Kyler Middleton, a software developer in the healthcare sector, builds and supports AI bots and AI agents that are now widely used inside the company where she works. Today on Packet Protector, Kyler stops by to talk about how and why she built these tools, how she (and her organization) address the risks these tools ... Read more »
Take a Network Break! Guest commentator Tom Hollingsworth joins Drew for today’s episode. We start with a double Red Alert from Cisco for its Secure FMC software. On the news front, Cato Networks adds adaptive threat prevention to its SASE offering that looks for seemingly innocuous signals that could add up to an attack, Google ... Read more »
Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a centralized architecture in which a controller, or a hierarchy of controllers, runs software that computes network-engineered paths and pushes that forwarding scheme into the network. It’s also very complex, which can lead to network failures. What if there was a way to keep the benefits of SDN while also ... Read more »
Today’s learning adventure is an overview of multicast. Ethan and Holly have invited a guest to share his multicast expertise: Lenny Giuliano, Sr. Distinguished Systems Engineer at HPE Juniper Networks. Lenny guides them through multicast principles and shares examples of where and how it’s used in live networks. He also explains how the OSPF routing ... Read more »
Engineers and developers are using AI like never before, including in production. That has potential consequences, both good and bad, for uptime, operations, security and risk management, and more. Today’s guest, Rich Mogull, guides us through the decision-making process of adding AI to your production lifecycle and possible ramifications. Rich is Chief Analyst at the ... Read more »...
Today we’re going to learn about the care and feeding of a three-headed dog named Kerberos. Developed at MIT and released in 1989, Kerberos is a free, open source authentication protocol that uses cryptographic keys to protect identity data as it crosses a network. Today, Kerberos is the backbone of Windows authentication. We’ll dive into ... Read more »
Take a Network Break! We start with follow-up on the proper pronunciation of the US state of Nevada, and then sound the alarm about new research that gets around WiFi client isolation and could enable man-in-the-middle attacks. On the news front, AMD and Meta strike a massive deal in which AMD will sell its stock ... Read more »
With the continued growth of data centers for clouds, neoclouds (especially AI model training), for carriers, and for the enterprise, it’s important to discuss data center network operations and issues. Scott is joined by Dr. Peter Welcher, a consultant, blogger, and Tech Field contributor. Together, they dive into how latency and the rise of AI ... Read more »
Our topic today is the designing and building of high-performance networking hardware. If you assume the hardware details don’t matter, you’re missing the intentional engineering required to build truly reliable and quiet infrastructure. In this sponsored episode, we discuss Meter’s hardware philosophy with our guest, Joshua Markell, Head of Hardware at Meter. Joshua walks us ... Read more »...
Alexis and Kevin sit down with Mike Miller to discuss what brought him from the back of a garbage truck to his current position as a Virtual Chief Information Security Officer (VCISO). He breaks down how a VCISO differs from a CISO, and discusses the two types of clients looking for VCISO services: those looking ... Read more »
Eric sits down with David Henderson, Principal Architect for NetDevOps at Presidio, to discuss the practical journey for network engineers transitioning from manual CLI operations to scalable NetDevOps and automation. They discuss how traditional networking knowledge and certifications are foundational, and suggest essential tools and habits for beginning your automation journey. David also shares a ... Read more »...
On today’s show, we pop the lid off of a firewall (figuratively speaking) to understand what’s inside. We talk about how a packet moves through various packet-processing elements inside a firewall, how header analysis and de-encapsulation work, which hardware component has the biggest impact on performance, why stateful inspection still matters in an age of ... Read more »
Take a Network Break! We start with follow-ups on secure browsers and data centers in space, and then sound the red alert about an RCE vulnerability in NLTK. On the news front, Palo Alto Networks acquires a startup that monitors endpoints for malicious packages, browser extensions, scripts, and other threats, Lumen debuts a multi-cloud gateway ... Read more »...
Traditional routing protocols like OSPF simply choose the “shortest” path. If the shortest path is full of traffic and there are alternate paths carrying nothing, OSPF can’t help you. Path Computation Element (PCE) along with Path Computation Element Protocol (PCEP) is a way to construct forwarding paths through the network based on factors that distributed ... Read more »
Today, Ethan and Holly provide an overview of firewalls. While cybersecurity is a separate discipline from network engineering, much of what happens in cybersecurity is interesting at the packet level, so there’s a good deal of overlap. It’s likely that as a network engineer, you’ll be managing, or at least dealing with, firewalls in your ... Read more »
Kat Traxler, Principal Security Researcher at Vectra AI, returns to the podcast to discuss her AI-powered vulnerability research workflow. She explains how she uses two different AI models to act as the “blackboard” while she applies her expertise to triage AI-generated ideas to increase her productivity. She also asks a concerning question: As AI automates ... Read more »
With the rise of cloud services and SaaS, the browser has become a primary productivity tool. It’s also a primary vector for malware, phishing, identity theft, data leaks, and other risks. On today’s sponsored episode with Palo Alto Networks, we dive into browser security. We discuss risks to the browser and how they differ from ... Read more »
Take a Network Break! We start with listener follow-up on data centers in space, and sound the Red Alert about a sandbox failure in Claude Code and a rash of Microsoft zero-days. On the news front, Cisco announces a 102.4Tbps switch ASIC in its Silicon One line of homegrown chips, and adds AI agent monitoring ... Read more »
Scott talks with Mark Gebert from Verizon about something that sits at the heart of every reliable enterprise network: testing. Automation is moving fast in the telco world, but automation without testing is just an accident waiting to happen. They unpack what makes enterprise service provisioning so complex—multi-vendor networks, optical and IP gear, security functions, ... Read more »...
Our topic today is building and running network workflows. If your network workflows live in a spreadsheet, a SharePoint document, or in your head, you really need a workflow manager. A workflow manager brings scalability, repeatability, and consistency to your network operations team. In this sponsored episode, we discuss Cisco Crosswork Workflow Manager. Our guests ... Read more »...
Kevin and Alexis sit down with Melissa Brooks, a Senior Cloud Engineer at Aritzia, to discuss how she went from being a “terrible waitress” to going back to school for a diploma in network security. They explore how she used a strategic, “reverse engineered” approach to goal setting to land on a career in tech. ... Read more »
Today we are joined by Matt Remke, who has spent years in the trenches of network automation projects as a consultant. Matt offers a unique, non-engineer perspective on scaling network automation in real-world, complex environments for some of the world’s largest companies. Matt shares what worked, what backfired, and the hard-earned lessons he has gained ... Read more »...
Everything old is new again in today’s Packet Protector news roundup, as a decade-old Telnet exploit resurfaces, and Microsoft unfolds its roadmap to phase out the ancient NTLM protocol. In other news, Google takes down a sprawling residential proxy network, the popular Notepad++ app takes steps to recover from a serious compromise, and a Polish ... Read more »...
Take a Network Break! We start with a trio of follow-ups, including a correction regarding Mplify certifications, Cisco proposing new OSI layers, and free-space optics. Our Red Alert sounds off about a remote code execution vulnerability in the Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile agent. On the news front, Broadcom announces new silicon for wireless APs for ... Read more »...
What should network engineers know about software development? What should software developers know about networking? Ethan and Drew sit down with Chris Rapier and Nick Buraglio to discuss why crossing these silos can improve outcomes for everyone. They break down why being a little curious about the infrastructure can help software developers write better code, ... Read more »...
Quality of Service (QoS) is a huge topic with a punishingly large group of acronyms. Join Ethan and Holly as they help you build a mental framework of what QoS is and what it solves. Not only do they break down essential acronyms, they also discuss QoS fundamentals, define the major groups of QoS tools, ... Read more »
Ned and Kyler sit down with Tikhon Jelvis to discuss Haskell and other niche programming languages. They explore how this decades-old language isn’t just surviving, but thriving. They also break down how Haskell can provide distinct advantages over traditional programming, especially for complex domain modeling and concurrent applications. Episode Links: Copilot Language Haskell Project Haskell ... Read more »...
Operation Technology (OT) and Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are where the digital world meets the physical world. These systems, which are critical to the operation of nuclear power plants, manufacturing sites, municipal power and water plants, and more, are under increasing attack. On today’s Packet Protector we return to the OT/ICS realm to talk about ... Read more »
Take a Network Break! We’ve got Red Alerts for HPE Juniper Session Smart Routers and SolarWinds. In this week’s news, Microsoft debuts its second-generation AI inferencing chip, Mplify rolls out a new Carrier Ethernet certification for supporting AI workloads, and AWS upgrades its network firewall to spot GenAI application traffic and filter Web categories. Google ... Read more »...
Let’s talk about AI for NetOps: It’s not just coming, it’s here. There are tools to use, skills to acquire, and we want to talk about what’s needed for highly certified network engineers to skill up in AI. What certification opportunities or paths exist? What developments do we think we’re going to see here? And ... Read more »
