Operator’s Security Toolkit

It is time for a refresh of the SP Security materials used by many over the years. Back in 2002, several people in the emerging “Service Provider Security” field pulled together a list of top practices every Operator should deploy. These “NSP-SEC Top 10” techniques became the foundation of our toolkit that is used daily

Is “Transparent” Web Caching Dead?

Over the last few months, I’ve been re-exam the value of web caches in a network architecture. Peers have asked me to write up the results. What follows are the results. The are provided to help operators not get pushed by vendors to make costly mistakes. “Web Caching” has been an effective and productive tool Read More

Does the Internet “End” at 500K routes?

No! Of course, the Internet does not end at 500K routes. On August 13, 2014, there was a lot of “news” about instability issues on the Internet that might have been caused by a surge of new Internet routes (see articles like “Internet routers hitting 512K limit, some become unreliable” – http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/08/internet-routers-hitting-512k-limit-some-become-unreliable/). The most accurate write Read More

Security Questions to ask Vendors

What security questions are you asking your vendors? The Bloomberg article, “How Russian Hackers Stole the Nasdaq,” is a sobering insight into today’s risk. It should be a wake-up call for all organizations in all parts of the world to understand that even the best security teams are facing an overwhelming threat. The focused expertise used by Read More