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Interesting NAC-related tidbit

07 Oct 2009 03:15 EDT

I noticed via VentureLoop today (a great resource for filling and finding jobs at venture-funded companies) that Infoblox is on a hiring spree. Infoblox makes products to help manage DNS and DHCP, two of the core protocols of the Internet — and in fact of all modern corporate networks as well. They have some fairly senior positions open, such as “Principal Software Engineer” and “Senior Product Manager”, and sales positions in Europe. Sequoia Capital, a very well-respected VC firm (with a fantastic web site, by the way!), is backing them.

The network access control (NAC) angle is that Infoblox also has some very interesting DHCP/DNS security mechanisms and interfaces, including NAC. DHCP is, in itself, an insecure protocol even though it is in widespread, in fact nearly universal, use. Infoblox added some capabilities to allow DHCP to be made more secure. They weren’t the only ones to do this, of course. And Infoblox is looking fairly successful for a combination of reasons (great leadership team, great field team), not that one particular feature. But I’m glad to see some capital flowing into the IP network management space, and some hiring going on as well.

Nice to see some stars shining through the smog of the downturn!

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Lots of talk about Toobla, and Tech in the Midwest

06 Oct 2009 01:30 EDT

Toobla is in launch mode right now. Toobla is a local (Columbus, Ohio) company working out of the TechColumbus business incubator, on Kinnear Road near Ohio State University. The ether has been vibrating today with Toobla news: tweets upon tweets.  They recently were named one of “The Best Web 2.0 Applications for Education – 2009” by blogger Larry Ferlazzo. They also were featured in Inspired Magazine in a story entitled “10 Amazing Tools for Sharing Visual Inspiration through Screenshots“.  Their rolling thunder continued with an interview of Toobla CEO Brian Link (formerly of Digg) on local station 10TV.

Toobla offers a service, currently in beta, that they say allows you to “collect and enjoy your favorite stuff in visual containers that can be shared anywhere.” It ostensibly is a bookmarking service with a visual metaphor, allowing you to manage your favorite content with channels, services, and subscriptions. I haven’t used the service yet (although I’d like to), so I can’t comment any more than that. In the future I hope to be able to take a deeper technical dive and learn what they’re all about. Seems quite intriguing and potentially useful at first glance.

First off, let me send kudos to their marketing team for creating what appears to be effective buzz and getting Toobla noticed. Let’s hope the noise can continue.

Then, let me send even more kudos to the whole gang, especially the founders, for starting this venture in Columbus. This is a great decision and I’m very pleased to see another high-profile startup here.

Columbus is a great city that is gaining more and more respect as a technology center.  There is a great depth of talent … in my own experience, for example, when we founded SmartPipes (a decade ago this month) there was already an incredible population of bright, talented, educated technical folks to come aboard.  In the decade since then, tech has become a growing and increasingly significant part of the Columbus economy. In fact, Columbus’s economy has not suffered the ill effects that the rest of the Midwest is unfortunately succumbing to. Tech companies in Columbus can be found in diverse segments from nanotech to healthcare to web services to security software, and there’s a major university to draw talent as well. I’ve done some work with TechColumbus, and I know that they have a thriving incubator culture and are an asset to the community and to the hard-working entrepreneurs they work with.

I haven’t met the guys at Toobla yet, but let me just say: good on ya, Toobla. Keep it up and best of luck.

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Getting ready for NaNoWriMo

04 Oct 2009 18:52 EDT

Well, I’ve committed to the public, to my family, and to myself that this year I’ll be participating in National Novel Writing Month – NaNoWriMo. To participate, I signed up at the web site and agreed to start writing a novel on November 1st. Every day I’ll upload my current word count, which is posted for all to see. The goal is to have at least 50,000 words written by November 30th. This is serious stuff, if you want to take it seriously.

I’ve actually been working on the background to some stories since the early summer. Finding myself with an excessive amount of free time this spring, I plunged into creation. Many people start from characters, but I’m not a character-driven person. The maxim is “write what you know:, and I don’t know much about people. Other than being one, and perhaps about being a father. I do know linguistics and astrophysics; mathematics and computing. I know music and little about poetry, some chemistry, some philosophy, and a lot about being lost. I know soldiers and cooking and evolution. So my novel will be about these things, and probably some others.

Genre comes from the Old French gendre, in turn from Latin gener- (a root of genus), finally from Classical Greek γενος, a term which Aristotle was the first to apply to writing. It still means “kind”, or “type”. The original Indo-european root form is ǵenh-, which meant “to give birth”. So what kind or type of novel am I to give birth to? Again “write what you know”. The genres of fiction to which I continually return are science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mystery. Mystery seems to me — I may be wrong here — to be a particularly tricky genre and I’m loath to try it as a starting point. So again, my novel will be somewhere in the science-fiction/fantasy/horror spectrum.

I don’t think we can avoid being influenced by our influencers; all we can hope for is to avoid plagiarizing them, I suppose. I may as well admit my influences right up front and get the comparisons out of the way. I’ve really enjoyed the following authors; observe that not all are authors of fiction.

  • JRR Tolkien
  • CS Lewis
  • Roger Zelazny
  • Larry Niven
  • Jerry Pournelle
  • Fred Saberhagen
  • HP Lovecraft
  • Arthur Conan Doyle
  • Wm Shakespeare
  • Douglas Hofstadter
  • Umberto Eco
  • Jorge Luis Borges
  • JK Rowling
  • Stephen King
  • Douglas Adams
  • Ayn Rand
  • Adam Smith
  • L Frank Baum
  • Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket)
  • Philip Pullman
  • Oliver Sacks
  • Orson Scott Card
  • Michael Crichton
  • Philip K Dick
  • Stephen J Gould
  • Richard Dawkins
  • Stephen R Donaldson
  • Frank Herbert
  • Dante Alighieri
  • Piers Anthony
  • Rex Stout
  • EE ‘Doc’ Smith
  • Kurt Vonnegut

I imagine I will be influenced by some to all of the above, and will probably outright steal from at least one. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and stealing is the sincerest form of imitation. QED.

So, gentle and not-so-gentle readers, I’ve shown you the blank, ungessoed canvas upon which I’ll be splashing words come November. I have no idea what will come out the other side.

Excelsior et citior!

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NaGoGymMo

03 Oct 2009 15:25 EDT

NaGoGymMo?   National* Go to the Gym Month! It’s an event in the spirit of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) — both of which I’m also doing.  And it’s very simple to participate:

Just go to the gym every day for a month.

Easy! If you don’t have a gym membership, well, you might consider getting one if you can afford it. It doesn’t have to be a traditional gym. We belong to the YMCA. If you live in a condominium or apartment community, use the gym at your clubhouse. If you can’t afford a gym membership, then run or walk or sweat to the oldies.  Get out and move your body intensely every day. Your heart, your muscles, your joints, and your brain will thank you.

Please join me in NaGoGymMo!

*National?  My apologies to international readers — as they put it at NaNoWriMo, “We are very proud to be an international event, and don’t consider the “National” in the title to refer to the United States. This is an event for all nations.“

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A Big Blue Cloud of Lotuses Engulfs Enterprise IT

02 Oct 2009 21:09 EDT

IBM has launched a cloud-based email service. Lotus Live iNotes offers webmail (as well as traditional POP/IMAP/SMTP support), calendaring, contact management, and 1GB of storage per user. According to disruptive technology blogger Dave Rosenberg IBM is selling this for only $3.75 per user per month, which is actually a Darn Good Price.

What’s so interesting? IBM getting into the cloud? Nah, IBM gets into everything. The feature set? Nope, you can get this from Google.  The price? Eh, sure, it’s competitive. What’s really interesting is that they are releasing this with the Lotus name.

The Lotus brand is no longer well-known among small businesses but it’s still a stalwart in the enterprise. This shows they are aiming this straight at their bigger customers. Enterprise IT seems uncomfortable with cloud-based services, but IBM’s move may be just the push they need.  It’s from IBM, so it’s expected to be reliable and secure.

Another reason this may help push Enterprise IT to the cloud is that this is a hybrid cloud/datacenter strategy that is built for migration. It’s not an all-or-nothing strategy. CIOs can take a sip of the cloud kool-aid and if they like it they can drink some more. Eventually tht ey can even migrate all their users to the cloud if they like it a lot. And the CISO’s imprimatur will be much easier to get with IBM’s name behind it.

Expect this to increase acceptance of cloud services in Enterprise IT. Also expect IBM to offer additional affordable cloud-based services like storage, antivirus, and even computing if Lotus Live iNotes takes off.

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Hatred is not a viable network security mechanism

01 Oct 2009 23:39 EDT

Twitter was one of the topics at the recent Forrester Security Forum. As related by Rob Whiteley, Twitter was roundly condemned by the security luminaries present, including Marcus Ranum and Hord Tipton (former CIO of the Dept of the Interior):

 ”On day one, there was loud, thunderous applause when Marcus mentioned that he is adamantly against Twitter. This was repeated on day two when Hord mentioned he, too, didn’t see the value in Twitter.” 

 I understand where Marcus and Hord are coming from. Twitter is new potential threat vector and a new potential data leakage point. What are these gentlemen to do — say they are in favor of threats and data leakage? They really have no choice but to proclaim they don’t like Twitter from a security point of view.

But come now. Robert Westervelt frames the issue clearly when he writes:  ”standing in the way of innovation is not the goal of security“. Twitter (it seems almost shocking to say) is nothing new. Twitter is the web. Twitter is text messages. Twitter is the telephone. Sure, the under-the-hood details are different. That’s tractable with current security technologies. In the long run, it may not be Twitter itself that’s successful. It may be Facebook, it may be Nixle, it may be something else altogether. Successful and useful applications come along, people start using them, then along the way they become mainstream applications.

CISOs need to decide for themselves what’s acceptable and what’s not. Surely they can choose to block applications like Twitter if they are compelled to. They do need to consider a couple questions along the way:

1) Where along the spectrum between total lockdown and total employee freedom are you? Unless you’re in certain specialized industries, total lockdown is a choice that brings down employee satisfaction. Employee dissatisfaction can lead to security breaches too!

2) Can you really block these things? The security perimeter is rapidly vanishing, and in fact is flickering in and out of existence.  You probably can’t block these things on the network — and with ubiquitous personally-owned mobile devices, you can’t even block these things on the client.

So don’t hate on Twitter and its siblings. If you can instead learn to embrace them in a managed and manageable way, your company might stay innovative and your employees might stay happy.

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