SDN: Software Defined Networking. This new technology is a sweeping change that organizations, such as yours, need to consider as a future direction. It is game changing and so simple.

You’ll save money, alleviate a lot of networking issues, increase security, and more.

At the very least, suggest that your IT professional, professionals, and/or third party firm look into this technology.

If you want to learn more, here is a short story intended to introduce the technology in plain English:

Meet the star of the story: Paul the pilot. He flies the newest passenger jets of your favorite airline.

Now, you become a part of the story. Imagine you paying an IT Professional to build a modern airport for your company using the latest technology. Think of Atlanta, DFW, Chicago, or the airport of your choice. The IT Pro creates a network of runways and taxiways for you.

When Paul lands safely at your airport, like at all airports, he uses the runways and taxiways to travel a dot-to-dot path from the runway to the terminal.

The way things work now: Imagine taking all the air-traffic controllers and placing them at intersections around the airport’s field. Then take away everybody’s radios and add fog so thick that nobody can see each other. There is your network! A disaster that is happening!

With this system, imagine this: A plane lands and then, at the end of the runway, there
is an aircraft controller standing on the runway that asks, “Where are you headed?”

Paul steps on the brakes, rolls down the cockpit window and says, “I need to get to Gate 23.” The controller has to think for a moment, then points to one of the taxiways and says, “Drive your plane that way!” Paul does as instructed.

After scooting down the taxiway for a while, Paul encounters another air traffic controller who reviews a table of best routes, and then points Paul towards the next step of the journey. This goes on, through all the intersections along the route, all the way to the terminal. Paul just cannot help it; he starts humming, “Do you know the way to SJO… (San Jose in the Caribbean)

Now think of dozens and dozens of aircraft moving along the taxiways and runways, slamming on the brakes, honking the airplane horns, traffic jams, and the inevitable crashes. No way, San Jose.

In this analogy, the airplanes represent packets of data. Imagine that Paul the pilot comes from (the) cloud, into your (network of) runways and taxiways, and eventually arrives at a (computer) terminal. In a similar fashion, he can leave the terminal, travel your network, and go back into the cloud, or at least into your file server.

Companies such as Cisco, D-Link, HP, Juniper, NETGEAR, etc. design, build, and sell these traffic controllers. Those switches and routers are expensive because each one has to be intelligent enough to know where next to send each data packet. They have to have good memories in order to remember where to route airplanes for best results. In addition, they are usually uncoordinated with the other devices on your network.

When a user connects to your network with their computer, an iPhone, or some other device, their information travels through your network cables of taxiways and runways to and from your servers, other computers, and the Internet cloud.

With this existing system, when someone starts listening to Internet music for peace of mind, it bogs down the whole network. Nobody notices the hacker or virus that is methodically looking for holes in your security by peeking into every computer on your network.

To top it all off, you pay lots of money for this archaic system! Drawbacks of this system, the one you use now, abound.

This is the happy conclusion: You, all the wiser after reading this story, tell your IT Pro to investigate the implementation of SDN: Software Defined Networking.

Then your wise IT Pro will move all the traffic controllers to a control tower, lift the fog so it is a bright sunny day, and provide radio communications so everybody can function as a team. Teamwork between your network devices is like striking oil! Synergy that is.

The key to all of this is the controller. The controller watches the traffic and tells the devices on the network what to do. Every step of the way, there is a signal that tells Paul where to steer next.

Faster – If Paul is carrying lots of music, then because music uses a great deal of data, he is directed to a special taxiway for music.

Prioritize Data – If a passenger is not feeling well, Paul gets priority and is expedited to the gate to provide a high quality of service (QOS).

Security – If there is an unruly passenger aboard, called a hi-hacker, Paul is directed to pull over so that the local S.W.A.T. team can storm the plane.

Save Money – Cisco, and other vendors may not like it, but your switches and routers
become inexpensive because they no longer have to be “intelligent.” They are generic, can be any brand, just as long as they listen to the controller.

Coordination – the seventh habit of successful people! Your devices now listen to an intelligent controller that has a clear view of all of the planes in the airport and can make things work right.

From an IT Pro point of view, this is perhaps oversimplified, but for an executive – I hope you found this very useful for understanding the next step in networking technology – and why you need to be planning for Software Defined Networking.

If you want to speak a little Geek, tell your IT Pros, who may already know all about this: The data pathways (the runways and taxiways) make up the Data Plane. The controller communication travels on the Control Plane using a protocol such as OpenFlow to send out instructions to the Forwarding Plane that contains routing information.

Moreover, all of those signals travel across the regular network connections that are in place now.

Are your IT Pros are aware of the emerging technology called Software Defined Networking?

Please post your comments below…

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The Wall Street Journal released an enlightening article entitled “Six Subtle Signs You’re About to Lose Your Job – For Busy and Confident Executives, These Warnings Are Easy to Miss” by Joann S. Lublin.

Like executives, many outsourced IT firms are so incredibly busy that they do not catch the hints that they are about to lose a customer.

Many executives loathe considering the fallout of changing outsourced IT support companies. Sometimes they say, “I don’t want to fire our outsourced IT firm – it is so helpful that they’ve learned how our business works.”

Because outsourced IT firms have their finger on the jugular vein of your business, executives prefer to wait until the last possible moment, after making all the preparations, and sever the relationship without warning.

There are many wonderful outsourced IT firms out there. If you have one, keep them.

Technology is an essential component for most companies, and you must feel confident that you have excellent IT service providers. Moreover, most service providers want to be excellent. As Stephen Covey said, it is a win-win when your service providers exceed your expectations.

Next week, expect 3 questions to ask your service providers in order to see how well they are delivering.

Would you advise every executive you know to tell their outsourced IT firm what they do and do not appreciate about their experiences while working together? Please post your comments below…

The post Executives Give Clues Before Firing IT Firms appeared first on Foster Institute.

Before it is too late, contact your IT Professionals, be they in-house or outsourced, and ask them to show you the administrative passwords to your network, the admin passwords to your databases, the password to all of your applications, and any other passwords that provide access to anything you wouldn’t want an attacker accessing. (It is often best “not to know” each user’s passwords – this is about the administrative passwords).

Remember IT Pros are very busy people and often juggling many projects. It is easy for something, like a default or guessable password, to “slip through the cracks.”

Just your asking will incentivize IT to be sure the passwords are all at least 14 characters long and make no sense at all. Even better if they use multi-factor authentication – more on that later.

Ask them now. And don’t let them email you the list.

Please post your comments below…

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Ask your IT professional to update your firmware. They may need to disable remote administration, but some of them rely on that service. Tell them you want to be protected from the brand new “Moon Worm.”

Please forward this to all of your friends who may be infected and post your comments below – this is for real.

The post Linksys products – if you use them at home or work – you may be vulnerable to an attack appeared first on Foster Institute.

By the way, here is a short 2 minutes and 40 seconds video that explains this: 

Is the bank kidding? Reduce security? Really? One of the reasons you have security is to protect against attackers gaining access to your online banking!

Often, banks tell IT to disable protections so you don’t experience technical difficulties. If your security measures mistakenly identify the bank as an attacker, the online banking may not work right.

Two key points:

1. The bank is simply passing along instructions from the company that provides the electronic banking services to the bank. This isn’t the bank’s idea.
2. It isn’t just banks. Some of our customers have insurance software providers, medical applications, voice enabled tools, etc, telling our customers to reduce security on some of the customer’s machines.

So what do you do when a vendor tells your IT Pros to lower your defenses? You tell your IT person to keep security in place and to open up the bare minimum that the banking functions need in order to operate properly.

Tight restrictions are the key. Your IT Professionals know that they can still protect users when the users visit other web sites, and still set a browser exception just for the bank’s site. Your IT Professionals understand about reducing security only on source and destination locations (in this case, between your network and the bank) in order to provide more leeway during online banking communications but still restrict other communications.

Sometimes banks recommend that you set up a separate computer to use only for banking. See: Should Executives Buy a Second Computer for Banking?

There is a chance your IT Professional may elect to configure a “virtual computer” inside one of the workstations so you don’t need to buy another machine. The same posting, Should Executives Buy a Second Computer for Banking?, includes information about a third strategy too.

In a perfect world, 100% of the companies that provide software applications to banks (and elsewhere) will invest the time to make their applications function properly with strong security still in place.

But vendors are incentivized to produce “inexpensive” software. Things will get better when enough Executives, like you, start understanding this problem, and demanding better service!

If you haven’t already, ask your IT professionals if your banking applications mandated any kind of reduced security settings. Your IT Pros will be happy you started this discussion. They want to keep your network secure and sometimes don’t want to interrupt you and respect your dedication to your own tasks.

Please forward this to your friends and post your comments below…

The post The Bank Tells Us To Disable Security! appeared first on Foster Institute.

Try it—you’ll see what I mean.

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When an executive asks their own IT professionals or service providers for advice, the executive wonders if the IT professional has some kind of “agenda.”

When executives talk to their peers and get advice on technology, keep in mind that they may not fully understand how the same technology they tried can help or hurt your organization’s situation.

A qualified independent third party has no “agenda” other than to help you. Most IT professionals, and even IT vendors, appreciate your choosing to seek advice from the qualified third party since then the IT professional doesn’t feel they have to “convince” you of necessary changes.

Most of the time top-level executives have 20/20 hindsight after security event or IT failure affects an organization. I hear questions like, “Why weren’t the IT professionals prepared—why didn’t they do something to protect us from something like this from happening?” Often the executives are very angry at their IT professionals. Wise ones know to go look in the mirror to see who to blame.

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They will often avoid changes that involve making big changes in the way your IT systems function. They are already “too busy” with other tasks taking care of your system the way it is; even if your system is terribly out of date.

Often, IT professionals are more focused on tactics than on strategy. This is exacerbated when you reward them after they “fix” what is “broken.”

For example, workstation virtualization technologies might help your business tremendously—or not. It is sure worth finding out, and you may need to bring in a workstation virtualization specialist for the implementation.

Guess what else: IT professionals, at least the ones confident about their abilities, appreciate your taking an active role in making strategic decisions. Take the reins.

The post Executives, Grab the Reins of IT! appeared first on Foster Institute.

Be Realistic—You may want IT to totally revamp an old application or perhaps an old infrastructure that is left over from the other guys. Be sure you provide IT the time and resources to add this to their schedule.

Reward Properly—Rather than saying “good job” when IT fixes something, ask them, “What will you do to prevent this next time?” Stop paying outsourced IT consultants an hourly rate. How long it takes to accomplish a task or solve a problem is irrelevant. Paying them by the hour incentivizes them to learn on the job at your expense.

Please post your comments on this blog.

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The same with sharing data between your local applications. Moving one of your most important applications to the cloud may eliminate the ability to share data with your other applications.

It may be expensive to convert your systems to run in the cloud.

Using a cloud service just adds one more entity to the finger pointing game of “the hardware guy blames the software guy, who blames the cloud provider, who blames the Internet Service Provider” etc.

In the past, it was easy to define the perimeter of your network as existing at your firewall. Everything outside your firewall is “out there” and everything inside your firewall is “in here.” Utilizing cloud services for your private data blurs the delineation.

In the next blog post I’ll focus on the dangers of the cloud.

Please post your comments on this blog.

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