The wait is over! Juniper Networks vGW Virtual Gateway 5.0 R2, having passed VMware's rigorous testing, verification, and software signing process, now supports VMware vSphere 5.0. This not only highlights Juniper Networks’ longstanding collaborative relationship with VMware, but now gives joint customers a clearer path to the most secure virtualized data center or cloud possible. In fact, vGW is the first virtualization security product to have successfully completed the VMware analysis for the VMsafe kernel integration into vSphere 5.0.

Today I attended Node Summit. Node Summit is a conference to discuss the ecosystem around Node. Node is a very important tool. If you have not heard of Node then today is the day you need to start paying attention to it. You can find my summary of the first day of Node Summit here to learn more. Back to the topic at hand. One of the speakers today made the statement that security is everyone’s job. That speaker was Steve Pawlowski. Steve is a senior fellow and CTO at Intel. I can tell you that he is definitely a smart guy. He gave a talk discussing many aspects of the cloud. This ranged from measuring pico joules per execution on processors to cloud designs. His comments around security really hit home for me.

Today, more than ever, companies have been adopting new open source tools to use in production. It seems like the NoSQL movement has opened up companies to adopting newer more cutting edge technology faster than ever. Tools like redis, CouchDB, MongoDB, and Node seem to be showing up all over the Internet in many new web applications. This is fantastic as the technologies behind these products are quite amazing. I use them everyday in the various tools that I have written and it is just a joy to work with. But I was thinking who tests this stuff for security issues. According to Linus’ Law most of these products should be fairly secure but how many eyes do you really need to ensure their aren’t potential security threats in these technologies? These tools have been adopted by thousands of organizations and they have them running naked on the Internet. I wondered what would happen if you tried to attack these services and what could be the potential impact.

Juniper’s customers face exponential growth in online video traffic.  Leading analysts report aggregate traffic is expected to double every six months. The financial impact for customers is significant.  And, with migration of video consumption accelerating from traditional television toward online and mobile devices, it is even more critical that our customers have innovative content delivery solutions.

I am therefore excited about Juniper’s announcement today that we have acquired rights to the service management layer of BitGravity’s content delivery network (CDN) technology.

As Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson revealed during his keynote this morning at our Global Partner Conference in Las Vegas, Forrester Research has once again validated the extraordinary real-world benefits delivered by Junos. The new Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) study on Junos finds our customers achieving a 42% reduction in network operations costs in 3.7 months. 

Forrester worked with four of our enterprise customers to get feedback on experiences they’ve had with our products.  According to the analysis:

• Overall, the interviewed companies noted a 25% to 50% reduction in unplanned network events.

• Interviewees reported time savings of 50% to 60% for Junos in planned network outages, such as applying software patches.

• In addition to the savings in routine administration tasks, interviewees also reported a 10% reduction in development time. They noted that development time was shorter using Junos and the Junos SDK.

• Our customers also reported a 10% increase in administrative productivity. All of the interviewed organizations commented that they were able to significantly reduce time associated with designing, managing, and upgrading their infrastructure.

The report (attached) also includes highlights from the in-depth customer interviews. One customer comment sums it up: “My team loves the Junos software.”

Anytime, anywhere connectivity. Hyperconnectivity. Call it what you will, but what it equates to is we – me, you, and just about everyone in the worldwide workforce – are always connected to something.  We not only want, but many times need to be connected, wherever we are.

In their most recent quarterly report on today’s global, mobile workforce (The iPass Global Mobile Workforce Report), iPass, a worldwide leader in managing mobile connectivity for large enterprises and global carriers through mobility and cloud services, reported that 88% of those surveyed work from the road, including 84% from  coffee shops, restaurants or bars.

Our need to be always connected has taken many of our employers – and in a domino effect, their service providers – by surprise. This has caused a significant spike in mobility costs, which in turn has driven up the mobility expense incurred by many enterprises today, especially those with worldwide globetrotters. Since mobile workers must be connected all the time, Internet connectivity has become a mobile worker’s lifeline.

Now, Juniper Networks and iPass deliver simple anytime, anywhere trusted network connectivity and role-based, secure, mobile remote access through a single client over a myriad of worldwide connectivity, types and means.

January 2012 Microsoft Patch Tuesday Summary

Welcome to another edition of patch Tuesday summary blog.  Last month’s patch Tuesday involved patching 18 vulnerabilities over 13 bulletins, while this month we are patching 8 new vulnerabilities over  7 bulletins.

Here is a list of the vulnerabilities fixed in today’s patches:

2011 will go down in history as the year where cyber-criminals and ‘hacktivists’ shook governments and brought many businesses to their knees.

What can we anticipate in 2012?

At the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, Germany yesterday, Alexander “alech” Klink and Julian “zeri” Wälde presented the results of their research into hash collision entitled "Efficient Denial of Service Attacks on Web Application Platforms".

Learn how an exisiting IDP Protocol Anomaly, HTTP:TOO-MANY-PARAMETERS, released in March 2011, saves the day!

In the IT Industry there is a topic that comes up on a regular basis and generates a lot of debate and that is Bring Your Own Device or BYOD as it is more commonly known. It seems that since the new wave of "smart phones" have come along the IT industry seems to have woken up to a threat that has existed since the early PDA's like the Psion or my beloved US Robotics Palm Pilot (which was released in 1996, its fifth generation sister has only just been retired from our household)



For as long as I can remember IT staff have been dumping data from corporate systems to their devices in one form or another. This data was unencrypted and unsecured and taken off the network and out of the building without considering data or security policies

Early on in my first career (i.e. childhood), I learnt about features. I would pore over the Argos catalogue with a biro - “got! got! want! want! got! - choosing the toys I was going to ask for at Christmas. I had a budget (roughly based on how good I’d been that year) and a deadline (Christmas shopping), and I then had to put forward a business case (Christmas list). I’d embellish this business case with facts about the toys I most wanted. This was made easier by Argos because they’d listed the features from the side of the toy’s box: “With realistic laser canon sounds”, “operating tipper wagons”, “TV AM’s resident rodent superstar” and so on. So, I was glad to discover that choosing and justifying a Juniper SRX is nearly as easy. 

Usually if a network device has its features written on the side of the box, you’d only ever want it on your broadband at home. But what if someone made an affordable device which could service your home or small office, runs Junos, has a stateful firewall, switchports and most of the protocols you’ve grown up with, wouldn’t you put that on your Christmas list?  “SRX100 - want!”

December 2011 Microsoft Patch Tuesday Summary

Welcome to another edition of patch Tuesday summary blog.  Last month’s patch Tuesday involved patching 4 vulnerabilities over 4 bulletins, while this month we are patching 18 new vulnerabilities over  13 bulletins.

Here is a list of the vulnerabilities fixed in today’s patches:

Let’s face facts: Today’s workforce is more mobile and remote than ever! Cultivating a mobile, remote workforce is a necessity for today’s business. Remote workers significantly reduce overhead costs. They enable organizations to conduct business worldwide, around the clock. Plus, the ability to be remote and work helps businesses capture and retain top talent, wherever that talent may be.

Gartner, Inc. has estimated the number of worldwide remote workers will pass 46 million this year (2011). A recent report by non-profit WorldatWork (Telework 2011: A Special Report From WorldatWork) states that the teleworking population in 2010 was 26.2 million people, which according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics represents nearly 20% of the U.S. adult working population. Imagine, almost 1/5^th of all U.S. adult workers work remotely! And, as of June 9, 2011, the U.S. Federal government’s Telework Enhancement Act went into effect, requiring federal agencies to draw up policies to govern and promote teleworking.

However, productivity while a user is remote or traveling outside of their corporate office continues to be an issue. The number of applications today that are “heavy” and data-laden, or that are rich media based has simply exploded. Wide area network bandwidth remains limited and can be prone to significant latency issues. Plus, protocol and application chattiness are also major impediments. These limitations impact the connection experience for remote, traveling and branch users. Their productivity while remotely accessing the network and applications can be severely affected.

World's Largest Coal Supplier Embraces New Network Vision

BEIJING, December 12, 2011 — Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR), the industry leader in network innovation, today announced that Shenhua Group, the world's largest coal-based energy company, has deployed a new high-performance switching and security infrastructure running on the Juniper Networks® Junos® operating system at its new corporate data center.

Shenhua Group is one of China's key state-owned enterprises with core businesses encompassing coal production, power generation, railway and ports operations, shipping and coal-to-oil and coal-to-chemical processing. Shenhua Group’s scope for expanding its existing data center was limited so the decision was taken to establish a second data center, designed to accommodate the latest virtualization and cloud computing technologies.

News Highlights

• Juniper Networks EX8200 Ethernet Switches and SRX3600 Services Gateways enable Shenhua Group to establish a dynamic, highly-reliable, scalable and secure data center network to accommodate its expanding application requirements.
• The new Shenhua Group data center network has a two-layer switching architecture with Juniper Networks EX8216 switches forming the core and EX8208 switches deployed as end-of-row server access switches.
• The design enables massive data center network scalability and low-latency performance, providing a high-density of Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 10GbE wire-speed access ports and a migration path to 100GbE in the core network.
• Each Juniper Networks SRX3600 Services Gateway provides up to 30Gbps of firewall throughput, making it possible for the Shenhua Group to scale robust security in tandem with network performance.
• The Juniper Networks EX Series, SRX Series and Junos operating system support a rich set of network virtualization features, ensuring the new data center network is ready for cloud computing.
• As Shenhua Group deploys increasing numbers of virtualized servers it will be able to upgrade physical server access ports to 10GbE, providing ample capacity for multiple virtual LAN connections.
• The high port-density and backplane capacity of the EX8208 access switches means that server-to-server traffic patterns, characteristic of a virtualized data center, can mostly be handled without passing through the core network.

Supporting Quote

Juniper Networks

"In keeping with the nature of the Shenhua Group, everything about this data center network is massive – except its cost and environmental footprint. Flattening the network down to two layers reduces capital costs and, by eliminating the aggregation layer, simplifies management and greatly reduces latency. With Junos running as a single operating system across the whole data center network, Shenhua Group will also benefit from a consistent, highly-reliable and automated management environment."
- Eric Yu, vice president of Greater China, Juniper Networks

Additional Resources:

• Juniper.Net Community: www.juniper.net/community
• Juniper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JuniperSecurity 
• Juniper on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/JuniperNetworks 

About Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks is in the business of network innovation. From devices to data centers, from consumers to cloud providers, Juniper Networks delivers the software, silicon and systems that transform the experience and economics of networking. Additional information can be found at Juniper Networks (www.juniper.net).

Juniper Networks and Junos are registered trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. in the United States and other countries. The Juniper Networks and Junos logos are trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners.

Cable & Wireless Subsidiary Deploys Media Flow Controller to Efficiently Distribute and Deliver TV and Video On-Demand Content throughout Caribbean

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Dec. 12, 2011 — Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR), the industry leader in network innovation, today announced that LIME, the Caribbean's premier telecommunications company, is deploying Juniper Networks® Media Flow Controller to underpin its next-generation TV and video services. LIME, Cable & Wireless Communication' (CWC) Caribbean subsidiary, delivers landline, Internet, mobile and entertainment services to thirteen Caribbean countries. The new entertainment service will use adaptive bitrate streaming to deliver up to 130 television channels over subscribers’ broadband Internet connections, and LIME is using Media Flow to cache, distribute and deliver content for maximum efficiency and viewing experience.

Click to Tweet : LIME Selects @JuniperNetworks Media Flow http://bit.ly/JNPRnewz 

News Highlights

• LIME is the first CWC subsidiary to launch adaptive bitrate multiplatform video services.
• The service, powered by Avail-TVN's AnyView™ multiplatform video service, will be fully deployed initially in Barbados and Jamaica in 2012, with further Caribbean expansion to follow later in the year.
• In LIME's network, Media Flow provides seamless interoperability with the Avail-TVN AnyView's content and player technology.
• Media Flow Controller is a next-generation software system that delivers content with an exceptional level of scale, efficiency and performance.

Supporting Quotes

LIME

"We will deliver superior TV services that give subscribers a high quality of experience, one that is easy to use, and offers the content consumers want to watch. The technology in our underlying content delivery network is absolutely critical to achieving these goals, and that's why we chose Juniper's Media Flow Controller. The Media Flow software solution delivers exceptional performance and scale for the delivery of high-quality adaptive streaming content."
- Patrick Bradd, Chief Technology Officer, LIME

Juniper Networks

"We are very pleased LIME selected our Media Flow products to underpin its ground-breaking new service. It is powerful validation of our content and media technology portfolio and demonstrates our strategic focus on growing our software business."
- Manoj Leelanivas, executive vice president, Junos Application Software Business Group, Juniper Networks

Additional Resources:

• Learn more about Media Flow Controller
• Juniper.Net Community
• Juniper on Twitter 
• Juniper on Facebook 

About Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks is in the business of network innovation. From devices to data centers, from consumers to cloud providers, Juniper Networks delivers the software, silicon and systems that transform the experience and economics of networking. Additional information can be found at Juniper Networks (www.juniper.net).

Juniper Networks and Junos are registered trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. in the United States and other countries. The Juniper Networks and Junos logos are trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners.

When financial markets move in microseconds, businesses need to know that their Balance Sheet reflects an accurate picture of the company health. Batch report that roll up over days mean executives are looking at history rather than reality - a New Network can ensure that the balance sheet reflects the now.

For an administrator “new” to the Juniper Secure Access family, the plethora of access methods can make it difficult to see the wood from the trees.  Despite the presence of resource policies, many just run to the “safe” security blanket of Layer 3 Network Connect/Junos Pulse Clients, but this is like buying a Rolls Royce and keeping chickens in it.

Choosing a Method

Within the IVE OS there are five major methods of providing remote access to a connecting user with graduated levels of control and compatibility.  At the “thin” end of the wedge (shown below), Core Clientless Access (CCA) provides very hi-fidelity control for a handful of application protocols.  At the “thick” end of the wedge, Network Connect and Pulse can support any TCP or UDP application, but destination control is limited to IP and port. In the middle are the Terminal Services and SAM access methods which offer “shades of grey” of access control between the extremes. In all cases, the source address will be a specific user in a specific context.  The context can be considered a combination of authentication mechanism, the security posture of the client device or even URL they used to reach the IVE.

Juniper's high-performance networking solutions combined with NISSHO's technical expertise to accelerate sales and services for customers

SUNNYVALE, Calif. and TOKYO, Dec. 7, 2011 — Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR), the industry leader in network innovation, and NISSHO ELECTRONICS, a subsidiary of Sojitz Corporation, today announced the establishment of a new NISSHO subsidiary named the J Network Initiative. The new entity will focus on providing pre- and post-sales support, consulting and maintenance services for Juniper Networks products to the Japanese enterprise market.

NISSHO has been a distributor of Juniper products since 1998, and since then has established itself as a leading vendor of Juniper Networks products in Japan. NISSHO employs numerous Juniper-certified engineers whose networking expertise and deep knowledge of Juniper Networks products will strengthen Juniper's presence in the Japanese enterprise market.

News Highlights

• Launching on January 1, 2012, the J Network Initiative will bring together experienced engineers from NISSHO and Juniper to better meet the needs of Juniper customers in Japan while strengthening the long-standing relationship between the two companies.
• The J Network Initiative will focus on enabling sales of Juniper Networks products, including Juniper Networks® EX Series switches, SRX Series security solutions, QFabric® data center systems and MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers.
• NISSHO will work directly and through channel partners to accelerate sales and services to Japanese enterprise customers.
• The J Network Initiative will also leverage NISSHO's NETFrontier Center, one of the largest technical service centers in Asia, to enable better technical support for Juniper's global alliance and sales partners in the region.
• The two companies are also planning overseas business development utilizing the global network of Sojitz, NISSHO's parent company.

Supporting Quotes

Juniper Networks

"The establishment of the J Network Initiative reinforces Juniper's increased focus on the enterprise and data center markets in Japan and represents an exciting opportunity to further strengthen our presence in the country. We are pleased to deepen our longstanding relationship with NISSHO ELECTRONICS, whose proven networking expertise will accelerate sales and services for Japanese enterprise customers."
- Kanaiya Vasani, vice president, Corporate Business Development, Juniper Networks

NISSHO ELECTRONICS

"With the J Network Initiative, we look forward to extending Juniper's high-performance networking solutions to the Japanese enterprise market. By bringing together experienced engineers from both NISSHO ELECTRONICS and Juniper, our two companies will strengthen consulting and maintenance services and deliver even more enhanced customer service and comprehensive technical support."
- Koji Makino, Director and Managing Executive Officer, NISSHO ELECTRONICS

Additional Resources:

• Learn more about Juniper Enterprise products: http://www.juniper.net/us/en/solutions/enterprise/
• Read more about Juniper on our blog: www.juniper.net/networkahead
• Juniper.Net Community: www.juniper.net/community
• Juniper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JuniperSecurity 
• Juniper on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/JuniperNetworks 

About NISSHO ELECTRONICS

NISSHO ELECTRONICS, a subsidiary of Sojitz Corporation, became the first corporate reseller of Juniper Networks for the Japan market in 1998. NISSHO ELECTRONICS provides Juniper Networks products and support capabilities to a large number of customers both in service provider and enterprise markets, gained through years of networking experience. The NETFrontier Center is NISSHO ELECTRONICS' technical service center which facilitates comprehensive technical support. NISSHO ELECTRONICS was awarded Juniper's "Asia-Pacific Regional Operations Specialist of the Year" award in 2010 and 2009, presented to the Asia-Pacific partner that made the biggest contribution to the promotion of Juniper Networks products. Additional information can be found at NISSHO ELECTRONICS (www.nissho-ele.co.jp ).

About Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks is in the business of network innovation. From devices to data centers, from consumers to cloud providers, Juniper Networks delivers the software, silicon and systems that transform the experience and economics of networking. Additional information can be found at Juniper Networks (www.juniper.net).

Juniper Networks and Junos are registered trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. in the United States and other countries. The Juniper Networks and Junos logos are trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners.

I just returned from Carrier Ethernet World Congress (CEWC) in Singapore last week, which was loaded with customer meetings, tech tutorials and great industry updates (and debates). But it also marked the second time this year that the Juniper Networks MX 960 router won the “Best Carrier Ethernet Core Product” at CEWC, having also picked up the same award during the Congress held this past October in Amsterdam.

On December 1, 2011, the vGW Series and Juniper Networks were inducted into the SC Magazine Innovators Hall of Fame by Dr. Peter Stephenson, the magazine’s technology editor and test labs director. This latest accolade capped off three consecutive years of innovation recognition by SC Magazine for Juniper’s vGW, a product that has come to set the bar for virtualization security.