Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) have been picking up the pace as of late. A high percentage of communication service providers and large data centers have either added these technologies on their roadmaps, or are already doing small-scale Proof-of-Concepts (PoC) in their testbed environments. more
'It could've been worse' is a fascinating expression. It implies that the incident in question obviously could have been worse than expected, however it also implies that it could have been better, ultimately leading to the conclusion that it was at least somewhat bad. So both fortunately and unfortunately for three Greek banks, the ransom DDoS attacks levied against them by hacker group the Armada Collective could have been worse. more
Cuba has announced it is launching country's first broadband home Internet servicea, a potentially major step forward in bringing the island online. more
We live in an online age, one where malware infections have become commonplace. Some might say this is the price of doing business online. News headlines report damaging attacks on well-known brands with depressing regularity. Consumer confidence suffers as customers look to organizations to sort out the issue, secure their transactions and fix the problem. more
It seems that this last holiday season didn't bring much cheer or goodwill to corporate security teams. With the public disclosure of remotely exploitable vulnerabilities and backdoors in the products of several well-known security vendors, many corporate security teams spent a great deal of time yanking cables, adding new firewall rules, and monitoring their networks with extra vigilance. more
Companies are no longer afraid of the cloud. Big talk about security and performance issues has dwindled to small voices as enterprises and SMBs alike adopt cloud services to empower their global impact. Big cloud benefits, however -- agility, scalability and on-demand access -- are the result of a thoughtful, well-planned move from on-site servers to off-site resources. Here are four key tips for a soft cloud landing. more
ICANN has now published the results of the auction for .SHOP, an eye-popping $41,501,000. This pushes the ICANN's auction pot over $100 million. That's a lot of money. There are eighteen more name contention sets that are on hold for various reasons, of which a few such as .WEB look likely to generate even more money once the hold issues are resolved. more
GMO Registry, Inc, a Japanese domain name registry business, has won the rights to a single new top-level domain, .shop, for $41.5 million. more
A number of Senior U.S. officials and business leaders visited Cuba last week and urged the government to speed up its build out of Internet infrastructure and to make it more widely available, Mario Trujillo reports in The Hill. more
Facebook has announced the construction of a new $220 million (€200 million) data centre in Clonee, County Meath, Ireland. This will be Facebook's sixth data center worldwide and the company's second in Europe, after Luleå in Sweden. more
Ransomware via a phishing attack was sent to Israel Electric Authority, not the power grid, as was heavily reported in mainstream media today. According to a cyber analyst in Israel (Eyal Sela) the media reporting so far is misleading with regards to the context around the incident, reports Robert M. Lee of SANS Institute. more
2015 was a challenging yet exciting year for brand owners. While new gTLDs continue to consume much of the news in the domain industry, there were other notable highlights. Global domain registrations reached nearly 300 million; ICANN had several initiatives in motion that were of particular concern to brand owners; and companies continued to face threats to their brand reputation, revenue and customer trust. Here's my top 5 domain highlights from 2015. more
A report released by IVC Research Center in advance of this year's annual Cybertech 2016, highlights how a tight interplay between industry, investors, and the government has turned Israel into a center of cybersecurity technology. more
"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language." (-Ludwig Wittgenstein) The words we use to describe telecoms networks often contain hidden metaphors and meanings that lead us into wrong thinking. Here are three examples... Why misleading? The word "best" implies both benevolent and optimal intentionality: the network is going to do the "right" thing for its users, and it will maximise the "rightness" in some way. more
Nearly 92 percent of malware use DNS to gain command and control, exfiltrate data or redirect traffic, according to Cisco's 2016 Annual Security Report. It warns that DNS is often a security "blind spot" as security teams and DNS experts typically work in different IT groups within a company and don't interact frequently. more