New Microsoft Quantum Chip... For Windows Updates! - NC2C030

So my name is Chris Miles . I'll be your host for this week at BGP Main on Blue Sky . Joining me , as always is I'm running out of adjectives to describe Tim , but he's just a beautiful , lovely person .

up , we have a couple of articles specifically about training and certification , which is good for us we never really hear a lot about this topic and specifically within cloud networking and things like that .

But so first up we have an article here from STX Central which is kind of just an overview of an announcement that CompTIA made about a new certification called CloudNetX , specifically focusing on IT professionals within cloud network architecture and security .

So this is apparently a new addition that is part of CompTIA's EXPERT , that is expert without an E at the beginning , just a capital X PERT program , which looks to be kind of a series of expert level certifications that theyifications . Sorry that they offer .

I'll be honest , I've been out of the comptia game for for a little bit and I didn't know they even offered this um , but they seem to have ones over this cloud net x , uh , vertical , as well as security x as well as data x um , so this is kind of rounding out that portfolio there , um . So yeah , it's like I said .

It's specifically focusing on hybrid cloud , it looks like with the listing here . Says validates the advanced skills needed to design , engineer and integrate secure , scalable networking solutions and hybrid environments , and you know , there's a wealth of stuff covered on here .

Apparently they even get into the details on things like container networking and ai for automation and things like that , which is I don't know man .

Like I did not see this coming specifically from comptia like if we think of it like we've always been kind of talking about like I mean , as far as certification goes , training in , in , you know , infrastructure technologies . Like the two most successful things out there are the ccna and the+ .

Like CompTIA has always been in this game , for sure , but I feel like the NetPlus has always been kind of like the little brother to the CCNA . That's always like yeah , it's like you know people will get it and it's like it's definitely a worthwhile achievement .

I'm not you know kind of pooping on it or anything , but it's always been like you know it teaches you some fundamentals but it's not .

I would never say NetPlus has probably proven enough to land like a solid job as a network engineer right , I feel like you had to kind of go above that , but this sounds , like you know , like a major leap beyond what the NetPlus is , and even on the landing page for this certification , they actually have a little kind of compare comparison matrix to how this

stacks up compared to the CCIE , the CCDE and the AWS advanced networking specialty exam . Um , which is funny because it's kind of pointing at , like , you know , ours is only one exam with , you know , 165 questions and the prerequisites are , um , let's see , 10 years , with five of those being in network architecture . I don't know how they validate that .

But if there's , are they listing that there is a formal prerequisite , like it has to be met in some capacity before they'll even admit you into the exam ? I don't , I don't , I don't know how to do that .

Yeah that's right . Yeah , man , I thought this sounds pretty cool . I'd like to see it in action and hopefully it lives up to the hype . But what about you , tim ? What do you think ?

I mean I took my Security Plus forever ago . I never did take my Network Plus . I got it . So when I took my degree at Western Governors for cloud computing , of course I had my CCIE , so they scratched off pretty much all of the networking prerequisites for that thing , including the Network Plus . I did have to take the Cloud Plus , which was interesting .

Comptia had a weird way of doing the Cloud Plus because it was heavily . It was actually like I don't know 65-35 or something for public cloud versus private cloud . So there was actually a ton of private cloud stuff on that exam .

I'm curious , given the , I wouldn't even call it a blueprint , but what they're saying is going to be in this cloud net X one , just how heavily they're going to lean into Kubernetes or the AI stuff on top of the other cloud stuff . Are they going to talk about each public cloud or is it just going to cover it as a general ? You know what I mean .

Like it's because comt has always been kind of the the switzerland of uh certifications . Right , it doesn't lean very heavily at all in uh direction of a particular vendor . Um , yeah , man , not much . Not I , I do . I do think it's hilarious , though , that they have this .

Here's our exam , and we're comparing it to a ccie or a CCDE , which involve an eight-hour lab exam .

So fairly close to the same idea , where it's going to be focused on hybrid cloud connectivity .

It's going to be focused on connecting on-prem to the cloud using the Aviatrix framework , also including middle mile providers like Equinix and Megaport , so people who take this certification will also learn how to do it through spinning up Megaport and Equinix virtual environment edges and , of course , like I said , on-prem to the cloud .

So it's interesting to see that these two just happen to come out around the same time , because we've been saying for a while that hybrid cloud is the future . For so long We've been saying , for hybrid cloud is the future and I think we're finally starting to see .

You know , of course , to be fair , I mean , aviatrix has been on the hybrid cloud train forever . It's just been . It's just taken us a while to develop an actual curriculum for that specifically . But yeah , it's good to see more vendors leaning into hybrid cloud as the future .

I mean , to be honest , we were probably predicting something that everyone knew it was going to be right . But hey , you know , we get to stand on that right . But no , yeah , this is great .

Yeah , I've obviously had a hand in configuring this solution many times with our hybrid solution integrations with Equinix and Megaport , and you know we have close relationships with them . So glad to see everyone else is going to get access to that and yeah really excited for this . It'll be cool .

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But by the time they got acquired , if you went to their website it was already redirecting to Cloudflare like day one . So it was kind of hard to kind of go back into the past and see what it was .

But it seemed like it was an orchestration engine that probably leveraged a lot of the public cloud APIs and things like that to build networks and correlated building tunnels between them as well . So pretty cool interface . I remember seeing that . But now they've finally kind of rebranded this as their own product , which is the magic cloud networking .

So pretty much everything that Cloudflare has done has had the magic moniker on it . So it fits in with that .

It seems like they are leaning in that this is going to be a direct integration with their connectivity cloud platform , which is kind of a it seems like an all-inclusive type platform that they offer that seems to give , like some of the you know SASE type connectivity options , wan as a service , sse is also integrated in this thing as well , so cool to see this

come to fruition . One thing that I definitely had a question about when I was looking at the Nefeli solution back in the day and I still kind of have that impression now is I don't know where the visibility piece comes in . There is a point here that they let you know that it's for a lot of customers that want to increase visibility as well .

As you know , obviously orchestration is a valuable thing , but I don't know where you get the insights into the traffic going between clouds or into clouds , et cetera , from Cloudflare's perspective . So I'd like to Um , yeah , I think it's . You know it took them a while , but they finally got it out there .

There's not there's not a ton on the docs page just yet , so I'm looking to see that get populated out . But , um , yeah , pretty cool . What do you think , tim ?

Like these , you have a single vendor who , honestly , is pretty well positioned I mean Cloudflare being the pretty much the almost the de facto CDN these days Very well positioned to do this kind of orchestration . I'm with you , man .

I'd not heard of Nefeli until they got acquired , and by that point it was impossible to figure out how the hell it worked , what it was . It's been almost like stealth since then . So I am very curious to see where the rubber meets the road on this Magic Cloud networking thing . What does it actually do ?

And I've got the same question If all it does is orchestration , you're going to get the visibility that the CSPs give you , which is not a great amount of visibility , right ? You're going to get metadata , or maybe they'll set up a VPC traffic mirroring . Maybe VPC traffic mirroring will be part of it .

All that stuff is super expensive , but maybe that's just part of the hey , maybe it's an on-demand or turn it on and turn it off type of of setup . I don't know , man . Yeah , I'm just throwing darts at a board here . I really want to see how this actually works and , more importantly , how it works as part of their total package , like all their magic .

But the thing is , orchestrating all of that comes at a cost , right ? All those solutions come at a cost . The visibility comes at a very high cost as well , for you know , like you said , VPC flow logs and mirroring things like that . So , like I'm , I'm , like you said , VPC flow logs and mirroring things like that .

So , like I'm , I'm questioning , like where , where does that value kind of meet its tipping point , Right ? Um , because it's it's . I mean , if you're orchestrating , you know building a Fabergé egg , you know you still have to pay for it to build a Fabergé egg , Right ?

So I was kind of surprised it took this long . But there , you know , maybe I mean there's probably competing priorities at Cloudflare , yeah , I imagine so .

let's just launch right into this next one because it's fucking confusing . So Microsoft has unveiled a new quantum chip which sounds really awesome . I can't even . Which sounds really awesome , I can't even . Quantum computing is something I was not unaware of but had no real skin in the game on .

And then a few years ago , when I was a few years ago , I was at where was I ? Duarte . I was at Duarte's speaking . Cisco would pay if you're going to speak at Cisco Live . Cisco would pay for you to go to train at Duarte , the speaking engagement company , to learn how to present .

And I was there with someone from one of the BU's and she was talking about quantum computing and basically how quantum computing was going to make encryption worthless . Basically it was just like with quantum computing you can break encryption in a negligible amount of time . So then I was like holy crap , like why aren't we ?

Why isn't the sky falling on this stuff ? Right , like finding this stuff out ? And it turns out because we were like really far away from any making of that happen , but apparently we've made huge leaps and bounds , or rather than Microsoft has recently . And yeah , I mean , I don't even , I can't even refer to the article very well , was it qubits , right ?

Qubits are like the computing computing , um , uh units that uh quantum computing uses . I understand the , I understand the idea like of it , but I I don't know what this means ultimately yeah , it's .

But I mean , yeah , when you , when I look at quantum computing , whenever I look it up , it's all like kind of gets into this element of qubits and things like that , which is , I mean , basically it sounds like , you know , in terms of bits it can be zero or a one and a qubit .

At the same time , yeah , yeah it can be both , so you can kind of do these like very complicated calculations in a fraction of a second , because you're operating within that , that entire realm of you . Know one and zero . The thing that I've had to look at some other kind of articles and reviews on this to understand it a little bit better .

And it seems like this , because I'm kind of with you like when it , when it , when it , when people talk about quantum computing , like I remember when I was applying for my visa to come to Australia , like quantum computing was like at one of the top of the list things , and I'm like I was like damn , if they're looking for quantum computing , you know engineers

and things like that like there's no way I'm going to get a visa . That's so far out of my realm , um , but it's , it's kind of taken a backseat .

I don't hear a lot about it until as of recent , and it sounds like this with Microsoft , like it's been a completely different kind of top-down architectural approach to quantum computing that differs from what has been going on for the last , you know , 2015 years . And you know , they kind of introduced this new . What are the chips called ? Majorana ?

I think is what it's called Majorana , yeah , majorana is the name which is apparently based on a specific subatomic particle that is also its own antiparticle at the same time .

So , like it kind of negates some of the stuff that qubits have with decoherence , where they kind of like , I guess they like interfere with each other in some capacity to like , and the more decoherence , the less accurate your results can be . So there's a lot of like error corrections and things like that that uh , come into play .

This is , this is all from my very stupid brain . What do I've looked up in the last you know a couple of hours ? But yeah , so like , um , my , my thing is , like , from a security perspective .

You know I've we've heard of , like from what you just said , like the you know there was this kind of thing about you know whether or not you know encryption and security protocols .

Are , you know , kind of prepared for quantum based encryption , right , and you know there's been things that have been put out that are , like you know , kind of quantum safe algorithms and things like that . But I question whether or not , like if Microsoft has taken a completely different approach to this , does that kind of change this in any capacity ? I haven't .

Obviously the news on this is , you know , days old at this point , so I don't know if there's been enough kind of investment or you know kind of research into this . But like I wonder if that just changed the quantum safe algorithm conversation altogether . But I would hope it doesn't . Well , yeah .

It shaves the amount of time that we're going to need to actually make this a thing like a household name .

If it does change the conversation about it , then what does that mean , and how are we sure that it changes the conversation , or where do you go from here then , if things are different now ?

That is still kind of keeping the same classic architecture that they've been working on , but it severely reduced the amount of error correction that needed to take place . But this one's like everyone's like I've heard comparisons that this is going to be as big of a game changer as , like , the transistor , which is , yeah .

That's a very bold claim , but like I don't know , like if it is something that would be , that'd be cool . But , like , like you said , I don't think you and I are smart enough to really understand what this means at this point .

the news for this week , we have one more article here from SDX Central , which is about the , you know , the Zayo group has apparently published a report , a DDoS insights report , saying that from 2023 to 2024 , there has been an increase in distributed denial of service attacks , up 82% from 2023 to or sorry , 2023 to 2024 .

And kind of talking about the widespread of cyber criminals now leveraging things like AI and the growing number of IoT devices across the board . This one , I feel like we're just throwing this in here as a pat on the back for us . As we also said , this is probably going to happen .

You know , kind of the proliferation of AI just really was going to , you know , kind of , assist those , the bad actors to take , you know , kind of take the guardrails off these things and do bad things with them , and I think this is probably the first instance of that .

Obviously , I haven't operated in the mind of a cyber criminal much in my life , so I don't know if this is true , but to me , on the surface , it seems like a DDoS is probably one of the easier things to do , because you don't have to be in someone's network to DDoS them , right , you need to kind of have control points outside of their control and then you

can , you know , perform a DDoS in that capacity . So this seems like this is probably the lowest rung in the ladder type thing , the easiest thing to mimic and , and you know , use AI to do so . Um , sad to say , it's probably going to get worse from here , um , but yeah , this is uh interesting to see .

It's definitely a thing . It mentions utilizing ai , and I know we talked about , but I'm curious if these things are related or like how they're . It doesn't say how they're actually utilizing the you know , ai in the attack . Like are they using AI to help them develop an attack ? Are they using AI to create a code like malicious code ?

I mean , you're not the AI wouldn't know any better , necessarily , right , the guardrails just aren't there . Ai security is going to be well , it's already becoming a thing , right . Security against prompt injection security , just scrubbing the inputs so you're not having data exfiltration from the LLMs and stuff like this .

This just seems like another thing right , this , this , this seems like another thing , right , like where it's not going to be good enough to create a prompt that says don't give away malicious , don't help . You know cyber criminals create malicious code . You know it's not going to be good enough , right ?

So I , I think this is a portent of a , like we said , right , it's gonna it's be a portent of of more cyber crime and more sophisticated . I don't know if it'll be more sophisticated actually now .

I say that I think more like , in the same way that script kitties were enabled by , yeah , you know , the cali linux and like , just you know , be having things kind of packaged up and put a bow on for them . Uh , I think ai is going to do the same thing and make it more widely accessible and louder .

It's just going to be a quantifiable measurement of more , because probably one thing that is hindering the precious cyber criminals that we have out there is time that they have to invest in this stuff , and if AI can come in and do more with less time , then it you know it's going to be .

The thing is , there's a lot of people that are exposed from that perspective on the Internet that just haven't been compromised yet , right ? But it's going to end up being a numbers game , and the more that they have to go out and attack , the more that's going to get compromised , right ?

So the gist of the thing is like we need to take this shit seriously is kind of what I gather , and you know , I think people are kind of skating towards the puck on that one , but you know it's only going to get worse .

It's not quite the same as , like application security or like it's like some weird new thing that I can't figure out , I think hasn't quite been figured out yet , right ? But yeah , definitely going to need it and yeah , it's going to be , otherwise we're going to be all attacked by . It's going to be the school of fish thing .

Up until now , there's been a lot of school of fish problem , where you have a million people out there vulnerable on the internet , but cyber criminals are spear phishing , right . So once this becomes commoditized with AI , like yeah , for sure it's going to be a numbers game .

So there's a doc that we publish on just a Google sheet with all the articles that we cover , plus a few articles that we don't always get around to covering that we think might be interesting . So please take a click on that link . I've never said that before . Take a click on that link . I've never said that before .

Take a click on that link I don't know if that's a phrase Take a click on that link . Yeah , I was going to say take a look at it . But take a click on that link , bro . I think that'll make you feel happy .

You can also visit our website for all the show notes at Cables2Cloudscom . Thanks again for listening and see you next time .