Jasper Bongertz enjoyed the messaging around VMware’s presentation at Security Field Day. They reminded everyone about the importance of patching, something in an age of continuing exploits certainly resonates. They went over some of their hardening guidelines, what they’ve done with CPU schedulers to reduce the threat of speculative attacks, and more.
Cisco Live – Network Building Blocks for IoT
Jasper Bongertz attended Cisco Live Europe this year, and also got to attend some Tech Field Day Extra presentations at the event. Cisco focused some of their time on introducing the delegates to their IoT switches and routers. These are ruggedized to survive a life on the edge, run the IOS operating system, and can be controlled centrally from Cisco DNA center. This last point was key to Jasper, as these devices will likely be put in insecure locations, where locking down who can interact with the device is key.
A look at Cisco Tetration
Jasper Bongert takes a look at Cisco’s Tetration, which he got details about at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe. Jasper finds it similar in intent to looking at Netflow data, getting network telemetry without keeping full packet captures. But he highlights how Tetration is designed to do this for modern network architectures.
A look at Paessler PRTG
After seeing their presentation from Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe, Jasper Bongertz decided to give Paessler PRTG a an extended look and write up his thoughts. It’s an impressively comprehensive rundown of the solutions monitoring capabilities. He walks through the setup processes, which is notably faster and easier than other open-source alternatives. He really likes how easy it is to setup monitoring sensors, which don’t require any complex configuration. In the end, although PRTG isn’t free like other alternative, the time you save may still make it the better value in the long run.
Programmable ASICs in Cisco Switches
Jasper Bongertz attended his first Tech Field Day presentation while he was at Cisco Live Europe. At the presentation, he learned about what Cisco is doing with programmable ASICs, including their “Unified Access Data Plane”, which allows for encapsulation or decapsulation of packets dynamically without losing performance. Jasper also liked seeing support for Netflow directly in hardware. He thinks while it’s an important network management tool, its also vital for security considerations. Overall, he thinks Cisco has an interesting approach to making ASICs a little more flexible.
