SynerComm Blog

Mobility requires next-generation access without regard to user physical location. And today’s user- owned or “bring your own device (BYOD)” environment is fueled by multiple device operating system platforms including devices which run on Android or Apple iOS.  Mobile “anywhere” user-access needs to support multiple device types. The way next-generation mobility is first enabled is through the access layer which is delivered through several alternative approaches/architectures.

I’d been hearing some buzz around FireEye on the security mailing lists and such, but with most of the the constant influx of “new security product” info I’d been ignoring it. Now I’ve seen it in action at some of our clients’ sites and I’m impressed with it.

The essence of the FireEye product is different from every other security appliance or software out there. The FireEye appliance has a stack of virtual machines including many flavors of Windows operating systems and many targeted applications like Java, Adobe, Windows media, and Office. The FireEye sniffs HTTP traffic off the wire, and takes anything that looks like it could be suspicious code and tries to execute it within the applications and operating systems in its virtual machines.

Thursday Feb 3rd, 2011, as the most of the United States unburied itself from one of the largest blizzards in decades, a few news agencies like CNN and the AP put out a story that made the bottom of any list of headlines.  To most people it’s not a big deal.  To those of us that were around for the real birth of the Internet it’s a HUGE deal.

On Thursday, the primary issuing agency for IP addresses gave out the last unallocated block of IP’s to APNIC (Asia) for assignment.  This means that essentially there are no major blocks of IPs left in the original pool of IPv4 space.

My name is Brian Lemm, and I started working for SynerComm four weeks ago. Until then I knew that Juniper had a network line, but I came from eleven years at a large fortune 500 company that is a Cisco-exclusive shop. This is not going to be a Cisco versus Juniper entry – I just wanted to give a little info on my background (just saying I’ve been around the block a few times).

Switches switch and routers route. If a networking manufacturer didn’t do those two things well they wouldn’t still be in business… Even equipment that is off the retail shelf will do that. So personal preference plays a big role in deciding which vendor to chose. When I started at SynerComm, I hadn’t touched a Juniper device, so when I was given the opportunity to tag along to some installs I jumped at the opportunity. New technology? Sign me up!

One of the things that continues to surprise me as I work in security consulting is the extraordinary amount of businesses that struggle with IT security.