Cisco Emphasizes Need for Modern Network Architecture

Sdxcentral | April 07, 2020

The global pandemic that continues to lay waste to economies, bring life to a standstill, and has claimed the lives of nearly 81,000 people to date around the globe, is emphasizing the importance of network architecture and performance. “There’s a lot of innovation going on from a networking point of view as far as how the IT teams are dealing with this crisis,” Scott Harrell, SVP and GM of Cisco’s Intent-Based Networking Group, said during a conference call with analysts today. IT professionals are meeting the need, but rapid changes in user behavior and shifting resources are also highlighting the opportunities that 5G and WiFi 6 will unlock for enterprises, he said. This is a huge innovation cycle we have to go through,” Harrell explained. “But just doing it from a hardware point of view won’t be enough. We’ve also got to become more flexible to be able to deal with things like COVID-19 but also just to deal with the changes in user behavior because … the users, and devices, and applications are becoming more dynamic.

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10 most essential performance metrics that businesses should consider when managing their virtual machines.

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10 most essential performance metrics that businesses should consider when managing their virtual machines.

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SERVER VIRTUALIZATION, VIRTUAL SERVER INFRASTRUCTURE

With Holistic View of Layered Security Technologies, Infinitely Virtual Rolls Out Integrated, Multifaceted Lineup

prweb | April 11, 2023

Recognizing that no company is too small to be a target of cyberattacks, cloud pioneer Infinitely Virtual today introduced a series of layered security tools and technologies. Newly packaged from IV are three integrated components: IV Host, IV Manage, and the ostensible flagship in the lineup, IV Protect. IV Protect goes beyond the built-in security within E.V.E., IV’s Cloud Platform, to provide additional protection against established and emerging cyberthreats. These solutions help address various threat vectors — from weak passwords and phishing to malicious websites and uninformed users — to keep systems and data as safe as possible. IV Protect strengthens security with targeted solutions to meet any SMB’s specific cybersecurity requirements. “Where alien code is concerned, the science of acting, reacting, anticipating, eradicating and managing has evolved,” said Adam Stern, IV Founder and CEO. “The world that anti-virus/anti-malware products inhabit has morphed as well, transformed by nefarious external forces and broader, smarter responses -- digital signatures, heuristics, memory management, etc.” In concept, the products are organized like a Venn diagram, with overlapping ala carte offerings, pegged to an organization’s discrete needs. Collectively, the various elements combine technology and human experience to perform highly accurate threat hunting, monitoring, and response at scale, among other capabilities. The IV Protect suite helps rapidly identify threats -- and limit their impact -- without the need for additional staffing. Given the length of time traditional solutions have been available, bad actors have learned how to evade them, he said. With the number and intensity of high-value cyberattacks growing, technology is increasingly scrutinizing behaviors, sketching on a wider canvas and examining more variables. “IV Protect, which integrates MDR with capabilities like DNS filtering, is both an advance and a throwback: automated and high touch,” Stern said, noting that security awareness training and compliance are central to the offering. IV Protect: Drilling Down Among the capabilities integrated into IV Protect: Multifactor Authentication Technology (MFA) - Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is an access security solution used to verify a user's identity at login. It adds two or more identity-checking steps to user logins by use of secure authentication tools, providing a fast, simple, and non-disruptive authentication experience. Managed Detection and Response (MDR) - Traditional antivirus solutions are no longer sufficient to protect servers and endpoints. IV Managed Detection & Response (MDR) provides AI-powered prevention, detection, response, and threat hunting across IV- hosted servers and local user endpoints, to protect against potentially harmful threat attacks that can put data —and the business itself— at risk. DNS Filtering - IV’s DNS Filter is a cloud-based, AI-driven content filtering and threat protection service that blocks malicious websites and filters out harmful or inappropriate content. It prevents users from unknowingly accessing unsafe websites via links in an email, while giving the organization the ability to restrict access to specific websites within a local network. Email Security - IV Email Security is an integrated cloud email security solution that is fast to deploy, easy to use, and protects the organization against today’s most dangerous phishing threats. The capability delivers email security in the mailbox using anomaly detection to stop advanced phishing threats such as Business Email Compromise (BEC), ransomware, credential harvesting and more. Security Awareness Training - IV SAT helps ensure that employees serve as a strong line of defense against the latest methods of attack. A critical piece of a strong security program, this solution makes it easy to send and track training videos on a wide range of security-related topics to the people within the organization who need them most. According to ISACA expert Tan Soon Chew, “a comprehensive cybersecurity awareness program should be established and implemented to educate every person (including external vendors and their personnel) who uses, operates and manages the enterprise’s assets or data… the program’s effectiveness should be measured at regular intervals (e.g., annually).” “We at IV are taking a refreshingly honest step forward by acknowledging that AI can’t yet be trusted to protect organizations definitively,” Stern said. “IV Protect in particular argues in favor of including actual human beings to take a closer look and to parse a timeline of events. MDR includes a SOC where threat hunters -- folks in a digital war room who get these alerts -- seek to determine if they are harmless or nefarious.” About Infinitely Virtual The World's Most Advanced Hosting Environment. Infinitely Virtual is a leading provider of high-quality and affordable Cloud Server technology, capable of delivering services to any type of business, via terminal servers, SharePoint servers and SQL servers – all based on Cloud Servers. Infinitely Virtual has earned the highest rating of "Enterprise-Ready" in Skyhigh Networks’ CloudTrust™ Program for four of its offerings -- Cloud Server Hosting, InfiniteVault, InfiniteProtect and Virtual Terminal Server. Founder and CEO Adam Stern is a member of the Forbes Technology Council. Infinitely Virtual was established as a subsidiary of Altay Corporation, and through this partnership, the company provides customers with expert 24×7 technical support.

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VIRTUAL DESKTOP STRATEGIES, SERVER HYPERVISORS

Island Supports Legacy Apps as Microsoft Carries Out Internet Explorer End of Life Plan

Island | March 09, 2023

On March 8, 2023, Island, the pioneer and leader in the Enterprise Browser industry, offered support for legacy applications that depend on Internet Explorer (IE), with Microsoft continuing to carry out its planned End of Life for the IE browser. With the Island Enterprise Browser, you can use modern controls like device posture assessment, multi-factor authentication, and comprehensive last-mile protections to keep your sensitive data safe while still using legacy applications that rely on IE. Mike Fey, Island CEO and Co-Founder remarked, “As much as we’d like to think all applications are cloud-based SaaS at this point, the reality is that there are thousands of applications written years ago that remain business-critical and require Internet Explorer to operate. Our customers have asked us to help them migrate with as little disruption as possible, and we are more than happy to do so and provide additional value in the process.” He added, “Island’s Enterprise Browser can provide effortless compatibility for legacy applications, giving customers the runway they need to migrate to modern web applications. And on top of essential compatibility, customers also gain the unique visibility, control and business productivity that are hallmarks of the Island Enterprise Browser.” (Source –BusinessWire) With the Island Enterprise Browser, the traditional idea of a web browser being a passive display layer is replaced with an active control plane, giving security and IT departments more control, visibility, and efficiency than ever before. Business continuity is ensured by introducing the Island Enterprise Browser to make the switch from Internet Explorer easier and by adding a lot of new and cutting-edge features. Some of new capabilities are: Compatibility with the rendering modes of Internet Explorer 5–11 Maintaining the integrity of the underlying legacy technologies like ActiveX, Silverlight, Flash, and Java Complete visibility into and auditing of every mission-critical application activity without the requirement for third-party add-ons The use of robotic process automation to modify existing web applications so that they conform to the specific requirements of a company's workflows for using legacy and other application types A user-controlled launcher that can be used to ease people into using new software. Advanced network routing for on-premise, private cloud, and SaaS applications Enterprise-branded in-app messages for user guidance. End-user productivity aspects for ideal employee experience The Island Enterprise Browser: The future desktop, the Island Enterprise Browser, protects users and data as they engage with SaaS and internal web apps. The Island Enterprise Browser lets security teams govern the final mile, from copy, paste, download, upload, and snapshot capture to data redaction, watermarking, and multi-factor authentication. Reducing complexity and user experience friction helps IT teams gain control, operational simplicity, and end-user productivity. About Island Island, headquartered in Dallas, is the pioneer of the Enterprise Browser, the perfect enterprise workplace where work flows freely and securely. Island gives enterprises complete control, visibility, and governance over the last mile while providing users with a pleasant Chromium-based browser experience. As a result, island is transforming the future of work for some of the world's largest, most renowned organizations, led by enterprise security and browser technology experts and funded by top venture funds Insight Partners, Sequoia Capital, Cyberstarts, and Stripes.

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VMWARE, CONTAINERS, VIRTUALIZED ENVIRONMENTS

Platform9's Latest Release Cuts Costs of Legacy Virtual Machines by 50%

Businesswire | May 19, 2023

Platform9, a leader in helping enterprises with a better way to go cloud native, today announced the most recent release of its products Platform9 KubeVirt and Platform9 Managed Kubernetes (PMK) to address the most pressing budget, staffing, and operational efficiency challenges enterprises are facing in today’s tight economy. As CEOs and CFOs step in to assess costs at all levels, IT leaders are faced with a number of challenging tasks, including controlling cloud costs, lowering legacy vendor license fees, optimizing staffing, and improving operational efficiencies. With this release, Platform9 can help enterprises migrate 100s and even 1000s of virtual machines from legacy virtualization products, driving down costs in several ways: Save by product consolidation and reduced license fees: Replace multiple legacy virtualization products and their extremely expensive enterprise licensing fees. Save enormous public cloud bills by repatriating to on-premises or co-location infrastructure: Migrate to another environment for a fraction of the cost of public cloud. Eliminate the need for costly hardware investments. Run legacy VMs on a modern self-service virtualization solution on existing infrastructure. Save on operation costs: Leverage built-in automation for multiple operational tasks such as lifecycle management, monitoring, alerting, self-healing, security patching, and troubleshooting “To optimize spending, businesses today are reducing the number of enterprise virtualization products and vendors with very expensive license fees,” said Bhaskar Gorti, CEO of Platform9. “Platform9’s latest release unifies, in a single platform, the capabilities of many legacy products including virtualization, container management, monitoring, bare metal management, management plane, and much more. Adopting a platform-based approach such as this for infrastructure management can help reduce costs by consolidating and eliminating redundant products and operational overhead.” Platform9’s approach is unifying and consolidating capabilities available in multiple legacy products into one platform. The latest 5.8 release incorporates the most recent open-source versions of Kubernetes (for container management) and KubeVirt (for VM management), including many infrastructure services for monitoring, load balancing, logging, networking, and much more. Platform9 KubeVirt has a modern user interface and terminology that both VM and infrastructure operators are familiar with. IT teams that are adopting the platform do not need to understand the underlying Kubernetes complexity, which reduces onboarding and training time. Engineering teams who are currently developing and delivering cloud native applications, on the other hand, may leverage the full power of Kubernetes on the same platform. Platform9 5.8 KubeVirt includes several improvements to VM performance, scalability, monitoring, and reliability, significantly matching legacy VM functionality at a lower cost. Notable capabilities include: Guaranteed 99.9% uptime SLA through remote monitoring and alerting: Platform9 management plane remote monitoring is now extended to KubeVirt services. You can now act on alerts round-the-clock to ensure your VMs’ availability. Tested at scale: Rigorous scale-testing to ensure that the platform can run in a variety of scale situations: a few nodes in thousands of locations (for edge use cases) and hundreds of nodes in a few locations (data center or public cloud regions use case). Advanced networking with OVS and performance add-ons: Leverage DPDK, SRIOV and other built-in features to run your networking processes at line speed. "Enterprises today face an ever-increasing need for agility and cost-effectiveness to thrive in a challenging economic environment," said Madhura Maskasky, VP of product and co-founder of Platform9. "With Platform9 5.8, we're delivering a unified virtualization and containerization platform that is secure, scalable, and easy to manage - giving enterprises the flexibility to deploy, orchestrate, maintain, and observe infrastructure across any cloud, edge, or on-premises infrastructure." Enterprises facing budget pressures and looking to save costs by migrating out of legacy virtualization platforms or out of public clouds can take advantage of Platform9’s free consultation offer with our experts. About Platform9 Platform9 empowers enterprises with a faster, better, and more cost-effective way to go cloud native. Its fully automated container management and orchestration solution delivers cost control, resource reduction, and speed of application deployment. Its unique always-on assurance™ technology ensures 24/7 non-stop operations through remote monitoring, automated upgrades, and proactive problem resolution, Innovative enterprises like Juniper, Kingfisher Plc, Mavenir, Redfin, and Cloudera achieve 4x faster time-to-market, up to 90% reduction in operational costs, and 99.99% uptime. Platform9 is an inclusive, globally distributed company backed by leading investors.

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