack to include new languages like Solidity and Clarity. Both are used to bring smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) to blockchain. Solidity is used for Ethereum while Clarity is used for Bitcoin (Link)

Mike

Apronomics: November, 2022

On By MikeIn ApronomicsLeave a comment

Apronomics, is a play on the word ‘macroeconomics’ which seeks to provide a general perspective in three specific domains. Cloud, Digital Transformation, and Web3. This is monthly and sometimes twice a month ‘Digital Glance’ (DG) which provides a practical yet quick consumption style for those looking for hot topics in Cloud, Digital Transformation, and Web3.

apronomics-nov-2022-1Download

CLOUD

  • Gartner: Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services (Link)
  • AWS: AWS re:Invent – November 28 – December 2, 2022 (Link)
    • Emerald sponsors: Accenture, Cisco, Datadog, Deloitte, Intel, MongoDB, TrendMicro, VMware
  • Microsoft: Announced its ISV Success Program for Microsoft Partners which offers software providers the ability to sell their software via the Commercial Marketplace (Link)
    • “In 2021, marketplace transactions grew an estimated 70% to $4 billion, which is 3x faster growth than the public cloud at large”
    • Customers can purchase software solutions and retire every dollar against their cloud consumption commitment

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

  • Cisco: Plans to provide networking, cyber security, and general IT training to 25 million people over the next 10 years (Link)
  • Dynatrace: Announced its observability “Data Lakehouse”, (Grail) at Dynatrace Innovate
    • Grail is a causational (cause and effect relationship) data lakehouse with a massively parallel processing (MPP) analytics engine, leveraging Dynatrace Query Language (DQL) a new query language (Link)
  • Cato: Cato Network Reaches $100M ARR in just Five years (Link)
    • “Cato provides the world’s most robust single-vendor SASE platform”
    • Cato has become the fastest growing Enterprise Network Security Startup
  • VMware: Takes advantage of ‘cloud adjacency infrastructure’ by partnering with Equinix offering VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal, a new offer that will enable enterprises to use VMware’s software environment as a cloud service on Equinix’s bare-metal cloud (Link)

WEB3

  • Google: Announced its Cloud’s Blockchain Node Engine; a fully managed node-hosting service helping scale Web3 development. Google announced that is working with Solana ($SOL) to launch dedicated Solana nodes in the cloud as early as next year (Link)
  • FTX: Impure business practices lead to the collapse of the second-largest crypto exchange underscoring the importance of truly decentralized systems

Mike