Through phishing attacks, scammers can get their hands on personal info, like financial details and login credentials, or implant malware into the host system.

Year-on-year, phishing attacks are increasing. A report by SlashNext shows that phishing activities have consistently increased during the pandemic, with there being 255 million phishing attacks in 2022 alone. Of these attacks, credential harvesting remains the most common form of attack.

This article will review some recent examples of high-profile phishing attacks and their results. It will then provide a few quick tips and pointers to prevent phishing attacks at your organization.

Twilio and Signal

In August 2022, cloud communications platform Twilio was hit by a social engineering attack where employees were tricked into handing over sensitive customer information through an SMS (text message) phishing attack.

Employees reportedly received messages from Twilio’s IT department suggesting they needed to log in to reset their passwords.

Employers were directed to a fake website resembling Twilio’s site and urged to click on malicious links. Once employers clicked on the embedded links, attackers got hold of their credentials and used them to access Twilio’s internal system and steal vital customer info.

After investigating the incident, Twilio released a statement saying a total of 93 Authy accounts and 209 customers were affected by the incident. Messaging service Signal also revealed that this incident could have compromised the personal data of around 1,900 of its customers.

Allegheny Health Network

On May 31, 2022, Allegheny Health Network (AHN) suffered a phishing attack that resulted in the protected health information (PHI) exposure of approximately 8,000 patients.

An employee at the network was targeted with a malicious email link, resulting in their account being compromised. Once the link was opened, attackers could gain access to the employee’s email account and, through that, access critical sensitive information of patients.

According to AHN, compromised PHI included patients’ names, dates of birth, ID numbers, medical history, diagnosis and treatment, email addresses, phone numbers, and driver’s license numbers.

Upon discovering that their system had been compromised, AHN immediately isolated their IT system and implemented preventive measures. They also enlisted the help of a cybersecurity agency to get to the root of the incident.

AHN even offered two years of identity protection services at no cost to individuals whose social security numbers and financial details had been leaked.

Mailchimp

In March 2022, hackers used social engineering techniques to target Mailchimp employees and compromise their accounts. First, attackers got hold of user credentials illegally to gain access to Mailchimp customer accounts. Then, using the accounts, hackers launched targeted phishing attacks on businesses that used Mailchimp emails.

While the Mailchimp team acted swiftly to control the incident, hackers still compromised 300 Mailchimp customer accounts and exported audience information from 102 accounts. In addition, bad actors also got hold of the API keys of customers, which they used to send spoofed messages.

Again, in August 2022, Mailchimp fell victim to an Okta phishing attack that also targeted Twilio and Klaviyo.

Mailchimp was the target of yet another attack as recently as January 2023. This was the third breach in less than a year. Once again, its employees were fooled by a phishing email as a result of which their account administration tool got hacked. This time, threat actors were able to access the data of 133 customers.

Oktapus

In July 2022, there was an enormous phishing campaign called Oktapus that specifically targeted the customers of the identity and access management (IAM) leader Okta. Over 130 organizations were breached, 10,000 Okta credentials were compromised, and 169 unique domains were identified in the attack.

According to threat researchers at Group-IB, employees received text messages with a link to phishing websites that copied the Okta authentication page of their company. When the user clicked on the link and navigated to the malicious webpage, they were asked for a two-factor authentication (2FA) code. Once the user keyed in the code, hackers gained access to all those resources users had access to.

Targeted organizations were mostly from the U.S. and U.K., with most of them being software companies providing cloud services. Targeted companies include Mailchimp, CloudFlare, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Twitter, T-Mobile, Coinbase, Binance, and Epic Games.

Despite the size of the attack, Group-IB analysis indicates that subject “X” (the threat actor behind the campaign) was somewhat inexperienced and used low-skill methods to conduct the attack.

Types of phishing attacks

A phishing email—or text or phone call—often uses language that strikes fear in a user and urges them to take quick action.

The most common types of phishing attacks include:

• Email-based attacks: Email phishing is one of the most common forms of phishing, where fraudsters impersonate legitimate organizations and send emails with malicious attachments.
• Vishing: Voice phishing or vishing is when a hacker tries to get hold of personal information by simulating a call from a reputable organization.
• Spear phishing: Spear phishing is a form of targeted attack towards specific victims or an organization.
• Whaling: Whaling is a specialized form of spear phishing attack where high-ranking executives within a company are targeted.
• Clone phishing: In clone phishing, scammers reproduce a legitimate email to spoof users into clicking on it.

Preventing phishing attacks

While there’s no way to fully prevent phishing attacks from happening, the best way to avoid any damage from them is a fully informed and vigilant workforce. You can also implement MFA and use anti-phishing software for further protection.

Only open emails from trusted sources

It’s recommended to only open emails from trusted sources you know, avoid clicking suspicious links, and never download attachments without first confirming their legitimacy.

Emails from unknown sources can contain malware and other threats. Even if you know the sender but the email’s content looks strange, it’s better to delete than open it.

Other ways to determine if it is an untrustworthy mail are:

• It contains embedded macros.
• It uses formats like .reg, .exe, .msi, .cmd, and .js files.
• It’s riddled with grammatical errors.

Train your employees

One of the best ways to prevent phishing attacks in an organization is by training your staff in secure communication practices and educating them on the repercussions of a phishing attack. Organizations should regularly conduct training programs to make employees aware of phishing activities and help them spot suspicious activities.

A robust anti-phishing employee training program should include reporting capabilities, compliance training, up-to-date educational content, simulated phishing materials, and threat intelligence features.

Use multi-factor authentication (MFA)

Making MFA a part of your phishing strategy is an important step for protecting your devices. MFA uses additional authentication methods like a PIN, a physical security token, or a biometric ID to confirm a user’s identity. This means even if hackers manage to get past the first layer, they would still require another authentication method to access a user account.

Use anti-phishing software

With individuals and organizations regularly falling prey to phishing attempts, using a good anti-phishing software is one of the best precautions against phishing attacks.

Anti-phishing software scans incoming emails for impersonation and identifies and isolates malicious messages in real time, thus protecting your privileged systems. Additionally, these solutions block you from accessing malicious websites.

The key features to look for in an anti-phishing software include the following:

• Inbox scanning.
• Quarantining infected devices.
• Mobile device compatibility.
• Malicious link identification.
• Mail server agnostic.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the most common phishing attempt?

Fake emails are one of the most common phishing attempts made by fraudsters. These fraudsters register a phony domain mimicking a genuine organization.

The user will get an urgent email containing the organization’s name and a nearly indistinguishable URL, and they’ll click on it, supposing it is authentic.

They’re then taken to a page that is an almost perfect replica of the actual login page, where they will be prompted to input their credentials so they can be stolen by the fraudsters.

What are the signs of a phishing attempt?

While phishing emails are common, they’re still tricky to spot. Here are some of the common signs of a phishing attack—though it’s important to stress that not all phishing attempts will have all or any of these features.

• Emails with spelling errors.
• Emails with unusual content.
• Emails soliciting personal info.
• Emails sent from unknown email addresses.

Bottom line: Spotting and avoiding phishing scams

Phishing attacks are costly not just in terms of monetary losses but also loss of reputation and trust when companies fall victim to scammers. And with cyber criminals becoming more innovative and successful in targeting individuals and organizations, users and organizations need to be aware of cybersecurity best practices.

Implementing multi-layered security measures, using anti-phishing tools, and educating users and employees to recognize phishing emails are necessary to stay ahead in the game—so your company can avoid becoming featured in the next version of this article.

For more information to stop phishing attempts on your employees, here are eight best practices, and a guide to training your employees on what to watch for.

The post 4 Phishing Examples: Spot and Avoid Fraudulent Attacks appeared first on Enterprise Networking Planet.

Such is the severity that global ransomware damages are expected to cross $30 billion by 2023. And as per the latest Cost of a Data Breach Report by IBM, data breach costs have surged 13% from 2020 to 2022, with the average data breach cost reaching a record high in 2022 at $4.35 million USD.

To help you learn more about ransomware attacks—how they happen, what they look like, and how (or whether) companies are able to recover afterwards, here is a survey of some recent examples of real-life ransomware attacks.

But first, let’s take a look at the state of the ransomware “industry.”

Ransomware by the numbers

Detailed research on ransomware trends by cybersecurity company NordLocker on 5,212 companies between January 2020 and July 2022 reveals that:

• The collective revenue of targeted companies was $4.15 trillion.
• The USA was the number one country most affected by ransomware.
• The top five industries most impacted by ransomware were manufacturing, construction, transportation, IT, and healthcare.
• More than 12 million employees were affected.
• Organizations with annual revenue between $10 and $25 million USD are targeted more by ransomware, but that does not mean smaller companies are safe.

Ransomware gangs are creating havoc, forcing governments to take action. One case in point is the notorious Conti ransomware gang, responsible for several high-profile attacks over the past two years.

Given the seriousness of the situation, the U.S. Department of State even offered a grand reward of $15 million to identify co-conspirators of the Conti ransomware gang and offer information about any individual planning or attempting to participate in a Conti ransomware attack.

However, the effects of ransomware are significant irrespective of the size of a business, says Kenneth Henao, founder and president of BCA IT. After all, paying the ransom money isn’t the only thing business owners have to worry about.

“It’s the cost of downtime, the damage to their reputation, and the costly penalties and fines for non-compliance that often hurt a business the most,” said Henao. “In some cases, the losses can be so damaging that small businesses, in particular, might not be able to recover from the attack.”

4 cautionary examples of ransomware attacks

Ransomware attacks can come in many types, shapes, and sizes—and they can target just about anybody, from a single individual to the largest corporations. (Of course, the bigger the company, the more money the criminals are able to try extorting.) Some of the biggest and most high-profile ransomware attacks in recent memory have been the attacks on Colonial Pipeline, Travelex, Nvidia, and the government of Costa Rica.

Colonial Pipeline attack caused a gas shortage

Ransom demanded: $5 million dollars

On May 7, 2021, Colonial Pipeline was hit by a ransomware attack that crippled the pipeline’s IT systems for days. Fearing that the malware would spread to the operational technology network that controls pipeline operations, the company decided to shut down the entire pipeline of 5,500 miles in an effort to prevent further damage.

But doing so created chaos and panic. Worried about a gas shortage, East Coast residents started panic-buying gasoline, with some hoarding it in plastic bags. Long lines were reported at many outlets, gas prices shot up, and even the airline industry was affected.

The Russian-based DarkSide gang behind the attack gained access to the system through a compromised virtual private network (VPN) password and asked for a ransom of $5 million dollars. Given the escalating situation and the panic all around, Colonial Pipeline agreed to pay the ransom amount. Fortunately, U.S. law enforcement agents managed to recover $2.3 million in Bitcoin of the ransom money.

Following the attack and other similar attacks like SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange, the Biden administration issued an executive order that includes using a software bill of materials (SBOMs), sharing threat information between the government and private sector, implementing strong cybersecurity standards in the federal government, among other measures intended to curb the threat of ransomware attacks.

Travelex forced to close following ransomware attack

Ransom demanded: £4.6 million ($5.53 million USD)

In January 2020, a ransomware gang called Sodinokibi (also known as REvil) attacked travel insurance brand Travelex, demanding £4.6 million ($5.53 million USD) in ransom money. The gang claimed to have downloaded sensitive customer data that included customers’ birth dates, credit card numbers, and national insurance numbers. The attack forced the company to suspend its websites for over two weeks across 30 countries in an effort to prevent further compromise of personal data.

As a result, the company had to resort to manual methods to serve their customers, causing great inconvenience to online customers. Not only individual customers but banks like Barclays, Sainsbury’s, RBS, and HSBC were also affected, as Travelex was their travel-money supplier.

After about two weeks of disruption and finally paying $2.3 million in Bitcoin, Travelex managed to restore its online services.  Nevertheless, COVID-19 and the ransomware attack took its toll, and the company went bankrupt in August 2020.

Nvidia chip data stolen and employee passwords leaked

No monetary ransom demanded

On Feb. 25, 2022, Nvidia, the largest microchip company in the world, was attacked by the ransomware group LAPSUS$, which stole proprietary information and employee personal data totaling 1TB and began leaking it online.

In an untypical move, the group didn’t demand any ransom money but instead wanted Nvidia to disable the lite hast rate (LHR) feature that puts limits on the performance of GPUs—specifically, preventing users from using them for cryptocurrency mining. The group also wanted the company to open-source its GPU drivers for Linux, Windows, and Mac devices.

Although a relatively new entrant, the LAPSUS$ group shot to fame by targeting big companies like Impresa (Portugal’s largest media channel), Brazilian telecommunications company Claro, Brazil’s Ministry of Health, Microsoft, Samsung, and Okta.

The group uses a variety of techniques like redline password-stealing malware to access confidential info, paying company insiders for credential access, social engineering, and SIM swapping to successfully target victims.

What’s interesting is that most of the masterminds behind the LAPSUS$ group are teenagers. The group is lying low after the U.K. police arrested seven people aged 16 to 21 in April 2022 for alleged connections to the LAPSUS$ group. However, how long this lasts is open to speculation.

Costa Rican government forced to declare state of emergency

Ransom demanded: $20 million

Early in April 2022, the government of Costa Rica became the victim of the Russian-based Conti gang. The gang started by attacking eight government institutions and demanded an initial ransom amount of $10 million. It was later increased to $20 million after the government refused to pay up. When no ransom money was paid, the group uploaded some 850GB of files to its website.

The attack crippled the government, as the finance and tax ministries were targeted and had to shutter operations for several hours. Automatic payment services were halted, workers were not paid on time, foreign trade was slowed, and common citizens could not access online services.

The situation was so dire that newly elected President Rodrigo Chaves had to declare a state of emergency. Considering that it was the first time a country declared a national emergency in response to a ransomware attack, this incident received a lot of media coverage.

Future of ransomware attacks

Unfortunately, ransomware attacks are not stopping anytime soon. Rather, we are going to see increasingly more evolved and sophisticated forms of ransomware attacks. In fact, in its latest Emerging Risks Monitor Report, Gartner lists “new ransomware models” as the top concern facing executives.

“We’re especially seeing ransomware as a service (RaaS) becoming more common,” said Henao.

Similar to other as-a-service models, RaaS is a subscription-based model that enables hackers to buy already-built ransomware tools to orchestrate attacks.

“Fully aware of how profitable ransom attacks are, cybercriminals are selling their ransomware kits through the dark web to attackers who might not have the necessary technical skills to launch ransomware attacks themselves,” said Henao.

This makes RaaS all the more dangerous because even hackers with limited skills can now launch attacks.

In addition to RaaS, double extortion ransomware and triple extortion ransomware are the newer forms of ransomware cybercriminals are using. In a double extortion attack, criminals enter the victim’s network, move laterally, encrypt the data, and then demand a ransom. In triple extortion, the ransom is directed not only toward the company but also its customers. Together, these techniques, along with RaaS, have the capability to bring an organization to its knees.

How to prevent ransomware attacks

While preventing attacks completely is not possible, following best practices helps. This includes regularly backing up data, patching vulnerabilities, allowlisting applications, limiting user access to your network and systems, and keeping employees educated on the latest threats and prevention measures.

Be sure to read our complete guide to ransomware protection, backup, and recovery for a complete list of tips and strategies.

While Steve Tcherchian, chief product officer at XYPRO Technology admits that there is currently no technology that can completely block ransomware, he recommends the following approach to prevent ransomware attacks:

• Keep all software, including operating systems and applications, up to date and patched to reduce the risk of vulnerabilities.
• Regularly back up important data to an offsite location to ensure it can be recovered during a ransomware attack.
• Implement network segmentation to limit the ransomware spread within the network and contain the damage caused by an attack.
• Provide regular training to employees to educate them on the dangers of phishing attacks and other types of social engineering tactics used by ransomware gangs.
• Use advanced threat protection technologies, such as next-generation antivirus (NGAV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR), to detect and prevent ransomware attacks.
• Disable Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) if it’s not needed to reduce the risk of unauthorized system access.

In the words of Ali Allage, CEO of BlueSteel Cybersecurity: “It’s all about doing the fundamentals consistently before you jump too far into the deep end of complication. Fundamentals are: basic access control plan (who, what, where, and why), device management (antivirus, backups, remote wiping), classifying the data you hold as sensitive and non-sensitive, incident response plan (if something were to happen, who would you call, and how will you handle it?), and backing up everything.”

Bottom line: Combating ransomware attacks

These examples show that ransomware has the potential to cause massive damage to organizations, bring down critical institutions, and compromise national security. With ransomware gangs becoming more sophisticated by the day, it can be difficult to anticipate their moves and be one step ahead of them. Although there is no panacea, adopting a clear action plan to combat ransomware helps. Knowing what to do in the event of an attack—and acting quickly and purposefully when it happens—can mean the difference between a setback and a disaster.

To help keep yourself protected from ransomware attacks, be sure to review our ransomware strategies and solution guides:

• 7 Most Common Types of Ransomware
• 7-Step Ransomware Incident Response Plan
• 5 Best Ransomware Protection Software
• Ransomware Recovery Guide: Top Recovery Methods and Tips
• 6 Best Ransomware Recovery Services

The post Examples of Ransomware: A Cautionary Tale appeared first on Enterprise Networking Planet.

Cato Networks and Juniper Networks were among the companies that expanded their SASE offerings. Cato announced a cloud access security broker (CASB) capability to its SASE SPACE engine—part of the company’s SASE cloud—and making it accessible to enterprises via the more than 70 points of presence around the world. 

The CASB offering also works with the Cloud Application Catalog the company unveiled in December, offering enterprises a single place to find more than 5,000 common enterprise applications, along with descriptions of each application and a risk score. CASBs can be used on premises or in the cloud to monitor activity and enforce security policies.

A Combination of SD-WAN, Security

SASE is essentially a blending of software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) and such network security capabilities as threat protection, zero-trust features, firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), and CASB. As the network has become more central to IT operations that now stretch from the central data centers into the cloud and out to the edge—including where many remote workers are located— securing those networks is crucial.

Gartner analysts predict that the global SASE market will grow an average of 42 percent a year through 2024, when it will hit almost $11 billion.

“CASB addresses a critical visibility and control gap created by cloud migration but must be converged into a broad SASE platform to be truly effective across the business,” Cato co-founder and CEO Shlomo Kramer said in a statement. “We’ve done just that with Cato CASB. By building Cato CASB into the Cato SPACE engine, it can leverage the global footprint, rich context, cloud scalability and self-healing and self-maintenance underpinning the Cato SASE Cloud.”

Also read: Transitioning to a SASE Architecture

CASB is Better Used on a Platform

Kramer argued that CASB works best and fastest  via a cloud-based platform rather than as a standalone offering in on-premises environments, noting that it can take months to get legacy SASE solutions up and running. For Cato CASB, it could take less than an hour.

At the same time Cato is rolling out a new Shadow IT dashboard designed to give enterprises a high-level view of their software-as-a-service (SaaS) usage, including such detail as the highest risk applications and the number of users accessing them.

For its part, Juniper said it is adding a FWaaS to its SASE platform. Juniper Secure Edge is a single-stack FWaaS software architecture managed by the vendor’s Security Director Cloud, which was introduced last year.

Work-From-Home Driving SASE

Samantha Madrid, vice president of security business and strategy at Juniper, wrote in a blog post that the new work-from-home model means that “new cloud-based architectures are required to secure the network edge. However, many organizations are hesitant to walk toward SASE for fear of throwing away their existing security investments and policies.”

However, it doesn’t have to be a binary either-or decision, according to Madrid. 

“With the right security architecture, including unbroken visibility from client to workload, security assurance and a single policy framework, organizations can leverage their existing security investments while also seamlessly transitioning to a SASE architecture,” she wrote.

What’s most important is easy management, Madrid wrote, pointing to Security Cloud Director, which ensures that security policies remain with users—and their applications and devices—as they move from one place to another, whether those security policies are delivered as a service or via physical, virtual, or containerized walls.

That also includes if an enterprise is making the shift to a SASE model.

Also read: The Home SD-WAN and SASE Markets are Rapidly Expanding

Secure Network Access

Juniper Secure Edge enables secure access from any location, a single-policy framework that is the same for SRX Series firewalls and applies those policies to remote workers and branch sites, dynamic segmentation based on zero-trust principles, security assurance and the ability for enterprises to transition to SASE on their own timeline

“Juniper customers can use the physical, virtual, containerized—and now cloud-delivered—SRX firewall, completely managed by Security Director Cloud with a single-policy framework, allowing for full visibility and consistent security across both the edge and the data center from one UI,” Madrid wrote.

The FWaaS space is expected to expand an average of 23.9 percent a year, reaching more than $3.9 billion in 2026, according to Verified Market Research. The analysts wrote that the growing importance of the internet has fueled a rise in security threats.

“Cybersecurity threats are worsened by the interdependent and interconnected architecture of recent computing situations,” they wrote. “Hence, firewalls help industries by protecting them from cyber-attacks, which has led to the growth of the firewall-as-a-service market.”

Fast-Growing SASE

The SASE space is among the fastest-growing sectors in the networking field, with the market expected to expand from $1.2 billion last year to $4.1 billion by 2026, according to a report from MarketsandMarkets.

There shouldn’t be any surprise to the expected increase in the SASE market, according to Bob O’Donnell, principal analyst with TECHnalysis Research. It was already expanding when COVID-19 entered the picture. Like other offerings that were on a growth curve, such as cloud collaboration and cloud services, the pandemic accelerated the global demand for SASE.

With the rapid shift to working from home when the pandemic set in in 2020 and the expected continuation of hybrid work environments even after it lifts, greater network security became a larger priority for enterprises.

“You’ve got people all over the place and companies understand the need to have the ability to have very flexible networks, software-defined networks, that can extend to literally all these people’s homes in some cases and work in branch offices or other kinds of situations,” O’Donnell told Enterprise Networking Planet. “At the same time, there are security concerns related to that. It’s kind of a perfect match for addressing the needs that hybrid and distributed workforces have.”

There also is the trend toward dedicated processing and network optimization that also is fueling the need to more tightly mesh networking with security. For example, Cisco Systems has its own networking chip, Network Silicon One, aimed at web-scale provider and service provider networks.

“You’ve got a combination of the technology being stronger [and] the need being more apparent and now it all comes together in a way that makes sense,” he said. “It is kind of a straightforward thing. It’s the kind of thing that people are starting to expect and you’re seeing all the big networking vendors do it.”

Read next: 12 Tips for Mitigating Security Risks in IoT, BYOD-driven Enterprises

The post Juniper, Cato Build Out SASE Platform Offerings appeared first on Enterprise Networking Planet.

Findings in the vendor’s sixth annual 2022 State of the WAN Report showed that the trend toward hybrid work continues to harden in organizations and that in response, businesses are closing more office sites, such as branch offices, and adopting software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications like collaboration offerings, including Microsoft Teams and Zoom.

The accelerated digital transformation efforts driven by the pandemic are resulting in more data centers being shut down as enterprises move more of their business into public clouds, networking budgets are expected to grow and organizations are increasingly adopting cloud-centric and agile strategies, which is fueling a shift to greater convergence.

Rise of SASE

In the networking and security field, that includes adoption of secure access service edge (SASE), which essentially brings together SD-WAN and key security frameworks. In addition, more than two-thirds of the more than 1,600 enterprises that responded to Aryaka’s survey said they will opt for managed SASE to address such issues as complexity and costs.

“We see a movement to what we’re beginning to call the permanent hybrid enterprise,” David Ginsburg, vice president of product and solutions marketing at Aryaka, told Enterprise Networking Planet. “This leads into the acceleration of digital transformation coinciding with accelerating legacy data center decommissioning.”

Organizations also are looking for ways to reduce the complexity that such hybrid environments can create and to have vendors shoulder some of the burden by providing converged offerings in managed services environments for networking and other IT areas.

“There’s always been an issue with observability and control, but this has gone up in mindshare over the last year vs. some of the other considerations,” Ginsburg said. “It’s becoming more and more of an issue in terms of what enterprises are looking for to solve their issues, what we call an all-in-one SD-WAN and SASE offer. They don’t want to go to a bunch of different vendors or providers to try to stitch something together.”

Also read: Transitioning to a SASE Architecture

The Shift to Hybrid Work

The continued transitioning to a more permanent working model shouldn’t come as a surprise. As the pandemic tightened its grip on the world throughout 2020, companies almost overnight sent their employees to work from home, which forced them to rapidly adopt cloud services such as collaboration software to adapt to the new business environment. Since then, many organizations have said they will allow many workers to continue working remotely, at least part of the time.

According to Ayaka’s report, that trend is accelerating. The survey found that almost half of respondents said 25 percent to 50 percent of their workers are remote and that 28 percent said that up to 75 percent of their staff is remote. Going forward, once pandemic-related restrictions are eased, 43 percent of businesses expect as much as half of employees will work remotely, with another 25 percent saying that number could be as much as 75 percent.

Budgets Growing, Sites Closing

The growing adoption of a hybrid workforce also coincides with businesses increasingly closing physical facilities. A quarter of respondents said they have closed 25 percent to 50 percent of office sites. This puts a premium on managing worker movement between sites and ensuring a good experience for employees working from home, which requires dynamic network bandwidth reallocation, which 61 percent of businesses tagged as very important.

Ginsburg said Aryaka had run into this situation. The company has a main office in San Mateo, CA, that is designed to accommodate about 100 workers. 

“We’re a very distributed company anyway,” he said. “Going forward, we don’t necessarily see the need for that number of seats even at our headquarters, and a lot of people are making that same calculus.”

The shift to remote work also puts a premium on collaboration and productivity software and services. Companies like Zoom and Microsoft—with Teams—saw use and revenues rise sharply in the months after the pandemic set in. According to Aryaka’s report, those offerings will continue to play a key role in the hybrid-work world.

Teams and Office 365 saw strong adoption in the survey, at 58 percent and 55 percent, respectively. That was followed by Zoom and Google Docs at 35 percent, Salesforce at 28 percent and SAP HANA at 25 percent.

Application Performance an Issue

That said, performance is still an issue, with 42 percent of businesses saying slow performance for remote and mobile users was a top issue and 37 percent pointing to slow performance at branch offices. This puts a focus on the network and raises the issue of control as the shift to the cloud and services continues.

“This has always been an issue,” Ginsburg said. “You’re implementing your WAN infrastructure, you’re investing, you’re bringing SD-WAN and SASE, but if you don’t have control, if you don’t understand how your applications are performing, you don’t understand what your user experience is. It’s not serving your business objectives. This goes back to things like Teams [and] collaboration applications, where you need to have a very good understanding of how your web infrastructure is actually handling this.”

Aryaka in December announced AppAssure, software designed to provide deep visibility, observability and control to more than 3,500 applications.

A key part of the reshaping of the IT environment is the transformation of the WAN, Ginsburg said. Organizations aren’t just looking for security or for application optimization. They want everything in a single bucket, fully integrated and easy to use. This is where SASE comes in, bringing with it a broad array of capabilities, including WAN—or SD-WAN—security, application optimization, multicloud connectivity, and last-mile management.

It also dovetails with the shift away from Multiprocotol Label Switching (MPLS), which  for years had been the key technology for connecting branch offices with central data centers but has seen its usefulness wane in the wake of greater mobility and cloud adoption. About 46 percent of businesses plan to end some or all of their MPLS contracts over the coming year.

Also read: The Importance of Application Performance Management (APM) for Cloud-based Networks

Transformation Means More Money

Given the rampant change, organizations are expecting to see their networking budgets grow. About 25 percent of respondents anticipate budgets jump by 25 percent or more and three-quarters expect at least a 10 percent bump.

“This ties hand-in-hand into the other statistics that are coming out in terms of enterprises accelerating some of their longer-term digital transformation efforts,” Ginsburg said. “In the pandemic environment, what was originally a five-year project has now been brought inward. … People want to take a step back, understand where they need to invest for the long term and are beginning to do that planning and then beginning to make those investments.”

This also has created a change in priorities, he said. Where once businesses said reducing complexity in connectivity was the top need, they are now putting a greater emphasis on the foundational costs of transformation.

Read next: Democratizing IT for Rapid Digital Transformation

The post Pandemic Leads to Permanent Changes in Workforce, WAN: Aryaka appeared first on Enterprise Networking Planet.

Most recently, Verizon and Google Cloud announced collaboration designed to deliver Google Cloud’s compute and storage services to mobile and connected devices at the edge of Verizon’s network. The plan is to leverage the higher speeds, lower latencies, and greater capacity that 5G networks provide over 4G and LTE networks to support such emerging enterprise fields as autonomous mobile robots, intelligent logistics and automation in factories.

The two will combine Verizon’s private On Site 5G and private 5G Edge networks with Google Cloud’s Distributed Cloud Edge to drive greater productivity, security, and efficiency for a broad array of enterprises in a wide range of markets, from retail to manufacturing.

Reaching Out to the Edge

In a statement, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian—who since joining the company in 2019 has pushed the organization to expand its enterprise customer base—said that “by bringing intelligence from data centers to the network edge, [the companies] will allow customers to build new cross-industry edge solutions, unlock new revenue models, and transform the next generation of customer experiences— from AI-driven in-store operations to live inventory management on the factory floor, the possibilities span multiple industries.”

Verizon and Google Cloud also are developing a public 5G mobile edge computing solution that will enable enterprise developers to build and deploy applications at the edge of Verizon’s wireless networks in multiple locations in the United States. Ericsson will work with Verizon to pilot the 5G Edge with Google Distributed Cloud Edge offering as part of a proof-of-concept at its USA 5G Smart Factory.

The first use case for Ericsson will leverage Verizon’s Sensor Intelligence technology, which will include attaching a camera to an autonomous mobile robot that will scan packages for inventory and location purposes in a warehouse. Using computer vision, the robot will send bar code and shipping label data over the 5G network and mobile edge computing to the inventory management system for real-time analytics.

Also read: Best Practices for Securing Edge Networks

Other 5G-Cloud Partnerships

The Verizon-Google Cloud partnership mirrors similar collaborations that have formed for more than a year as 5G networks have expanded. Cisco Systems is partnering with Dish Network and data center services provider Equinix, Microsoft Azure and AT&T are working together in an alliance with similar goals as those of Verizon and Google Cloud, and Nokia earlier in 2021 said it is partnering with Azure, Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS), pairing its radio access network (RAN) technologies with cloud services from the world’s three largest providers.

Such partnerships make sense, particularly when the speed, latency and capacity benefits of 5G are factored in, according to Bob O’Donnell, principal analyst with TECHnalysis Research.

“Everybody is talking about 5G and edge and AI [artificial intelligence] all at once,” O’Donnell told Enterprise Networking Planet. “Originally we were talking about all these topics separately, but now it’s really about how to do edge computing leveraging a mobile 5G network because the sense is that’s where the big opportunities are going to happen. … Doing things that are actually different and transformative, the general consensus seems to be you’ve got to do a distributed computing application that leverages low latency, fast network connections and that’s what 5G offers.”

From Centralized to Distributed

In an increasingly multicloud world, what had been a fairly centralized cloud environment—with infrastructure housed in massive data centers and organizations using one cloud for one workload and other clouds for other applications. However, enterprises are pushing to more workloads and data between multiple public and private clouds in a seamless fashion, and now compute, storage, analytics and AI capabilities are extending beyond the cloud and into the rapidly growing edge.

5G networks not only offer 20 times the speed of 4G and more than 30 times the latency, they also provide much greater capacity, enabling more devices to run on the same network, a significant benefit in edge and Internet of Things (IoT) environments.

“The bottom line is there’s a whole bunch of factors that are coming together at the same time,” O’Donnell said. “You’ve got the extension of the cloud to the edge and the edge in this case being mobile networks. You’ve got the re-architecting of mobile networks that can leverage cloud computing. Then there’s this whole idea of figuring out how to leverage the combination of these two things to build entirely new business opportunities and then how and with whom do I bring those to market. It’s really a combination of all those different factors at play. It’s also something I think is going to take a while to play out because there’s so much involved.”

Also read: 5G Drives Collaboration Between Carriers, Cloud Infrastructure Providers

A Wide-Open Market

It’s also in the early stages. O’Donnell that eventually essentially the one-off pairings will end. Enterprises will demand it.

“Right now we’ve had this cloud provider hooking up with this mobile company,” the analyst said. “Realistically, we’re going to end up seeing all cloud providers working with all mobile companies because we live in a multicloud world and we live in a multi-network world, meaning different people have different combinations of cell providers and cloud providers. You’re not going to pick a cloud provider based on your cell provider, nor vice versa. People are going to want to have the option to use whatever cell provider or mobile network in conjunction with whatever the cloud computing provider they have.”

The collaborations between cloud providers and carriers will go even deeper, with each looking to leverage the benefits provided by the other. Google Cloud will want to explore how Verizon extends Google’s points of presence to run the applications and services beyond the cloud and Verizon will look to run portions of its network in the cloud, making Verizon a customer of Google Cloud.

Furthermore, virtual network functions (VNFs) and similar capabilities in software-defined networks (SDNS) will become important for 5G networks, O’Donnell said. That can be seen in such efforts as OpenRAN and vRAN, in which organizations use general-purpose compute hardware to run network tasks that in the past have run on dedicated networking hardware, similar to other software-defined environments, which will drive greater efficiencies and cost savings.

More Competition

The ongoing changes in the enterprise IT world could also lead to greater competition between mobile operators and cloud providers, he said. AWS last month announced a preview of its AWS Private 5G, a fully managed services aimed at helping enterprises deploy and scale their own private 5G networks without having to deal with the long waits and integrations that come with a carrier’s product, CEO Adam Selipsky said during his keynote address at the re:Invent show. The move will put AWS in competition with the mobile operators in the area of enterprise private 5G networks.

“That’s an intriguing potential threat,” O’Donnell said. “A lot of times in the past, you needed a carrier to get access to spectrum to set up a private cellular network. We were all LTE previously. But now that you have the ability to use a CBRS spectrum, which is freely available like a Wi-Fi type of thing that uses cellular connections, you don’t necessarily need a carrier to get access to spectrum. You do need a certain amount of equipment—you have radio antennas and things like that to just transmit and receive cellular signals—but once those signals are sent in or received, the ability to act upon that data could happen in a cloud computing environment. That becomes yet another interesting potential scenario.”

Read next: Going Beyond 5G: What to Expect from a 6G Future

The post Google and Verizon: The Latest Cloud Provider and Mobile Operator Pairing appeared first on Enterprise Networking Planet.

Now increasingly handled by server-side autonomous management and forms of artificial intelligence (AI) -based automation directed at system-level operations, the ‘too many spinning plates’ headaches (figuratively and literally) experienced in VM sprawl do still exist, but they have given way to a more granular brain ache that stems from the same type of neural imbalance.

The new network malady is API sprawl, also potentially known as API abomination or API application anathema if we’re looking for a snappier and more alliterative name tag. So what kind of  API meltdown is happening and what can we do about it?

A Latticework of Layers

If we accept the new well-worn suggestion that digital transformation is underway and enterprises are embracing cloud, mobile, data analytics, and device ubiquity, then we don’t need to remind ourselves that computing is becoming an inter-networked lattice of layered services and tiers. 

In this new IT fabric, the growing use of hybrid, multi and poly cloud environments means everyone’s application programming interfaces (APIs) are spread out all over the place. They’re all built with different standards, gateways, frameworks, policies and so on, subject to the environment they live in. It’s a Wild West API sprawl inside the new cloud maul.

Trying to manage all those APIs—keeping them secure, setting governance policies, maintaining performance plus availability and so on—is like herding cattle. Developers are forced to constantly switch from dashboard to dashboard as they hop between different sets of APIs to keep their house in order.

Also read:  What You Need to Know About Cloud Automation: Tools, Benefits, and Use Cases

An API Lasso

Integration and management centric API platform company MuleSoft’s answer is—give everyone a universal platform that can lasso any environment and round APIs up into a central corral—so developers and ‘business technologists’ (people outside IT who use APIs to build new stuff for themselves) can just head to one place to manage and access them all.

The company this month detailed its latest universal API management capabilities designed to enable IT teams to securely create, manage and govern any API across any environment. The universal API management capabilities—including Anypoint Flex Gateway, API Manager, API Experience Hub, API Designer with event-driven capabilities and API Governance—are built directly on Anypoint Platform, MuleSoft’s own branded platform for integration, API management and automation. 

MuleSoft reminds us that with the proliferation of digital touchpoints and the need to create seamless experiences for employees and customers, companies are creating more APIs than ever before. The firm points to its own research which suggests that the average enterprise organization today uses over 800 applications on average and  96% of them currently use public or private APIs—up from 80% last year. 

“Companies now have to manage and compose thousands of APIs spanning different teams, environments, and technologies,” said Meir Amiel, chief product officer, MuleSoft. “[Our] universal API management capabilities bring companies closer to achieving the composable business vision, by allowing them to choose and integrate best-of-breed solutions and compose new services using any API.” 

Also read: Juniper Launches Software Agent to Protect Applications in Cloud, On Premises

Composable Complexity vs. Consistency & Compliance

If there are opposing forces in action here, it may be the composable complexity of cloud vs. the need to strive for consistency, compliance, and compatibility. 

There is much talk among the behemoth cloud hyperscaler vendors and their dutiful litany of partner practitioners, protagonists and (even among some) pretenders about the need to enable so-called ‘unlocked innovation’ and be able to use cloud as it was intended for true breadth and flexibility. Without the ability to shift workloads across clouds effectively, that innovation channel remains closed off (or at least partially blocked) for many.

To navigate these hybrid and distributed ecosystems, IT teams can use MuleSoft’s new universal API management capabilities on Anypoint Platform to design, build, deploy, operate, and discover all of their organization’s APIs. In addition, MuleSoft also aims to help companies operationalize governance across all of their enterprise APIs to help them comply with industry regulations and internal design standards, without adding friction to development. 

But Mulesoft is not the only player; security stalwart F5 also plays heavily in this space.

Senior director and distinguished technologist at F5 Rajesh Narayanan says that enterprises are, irrespective of size, a combination of product and IT services developed on behalf of business units that make up the organization.

“Enterprises are naturally siloed with information shared on a need-to-know basis. As enterprises expand, so do the various business units, product teams and operational teams. In essence, the business ‘sprawls’. Because every team and business unit today relies significantly on APIs, we can see the inevitable result is API sprawl,” said Narayanan.

Looking at where we go next, Narayanan said that we can see that a new approach is needed to address the challenges that will arise from API sprawl because existing solutions focus on challenges within a cluster; that is, the challenges of managing APIs within a microservices environment. 

“Existing solutions have not yet expanded their scope to address the challenges of API sprawl across clusters; that is, between microservices environments that span locations, business units, and product and operational teams,” wrote Narayanan, in a technical discussion blog jointly authored by Lori MacVittie in her role as F5 principal technical evangelist.

Hybrid, distributed ecosystems have become the norm, which adds complexity to the IT landscape. According to Deloitte, 97% of IT managers are planning to take a best-of-breed approach by distributing workloads across two or more clouds to boost resilience and support regulatory requirements. These distributed ecosystems result in data silos, limited reuse, inconsistent governance, and security across services. 

There’s also the spectre of limited visibility with many management consoles across cloud vendors. API management has clearly become an entire sub-genre and sub-discipline of cloud computing in and of itself. 

 Read next: The Integration Chasm that is Killing Cloud

The post Fighting API Sprawl in the Modern Cloud Maul appeared first on Enterprise Networking Planet.

Now the startup, which was founded in 2012, is putting the organizational pieces in place to expand the reach of its switchless network in the highly competitive market and is doing so with another $48 million raised via private funding.

The company this week announced the appointment of Marc Sultzbaugh, a longtime executive with Mellanox Technologies, as its co-CEO alongside founder and co-CEO Doug Carwardine. Sultzbaugh has been on Rockport’s board since December 2020.

Sales and Marketing a Focus

He will be responsible for growing sales of Rockport’s Switchless Network, as well as technology and product management, marketing, manufacturing, and customer relationships. Carwardine will continue overseeing research and development, finance, and people and culture.

Carwardine told Enterprise Networking Planet that after almost a decade getting the switchless architecture built and ready for the market, the demands of the CEO job were continuing to increase. Being able to split duties with someone with Sultzbaugh’s expertise would allow him to continue to focus on what he does best and puts the necessary skills in place at the top at a time of change for Rockport.

“We stayed quiet longer than most organizations will typically do and we did that for a very good reason,” he said. “It’s at the point where the engineering is essentially there and now it’s time to commercialize the business. We’re going to transition from what was really an engineering-focused business to now a commercial opportunity to get this product in the field and let our customers reap the benefits of what we’ve created.”

Also read: 7 Enterprise Networking Trends to Watch in 2022

Great Opportunity

For his part, Sultzbaugh told Enterprise Networking Planet that after spending a year on the Rockport board and seeing the technology the company was pulling together, he was eager to sign on as co-CEO when the opportunity arose. 

“Our premise is that we’ve made complex networking simple,” he said. “That’s an important element. It’s easy for customers to achieve the kind of value proposition that we’re proposing.”

Sultzbaugh, who for more than 19 years helped steer the rise of Mellanox in the high-end networking space until it was bought by GPU maker Nvidia for $7 billion last year, said such trends as the cloud and emerging applications like AI and machine learning are driving rapid change in enterprise IT. In the data center, compute has evolved with the use of GPUs and other accelerators while storage has shifted from spinning disks to solid-state drives (SSDs), which has improved latency and better supports the newer scale-out applications.

New Architecture for Networking

While there also have been changes in networking—for example, the evolution of the standard network interface controller (NIC) into a smartNIC or data processing unit—the fundamental switching architectures have remained stagnant, which has kept performance unpredictable and traffic congested, he said. Those are the kinds of problems the Rockport Switchless Architecture is meant to solve.

Removing the switch from the equation will drive improvements in performance, bandwidth and latency, according to the company. The vendor’s Rockport Network Operating System (rNOS) is designed to navigate data through the best network paths to reduce latency and congestion. It also breaks down packets in small pieces called FLTs to help make the movement through the network more efficient.

Rockport’s NC1225 networking card is housed in servers and storage enclosures and moves the switching tasks normally found in traditional switches to each endpoint, which essentially becomes the network. The NC1225 is not a NIC or smartNIC, which rely on switches to create a fabric. It’s powered by a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) accelerator from Xilinx and it’s a half-height, half-depth PCIe card that includes a standard Ethernet host and enables a 300 Gb/s fabric in each node.

There also is a passive fiber optic cable that connects the card to another component called a SHFL (pronounced “shuffle”) that sits where top-of-rack switches are normally located. There are up to 12 links coming from the NC1225 card that are plugged into the SHFL, creating the connectivity between nodes.

Rockport also offers its Autonomous Network Manager software for monitoring performance, tracking traffic flows and managing settings. The company estimates that its architecture improves workload completion times 28 percent faster than traditional networks and reduces latency under load by 3.5 times. There also are savings in power, heat and cooling (69 percent), space and weight (77 percent) and cables (72 percent).

Also read: Data Center Technology Trends for 2022

A Better Way

“What Rockport is doing is basically breaking that paradigm and saying there’s a better way to architect the switch fabric in data centers that will not only give you more performance, but give you predictable performance,” Sultzbaugh said. “While the network is a relatively small part of the overall IT spend, we’re having an outsized impact on the utilization of all the infrastructure and that has all kinds of goodness.”

Rockport already has some high-profile early adopters, including the Texas Advanced Computer Center (TACC), which houses the Frontera supercomputer, a Dell EMC system powered by Intel Xeon chips and GPUs from Nvidia and interconnected via Mellanox’s IninfiBand. Another early adopter is Durham University in the UK, home to the DiRAC integrated supercomputing facility and the COSMA system. 

Classic Go-to-Market Strategy

The company is adopting what Sultzbaugh calls a “classic multi-tier go-to-market” strategy that includes the early adopters, which gives Rockport proof points that can be referred to with other potential customers. The vendor also will leverage channel partners like value-added resellers and traditional server and storage OEMs.

“We’re going after enterprise HPC [and] AI customers around financial services, life sciences, manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, all of those areas that are heavy users of performance [architectures],” he said. “We’re targeting people looking at 100 gig networks and above. It’s the fastest growing part of the data center Ethernet market.”

Rockport will have direct contact with customers but will fulfill orders exclusively through channels. In the cloud, the company initially will go after second-tier and software-as-a-service (Saas) providers that also are involved with AI, HPC, and machine learning workloads and later will target the hyperscalers.

Funding Will Help

The $48 million in new funding, which brings total investments in Rockport to almost $100 million, will help with all this. The latest round was led by Northern Private Capital, with current investors also participating. The money will be used to accelerate the company’s go-to-market efforts and expand sales and marketing.

“We’ve taken a number of years to build a pretty unique product and we protected the intellectual property, taking that very seriously out of the gate,” Carwardine said, adding that at this point for Rockport, the company could use the money. “We’re just going to market now and so that’s very important to fuel the growth. The fact that we’re getting endorsed to this level by the kinds of investors that we have speaks volumes of the business. These things don’t happen without a lot of diligence.”

Read next: Best Network Monitoring Tools & Software of 2021

The post Networking Startup Rockport Adds Co-CEO, $48 Million in Funding appeared first on Enterprise Networking Planet.

The company’s new EdgeConnect Microbranch is a single access point (AP) that delivers a broad array of connectivity services that are found in on-campus environments, from troubleshooting problems and zero-touch onboarding to software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) capabilities and security features like zero-trust and secure access services edge (SASE) security frameworks.

In addition, like other Remote Access Points (RAPs) from Aruba, the EdgeConnect Microbranch device can be managed via the company’s cloud-based Aruba Central networking management and monitoring solution.

Pandemic Accelerates IT Decentralization

Along with other networking vendors, Aruba, which is owned by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, for more than a decade has been adding to its portfolio of remote work products and has continued that effort since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced a dramatic shift to working from home, a change that has cemented the hybrid work model at many businesses since.

“Remote work and work-from-home, which may have been a transitory state a year ago, is no longer that,” Larry Lunetta, vice president of solutions portfolio marketing at Aruba, told Enterprise Networking Planet. “It’s part and parcel of how organizations now execute. More than 50 percent of workers are expected to be in some form of remote work, depending on the industry. Depending on your position, it could be much higher than that.”

This comes at a time when the IT and business worlds already were becoming increasingly decentralized, with the growing adoption of the cloud and the rapidly expanding edge. That already was forcing companies to find tech solutions to enable those working at home or other remote locations to have the tools needed to do their work. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated all that.

Also read: Home SD-WAN: Networking Vendor Responds to the Pandemic

Aruba’s Expands Edge Services Platform

The EdgeConnect Microbranch is part of Aruba’s larger Edge Services Platform (ESP) that includes not only APs but also a suite of SD-WAN services inherited when HPE last year bought SD-WAN vendor Silver Peak for $925 million and folded it into Aruba, which has become the networking arm for the parent company.

SD-WAN is among the fastest-growing sectors of the larger networking market, driven in large part by rising demand for more performance and better security for applications in the cloud, according to market research firm Futuriom. The analysts noted in a report earlier this year that the market hit a “pandemic pause” in the first half of 2020, but is back on track and is now expected to grow an average of 34 percent a year, from $2.6 billion this year to $4.6 billion by 2023.

“As we move into this true hybrid work environment, where you may be in the office sometimes and you may be working remotely other times, you want as identical an experience as you can get,” Lunetta said. “That applies not just to someone who’s doing Zoom calls or working on Office 365, but those sort of non-remote-friendly types of functions like a call center. A lot of what we’ve built in via the SD-WAN services and SASE facilitates and is intended to enable those kinds of functions to be done remotely as they are in the office.”

Adding SD-WAN and SASE

The addition of SD-WAN and SASE—which essentially combines networking and network security functions—means that EdgeConnect Microbranch enables remote workers now have the same connectivity, identity-based access control, management and analytics features that have gotten from Aruba’s RAPs without having to use additional on-premises hardware or agents on devices.

The new offering ensures that work-from-home employees can run the latency-sensitive applications like unified communications and bandwidth-intensive devices that their in-office counterparts can with the same level of security, according to Aruba officials. Services include policy-based routing to ensure application traffic is optimized, scalability, and improved uptime and reliability.

New features include tunnel and route orchestration to ensure network performance by orchestrating VPN tunnels on demand and automated rerouting of traffic, SASE integration for secure connectivity to such cloud security services as Zscaler through the AP and enhanced WAS visibility.

“One of the things that we’ve done is enable EdgeConnect MicroBranch to run on any access point and that really opens up this idea of performance and scale that we perhaps didn’t have before with the specific access point that sat in the home,” Lunetta said. “Instead of having the need now for multiple access points, you can put in a Wi-Fi 6 or a Wi-Fi 6E Edg Connect MicroBranch and service a lot of endpoints and a lot of devices.”

Also read: The Home SD-WAN and SASE Markets are Rapidly Expanding

Competitive Differentiation

The ability to offer myriad capabilities in its RAPs and EdgeConnect Microbranch is a competitive differentiator for Aruba against its competitors, he said.

“We feel like you have to be good at a number of things here,” Lunetta said. “You have to be good at connectivity, you have to be good at packaging hardware up in a way that can support these kinds of services, you have to be good at the cloud, you have to be good at security. We’ve seen new players come in that maybe are good at one of those, but can’t really cover the waterfront in terms of, how do you mirror the in-office experience in the home?”

The EdgeConnect Microbranch solution is available in early access, with general availability coming in March for any APs running the vendor’s ArubaOS 10 networking operating system with a Foundation AP License. Such licenses are available for $145 per AP and prices for Aruba APs starts at $575 for the Aruba 303H Series.

Read next: Top SD-WAN Providers & Vendors for 2021

The post Aruba Brings SD-WAN, SASE to Home Offices with New Offering appeared first on Enterprise Networking Planet.

The acquisition underscores the growing value of container architectures in solving many storage problems that have developed as container workloads increase as well as firmly establishes DataCore in the Kubernetes space. The combination of DataCore and MayaData aims to help medium and large enterprises to simplify container technology with purpose-built storage that meets the manageability and security requirements of cloud-native container-based applications. 

“​​MayaData’s team will become part of DataCore, and its MayaStor will become a DataCore product,” DataCore President Dave Zabrowski told Enterprise Networking Planet. “Together we will be providing customers with solutions for both architectural approaches to containers: those who want to leverage existing SAN or NAS infrastructure, using products like our SANsymphony and vFILO along with a CSI plug-in—and those who want a container-native storage solution like MayaData, with dedicated storage controllers in the container stack, to achieve portability and the benefits of containerization for the storage component as well.”

Also read: Virtualization vs. Containerization: What is the Difference?

The OpenEBS Factor

OpenEBS, the Kubernetes-native container attached storage solution that was developed by MayaData and later donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), has seen rapid adoption since its launch in 2020. The CNCF 2020 Survey cites OpenEBS as the number one cloud-native storage software used in production. At the end of Q3 2021, OpenEBS had over 600,000 pulls per week—representing 300% growth in eight months—and was the top-ranked container native storage solution being used or evaluated in a recent ad hoc Kubernetes developer poll.

“The community is the reason for the success of OpenEBS, which is the foundation of MayaData,” Zabrowski said. “It is core to our strategy in this market. We will continue to invest engineering resources in advancing OpenEBS,  and we will continue to invest talent and time in the community itself. Not just because OpenEBS is the foundation of MayaData,  but because the community provides us with millions of users that can give us real-world feedback on the product and contributions to make OpenEBS better. This is in itself a huge competitive advantage over purely commercial solutions and other open-source projects that don’t have the critical mass that OpenEBS already has.”

Datacore began offering a CSI interface back in 2019 to allow IT enterprises to support container-based workloads within their existing infrastructure. IT teams that prefer a native storage interface in the container stack will have OpenEBS as an option. 

“OpenEBS has become the de-facto standard for enterprise workloads on Kubernetes. OpenEBS is seeing millions of pulls every month, and every survey shows it has a good lead on other storage technologies, which reflects the technical superiority of its architecture,” said Kiran Mova, architect and maintainer of OpenEBS, who is also co-founder and chief architect at MayaData. “Joining DataCore will accelerate our plans to bring even more attractive capabilities to market.”

MayaData’s platform offers availability, security, and scalability for enterprise-grade container workloads with workload-specific storage and increasing granularity and control. Backed by complete portability across clouds and hybrid environments with its OpenEBS deployments, MayaData users can run production applications on a container stack and streamlined management at scale.

Giving DataCore Greater Reach

Nick Connolly, technical lead for the CNCF Technical Advisory Group on Storage and DataCore’s chief scientist noted that with MayData, “DataCore will have the technical resources to reach a wider community of enterprises, faster, while meeting the strict technical requirements of enterprise applications.” 

Indeed, the acquisition of MayaData boosts DataCore’s standing in the cloud-native community, with the expanded portfolio placing the company as the leading independent provider of software-defined storage solutions across  block, file, object, HCI, and container-native storage, Zabrowski noted. 

“No other company offers this breadth with best-in-class products in each category,” Zabrowski added, “meaning that when a customer brings a challenge to DataCore, we have a complete toolbox to give organizations the right technology for every storage problem, and can be the single vendor to solve all their storage needs.”

Read next: Best DCIM Software for Managing Data Center Infrastructure

The post DataCore Acquires MayaData, Gaining Foothold in Kubernetes Space appeared first on Enterprise Networking Planet.

The European-based company recently announced that Versa’s software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) and secure access service edge (SASE) products will now be available to customers through its network of more than 2,900 resellers.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is putting a focus on midsize organizations with the latest networking offerings. It noted the easy creation and configuration of networks offered through the Shortest Path Bridge (SPB) standard and the optimized security that can be leveraged across multiple remote locations.

A Good Mesh

Stephan Robineau, executive vice president of Alcatel-Lucent’s network business division, noted that Versa’s technologies mesh well with what his company offers.

“Their solutions for branch office cloud and security services fit perfectly with our enterprise networking solutions, designed to simplify IT automation, secure IoT connectivity deployment, and integrate quickly with business workflows,” Robineau said in a statement. “By leveraging this transformative technology, we enrich our new network-as-a-service offer with complementary solutions to meet the business demands of today but also future-proof enterprise IT operations.”

For Versa, the relationship with Alcatel-Lucent expands the growing list of companies the networking vendor is partnering with. Versa not only works with such giant cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Tencent, and Alibaba Cloud but also telecommunications and services companies like Comcast Business, Ericsson, Sierra Wireless, and Ciena.

Also read: Transitioning to a SASE Architecture

Versa Extends Its Reach

Such partnerships help Versa extend its reach around the world. Hector Avalos, vice president of sales in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region, pointed to Alcatel-Lucent’s 2,900 resellers, more than 830,000 customers and presence in more than 50 countries.

“Bringing Versa SASE and Titan [SD-WAN] solutions into [Alcatel-Lucent’s] portfolio allows Versa to address their install base and extend our capabilities to meet the global market demand for SASE and SD-WAN,” Avalos told Enterprise Networking Planet. “Versa is expanding our partner [and] reseller ecosystem to maximize our business opportunity, leveraging their salesforce and customer intimacy.”

Alcatel-Lucent will integrate Versa’s Titan offerings and SASE technology into its own networking portfolio. The offering initially will be accessed in Europe and will expand worldwide in the following months. 

Aiming for the Midmarket

The company sees the technology as a way to grow its presence among mid-market businesses. Versa launched Titan—its cloud-managed SD-WAN offering—in 2019, aiming to reduce the complexity around WAN transformation efforts. Channel partners like managed service providers (MSPs), value-added resellers (VARs, and systems integrators (SIs) can deliver, deploy, and centrally manage WAN infrastructures for their clients.

Titan includes both networking capabilities as well as software-defined security management tools that make it easier for organizations to monitor for security vulnerabilities, application behavior, network performance, and bandwidth utilization.

Integrating SASE into SD-WAN

In March, Versa integrated its SASE technology into Titan, with the goal of giving organizations a solution that is easy to manage and deploy—including zero-touch provisioning and single management interface—and includes networking and security.

Gartner was the first to name the SASE technology trend, which is being driven by the increasingly distributed nature of IT and the mobility of data and workloads, all of which increase the attack surface for bad actors. SASE essentially marries SD-WAN and hybrid network connectivity with an array of network security functions, including web gateways, cloud access security brokers (CASB), zero-trust network access, and firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), all of which is delivered as cloud services.

In June, Versa released a report which showed that the demand for SASE technology was continuing to grow. This trend was fueled in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many businesses to rapidly adopt remote-work models for employees and further move data and applications away from central data centers and out toward the cloud and edge. In addition, organizations had to adopt bandwidth-hungry technologies like videoconferencing to help all the work-at-home employees continue to collaborate.

About 34 percent of the 501 IT security and networking professionals surveyed by Sapio Research for Versa said their companies had already adopted SASE over the past year. Another 30 percent said they plan to do so in the next six to 12 months.

Also read: SD-WAN is Important for an IoT and AI Future

Confusion in the SASE Market

That said, the report also found there was some confusion as to what SASE actually is, due in part to some vendors without the right architecture promoting their offerings as SASE. Versa’s survey found that 69 percent of respondents said they are unclear what SASE entails. Michael Wood, chief marketing officer at Versa, said that at the time, much of that confusion came from vendors essentially pulling together security and networking products on premises or in the cloud “in a Frankenstein approach” and then calling it SASE.

“Vendors are creating this confusion to sell legacy products, so the onus is on the industry to dig deep technically into how a company architected, designed, and built their SASE solution,” Wood said. “Was it cobbled together from multiple products, acquisitions, and partnerships, or is it built intentionally from the ground up to be fully integrated? 

“Continued education will help IT organizations realize there is a true difference between legacy bolt-on implementations and a genuine SASE architecture being used to build the modern secure network.”

Versa isn’t the only one that sees SASE as a fast-growing market. Analysts at 650 Group said in a report that the global SASE market will grow five-fold between now and 2025, when it will reach more than $11 billion. There also is a lot of competition. The crowded space includes not only Versa but other vendors like Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco Systems, Extreme Networks, Palo Alto, VMware, Fortinet, and Zscaler.

Versa tightly integrates SASE with Titan Cloud, offering SD-WAN with a range of services that all sit atop the Versa Operating System (VOS). It can be delivered either through the cloud, on premises, or in a hybrid fashion.

Read next: Top SD-WAN Providers & Vendors for 2021

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