VMware has pumped out a key version of its core networking software with over 100 new features and added security and application-management support all designed to help customers build and run large scale virtual networks.

These enhancements are part of NSX-T30, the latest version of VMware's flagship networking package that supports everything from private or public cloud-native applications to bare-metal workloads  running on multivendor hypervisors. It also supports network-virtualization stacks in Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure Google Cloud, IBM Cloud as well as leading Kubernetes container technologies.

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Power over Ethernet has become one of those checklist items many enterprises rely on to bring electricity over existing data cables to Wi-Fi access points, firewalls, IP phones and other infrastructure throughout their networks.

PoE’s use has grown substantially since the IEEE standardized it in 2003, and its use will only increase in the coming years as new applications develop. In fact, the Dell’Oro group says that PoE port shipments will total over 624 million over the next five years.

“There are a number of drivers for the current PoE technology. For example, if you look at WLAN [wireless LAN] access points, you have increased number of [wireless-spectrum] bands and higher speeds which require higher power,” said  Sameh Boujelbene, Senior Research Director for Ethernet Switch market research at Dell’Oro. “The new generation of IP phones is adding telepresence features. If you look at surveillance cameras, you have zooming features, you have added analytics. All these new features require higher power.”

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With an eye towards significantly bolstering its edge networking offerings, Palo Alto has entered into an agreement to buy cloud-based SD-WAN vendor CloudGenix for $420 million in cash.

Palo Alto said upon the completion of the acquisition it will integrate CloudGenix's cloud-managed SD-WAN products to accelerate the intelligent onboarding of remote branches and retail stores into its Prisma Access package. 

Announced in May 2019, Palo Alto’s Prisma is a cloud-based security package that includes access control, advanced threat protection, user behavior monitoring and  other services that promise to protect enterprise applications and resources.

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As the coronavirus continues to spread and more people work from home, the impact of the increased traffic on networks in the US so far seems to be minimal.

No doubt that web, VPN and data usage is growing dramatically with the influx of remote workers.  For example, Verizon said it has seen a 34% increase in VPN traffic from March 10 to 17.  It has also seen a 75% increase in gaming traffic, and web traffic increased by just under 20% in that time period, according to Verizon.

Verizon said its fiber optic and wireless networks “have been able to meet the shifting demands of customers and continue to perform well. In small pockets where there has been a significant increase in usage, our engineers have quickly added capacity to meet customers’ demand.”

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Cisco has issued five  warnings about security weaknesses in its SD-WAN offerings, three of them on the high-end of the vulnerability scale.

The worst problem is with the command-line interface (CLI) of its SD-WAN Solution software where a weakness could let a local attacker inject arbitrary commands that are executed with root privileges, Cisco wrote.

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The Wireless Broadband Alliance has taken over development and promotion of Cisco's OpenRoaming technology, which lets devices move between Wi-Fi and cellular networks such as LTE without interrupting service.

OpenRoaming is built on the Passpoint (HotSpot 2.0) standard, which in turn is based on the IEEE 802.11u standard for interworking connectivity. The expectation is that WBA can bring about the broad adoption of OpenRoaming by new and existing Wi-Fi network customers, identity and service providers.

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As the coronavirus spreads, many companies are requiring employees to work from home, putting unanticipated stress on remote networking technologies and causing bandwidth and security concerns.

Businesses have facilitated brisk growth of teleworkers over the past decades to an estimated 4 million-plus. The meteoric rise in new remote users expected to come online as a result of the novel coronavirus calls for stepped-up capacity.

Research by VPN vendor Atlas shows that VPN usage in the U.S. grew by 53% between March 9 and 15, and it could grow faster. VPN usage in Italy, where the virus outbreak is about two weeks ahead of the U.S., increased by 112% during the last week. "We estimate that VPN usage in the U.S. could increase over 150% by the end of the month," said Rachel Welch, chief operating officer of Atlas VPN, in a statement.

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Cisco and Microsoft have tied together their edge-to-cloud software packages in an effort to ease the management of IoT devices.

Specifically, Cisco this week said it will meld its recently announced Intelligent Edge software with Microsoft’s Azure IoT Hub.  Cisco Edge Intelligence runs on Cisco’s IoT packages and gathers data from connected devices to create logical flows from the edge into private, public or third-party clouds – in this case Microsoft Azure IoT Hub. IoT Hub is a managed cloud service that acts as a communications traffic cop between IoT devices and applications. 

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Cisco has issued another batch of security warnings that include problems in its Firepower firewall (FXOS),  Unified Computing System (UCS) software and Nexus switch operating system (NX-OS) .

The firewall and UCS vulnerabilities all have a severity level of “high” on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System and include:

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VMware this week further integrated and added new features to its security software in an effort to bring unified protection to resources in data centers, and private clouds and public clouds.

The company rolled out three new offerings:

• VMware Advanced Security for Cloud Foundation – an integrated package of VMware Carbon Black technology, NSX Advanced Load Balancer with Web Application Firewall capabilities and NSX Distributed IDS/IPS aimed at offering customers a unified shield for data centers, private and public clouds.
• Support for security correlation with the MITRE ATT&CK framework Technique IDs (TIDs)—a list of common tactics, techniques, and procedures now built into the VMware Carbon Black Cloud that customers can use to determine network threat risks and prioritize resolutions. Improved Carbon Black Cloud support for Microsoft and Linux is coming as well.
• VMware Secure State – real-time detection and remediation capabilities to automate problem resolution across clouds.

The announcements further VMware’s overarching goal of integrating security features within its infrastructure – a concept it calls intrinsic security – that it says will better protect networked workloads than traditional piecemeal protection systems. They also feature the further integration of a number of technologies VMware has recently acquired.

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