Many organizations have embraced software-defined innovations such as the software-defined data center and the software-defined WAN, taking advantage of programmability and automation to simplify the management of their networks and other data center resources. What’s been missing, until recently, was a way to achieve the same benefits at the access layer of the network.

From security conferences to post-breach remediation documents, network segmentation is the most highly mentioned security topic since next-generation anti-virus software. That’s for good reason. Many recent high-profile security breaches might have been prevented had the victim employed network segmentation to limit the reach of attackers once they established an initial foothold on the network. However, many organizations…

When the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation went into effect in May, the new mandate affected organizations far beyond the boundaries of the EU. GDPR’s requirements that organizations protect the privacy of any personal data they handle apply to the personal information of EU residents wherever it may exist in the world. This means…

If you don’t talk to your business units about the Internet of Things, who will? IT history shows why that’s not a glib question. Over the past decade, many enterprises suffered embarrassing security breaches and hefty noncompliance fines because their business units signed up for a cloud service without IT’s blessing or even knowledge. Why?…

James was flustered. As the CIO of a small but growing community bank, he had quite a few balls in the air at any point in time. He was used to quickly turning to one of the talented members of his small team and handing off most problems, but one was vexing him. The bank’s…

Next-generation firewalls and other advanced security tools can be a double-edged sword. They’re great at ferreting out and thwarting attacks that get past older technologies. But they also generate far more alerts and logs, which overload IT staff. No wonder one of the first things IT departments do after deploying next-gen security tools is minimize…