Cisco Blog

A successful RFP for IoT: Five considerations for IoT at the edge

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 15:56:11 GMT

While the data generated from an Internet of Things (IoT) deployment holds a lot of promise, it can also hold a lot of complexity and risk. At the moment, 58 percent of IoT projects fail and only about 25 percent of companies derive business value from IoT. To improve success rates, organizations need to carefully think through a number of elements before writing a Request for Proposal (RFP). In no particular order, here are five of the ten factors to consider for IoT at the edge, taken from my paper, “The Top 10 Considerations for IoT at the Edge.”

Light edge vs. heavy edge

As you go about planning your IoT implementation, you have flexibility in where you perform analytics, machine learning, etc. However, performing these functions at the edge requires additional infrastructure (read: investment). A light (weight) edge is a relatively simple solution that gives a user compute, storage, security, and network functions to allow them to connect, run, and lightly process data or send outcomes to be handled by the cloud. Compare this to a heavy (weight) edge solution that has a full stack of technology that enables “cycles” – heavy applications such as analytics, machine learning, etc. – to do actual work at the edge of the network. If you prefer a thinner edge, you can collect the data and get it out as quickly as possible or perform preprocessing at the edge with minimum compute and send the rest to the cloud. The choice is yours, but regardless of what you select, it’s important to understand the implications of that choice.

Data management and analytics

Much like light edge or heavy edge, the decisions you make about data management and analytics will have far-reaching implications. There’s a lot to consider, including how much data you have, what you want to do with it, whether you’ll run artificial intelligence or machine learning to perform analytics and predictions — and, of course, how you’ll manage it. You need the technology, but do you also have the people and are they properly skilled?

Security

This is a no-brainer, right? An IoT deployment requires enterprise-grade security controls and best practices. Think network segmentation and defense-in-depth. At a minimum you need security on the hardware, network, applications, and data layer. Don’t cut corners here!

Governance

Data governance, like security, is essential. Governance is about protecting your intellectual property — IoT data — by ensuring that the right data is going to the right place at the right time and is accessed by the right person and the right IoT asset. For example, you get to choose if a piece of data goes back to a robot vendor or a cloud service provider. Not only do you have the right to make these choices, but you must do so. If you don’t, you risk the wrath of regulatory compliance auditors, privacy laws such as GDPR, or even industrial espionage and sabotage.

Integration

Integrating the technology that comprises an IoT solution at the edge is no easy feat. You’ll likely have hardware, software, a gateway management platform, compute, storage, application, and data management solutions — all from different vendors. You’ll be lucky to find a systems integrator who can do this (pricey) work. To reduce complexity and costs, look for a vendor that provides a simple solution that does the integration for you.

As I mentioned at the opening, these are just five requirements taken from a recent guide I put together. If you’d like to dive deeper into the five requirements I’ve introduced here and five additional that will help reduce the risk of your IoT deployment, read “The Top 10 Considerations for IoT at the Edge.”

The post A successful RFP for IoT: Five considerations for IoT at the edge appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Cisco Receives 2020 Contact Center Technology Award from CUSTOMER Magazine

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 15:27:46 GMT

Cisco Webex Contact Center CCaaS honored for improving customer service technology and customer experience

Award Winner Second Year in a Row

I’m excited to announce that Webex Contact Center was among the 2020 Contact Center Technology Award winners, presented by CUSTOMER Magazine this month. This award honors vendors that have embraced technology as a key tool for customer service excellence and distinguish their success as innovators, thought leaders, and market movers in the contact center and customer care industries.

Let me share some of the reasons Webex Contact Center received this recognition.

Cloud Agility

Webex Contact Center is our omnichannel contact center Software as a Service for small, mid-sized, and distributed contact centers. It’s powered by the public cloud, making it highly scalable, flexible, secure, and agile. It uses artificial intelligence and data insights to power contact center performance, and empower agents with greater knowledge and context, enabling them to deliver enriched and more meaningful engagements with their customers.

Webex Contact Center is built on the unique Webex Platform for Contact Center. This open platform architecture enables our customers to easily add and integrate with advanced cloud applications such as AI-based virtual agents, advanced data analytics, workforce optimization, and other Webex applications, including Webex Experience Management, Webex Calling, and Webex Control Hub.

This multi-tenant approach benefits Cisco Contact Center customers in two ways. First, it enables all customers – whether cloud or on-premises, to take advantage of advanced applications, continuous feature delivery, and a low-disruption path to the cloud. Second, by having integrations between Webex applications, collaboration within the organization is more seamless, reduces costs, and makes solution acquisition and management easier for our customers.

Business Continuity

With the increase in customer inquiry and call volumes, and millions of agents now working from home, many businesses have experienced a massive disruption in operating their business. Some have needed a contact center for the very first time to set up an emergency “hot line,” and others have needed to augment and scale their existing one to offload call volumes. In the first 60 days of the pandemic, we were able to quickly deploy and expand contact center solutions and remote agents in less than five days for more than 150 businesses who had an urgent need.

Here’s what some of these customers have to say.

“ Webex Contact Center enabled us to provide and respond to the immediate needs of the business, while maintaining social distancing and work from home. We were able to provide scale above and beyond what we could have established with an on-premises solution.”

“Webex Contact Center has been an enabler for remote working during COVID. Without it, we would have had to close our contact center for longer.”

“Webex Contact Center has allowed us to adapt “agile working” during the current pandemic.”

“Webex Contact Center provided a quick and easy way to handle the call volume coming in, and keep track of trends so we could forecast and plan accordingly. It provided all the right metrics to report to the management team.”

Digital Transformation and Artificial Intelligence

Over the past two years, Cisco acquired AI companies Voicea and CloudCherry to accelerate our Webex Contact Center AI practice. To deliver AI solutions quickly to customers, we use a “best of breed” approach, using our own in-house AI, and AI from partners like Google Cloud. For example, Virtual Agents for voice and chat are powered by Google Cloud CCAI and provide our customers with new ways of responding to their customers using AI-powered self-service technologies. With the rise of digital interactions, automated self-service has become the preferred method for consumers to interact with a business. Self-service enables a contact center to offload incoming inquires, while providing customers with faster, 24/7 service. According to research advisory firm Nemertes, companies experience a 37% increase in CSAT scores when using AI for customer contact.

Coming up this fall, we’ll be introducing Agent Answers, an intelligent agent assistant that displays context-driven suggestions and guidance in real-time to contact center agents as they are talking to or chatting with a customer, minimizing agent research time, while improving first contact resolution and customer satisfaction.

In addition, using Cisco’s own AI we’ve delivered Agent Call Transcription. Powered by the same groundbreaking speech engine that delivers transcripts and captions on the Webex Meetings platform, this unique feature provides real-time transcription of the agent/customer conversation, giving agents a full transcript and summary of each call. This allows agents to focus on what the customer is saying while minimizing post-call wrap-up time and ensuring transaction accuracy and follow-up with the customer. Agent Call Transcription is currently in field trials on Cisco Contact Center platforms and in development for Webex Contact Center.

Bringing CX to the Contact Center Forefront

In January, we introduced Webex Experience Management (formerly CloudCherry), our next-generation AI-powered customer experience management SaaS. This solution provides a true 360-degree view of the customer journey bringing tremendous insight to all customer touchpoints across the organization.

Cisco will be uniquely embedding these capabilities directly into Webex Contact Center, beginning with post-call surveys via SMS and email. With this information, organizations are empowered with customer sentiment data in real-time, providing them with a better understanding of what customers are experiencing, and enabling them to make informed decisions and take action on how to improve those experiences to drive higher NPS, CSAT, and CES scores. More integrations with the agent desktop will be coming out in the near future.

This is Just the Beginning

This is just the beginning of how we’re enhancing Webex Contact Center to help organizations create greater efficiencies, improve productivity, and achieve more meaningful relationships with their customers that improve loyalty and financial outcomes. Keep an eye out for more continuous innovation from Cisco Contact Center!

Read the Webex Contact Center ebook to learn more.

Learn more about Cisco Contact Center solutions here.

Aragon Research names Cisco as a leader in intelligent contact centers. Read their latest report.

We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Collaboration on social!

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Award Info

This 15th-annual Contact Center Technology Award, presented by CUSTOMER Magazine, honors vendors and technologies that have embraced technology as a key tool for customer service excellence. This award distinguishes their success as innovators, thought leaders, and market movers in the contact center and customer care industries.

The post Cisco Receives 2020 Contact Center Technology Award from CUSTOMER Magazine appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

UC Today Awards AI-Powered Cisco Webex Assistant 2020 Innovative Product of the Year

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 15:27:32 GMT

Cisco Recognized for Delivering Highly Innovative Webex Assistant AI Solution

We have some great news to share. Cisco won two UC Today 2020 Awards last week: Webex for Best Collaboration Platform & Webex Assistant for Most Innovative Product.

UC Today is the industry’s leading authority on communication and collaboration technology. The panel of judges included some of the most reputable analysts in our industry including Zeus Kerravala, ZK Research, Blair Pleasant, Commfusion, Kevin Kieller, enableUC, Melissa Swartz, Swartz Consulting, Jon Arnold, J. Arnold & Associates, and Irwin Lazar, Nemertes Research.

Webex Assistant is based on the groundbreaking speech engine by Voicea, the company I co-founded that was acquired by Cisco in September 2019, and AI technology from MindMeld, the company Cisco acquired in May 2017. We’ve natively integrated our AI technology into Webex Meetings and Webex Rooms, and we’ve also uniquely integrated call transcription into the contact center agent-customer experience, giving agents a full transcript and summary of each call.

Let me tell you more about why Webex Assistant was recognized as most innovative.

Never Again Touch Another Button to Start a Call or Take Notes in a Meeting

In today’s meeting saturated work-from-home era, businesses place their trust on the technology that enables them to gather virtually so they can get work done and keep their business moving forward. Highly secure, dependable, and easy-to-use products are a must. Innovation is a plus.

And Webex Assistant delivers. It’s the first AI-powered fully integrated in-meeting digital assistant for the enterprise, automating meeting tasks and bringing voice commands to Webex video conferences.

Imagine getting a full transcription of all of your meetings, being able to ask for things during your meetings, and then, having immediate access to the full transcript, recording, highlights, and action items after your meetings. Think of how much time will be saved, productivity gained, and follow-through to ensure accountability, outcomes and decisions.

This is the power of a voice-first design approach! Webex Assistant provides real-time closed-captioning, takes notes, creates action items, and allows you to mark highlights. You can download the meeting transcript, and each speaker is identified so you can go back and hear who said what. Searching for topics and making updates is easy, so you can quickly share meeting outcomes and keep your team coordinated. It’s that simple.

Solution Highlights

Webex Assistant for Webex Meetings automates many of the mundane tasks when hosting a meeting – note-taking, highlights and assigning action items. This way you can focus on the meeting discussion rather than on being distracted with note-taking. It uses natural language processing (NLP) to support voice commands, real-time transcription, automatic closed captioning, highlights and notes, automatic action items, post-meeting keyword-search, editing and distribution, and recorded transcripts. And it offers the industry’s highest transcription word accuracy rate, giving you meaningful and highly accurate content regardless of participants’ speech delivery, talking styles or accents.

Webex Assistant for Webex Rooms provides a zero-touch meeting room experience. You can easily call colleagues, book meeting rooms and fully control your meetings using only your voice. For example, you can start, join, record, mute, adjust the volume, invite colleagues and end meetings without ever touching anything! In addition, the “proactive join” feature verbally reminds you to join your call before your meeting. Just enter a room and your mobile device or laptop will pair automatically. Webex Assistant will then let you know when your meeting is about to start and ask if you’re ready to join. Calling a colleague or adding someone to the meeting is simple. Just say “Ok Webex call John” and Webex Assistant will provide a list of colleagues based on your collaboration history with people named John.

Highly Secure in the Cisco Cloud

Webex Assistant for Webex Meetings is also the industry’s only first-party transcription service, which means your data stays securely in the Cisco cloud and doesn’t have to be sent to a third-party to be transcribed and then sent back – which could result in potential security breaches.

We Thought About Everyone

According to the World Health Organization, over 5% of the world’s population has disabling hearing loss. It’s estimated that by 2050 over 900 million people, or one in every ten people will struggle with this condition. Webex Assistant makes meetings more accessible for participants who are hearing impaired or for those who are not fluent in the language of the meeting. The solution supports close captioning for when it’s easier to read than hear, and is available today in English, and will soon be available in Spanish, French, and German for Webex Rooms devices.

Continued Innovation

We will continue to embed this incredible technology across the rest of the Webex platform – including post-call transcription for Webex Calling and even more integrations with Webex Contact Center. Stay tuned!

Webex Assistant for Webex Meetings is currently available in a 90-day free trial to Webex customers and Webex enterprise trial users.

Webex Assistant for Webex Rooms is currently available at no additional cost on cloud registered devices including the Webex Desk Pro, Webex Room Series, Webex Room Kit Series, and Webex Board Series devices.

To learn more about Webex Assistant visit our website.

Read more about our award-winning Webex Platform.

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The post UC Today Awards AI-Powered Cisco Webex Assistant 2020 Innovative Product of the Year appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Cisco Wins UC Today’s Best Collaboration Platform for 2020

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 15:26:56 GMT

UC Today announced that Cisco has won in the Best Collaboration Platform category for their 2020 UC Awards. The awards recognize and celebrate the most innovative and forward-thinking companies in the communication landscape. Cisco won two UC Today 2020 Awards:

•Webex for Best Collaboration Platform
•Webex Assistant for Most Innovative Product

Webex is a comprehensive communication, collaboration, and customer engagement platform that brings together calling, meeting, and messaging with one unified application – and a single pane of glass for device control. Additionally, Webex offers integrated devices like the 730 Bluetooth headset, Desk Pro and DX80, to huddle room and conference room video solutions. The recognition from UC Today underscores our leadership in the areas of AI, security, and user experience.

Work Smarter with AI-Powered Tools

When it comes to AI, Cisco pioneered the concept of cognitive collaboration. Cognitive collaboration provides relationship intelligence and gives user information like biographies, work history, titles, and reporting structure. The AI-enabled Webex Assistant helps you easily carry out tasks like joining a meeting with your voice, calling a contact and recording a call. And it can proactively reach out when a meeting is about to start. Webex Assistant can also automatically take meeting notes, organizes your action items, and provides you with a transcript including closed-captioning during your meeting.

Securing Users, Meetings and Content

From a security standpoint, Webex is unparalleled. Webex gives you the peace of mind that all your collaboration is secure – with end-to-end encryption by default for files, whiteboards, and messages – and options for end-to-end encrypted meetings. In fact, Webex has offered end-to-end encryption for meetings for over 10 years – while other vendors are just getting started developing those capabilities. And with extended security options, you can protect your users from leakage of sensitive data and malicious files – even when they’re collaborating with people from outside of your company. Webex also has best in class support for legal and regulatory compliance.

Single Platform for the Win

Unlike cobbling together piecemeal solutions, Webex gives you one single platform to cover all your collaboration needs – and deliver a seamless and integrated user and management experience. But don’t just take our word for it. Look at the over 300 million users who use Webex every day to get work done. And while Webex is a standards-based, interoperable open platform – having seamless device and software integration is key to delivering an easy-to-use and intuitive user experience as well as reducing IT management complexity.

Continuous Experience and More Integrations

Last year, Cisco launched the Webex Teams unified app, bringing together calling, meetings, messaging, and video device control – giving you a consistent experience no matter your join device. There’s no need for third party-connectors and support.

Additionally, Webex improved the user experience with new integrations such as the Webex application for Google Calendar, which lets you schedule and join a Webex video conference meeting right from within your Google Calendar app. And Webex refined our Microsoft Teams integration, including the ability for hosts to share recordings directly within a Microsoft Teams channel. And Webex has ready-made, DIY integrations with leading business apps like Salesforce.com and ServiceNow – via open APIs, SDKs and widgets.

Making IT Administrators’ Jobs Easier

The Webex Control Hub provides a single point of administration across the platform with zero-touch account provisioning, security configuration and device management in one place. This single point of administration offers rich metrics that give your IT administrators insight into user adoption and helps them troubleshoot quality of service issues in real time. And for the post-Covid return to office, Webex offers sensors that detect the number of people in the room and issue a warning when room capacity has been exceeded.

And if you’re looking to save money on PSTN calling costs and extend your on-premises investment lifecycles Webex Edge for Calling and Meetings offers flexible options for your business needs – with flexible cloud, hybrid and on-prem options make it easy to expand as your needs evolve.

We’re thrilled to receive this recognition from UC Today. We look forward to showcasing more in the coming months on why Webex wins when it comes to collaboration!

If you want to learn more about Webex and the value, it can provide your business, reach out for more information, or get started with our free offer today.

We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Collaboration on social!

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Cisco ACI Integrates with HashiCorp Consul For Secure and Easier-to-Operate Microservices

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 15:00:12 GMT

The change in how people are working today means the architectures of business applications and the networks that support them are changing too. The move from traditional, monolithic application architectures to modern, hyperconnected microservices architecture has accelerated. With it, we are seeing apps increasingly spanning multi-cloud data center environments, including on-prem data centers, instead of being pinned to a single environment. This generational shift in application deployment and architecture has introduced new challenges for IT leaders and practitioners alike. They must handle dramatic increases in network traffic while maintaining strong SLAs and expanding capabilities for self-service of both applications and infrastructure. At the same time, IT staff have to cope with a lack of unified visibility and insight into the performance of their technology stack.

At Cisco, we are working hard to address these challenges. One way is by working with HashiCorp, a pioneer in infrastructure software for modern apps. A new integration between Cisco ACI and HashiCorp Consul enables customers to operate their intent-based infrastructure efficiently, with insights from HashiCorp Consul service mesh. This integration brings together an intelligent closed-loop collaboration between the service/application and network that will achieve the following goals:

It will pave the way for dynamic, service-driven network infrastructure automation with self-service capabilities for services,
It will provide end-to-end visibility and insights into the entire technology stack starting from the application services to the physical network, and
It will enable a secure, consistent multi-cloud infrastructure across any workload by shining light into the nuances of application communications.

Application-Centric is Service-Centric

This integration optimizes application delivery in multi-cloud environments by providing comprehensive service-level visibility across the infrastructure. In the future, it will reduce operational complexities through automation, allowing IT teams to be agile and drive faster business outcomes. In addition, the joint solution can add modern capabilities to legacy environments without requiring significant re-tooling.

The ACI and Consul integration provides two big benefits:

First, Service visibility and faster Mean-time-to-Resolution (MTTR). The integration offers Abstraction Translation, by mapping service-mesh abstractions to intent-based networking abstractions.

Traditionally, data center operations involve multiple personas, such as NetOps, DevOps, Application owners, SecOps, and CloudOps – all working in silos, resulting in lack of end-to-end application stack awareness. This complexity is exacerbated by workload (container, VM and bare-metal) sprawl across disparate infrastructure spanning private and public clouds, each of which bring to the table their own syntax and semantics. A common understanding achieved by the abstraction translation simplifies data center operations by enabling faster identification of issues based on service health and network data correlation.

Abstraction translation also provides real-time visibility into dynamic L4-L7 services, and service health and service-to-service communication on virtual, container and bare-metal workloads connected by the ACI Multi-cloud network driven by Consul service discovery.

Second, Network Middleware Automation (NMA). This will provide consistent service intention driven network policy automation for virtual, bare-metal and container workloads across private and public clouds for an ACI multi-cloud network.

NMA will also ease transition to a secure Consul-based service mesh deployment for applications teams and DevOps operators with the ACI multi-cloud network.

How to Try It

The “Consul Extension for ACI” app is available on the Cisco DC App Center. It provides Service visibility and faster Mean-time-to-Resolution benefits. Network Infrastructure Automation functionality will be added to this app in near future.

This integration augments the existing capabilities of Cisco ACI with HashiCorp Terraform to enable flexible on-demand resourcing, operational consistency, and a self-service model to replace manual processes for provisioning applications. Customers are quickly embracing the Terraform providers for Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and Cisco Multi-Site Orchestrator (MSO) that Cisco and HashiCorp have developed together to modernize their infrastructure automation posture. Cisco ACI and HashiCorp Consul combine network and dynamic application services knowledge to deliver Network Infrastructure Automation and end-to-end insights.

Check these links to learn more:

Learn more about Cisco ACI
Learn more about HashiCorp Consul
Learn more about Consul Extension for ACI
Learn more about Cisco ACI Terraform provider

The post Cisco ACI Integrates with HashiCorp Consul For Secure and Easier-to-Operate Microservices appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Reportingonsuicide.cisco.com is live!

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 12:00:49 GMT

According to the World Health Organization, close to 800,000 people die by suicide every year. Furthermore, for each suicide it is estimated that there are more than 20 suicide attempts. In the U.S., death by suicide has been growing at a rate of approximately 1.5-2% per year since 1999. In November 2019, the American Medical Association published a paper showing that the average life expectancy in the U.S. dropped for the first time in history, and a major cause cited for this drop was death by suicide.

On the surface, reporting, blogging, posting on social media or talking about death by suicide may not seem like a life-saving or life-endangering task. Yet HOW an individual’s death by suicide is reported and discussed can be a contributing factor to whether the death will be followed by further tragedy and suicide. Ohio University recently reported that “typical news media and social media coverage of suicide has the potential to increase the risk for contagion, especially among at-risk individuals.” This and other research from around the world has consistently shown that how media reporting on a suicide makes a difference. Because there is an increased risk of deaths, best practice recommendations for media reporting on this topic have been created, although they have seen only moderate use and adherence to-date.

The life-saving guidelines, whose development was led and authored by Dr. Dan Reidenberg, available on reportingonsuicide.org, outline how each of us can take a proactive role in suicide prevention by changing the way we write and speak about the subject. Research released just last year by Dr. Thomas Niederkrotenthaler quantifies the harm caused by today’s media reporting norms: A 13% increase in national suicide rates following media reports of high-profile deaths.

At their core, the suicide reporting guidelines center around key findings:

At any given time, a portion of the population is struggling with mental illness and could be triggered into taking their own lives by how others talk about, report or view mental illness. With proper treatment, they have the potential to recover just as a person does from other life-threatening illnesses.
Sharing, showing or describing the method of suicide is one of the most harmful triggers for those at risk. On the other hand, sharing that the person died by suicide can help bring attention (and with it, research and funding) to the public health crisis of suicide.
Including education about suicide and resources for those at risk, such as a national Suicide Prevention Hotline (1-800-273-8255 in the U.S.) has a dual benefit of destigmatizing mental illness and providing those at risk with a lifeline when they may need it most.
If we talk about mental illness and suicide in the same way we talk about other illnesses, more people will seek help, recover and survive. Terms like ‘committed suicide’ associate suicide with sinful and/or criminal activity whereas stories on individuals who have recovered from near death by suicide have been shown to be most helpful to others in a crisis. No one ‘commits cancer’; they die by it. And like cancer, treatment is available.
Best practices for reporting on suicide challenge what many of us learned as best practices for reporting in general, or example, in the sharing of details about the person who died or the circumstances of their death. The best practices for reporting on suicide, on the other hand, advise us to hold back certain details for the sake of those at risk.

We at Cisco, SAVE, and The Erika Legacy Foundation are proud the unveil the public beta version of a data science tool to help not just reporters, but anyone talking about suicide to make a difference. The tool automatically screens whether text adheres to these four life-saving guidelines: Exclude suicide method; use appropriate language; avoid blame; and include education and help. We have focused our effort in working with mental health experts to conceptualize the tool as well as an initial version of the detection algorithm that can almost perfectly detect two of the guidelines. Immediate future work includes more sophisticated machine learning techniques to improve the accuracy of detection for the “exclude suicide method” guideline.

Please take a few minutes to try it at https://reportingonsuicide.cisco.com. We also invite you to watch this video by the development team (password: 3AqSwMUq).

The post Reportingonsuicide.cisco.com is live! appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Leaves on the Success Tree: Hard Work, Mentorship, and Sponsorship

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 12:00:34 GMT

The value of hard work has always been a staple of mine, long instilled in my siblings and I from our parents. In fact, anytime I found myself being lackadaisical or not paying attention to detail, my mom would always paraphrase a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. saying, “Even if you’re a street sweeper, you be the best street sweeper you can be.”

At the time, I’d stand there puzzled (after all, I wanted to become a teacher) and absently understand that she was preparing me for what would later develop into my work ethic. She never addressed it, but I now understand that everything she provided us was because she wanted more for her children – opportunities that she didn’t have growing up in the 1920s.

My mom was what she called a “domestic engineer” who cleaned houses. She had a fourth-grade education yet ensured each of her children went to college. My dad was a high school custodian and WWII veteran. He had a high school education and always corrected my grammar like, “Ain’t is not a word.” and “I don’t have any.”

I didn’t appreciate it then, but I do now.

Although my parents could not teach the rules of a corporate environment, such as politics, soft skills, mentorship, or how to earn a seat at the table, they nailed the fundamentals of hard work, and I took those lessons with me wherever I went.

When I was a young professional, I once heard a speaker ask, “When you leave this world, what will the “dash” between when you lived and died represent? What legacy will you have left behind?” When I initially heard those profound words, I didn’t know what to do with them. I thought I was too young to consider a legacy, and certainly wasn’t thinking about the part “after” the dash. The only thing on my mind was working hard enough as a single parent to put food on the table.

Still, I often thought of what my answer might be.

In 2006, I started working at Cisco as a vendor. I was broke and broken, on a constant roller-coaster of having more bills than money. My circumstance wasn’t effort. I was doing as my parents had taught me; I was working hard, but I wasn’t really going anywhere in my career. I was a degreed woman, who was not actualizing the power of my potential, and was stuck on a plateau without an understanding of how to get to the next level. I’d never been taught how to negotiate or to be intentional, so I took what I received and continued to work hard.

2006 was the year that I learned new lessons about the relationship between hard work and high-level compensation. Two words changed my life: sales and commission. Wowser! Hard work rebounded my financial situation, and that same determination helped me to overcome cancer two years later. However, I continued to miss the lesson that hard work is but one leaf on the success tree.

Other leaves on the success tree that I’ve found crucial were mentorship and sponsorship, and they’ve helped my career flourish at Cisco.

Mentorship has afforded me the opportunity to grow professionally and to view challenges through a different lens. Sponsorship has been equally important. Sponsors have seen potential in me when I have not always recognized it myself. Even better, these relationships have made it possible for me to “pay it forward” and mentor others.

I am so grateful that Cisco has a culture that supports these relationships, and that even when I may have missed the mark – my mentors and sponsors have recognized that and prevented me from failing.

So, what does that “dash” mean for me today?

It means altruism, the unselfish concern for the welfare of others. It means being a bridge-builder, an elevator, or even a parachute. Over the course of my career, I’ve gone on to create several events and programs at Cisco that will forever become part of my legacy. However, my passion has become preparing the younger generation for the professional workforce.

I want my legacy to be one where I’ve helped young, talented, and ambitious students recognize all the leaves on the success tree. Moreover, I want my legacy to be that I gave more of myself to those who may have grown up in single or no-parent households, homeless, impoverished or who might be first-generation college students. I want to show them what my parents could not. I want them to understand the interworking of a corporate environment and how to overcome barriers to their success.

In keeping with this passion for assisting young people, I created The ASCEND Program with employees from Cisco, Merck, and North Carolina Central University. ASCEND assists African American and Hispanic collegiate talent with the unforeseen challenges they may encounter when first entering a corporate environment. Aligned with a mentor, these students participate in an 8-week education program that addresses areas such as effective communication, professionalism, diversity, executive presence, business skills and acumen, and the 5 points of self (Spiritual, Emotional, Mental, Physical and Relational).

Each of these educational modules is important, but “5 Points of Self” is specifically important to the program because mental health impacts everything we do every day. This session teaches students that we do in fact bring the past into our present, but it also teaches them that we have a choice to not allow old baggage to derail our future. A therapist assists students with moving through the “5 Points of Self” and understand that past pains should not define them as people.

After nearly two years of planning, our first cohort of 15 students finished in November 2019. Three Seniors were placed into roles at Cisco, Merck, and a small business, one student gained an internship at Cisco and another student will potentially join Cisco in December upon graduation. Our students continue to receive coaching after they’ve landed roles to assist them with areas such as financial planning, etiquette, and corporate attire. Our next cohort will begin with fall classes at NCCU in September 2020.

What a gift it has been to find – and define – my “dash” at Cisco.

Through my experience, I’ve found that it’s never too early or too late to define your “dash” and I know my parents would be proud that hard work – mixed with mentorship, sponsorship, and a company that empowers its employees to grow – paid off.

Ready to join our team? We’re hiring. Apply now.

The post Leaves on the Success Tree: Hard Work, Mentorship, and Sponsorship appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Data Science and Machine Learning: A New Paradigm of Intelligence

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 22:26:18 GMT

Back in the 1950s, when computers were quite the novelty, some researchers were optimistic they could turn their glorified calculator into an intelligent being. Since then, artificial intelligence (AI) has built a remarkably scattered track record: they can outperform doctors at diagnosing cancers, yet can barely talk to us about the weather. The lessons are clear: tasks easy for humans are not necessarily so for machines. Understanding how and why is much more complicated but critical for applying data science and machine learning to business applications. We’ll begin by looking at the relationship between intelligence and machines to explain the two main types of contributions data science can make: predictive intelligence and insights. We’ll then discuss some common applications of each type, and the general limitations of machine learning.

Smart Programs vs Learning Programs

There are two categories of programs: smart programs and learning programs. While it may not be immediately evident how this relates to data science, the fundamental differences between the two lay the groundwork for understanding what machine learning can do.

“Smart programs” (a name I coined for the lack of an official one) are those that have their intelligence directly programmed by humans. My favorite example is the chess engine. These chess programs easily beat the best human grandmasters, exhibiting incredible intelligence by this standard. However, they achieve this feat by abusing the lightning-fast calculation ability of computers. They don’t learn, adapt, or innovate beyond what their creators programmed them to do, and sometimes that’s just fine! In fact, it wasn’t until 2018 that a learning program finally ended the multi-decade reign of chess smart programs.

While chess engines are extremely complicated, many very simple systems also fit into the criteria of smart programs. Here’s another example of a smart program that a banker might have written to determine whether she should give out a loan.

You may find the decision tree too simple to consider “intelligent.” However, you’ll find it difficult to distinguish even the simplest rules engine from a superhuman chess program except by their complexity. Both are merely instructions of human-programmed logic that make decisions. This begs the question: what level of complexity does a smart program need to attain “intelligence”? And to look at intelligence from another angle, what if this simple program has higher lending profitability than your local banker?

By this loose definition, smart programs are everywhere, and there’s no clear way to categorically distinguish one from another by any metric of intelligence. So, while colloquially people will refer to the more capable of these as “AI”, the experts generally consider smart programs to be just that, smart programs, not AI.

The opposite of smart programs is learning programs, those that are not explicitly programmed by their creators, but instead rely on data (data science) or experience (reinforcement learning) to come to their conclusions. Broadly, this is the domain we call machine learning. Not only do learning programs tend to outperform smart programs, but since humans aren’t teaching machines, the machines can teach humans. Isn’t that really cool?

Machine Learning Applications

This gives us two main advantages that learning programs have over smart programs. They are generally more capable than smart programs and are not limited to the knowledge of the programmer.

In fact, these two advantages translate directly to the two categories of machine learning applications:

Predictive intelligence
Discovering insights

Predictive Intelligence

Because learning programs exhibit very good and sometimes super-human performance in certain tasks, we can simply replace the human. They’re already excelling in applications ranging from approving loans to diagnosing patients. As the science of machine learning grows, the universe of decisions we can delegate to the machine grows with it. Unsurprisingly, using machine learning for predictive intelligence is by far the most common and straightforward application of the technology.

Discovering Insights

Learning programs often exhibit behaviors and decision-making patterns that surprise even their programmer! While this sounds exciting, humans have generally struggled to learn from the opaque numerical mass that is most learning programs. One example is from the game of Go, in which a revolutionary learning program in 2017 defeated the best humans (smart programs never got close) and turned the time-tested strategies of the three-thousand-year-old game upside down. Experts describe the computer moves as often alien, foreign, and incomprehensible, acknowledging that the AI was perhaps too advanced for humans to understand. And while the field of “explainable AI” has made some progress in recent years, we’re still far from consistently applying insights from learning programs.

What Machine Learning Isn’t Good At

Machine learning has two primary disadvantages:

Learning programs aren’t always correct
We have a hard time understanding them

The struggle for self-driving cars exemplifies the weaknesses of learning programs. Despite billions of dollars in investments, self-driving cars are still years away. While learning programs struggle on the task for many reasons, the underlying challenge is the incredibly high cost of failure. Learning programs will inevitably make mistakes and applications need to account for it. For example, Google Search can balance out its occasional mistake by making ten or a hundred great searches. Self-driving cars, in contrast, offer no opportunity for thousands of machine-quality decisions to compensate for one collision a human might have avoided and thus presents a much more difficult task for a learning program.

In addition to the pure engineering hurdle, self-driving poses a legal challenge as well. Who do we hold liable if a self-driving car kills someone? Do we fault the engineer, even if the engineer used a learning program that learned by itself? Again, we have a very tough time explaining the decisions from learning programs. As a result, we generally have a harder time using machine learning for applications requiring decision-making transparency.

AI Today and Tomorrow

Harnessing machine learning is less about math and more about the nature of computerized intelligence. Letting machines figure their own path towards truth grants us a double-edged sword offering computer-speed, quasi-human-quality decisions without any guarantee of understanding them. Whether or not you can apply the technology to your situation primarily comes down to whether the learning programs are good enough to emulate humans and if you can accept them making errors. Fortunately, the rapid developments in AI will ease both limitations, giving me great optimism that we’ll see truly remarkable AIs lead the future.

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Threat Roundup for July 24 to July 31

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 18:08:05 GMT

Today, Talos is publishing a glimpse into the most prevalent threats we’ve observed between July 24 and July 31. As with previous roundups, this post isn’t meant to be an in-depth analysis. Instead, this post will summarize the threats we’ve observed by highlighting key behavioral characteristics, indicators of compromise, and discussing how our customers are automatically protected from these threats.

As a reminder, the information provided for the following threats in this post is non-exhaustive and current as of the date of publication. Additionally, please keep in mind that IOC searching is only one part of threat hunting. Spotting a single IOC does not necessarily indicate maliciousness. Detection and coverage for the following threats is subject to updates, pending additional threat or vulnerability analysis. For the most current information, please refer to your Firepower Management Center, Snort.org, or ClamAV.net.

Reference

20200731-tru.json – this is a JSON file that includes the IOCs referenced in this post, as well as all hashes associated with the cluster. The list is limited to 25 hashes in this blog post. As always, please remember that all IOCs contained in this document are indicators, and that one single IOC does not indicate maliciousness. See the Read More link above for more details.

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Work When, Where and How You Want – A Better User Experience with Cisco and Microsoft

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 15:54:27 GMT

Cisco and Microsoft Bringing a Seamless User Experience

It’s no secret – the way we work has changed forever. The past few months have challenged us to adapt to how we stay connected and productive while remaining physically apart. We have seen video usage on the Cisco platform explode, increasing 3.5 times in just a few months. And that’s not a surprise. There’s tremendous power in human connection. Many of us have learned firsthand the power in seeing a co-worker’s gesture or facial expression to bridge the physical distance. This trend is here to stay. Video-first collaboration experiences should be a pressing matter for every CIO/CTO as they contemplate what is next for their business.

As organizations plan for their next normal, user experiences continue to be top of mind for IT as they manage hybrid work environments – blending the needs of those working at home with those who are beginning to return to the office. No matter where you are, people want to use collaboration tools they are familiar with. They need to stay connected to their co-workers while also staying productive and secure regardless of their location.

Announcing Frictionless Collaboration in Multivendor Environments

Cisco and Microsoft understand that people are at the heart of any company’s winning advantage. By empowering them through technology, they can focus on doing their best work. With this in mind, I’m pleased to share that the previously announced integration (specifically, Direct Guest Join) is now available through Cisco and Microsoft. This enables joint Cisco and Microsoft customers with the ability to connect to Microsoft Teams meeting services from Cisco Webex Rooms devices, and to enable Microsoft Teams Room devices to connect to the Cisco Webex meeting service – creating a seamless user experience.

In addition, Cisco Webex Video Integration for Microsoft Teams (our Microsoft Cloud Video Interop solution) is currently in early field trials with customers and garnering enthusiastic feedback. Together, these new options deliver amazing experiences for all employees who enjoy using both Cisco and Microsoft collaboration products.

“We recognize that customers have a mix of different vendors across conference rooms and meeting infrastructure solutions. We’re excited to help our customers communicate with people outside their organization more easily, by partnering with Cisco to enable direct guest join across Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex meetings and devices,” said Ilya Bukshteyn, Partner Director, Microsoft Teams Devices.

Workplace of the Future

Bringing these two solutions together delivers a frictionless collaboration experience giving users of Cisco and Microsoft collaboration tools, one less thing to worry about. The workplace of the future isn’t a specific place — it’s where you are at any given time, whether that’s a home office, an office building, or on the go. It’s using the tools you want, when you want, and where you want. And, together, Cisco and Microsoft are providing you with just that.

Anything is possible with the right combination of people and technology.

Stay tuned for a deeper dive from Espen Loberg and Michael McGary in the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, make sure to check out the devices that make this possible – Webex Rooms

We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Collaboration on social!

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Learn More

Cisco and Microsoft Have Come Together to Deliver a Better User Experience

Webex Meetings and Microsoft Teams: Working better together

Collaboration in 2020: Top Tips for Meeting Room Technology

Forrester: Total Economic Impact of Cisco Webex Meetings + Devices

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"Don’t fire the CISO”, with Quentyn Taylor

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 15:41:54 GMT

For the latest episode of the Security Stories Podcast, I met someone who actually has the title ‘CISO Supremo’. It’s an award which recognizes the individuals and teams working hard to protect the United Kingdom from cybercrime.

Security Stories: Quentyn Taylor

As well as being CISO Supremo, Quentyn Taylor is also the CISO for Canon Europe. Odds are that you might have had your hands on a Canon camera or a printer at one point in your life. If you’ve ever had a security related query about one of their products in Europe, it’s Quentyn’s team whom you would have spoken to.

That’s because they are a customer centric security team (as well as also protecting the internal aspects of the business). Hearing the story behind this was incredibly interesting.

It’s clear from the get go how passionate Quentyn is about the cybersecurity industry. During the podcast we talk about having a degree vs. relevant experience , and how to overcome the “virtual hurdle” of working remotely. Like many of us, Quentyn is really missing those in person interactions with his team members. We also talk about data breaches, and why firing the CISO shouldn’t be the first resort.

We then end the interview as all interviews should: with a spot of cybersecurity cocktail making.

“T-shaped” people

One of the biggest things I took away from our chat, is the concept of “T-shaped” people. I hadn’t heard the term before, but apparently it’s fairly common in the recruitment and agile software world.

For anyone who doesn’t know, “T-shaped” people is a way of describing someone who is an expert in one particular field, but you also spend time acquiring different skills. For example, a cybersecurity engineer who spends some time on the IT help desk, or even in the PR team, as some of Quentyn’s team do.

I really like that, because it means that it doesn’t matter what age you are, or what field you’re in. You can learn another skill, see the other side of the coin, and bring that knowledge back to your area of expertise.

It occurred to me that if more people did that i.e explore other departments in a business other than their own, we might see more harmonious communications between different teams.

And that applies to security as well. As Quentyn was saying, those of us in the cybersecurity industry often think that security is the most important thing in any business. Because we have a natural bias, and, well, we’ve seen things…

However, business decisions are made for various reasons at the time, and sometimes security is not the foundational factor behind those. Or, there’s a level of security risk that people are prepared to holster.

In those scenarios, the role of the cybersecurity team is to find a way to cushion the risk. Even if the simplest, or the fastest, solution isn’t a solution any more. We’ll find another way to support you.

On this Day: Mirai botnet

Also in episode 10, we take the DeLorean for a short spin back to 2016. “On this Day” is a regular Security Stories feature, where we visit a significant cybersecurity event from the past, and this time, we explored the story behind the Mirai botnet.

After it first surfaced in August, Mirai came into the media’s attention a few weeks later when researcher Brian Krebs was targeted by a large DDoS attack.

In his debrief with Akamai (the CSO of which, Andy Ellis, we spoke to in the last episode), it was noted that rather than relying on DNS amplification to achieve such traffic, it seemed to have come from many different sources.

This suggested that an enormous number of devices were compromised, and soon enough the world started to hear and read the word “Mirai”.

You can listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you normally get your podcasts from! You can also listen right here and now:

Are you a security leader who would like to share their story on the podcast?
Please get in touch with me on LinkedIn and we’ll take it from there.

On the Security Stories Podcast, we meet pioneers from across the world of cybersecurity, who then share their experiences with us.

The post “Don’t fire the CISO”, with Quentyn Taylor appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

New (fiscal) year, new world in financial services

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 13:15:59 GMT

Happy new year! – well at least here at Cisco. As Cisco embarks on Fiscal Year ‘21, we take a deep breath and reflect on the last 12 months. Looking back over this past year, the world has changed more than any of us could have predicted. Long-awaited summer trips have been replaced with staycations, school districts are faced with making difficult ‘back-to-school’ decisions, and many of us have discovered the unexpected challenges of working from home. Virtually every aspect of the world looks different as Cisco begins its new fiscal year, and financial services is no different.

Fortunately, financial services institutions are better equipped than ever to handle this latest global tilt. Financial Services is no stranger to disruption: From the introduction of innovative solutions like ATM’s, credit cards, or mobile banking to more unpredictable disruptions like flash crashes, market bubbles, and now the COVID-19 pandemic, financial services has served communities and businesses throughout. So, what does this latest disruption mean for FY21?

From a Cisco-internal perspective it means communicating with our customers through Webex, rather than in your offices or at events. We adapt and expand our conversations from “how to build the branch of the future” to “how to extend your branch to remote / home office bankers”. As a financial services institution, you face another transformative year. The sustainability of long-term work from home will be debated. Judgement calls will be made on when is the right time to reopen branches and how many customers and employees will be allowed inside. While these will be challenging decisions to make, this next year is a prime opportunity to differentiate your organization as a leader in both the communities you serve and in the industry.

Undoubtedly the future holds more change; however, as we set in motion our strategies to deliver value and help each of our FSI customers succeed in these uncertain times, we know many of you will be doing the same for your own customers. We look forward to being your trusted partner on this journey.

Happy new year everyone! Visit cisco.com/go/fsi for more updates on how Cisco’s Financial Services Team will continue to lead the way and assist each of you in making this next fiscal year your strongest one yet.

The post New (fiscal) year, new world in financial services appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Cisco Announces Acquisition of Modcam

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 13:00:23 GMT

At Cisco Meraki, we strive to create products that solve our customers’ problems. With our MV smart camera portfolio, we have eliminated the problems of infrastructure cost and complexity that were prevalent in legacy systems. At the same time, we have simplified day-to-day physical security operations, while raising the bar for digital security. Importantly, we have done this all while keeping an eye on the future; a future where integrated analytics will be included in every camera at no additional cost.

This evolution of security cameras to smart cameras has resonated with every customer I have spoken to. We know that less than 1% of the video our MV smart cameras capture is actually watched. One of the questions we ask ourselves is, how do we extract value from the 99% that no one ever sees? And in these challenging times, it becomes even more critical that we can offer solutions that deliver valuable outcomes for our customers.

For this reason, I am pleased to announce the acceleration of this evolution through Cisco’s acquisition of Modcam, a privately held, video analytics company headquartered in Malmӧ, Sweden. In acquiring Modcam, Cisco is investing in a team of highly talented engineers who bring a wealth of expertise in machine learning, computer vision and cloud-managed cameras.

Modcam has developed a solution that enables cameras to become even smarter. Cisco Meraki MV smart camera capabilities include motion detection and machine learning-based object detection, all of which run at the edge, in-camera. Today, these analytics are constrained to a single camera’s view of the world. With Modcam’s technology, this micro-level information can be stitched together, enabling multiple cameras to provide a macro-level view of the real world.

Modcam’s technology for precision locationing and journey pathing provides insights that inform strategic planning of physical spaces. These collaborative, cross-camera analytics can allow retailers to better understand customer behaviors — from products of interest to check out wait times. Facilities managers and office space planners can better measure occupancy and room usage, while using trend data to optimize space utilization that can create safer working practices.

The analytic functionalities of the Cisco Meraki MV smart camera portfolio allow for the protection of individual privacy, while still providing intelligent insights. These features will be maintained with the integration of the Modcam’s technology, allowing users to continuously monitor an individual’s path without obtaining or disclosing personal information.

We are thrilled to welcome the Modcam team to Cisco Meraki and we look forward to sharing more details on the technology integration in the future.

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Cisco IoT Solutions: Creating a Portable Temperature Screener – Part 1

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 00:51:54 GMT

Here at Cisco’s DevNet IoT (Internet of Things) group, our team of experts is constantly seeking innovative ways to incorporate technologies from different areas around the world with Cisco’s cutting-edge IoT-capable platforms and devices. In response to recent events, we’ve created an IoT IR Thermal Camera that reads body temperature and provides instant feedback regarding if a subject’s temperature is within the normal range.

Project background

This project guides the user through the process of creating an IoT IR Thermal Camera to be deployed on Cisco Edge Devices, such as the IR829 Router. During these times, a body temperature reading can give us peace of mind and allow us to better navigate and operate in the present. It is economically prohibitive for most people and small businesses to screen others for the main measurable symptom of COVID-19, which is high body temperature, or “fever.” The current IR temperature scanners on the market are neither network nor power connectable. And, they are not calibrated to measure human body temperature.

We developed this project as a way to use commercially available materials and Cisco’s IoT platform to develop a solution. You can review my entire project at this repo.

Project goal

This project started as a research mission to determine the feasibility of deploying an IR thermal camera on an edge device and managing it remotely from the cloud. Our goal is ultimately to enable Cisco partners and customers to create similar projects for their own use, or to bring to market.

As stated previously, we determined the commercial market currently lacks hand-held commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) temperature scanners, except those which are a) battery-operated b) designed for industrial use (not for body temperature), or c) unable to connect either wired or wirelessly (save for a few models which have Bluetooth connectivity only). Any one of these attributes precludes these devices for use in our mobile human temperature screening project.

The initial requirements and specifications include:

The system must be portable. The entire system (scanner, router, display and power source) should be able to be transported in a personal carrying case and operated wherever a power outlet and cellular signal are present.
We wanted to use commercially available products such as a Raspberry Pi 4 and an incorporated IR Thermal Camera to collect temperature
To leverage IoT, we wanted to extend the range of the thermal data collection by hosting our project software in the IR829 router’s IOx VM and OS, which will contain and manage the Thermal Camera and collect data from it.
Because this is a portable solution, we had to create a durable and mobile case to house the Raspberry Pi, thermal camera, IR829 and associated peripherals.

Putting the Sensor Together

In this first part of the series, I describe the steps to put together the Pi and camera.

Purchase and set up a Raspberry Pi. We procured a Raspberry Pi 4B that included heat-sinks, a case, and extra wiring (electrical, HDMI, Cat 6, etc.). Raspbian was already preloaded onto the SIM card included in the set. Set up the Pi with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and make sure it is secure.
Purchase a MLX90640 IR Thermal Camera. Adafruit and Pimoroni are among the most well-known distributors, but they were all sold out. We ended up ordering a Pimoroni from eBay for around $100 USD, which is roughly double the normal, non-pandemic price. I saw some who tried this project previously had used an 8 X 8 array of IR thermal sensors, which produced a display which lacked detail and granularity. The main reason I chose the MLX90640 is because it offers a much better 24×32 array of IR thermal sensors. You can find the data sheet here and a GitHub repo with related code here.
Attach the IR Thermal Camera to the Raspberry Pi. There are two ways to do this and each has their advantages:
A) Solder the camera to the Pi (you are now a computer engineer, yay!), which requires more time and skill but gives you more control over how you want to position the camera in relation to the Pi.
B) Purchase a Breakout Garden for your Raspberry Pi. This makes adding the IR Thermal Camera, as well as many other sensors and peripherals rather easy, but does limit the directions you can point your sensors. It also eliminates the ability the fully integrate the case, including fan, which was designed for the Raspberry Pi without Breakout Garden on top.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SgOHAD-MhVw%3Ffeature%3Doembed

Our IR Thermal Camera is now operational locally. I converted from Celsius to Fahrenheit and display both temperature scales. We won’t see our body temperature near 98.6 Degrees F as our skin dissipates some of the heat that can be read by the IR Scanner. We do, however, see a display of “Normal”, indicating our body temperature is within the acceptable range for healthy human beings.

Future Considerations

In the next part of this series, we will explore how I tested software to get the most accurate temperature readings and how to deploy the solution on the Cisco IR829 router.

References:

Related resources:

Learn more about Cisco IoT technologies and get developer resources, visit the DevNet IOT Dev Center

Thanks for reading. If you have comments or questions, please leave me a comment in the space below. And stay tuned for the next blog in this series: “Test software to get accurate temperature readings and deploy on a Cisco IR829.”

The post Cisco IoT Solutions: Creating a Portable Temperature Screener – Part 1 appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Securing industrial IoT: a guide to selecting your architecture

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 16:19:03 GMT

As organizations are increasingly connecting industrial control networks to the IT environment, cloud applications, and remote workers, the airgap created by the demilitarized zone (DMZ) erodes, and new ways to secure operational technology (OT) networks must be deployed.

A security solution must take into account the needs of both IT and OT – providing robust security without increasing operational overhead or network complexity. To choose the best solution for your organization, you need to understand the implications of the various security architectures available to you. In this post, we outline a guide to selecting the right architecture to secure industrial IoT.

Getting started

The first step to securing an industrial IoT network is to obtain visibility. You need to understand what devices are on the network, what they are communicating, and where those communications are going. However, traditional industrial control networks weren’t built to provide these insights.

Fortunately, the technology to achieve network visibility is available today. Deep packet inspection (DPI) decodes all communication flows and extracts message contents and packet headers, providing the visibility to understand what devices you need to secure and what they are communicating. Not only does this let you build the right security policies, it also gives you the ability to detect abnormal behaviors such as illegitimate commands to machines that could have disastrous effects.

Selecting your architecture

When collecting network packets to perform DPI, security solution providers typically employ one of two architectures:

Configure network switches to send traffic to a central server that performs DPI
Deploy dedicated security appliances on each network switch

While both approaches can deliver network visibility, they also create new challenges. Configuring network switches to send traffic to a central server requires duplicating network flows, which can be complex and costly. The additional network congestion can also create network latency — often an unacceptable compromise.

Deploying a security appliance addresses the issues associated with duplicating network traffic. The appliance collects and analyzes network traffic at the switch and only sends metadata to a server for additional analysis. However, full visibility requires the installation, management, and maintenance of dedicated hardware for each and every switch on the network. This can quickly lead to cost and scalability challenges. And to be effective, security requires full visibility. Even leaving one switch “in the dark” introduces risk.

An alternative approach

There is a better way to achieve full network visibility and a third architectural approach: deploy industrial-grade switches with native DPI capability. This eliminates the need to duplicate network flows and deploy additional appliances. Obtaining visibility and security functionality is simply a matter of activating a feature within the switch. Cost, traffic, and operational overhead are all minimized.

Embedding DPI in the network switch affords both IT and OT unique benefits. IT can leverage its existing skillset to secure the OT network without having to manage additional hardware or network traffic. OT can obtain visibility into operations that it’s never had before as the entire industrial network traffic can now be analyzed, providing valuable analytical insights into control systems.

As you evaluate OT security solutions, be aware of their architectural implications. To simplify deployment and make it scalable, the best option is to embed security capabilities into the switch. This requires network equipment that has industrial compute capabilities – look for DPI-enabled switches that are designed for industrial IoT.

This is the approach we adopted with Cisco Cyber Vision. It leverages a unique edge computing architecture that enables security monitoring components to run within our industrial network equipment, thus providing visibility, operational insights, and holistic threat detection for the OT environment.

The benefits of Cisco Cyber Vision aren’t limited to organizations with Cisco networks – the sensor is also available within the Cisco IC3000 appliance that analyses traffic at the edge by connecting to your legacy network devices. This provides maximum deployment flexibility to meet your needs with your existing network, while giving you time to replace older switches with DPI-enabled network equipment that’s capable of seeing everything that attaches to it.

If you’d like to learn more, check out the white paper, “An Edge Architecture Approach to Securing Industrial IoT Networks,” in which we further explore the three security architectures introduced here and how embedding DPI in the network switch meets the needs of both IT and OT.

The post Securing industrial IoT: a guide to selecting your architecture appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Using Security Awareness to Empower Your Most Important Assets

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 15:15:55 GMT

You’ve invested time and money into the security of your organization’s network. You’re protecting everything from your data to endpoints and networks. So, it’s no surprise that your IT department throws its hands up when a happy clicker in your organization inadvertently launches a malware attack; enticed by what looked like a legitimate link in an email.

The volume of phishing threats continues to increase, and bad actors are getting more sophisticated; often meaning that the look and feel of phishing emails are increasingly authentic.

Over 3.4 billion email scams or phishing emails are sent every day. This adds up to one trillion email scams per year (Security Magazine)
Data breaches exposed 4.1 billion records in the first half of 2019. (RiskBased)
62% of businesses experienced phishing and social engineering attacks in 2018. (Cybint Solutions)
52% of breaches featured hacking, 28% involved malware and 32–33% included phishing or social engineering, respectively. (Verizon)

It’s become evident that, frequently, the weakest link in many cybersecurity defenses are people. In fact, according to the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Security Awareness Computer-Based Training, “People influence security more than technology or policy and cybercriminals know how to exploit human behaviors.”

So, while technology continues to evolve, the human element will always be the most unpredictable variable to secure. In order to fortify against people-enabled losses, organizations are turning to security awareness and training programs. Recent events have highlighted an increased need for security awareness as the vast move to a remote workforce has unveiled new, targeted threats that require employees to detect on their own.

Cisco Security Awareness is designed to help promote and apply effective cybersecurity common sense by modifying end-user behavior. Using engaging and relevant computer-based content with various simulated attack methods, this cloud-delivered product provides comprehensive simulation, training, and reporting so employee process can be continually monitored and tracked; an important part of compliance standards such as HIPPA and GDPR.

Leveraging the power of other leading Cisco Security technologies, Cisco Security Awareness provides a comprehensive and robust defense against phishing attacks.

Analyze your organization’s security awareness needs and set strategic objectives
Plan your awareness program including phishing simulation, awareness training, communication, and reinforcement plan
Optimize program performance by setting and measuring against strategic metrics and KPIs

Empower the people in your organization to play a critical role in its overall security with Cisco Security Awareness. Sign up for a free trial today.

The post Using Security Awareness to Empower Your Most Important Assets appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Introducing the Cisco C240 SD M5 Server for the Performance Edge

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 15:00:52 GMT

Supporting applications at the edge with high-performance, easy to manage UCS C240 SD M5 Server

As more data and processing needs exist and are growing rapidly at the edge, providers and customers are exploring methods to avoid the bandwidth, latency, and overall costs of backhauling content to the traditional data center. Instead, the industry is moving towards enabling the more intense computational needs closer to where this data and content is gathered and presented.

According to IDC (1), 50% of new enterprise IT infrastructure deployed will be at the edge by 2023, and there will be an 800% increase in the number of apps at the edge by 2024. The industry is already looking for innovative methods to uniformly operate in this greatly scaled out environment.

We talked with many customers looking at these needs in areas such as service providers, hosting providers, enterprise branch, retail, defense, and many others, they have shared some common requirements:

Solution optimized for a compact and tactical environment
Simple on-boarding to management and orchestration tools by non-IT personnel
Autonomous operations, with an ability for simple periodic updates
Easy access and maintenance by non-IT personnel
Performance that traditionally resides within today’s Data Center
Enhanced security to operate within shared-use multi-access facilities
Flexible options along with global 24×7 support

Cisco used these customer requirements to guide us as we developed a new UCS server platform for our customers. Our teams have been working hard on this problem and we are excited to announce the new Cisco C240 SD M5 server.

Introducing the Cisco UCS C240 SD M5

The Cisco UCS C240 SD M5 is available today and delivers a performance edge solution integrated with our Cisco Intersight offering to allow the same advantages in edge that existing Cisco customers consume in their data centers today.

The Cisco UCS C240 SD M5 delivers the following key capabilities for customers:

Simplicity: Easy deployment and connection to network and power
Turnkey: Simple onboarding into already defined policy
Cloud or Virtual Appliance Managed: Simple Intersight claiming, Cloud or Connected/Private Virtual Appliance
Economic: Match workload density needs to ratio’s only seen inside traditional DC with full performance – while fewer device touches and full Intersight management means reduced operational costs
Future Proof: Standard peripherals and accelerators supported as rest of UCS line
Agile: Intent based Intersight template definition of many edge sites from a single policy
Complete Stack at Edge: When combined with HX and HXAP (both of which will be available late 2020 on the C240 SD M5) you have platform for full stack management to match storage, SD-WAN, servers, network all in a coordinated fashion

Optimized for a compact and tactical environment

The Cisco UCS C240 SD M5 is built for environments within and outside a traditional data center with some key points below. The C240SD M5 Server:

Can be stacked up to 4 high without racking – or in 2 and 4 post racks
Can be installed against rear wall with minimum 6” rear clearance
Is just under 22” deep
Can be powered by 120/240VAC or -48VDC
Users can connect 2 nodes together directly with 10GE cable for workload live-migration
Can be deployed with 1 or 2 Intel Xeon SP processors (configuration options will change)
24 DIMM slots supporting up to 256GB DDR4, or add 128/256/512GB PMEM modules to a maximum of 9TB
2-6 SAS/SATA/NVMe Drives, 2 M.2 Drives
2-6 PCIe slots (Gen3 with 2 x16, 4 x8)
Will have future NEBS L3 qualification
Unit has optional internal M.2 boot drives
Has a tamper-evidence device that will raise alarms in multiple management systems
FCS operation up to 10,000 ft, testing in progress to 13,000 ft
FCS temp range from 10-40C, testing in progress to 50C (and peripheral options come into play)
Shock in operation a 10g, and non-operational to 20g

Simple on-boarding to management and orchestration tools by non-IT personnel

In order to gain the advantage of remote installations without IT staff travel, Cisco has invested in methods to ease the onboarding of the C240 SD M5 both in situations where a pre-staging can be done, and also developing a low-touch deployment that will be allow direct shipments to remote sites. These methods will allow remote staff who have limited compute expertise to perform an installation of the Cisco edge solution. Some key elements include:

Staging Intersight pre-claim today
Intersight onboarding directly by non IT remote staff in near future
Remote config setup, validation, and OS installation via policy
Operational analytics

In summary the customer can stage at a partner today, units for global deployment, or in near future just deploy at these global locations with no staging required. All state to be installed on that server (config, options, OS/Hypervisor, Analytics, etc.) can be done not only remotely – but in the policy already defined within Intersight.

Autonomous operations, with an ability for simple periodic updates

In many of these types of edge deployments, having a model that is not connected to the cloud is a mandatory element. Cisco has many deployment models starting with simple stand-alone device management through our Cisco Integrated Management Controller that can be configured via multiple scripting and API methods. To take this further, based on our customer requirements we have developed the Intersight Connected Virtual Appliance which maintains a relationship with Cisco for real-time analytics and support, or the Private Virtual Appliance that has no connectivity back to Cisco. The latter provides isolation in the customer environment much like perpetual isolated software components common today.

To allow a capability of keeping updates for latest support and features ,the connected appliance can operate disconnected for up to 90 days – when the connection can be re-established, or in the case of the private appliance disconnected for same duration before customers are asked to update the appliance via a downloaded package.

Easy access and maintenance by non-IT personnel

The C240 SD M5 has a key advantage of all front access, where only rear components are the redundant fan modules. The components allow for easy replacement with easy access should maintenance be required.

Performance that traditionally resides within today’s Data Center

In many edge platforms today, the processing and peripheral/storage needs are much smaller for far edge points of the environment. Using those platforms to address the performance needs of hosting workloads, processing of data and video, transcoding, etc. are forcing higher processing and peripheral needs into the space between DC and edge. The Cisco UCS C240 SD M5 fits into that space and offers the performance of the full suite of most Intel Xeon SP models, Intel N3000 FPGA devices, nVidia T4 devices, up to 6 PCIe slots (2 x16), SAS/SATA or in combination with 6xNVMe.
As customers look to deploy SD-WAN solutions that include edge sites, methods to store large amounts of data where it is generated at the edge, process that data at the edge, our solution when combined with HyperFlex and HyperFlex Application Platform in the coming quarter will provide a full-stack solution to those locations with a single point of management and analytics.

Enhanced security to operate within shared-use multi-access facilities

As the data, business processing, and key Intellectual Property move outside the well-defended DC into these edge locations, the ability to secure these elements moves from an over the top add-in into a integrated strategy. Cisco UCS C240 SD M5 bases our security in our Cisco ACT2 technology that validates the hardware, the booting process, all firmware components up the stack. Cisco also supports Self Encrypting Drives in this solution, so that a unit will brick if removed. Cisco also includes tamper sensing within the solution that will allow central alarming.

Flexible options along with global 24×7 support

Customers we have talked with envision using the C240 SD M5 offering in combination of bare metal workloads, container workloads, standard virtual server hosting, Cisco HyperFlex solution, and more generally in a variety of storage heavy or PCIe dense deployments.
Cisco has multiple methods in the C240 SD M5 for sharing support information with Cisco TAC, including the fully connected TAC offering inside Intersight. All of the benefits of Cisco Intersight from an infrastructure automation and orchestration perspective are available to the C240 SD M5 at launch.

Customer Focused, Operate at Scale

Customers desire a platform for performance edge needs that is agile, simple, and economic. The new Cisco UCS C240 SD M5 delivers on that promise by providing a turn-key platform that is simple to deploy and operate and reduces the burden of IT staff. Future options for new acceleration technologies, driven by Intersight intent based policy and centrally managed will remove significant roadblocks to a modern performance edge. Operating at the scale of thousands or higher is much more straightforward with the UCS C240 SD M5 and Intersight together.

For additional information, read the UCS C240 SD M5 specification sheet .

Sources:
1. IDC FutureScape Outlines the Impact “Digital Supremacy” Will Have on Enterprise Transformation and the IT Industry

The post Introducing the Cisco C240 SD M5 Server for the Performance Edge appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Transformative Speed, Agility, Performance, and Scale with Cisco and Equinix

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 15:00:30 GMT

Now, more than ever, businesses and organizations need agility, speed, and innovation to thrive. Business continuity is table stakes, while applications are the mechanism for engaging and delivering secure, innovative user experiences that supercharge business and strengthen customer loyalty for the long term.

So, how do you manage hundreds—maybe thousands—of high-performing enterprise, web, and mobile applications, securely and with minimal latency, while also optimizing for cost?

Cisco has partnered with Equinix to do just that. Equinix offers a global industry-leading footprint of 210 data centers located in 26 countries, provides private interconnections to clouds, and seamlessly integrates with network service providers. In fact, 96 percent of all Internet traffic flows through Equinix data centers.

“Our partnership with Cisco places the customer outcome at the center of our shared focus and energies. The combination of Cisco’s market leadership in networking, compute and security solutions with Equinix’s global reach, our comprehensive ecosystem of digital platforms and range of interconnection options, delivers digital advantage that transforms enterprises and industries.” – Greg Adgate, Equinix, VP Global Channel Programs

Core to this partnership is the realization that the enterprise wide area network (WAN) provides the foundation for cloud deployments and digitally transformative initiatives.

Most applications bridge both private infrastructure and public clouds. Cisco, in partnership with Equinix, gives customers a broad choice of solutions and deployment options to optimize their WAN architectures for applications that connect users, remote headquarters, branches, and the data center to cloud providers to:

Deliver the best quality user experience
Protect against cyber threats and meet compliance requirements
Reduce overall costs and operational complexity

In the scheme of things, it’s also important to realize the how and where an enterprise connects to the cloud matters:

Public Internet connections can cause “jitter” and latency that impact the user experience, especially if there is international backhaul required.
Distance between endpoints and the data center raises bandwidth and network costs.
Cloud provider data egress charges increase overall operating costs.
Indirect data access and lack of visibility into data in transit increase security risks.

Cisco’s SDWAN solutions help businesses and organizations deliver optimal and secure application experiences through a broad choice of deployment options that offer four key benefits:

1. Increase application performance: Dramatically reduce latency, optimize data paths, and allocate bandwidth appropriately to the clouds at Equinix.

2. Reduce costs: Streamline branch deployment, bringing users closer to applications through private interconnections at Equinix, while also simplifying troubleshooting and accelerating problem resolution to reduce CapEx and OpEx.

3. Optimize security: Reduce CapEx by consolidating security measures at the central point of presence. Provide a full edge security stack from branch to colocation site to the cloud—for the right security at the right place.

4. Scale: Simplify deployment with prevalidated deployment architecture and services. Manage branch, colocation, cloud, and security with a single dashboard.

Cisco is helping companies create agile, distributed, and secure connectivity for the needs of businesses, organizations, and their customers. By integrating Cisco’s cloud and SD-WAN solutions on the Equinix platform, customers have the speed and flexibility to connect to clouds, SaaS, PaaS, networks, and service providers, which helps us support business continuity needs and enables better end-user experiences.

You can learn more by downloading the whitepaper, Network Transformation with Cisco SD-WAN and Equinix Interconnection Oriented Architecture, and check out the ITPro Today webinar, Accelerate Your Digital Transformation Journey featuring our joint partner World Wide Technology.

To learn more about how Cisco and Equinix are
working together, please visit www.cisco.com/go/equinix.

The post Transformative Speed, Agility, Performance, and Scale with Cisco and Equinix appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

It’s Not Too Early to Start Thinking About Post-Quantum Security

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 14:09:35 GMT

In networking and communication, information security is absolutely necessary when transmitting over any untrusted medium, especially the Internet. Interestingly, people have been trying to securely encrypt information for 1000s of years, mostly using intuitive methods of encrypting, which is a good reason why we need cryptography. Cryptography protects data from being stolen or altered and is also used for individual authentication.

Physics proposed a solution known as quantum key distribution (QKD) which uses the quantum property of the particle to create and transmit a secure key. This is an interesting solution because a quantum particle state cannot be copied, so it is inherently possible to validate that a transmitted key is secure.

Actual quantum computers are still in early development but the threat to communication security has triggered investigations into alternative methods to distribute encryption keys. As mentioned before one of the methods proposed to address post-quantum security challenges is the Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) because of its theoretical promise to be intrinsic unbreakable and offering an easy method to detect the eavesdropper presence. Unfortunately, implementation flaws and side-channel attacks could open up a vulnerability, and while current commercial QKD systems are designed to have no exploitable implementation flaws and be resistant against known side-channel attacks, it leaves open the question about side-channel attacks which have yet to be discovered.

It is believed that quantum computing will have a huge impact on areas such as logistics, military activities, pharmaceuticals (drug design and discovery), aerospace design, nuclear fusion, financial modeling, polymer design, Artificial Intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, fault detection, Big Data, and capital goods, especially digital manufacturing. According to an analysis by Nature, private investors have funded at least 52 quantum-technology companies. The market for quantum computing is projected to reach $64.98 billion by 2030 from just $507.1 million in 2019, growing at a CAGR of 56.0% during the forecast period (2020–2030). According to a CIR estimate, revenue from quantum computing is pegged at $8 billion by 2027.

How quantum computing will scale, while quantum error correction itself is an implementation challenge, and still needs to be solved. Real quantum cryptoanalysis is most likely ~10 years away. Quantum key exchange has proven fantastic and unbreakable when implemented correctly, but it is limited by the physical infrastructure. There may be a niche application for relatively short distances, but it will not be a general solution. Cisco is tracking all of the solutions in this area and will bring to market a flexible solution that will enable our customers to use whatever PQ secure solution they feel more appropriate for them.

Read the full Cisco Post-Quantum Security Brief here

Learn more about Cisco Optical here

The post It’s Not Too Early to Start Thinking About Post-Quantum Security appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Reimagine Your Government Workforce and Workplace

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 13:30:00 GMT

Recently, we’ve had two special edition posts. First, a feature from #PublicSectorNow that took a look at – and gave some praise for – the impressive results of remote telework that are keeping governments running around the world. Next, some insightful guidance in how to lead through crisis.

The world has undoubtedly changed, what appears to be, overnight. Now, with many countries and communities in different stages of reopening and recovery, government authorities and organizations are constantly thinking about how to keep critical public services running without disruption.

As more and more government functions become enabled by technology, many agencies and departments adhere to varying degrees of business continuity plans (BCP). However, from what we have seen, many of these plans focused simply keeping the lights on, while very few governments planned for a scenario where the vast majority of their workforce would be incapable of working in their traditional workspace. And this is just one side of the same coin. Government organizations are still faced with the pressing need to continue to safely uphold standards of civic engagement and participation.

It is difficult to understand the scope of the change that will be required. Much of our former realities will be challenging or impractical to return to, particularly in any immediate timeframe. However, one thing is clear: Government is being redefined by the changes of today and the uncertainties of tomorrow.

Redesign government service through operational resiliency and continuity

As governments primarily dealt with imperative medical and economic matters during the earlier weeks and months of the pandemic, the urgent task of restoring government operations continues to grow. There is no question that the safety and health of your workforce is critically important. But it is possible to increase capacity over time. Governments can adopt certain approaches that both cater to the safety of employees and boost service capabilities where and when they’re needed.

Governments and public sector organizations must be diligent in how they prioritize services and define clear roles for their employees. Is an election cycle coming up in the near future? Make sure to secure elections against cyber threats and safeguard voters. Critical infrastructure segments and their subsequent services require endurance and consistency. Of these services and programs that are deemed “essential” must remain secure and uninterrupted. Meanwhile, to protect budgets, staff, and this operational continuity, it is imperative that government organizations identify services that can evolve to alternate delivery and consumption models.

The immediate challenge is then how to accelerate the use of digital tools and technologies. Governments must assess their technology requirements and adoption plans to accomplish resiliency and continuity. For example, what might a minimally viable agenda have to include?

Network readiness and scalability
Robust and all-encompassing cyber security strategy
Application capacity
New technology requirements
Workforce collaboration needs
Data privacy compliance
Secure and seamless technology consumption models

And finally, efforts to change must be properly managed. People don’t generally like change. But, now is the time to consider how to make improvements more permanent.

Enable secure government telework

The changes that we are experiencing today will have a lasting impact on the future of work. The need for a resilient organization is vital for navigating in a disrupted world and the workforce is key to adaptability.

Use technology to reduce the burden on your employees and to remain adaptable to evolving situations. Flexible, secure network access allows you to work the way you need to, from anywhere. Give your workforce the tools to uphold operations and productivity with seamless collaboration across distributed teams. Accelerate teamwork and work smarter with stronger engagement and employee experiences. Reduce cyber risk through secure user access and device verification at scale while upholding employee safety.

Build trusted experiences for your countries and communities

Keep your workforce and constituents engaged, informed, and connected to key information from any location.

People count on you to work in their best interest. Maintaining their trust is always important, but even more so during these uncertain times. The unmatched security, network access, seamless collaboration, and operational capacity of Cisco’s broad portfolio of solutions enables governments around the world to connect with confidence, from anywhere.

Bridge to Possible

We are committed to improving the human impact of technology. Cisco brings together your workforce and workplace – no matter where they are – for secure, trusted experiences for organizational and operational resiliency to power an inclusive future where people, society, and the planet all thrive.

Share your thoughts. Join the conversation. And keep an eye out for our next #GovernmentNow post. We look forward to taking this journey with you.

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