SCADA stands for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, and although it’s not likely to be the first thing to come to mind when discussing cyber security, it certainly should be. As its name implies, it is a type of software designed to supervise – controlling and monitoring – and collect data and well as analyze data for industrial processes.
A wireless LAN (WLAN), also commonly called Wi-Fi, is a wireless local area network defined in the various IEEE 802.11 standards and certified by Wi-Fi Alliance. WLAN capability used to be listed using the name of the IEEE standard amendment that it supports. Now the Wi-Fi Alliance uses generational numbering for corresponding technology support: Wi-Fi 4 (for devices implementing IEEE 802.11n), Wi-Fi 5 (IEEE 802.11ac), and Wi-Fi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax).
Did you hear about the change window that went exactly as planned? No? That’s because the odds of winning the PowerBall without buying a ticket are better than the odds of executing a change window on a global network without a glitch. What about the story of the tier one network engineer that diagnosed and resolved an ACL in seconds? That one also seems as mythical as staying friends with your ex—but it’s not.
If you follow cybersecurity current events, you may know that the cost and frequency of a data breach continue to skyrocket. Organizations are constantly under attack, and the shift to remote work is only exacerbating the problem. According to IBM’s 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report, most respondents are concerned that identifying, containing, and paying for a data breach is more burdensome today than ever before.
In network operations, it’s never the same day twice. Most network engineers love this aspect, but it has a dark side. The best plans often fall to the wayside—in an instant work stops and firefighting begins. In the last year, I’ve been part of a whole-day colo move, diagnosed an outage in the middle of the night, and resolved a slow performance issue. I know what the networking operations experience is like, and I know how much better it can be.
The hybrid workforce is here to stay. With that in mind, you should start putting more robust cybersecurity controls in place to mitigate risk. Virtual private networks (VPNs) help secure data, but they are also challenging to bring into your log monitoring and management strategy. VPN and firewall log management gives real-time visibility into security risks. Many VPN and firewall log monitoring problems are similar to log management in general.
Network security is a top-of-mind concern for business executives and technical leaders alike. The costs of a major breach can range in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and it can take years for companies’ reputations to recover. But when most people think about network security, network modeling, visualization, and path analysis probably don’t spring to mind. We believe it should.
If you think you’re having a bad day, you should see what happened to a group of Greek merchants crossing the Black Sea, 2,400 years ago. Providing a stark perspective on the vastness of history, their ship has just been discovered under 2km of water.
Speak with networking ops and engineering leads anywhere, and you’ll hear what I frequently hear: “The way my team actually spends their time is the opposite of how they feel they could best spend it.” The passion they have for their team and the network they keep running is clearly at odds with a frustrating feeling that they can’t get ahead.
