Cisco Live EMEA is happening this week and we’re here learning all the great things that Cisco is investing in and bringing to the market. We thought it would be great to give you a quick overview of the biggest announcements as well as providing some context around why they’re important. This and more on this week’s Rundown. Thanks to Zoë Rose for sitting in!
1:09 – Linux Foundation Launches Post-Quantum Cryptography Group
Quantum computing is a topic that is still on the horizon, but the prospect of post-quantum cryptography has been very active in recent months. This week the Linux Foundation announced the formation of the Post Quantum Cryptography Association, a group dedicated to the idea that cryptographic algorithms need to be hardened before quantum computers render them invalid. Founding members of the group include IBM, AWS, Google, and QuSecure.
Read More: Post-Quantum Cryptography Alliance Launches to Advance Post-Quantum Cryptography
3:35 – DEFCON Defends Caesar’s Cancellation Chaos
DEFCON was canceled. Again. This time it was only for a day. Caesar’s Entertainment, the company that controls the hotel where DEFCON has been held for 25 years, announced they will not be renewing their contract. The DEFCON organizers went out to Las Vegas and moved the event to the Las Vegas Convention Center. No word was given from Caesars for the abrupt departure of the world-famous hacker convention but rumors persist that the 2023 hack of the hotel by threat actors may have played a part.
Read More: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it.
5:07 – NetApp and SpectraLogic Teaming Up for Archival Options
NetApp and SpectraLogic are ready to bring Glacier-style storage to on-prem data centers. The announcement matches NetApp StorageGRID S3-based object storage with SpectraLogic leading archival tape technology. The goal is to provide a tier for StorageGRID that will allow large amounts of data to be stored for long periods of time without clogging up the object data store while also being faster than Amazon Glacier, the cloud solution that does the very same thing.
Read More: NetApp, SpectraLogic link up for on-prem archival storage
8:06 – Ivanti Exploited After Advisories
Remember two weeks ago when we mentioned on the Rundown that Ivanti was under fire for CVE disclosure issues? Well, the chickens have come home to roost. Ivanti is currently seeing their Server Side Request Forgery vulnerability actively exploited. This particular nasty bug allows for mitigation efforts to be bypassed and admin teams to have their network gateways taken over with some clever exploit chaining. A patch was issued to resolve this issue back on February 1 but there’s no data on how many affected systems have been patched to date.
Read More: Ivanti Devices Hit by Wave of Exploits for Latest Security Hole
10:05 – Zscaler COO Exits For Wiz
Zscaler COO Dali Rajic has decided to head over to compeitor Wiz. The announcement came from an SEC filing from Zscaler noting he was leaving effective February 2nd. The move is expected to see Rajic in the same position in the startup as they look to IPO in the near future. Rajic has a long history with successful companies like AppDynamics and BMC Software and is known as someone very focused on rapid growth.
Read More: Zscaler COO suddenly resigns, joins cloud security unicorn Wiz
12:34 – Cisco Live EMEA Embraces New Technologies
Cisco is enhancing their Security Cloud offering to protect specifically against identity-based attacks. Identity Intelligence is an industry-first blending of identity, networking, and security that helps protect the complex identity framework that has become an increasing popular target for attackers. Cisco cites data from Talos that 26% of their engagements last year invovled attackers using compromised credentials to get inside systems with no protection against valid logins. Identity Intelligence allows security teams to find accounts, clean up permissions, and secure them from anomalous behavior.
If you had money on an AI announcement at Cisco Live, go ahead and collect your winnings! Cisco announced Motific, part of Outshift. It’s a SaaS solution aimed at rapid deployment of GenAI applications. The focus from Cisco is about security around proprietary data and audit trails.
Another big AI-related announcement was a new partnership between Cisco and Nvidia for on-prem AI computing. Cisco will be selling UCS servers with NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs for AI workloads. Cisco is also working on validated designs to deploy and manage AI clusters at scale as well as offering support for management through Nexus Dashboard and Cisco Intersight. Lastly, Cisco is providing monitoring and observability for workloads either on-prem or in the cloud.
Read More: Comprehensive Analyst Coverage of Cisco Live EMEA
Cisco unveils ‘Identity Intelligence’ to enhance cloud security with AI and networking integration
Cisco and NVIDIA to Help Enterprises Quickly and Easily Deploy and Manage Secure AI Infrastructure
24:23 – The Weeks Ahead
AI Field Day 4 – February 21 – February 23
Networking Field Day 34 – February 28 – 29
The Gestalt IT Rundown is a live weekly look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.
