Tom Hollingsworth moderated a panel during Mobility Field Day Exclusive at Aruba Atmosphere 2019, where the delegates talked about OpenConfig. Tom had some thoughts on the topic that he didn’t get to share during the event, so this blog post goes into a little more detail. For Tom, OpenConfig’s use of common YANG data models is a huge win for organizations and wireless professionals. Be sure to check out the full post to understand why.
Gestalt IT Live Blog – Aruba HER Keynote Address
Mobility Field Day Exclusive delegate Zoë Rose presented the keynote at the excellent Aruba HER at Atmosphere 2019. Our own Tom Hollingsworth and Kori Younger live blogged the entire event, be sure to check it out for a truly thoughtful and personal journey. She discusses surviving abuse, how professional and personal progress can differ, and more.
Fast Friday – Aruba Atmosphere 2019
Tom Hollingsworth is definitely excited for Aruba Atmosphere 2019. First, there will be a great Mobility Field Day Exclusive at the event. But he’s also interested to hear about how Aruba is innovating around IoT networking, discussions with the OpenConfig community, and seeing Security Field Day delegate Zoë Rose keynote the Aruba HER session.
Device Validation Security in Service Provider Networks
At Networking Field Day Exclusive with Cisco’s Service Provider, Cisco went into some detail about their approach to Service Provider Security. A lot of what they presented on comes from the company’s recent acquisition of Skyport Systems, another former Tech Field Day presenter. For Tom Hollingsworth, this brings in sophisticated tools around device validation and trust. This gives Cisco better tooling for SPs, where the network itself is the target, rather than just the data on it.
Drive Your Own Demo With Riverbed
As the organizer of Networking Field Day, and a former delegate himself, Tom Hollingsworth has seen his fair share of demos at our events. At last month’s event, Riverbed really stood out with how they presented their demo section. They opted for a “hands-on” demo, discussing with the delegates as they interacted with the product in real time. For Tom, it can be a risk proposition, but he thinks the benefits of seeing how people learn and build muscle memory in the application far out weights the potential pitfalls.
Making Way for the New With Cisco
Planning to maintain code can be tricky. Tom Hollingsworth points out in this piece, sometimes code is quickly made irrelevant with bygone platforms while others, like COBOL, seemingly stick around forever. Maintaining your own code is challenging enough, but companies like Cisco have to deal with code from numerous acquisitions over time. After maintaining AireOS code for some time, Cisco is now finding ways to migrate to a more modern approach with modular IOS WLC code. Tom is impressed with this approach and think its a model of dealing with similar issues in the future.
Kentik and the Negative Roadmap
Tom Hollingsworth is the organizer of Networking Field Day, but he’s always a delegate at heart. In this post, he digs into what Kentik presented at the event last month. He was impressed with what Kentik had planned on their roadmap. But even more impressive was the company explicitly stating what they were not going to be getting into. This helps alleviate some of the concerns of feature creep that seem to happen with any solution over time. For Tom, this open perspective into their thought process can only spell good things going forward for Kentik.
The Future of Sports Wi-Fi Is Intelligent With Extreme Networks
In this post, Tom Hollingsworth looks at what Extreme Networks is doing with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning on their platform to improve wi-fi. Tom has some healthy skepticism about these buzzwords, but was impressed with what Extreme has been able to do in real world use cases, like providing improved wi-fi at stadiums. Extreme will be presenting at Networking Field Day this week, be sure to watch their presentation on our live stream for more details.
Using Identity To Secure Workloads with Aporeto
Security issues with digital identity are only going to increase with time. At Security Field Day, Aporeto presented on how they help organizations manage this in a scalable way. Tom Hollingsworth looks how they offer digitally sign containers. This allows organizations to trust a workload, from which you can build robust policy automation around that foundation of trust.
Aruba and the Need for WPA3 with OWE
At Security Field Day, Aruba did a deep dive into a key feature of WPA3. Aruba had a lot of input into the successor to the long in the tooth WPA2, and detailed the optional Opportunistic Wireless encryption in the standard. This provides encryption for open wireless networks for information passed in the clear outside of the application payload. Tom Hollingsworth makes the argument that this should be a mandatory part of the standard, providing true defense in depth for traffic that falls outside SSL/TLS.
Visual Networking At It’s Finest with Apstra
Apstra is no stranger to Networking Field Day, and it was great to see the company present at our most recent event in November. Tom Hollingsworth organized the event, and got a first hand look at the latest from this innovative company. What stood out for Tom this time was the key work Apstra is doing in network visualization. The advent of intent-based networking means that operators now have direct visibility into all devices in their control zones. Apstra not only innovates in their area of intent, but finding ways to visualize and break down this information into meaningful insights.
The Power of a Great Demo with Illumio
It’s one thing to have a great Tech Field Day presentation, filled with technical overviews, architectural deep dives, and a killer slide deck. But putting together a great demo is a different beast. Tom Hollingsworth got to see a demo from Illumio at Networking Field Day last year that definitely left an impression. They showed off their new PCE Supercluster, and simulated a truly impressive amount of real workloads to truly show off its capabilities.
Building More Factors For Security with Cisco Duo
Cisco was one of the companies that presented at our inaugural Security Field Day event in December. Tom Hollingsworth breaks down what he saw at the event from Cisco Duo, their authentication platform. This provides intelligent multifactor authentication. It does this by not assuming endpoints are secure, enforcing the latest firmware, and supporting geofencing and time zone awareness. This allows you to build policy enforcement into your 2FA from the ground up.
Some Random Thoughts From Security Field Day
Tom Hollingsworth just finished up the inaugural Security Field Day. As the organizer, Tom has some unique perspective, getting an inside look at both the presenting companies and delegates. I’m sure we’ll see a lot of takeaways from the event, but these initial thoughts by Tom are an interesting look at security from a more IT generalist perspective. The big thing here is that security isn’t about tools, it’s about embracing a way of thinking, and realizing that failure is a likely outcome over time.
Automating the Mundane with Silver Peak
Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at what Silver Peak presented at Networking Field Day. The SD-WAN company doesn’t just stop at basic SDN automation. SDN has long been used for automatic VLAN provisioning for ports, but Silver Peak showed how their automation can handle even more mundane tasks, like an RMA process. This takes it off the plate of admin busy work, and frees up productivity.
When Is It Not Always DNS?
During their recent Networking Field Day presentation, BlueCat Networks posited that DNS is unreliable because it was never designed to actually be reliable. Tom Hollingsworth looks at the security implications of this, and the merits of BlueCat’s unified DNS, DHCP and IPAM platform.
The Need for Security Field Day
The Tech Field Day event series has always tried to present a comprehensive view of enterprise IT. Our more specialized Field Day events were created to provider a deeper dive into the most important areas. We started with IT mainstays like storage and networking, but in recent years have added cloud and mobility-focused events to the calendar as those have become vital to modern IT. In 2018, we’re launching Security Field Day. Tom Hollingsworth makes the case why this has never been more vital in this post.
Presenting To The D-Suite
As an event lead with Tech Field Day, Tom Hollingsworth has a lot of experience hearing presenters talk to IT professionals, the “do-ers” in IT. He looks at the problem of treating these presentations the same as C-level audiences, who are more concerned with problems then technical details. The post provides a lot of great tips for speaking to this very specific audience.
Jack Daniel and Tom Hollingsworth Discuss Community and Security
Be sure to checkout this conversation between security researcher Jack Daniel and our own Tom Hollingsworth. They discussed the importance and challenges of building communities within the security field. They also discussed the inaugural Security Field Day event coming up this December.