NC1809

NETWORKcomputing 

I N F O R M A T I O N A N D C O M M U N I C A T I O N S – N E T W O R K E D www.networkcomputing.co.uk 

MINE YOUR OWN BUSINESS? 

Digging into the cryptojacker threat 

GIVING WAN AN EDGE 

The evolution of SD-WAN 

SERVER-SPECIFIC SECURITY THREATS 

Out of sight, out of mind? 

BLOCKCHAIN TAKES OFF 

How blockchain can radically improve 

the aerospace and defence supply chain 

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 VOL 27 NO 05

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COMMENT 

COMMENT 

BLOCKHEADS AND BLOCKCHAIN 

BY RAY SMYTH, EDITOR 

Blockchain, which is not necessarily anything to do with cryptocurrency (well at 

least not exclusively) is starting to get some recognition for the way that it could 

potentially provide an efficient, reliable, and secure infrastructure for the digital 

transformation of transaction orientated processing and applications. 

On the face of it, some IT and many networking disciplines may sideline this, thinking 

that it is not core to their role or contribution, but nothing could be further from 

the truth, and such thinking on the part of IT and networking professionals is a grave 

error. You see, this is an example of head-in-the-sand tech thinking. In fact, it is comparable 

with the thinking that ultimately unleashed the irreversible BYOD phenomenon 

on organisations across the world. 

Blockchain is evolving into an enterprise scale application enabler, as testified by the 

feature articles in this edition of the magazine. Blockchain deployments are going to 

require all the facilities that IT and networking can offer - and guess who will be asked 

to implement, manage and secure them? While you're at it, who do you think will be 

blamed when it doesn't work, or compromises the business? 

Apart from digesting our new blockchain coverage in this and future editions, synthesise 

your understanding so that you can see if it has a role in your organisation. If it 

hasn't then at least you will be able to articulate a view, and if it does, you never 

know, you might want to make a proposal to the CEO and marketing team so that this 

time you get the credit, and not the headache. 

EDITOR: Ray Smyth 

(ray.smyth@btc.co.uk) 

REVIEWS: 

Dave Mitchell 

Ray Smyth 

SUB EDITOR: Mark Lyward 

(netcomputing@btc.co.uk) 

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writing, from the publisher. 

As I will not refrain from saying, in any way I can, until I am proven right or disavowed, 

organisations do not need propeller head techies to deliver their IT and networking. 

What they need is creative business experts who are also IT and networking 

experts, who are also skilled strategists and articulate communicators. 

This role, you might be tempted to think, does not exist. However, if you start performing 

it and it delivers a small part of its potential, then you may well be seen as 

the candidate of choice. 

Ray Smyth - Editor, Network Computing. 

Ray.Smyth@BTC.CO.UK | https://twitter.com/ItsRay? 

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WWW.NETWORKCOMPUTING.CO.UK @NCMagAndAwards SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 NETWORKcomputing 3

CONTENTS 

CONTENTS 

S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 1 8 

BLOCKCHAIN......................11 

From enabling greater collaboration in 

scientific research to automating a range of 

business processes, blockchain has 

potential far beyond its bitcoin association 

MINE YOUR BUSINESS?........21 

Organisations of all types are now under 

threat from cryptojackers. Karl Sigler at 

Trustwave explains the threat 

PREPARING FOR LIFT-OFF...10 

IP EXPO Europe 2018 takes place at 

ExCel London in October, and welcomes 

former Astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield 

as its keynote speaker 

SD-WAN EVOLVES...............18 

In our feature on SD-WAN this issue Allan 

Paton at Silver Peak explains its evolution, 

while Nick Johnson at Evolving Networks 

examines how UK businesses can make SD- 

WAN work for them 

THE SERVER THREAT.............27 

Due to their location the protection of 

servers has not received adequate 

attention. Paul Murray at Sophos considers 

the threat, and possible responses 

EDITOR’S COMMENT......................3 

Blockheads and blockchain 

COMPANY NEWS............................6 

Market Dynamics: making sense of the market 

NETWORK NEWS............................7 

Moves, adds and changes 

VERSION X......................................8 

The latest networking news 

ARTICLES 

THE CURRENCY OF BLOCKCHAIN...11 

By Jonathan Wilkins at EU Automation 

FUELING THE CHAIN OF 

DISCOVERY........................................13 

By Eitan Katchka at MaterialsZone 

BLOCKCHAIN TAKES OFF...............14 

By Thane Hall at Thales UK 

THE BLACK MARKET BLOCK............15 

By Steve Kuh at Bonafi 

ENGINEERING BLOCKCHAIN..........16 

By Travis Biehn at Synopsys 

DIGITAL WISDOM...........................17 

By Eric Yu at GTCOM 

IoT IN THE SHADOWS.....................20 

By Gary Cox at Infoblox 

DIGITAL VISIBILITY............................22 

By Richard Piasentin at Accedian 

NETWORKING FAST........................25 

By Karim Taga and Glen Peres at Arthur D. Little 

MOVING RECOVERY TO THE 

CLOUD............................................26 

By Dave Packer at Druva 

TAKE IT ON THE CHIN?...................28 

By Ian Osborne at Shred-IT 

OMINOUS CLOUDS........................30 

By Steve Brown at VIAVI 

THE CURRENCY THREAT..................31 

By Fabian Lineau at RiskIQ 

THE INTELLIGENCE NETWORK........32 

By James Hatch at BAE Systems 

IP CCTV: THE NETWORK 

CHALLENGE.....................................33 

By Dan Barrera at Ideal Networks 

STITCHING UP THE CLOUD............34 

By Matthew Parker at InterCloud 

PRODUCT REVIEW 

ALLIED TELESIS HYBRID WIRELESS 

SOLUTION...................................24 

4 NETWORKcomputing SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 @NCMagAndAwards 

WWW.NETWORKCOMPUTING.CO.UK

COMPANYNEWS 

MARKET DYNAMICS: MAKING SENSE OF THE MARKET 

IN A REGULAR LOOK AT RESULTS AND KEY BUSINESS ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR SUPPLIERS INTO THE 

NETWORKING AND IT MARKET, NETWORK COMPUTING SUMMARISES THE EDITORS SELECTIONS 

We are currently in the centre of 

an IT spending maelstrom, one 

that is driven by an increasing 

fascination for cloud based computing. 

This view is given shape by Gartner, who 

say that "28 per cent of spending in key 

IT segments will shift to the cloud by 

2022." This figure is up from the 2018 

figure (19 per cent) and Gartner says that 

spending on cloud-based offerings will 

grow faster than that in traditional, noncloud 

IT offerings. 

Michael Warrilow, Research Vice 

President at Gartner notes, "The shift of 

enterprise IT spending to new, cloud-based 

alternatives is relentless, although it's 

occurring over the course of many years 

due to the nature of traditional enterprise 

IT. Cloud shift highlights the appeal of 

greater flexibility and agility, is perceived 

as a benefit of on-demand capacity and 

pay-as-you-go pricing in cloud." The 

largest cloud shift prior to 2018 occurred 

in application software, driven by CRM, 

which Gartner says has already reached a 

tipping point where a higher proportion of 

spend occurs in cloud compared to 

traditional software. 

Privileged Access Management (PAM) 

solutions provider Bomgar has signed a 

definitive agreement to acquire 

BeyondTrust, who offer Privilege-Centric 

Security, from an affiliate of Veritas Capital. 

A spokesman for the combined company, 

to be called BeyondTrust, said "This brings 

together proven innovators with a shared 

mission of securing privileged access and 

helps customers to defend themselves from 

cyber-attacks while increasing productivity." 

Matt Dircks, CEO of Bomgar, who will 

lead the combined company as CEO said, 

"We are extremely excited to build upon 

BeyondTrust's Privileged Access 

Management leadership. The greater scale 

and resources of the combined company 

allows us to accelerate innovation and 

deliver technology that protects customers 

from constantly evolving threats." Earlier 

this year Bomgar was acquired by 

Francisco Partners, a technology-focused 

private equity firm. 

Cloud-based messaging, voice and video 

collaboration solutions company StarLeaf, 

has been named in The Sunday Times Tech 

Track, a listing for rapidly growing UK 

technology companies. It was ranked 48th 

in the 100-strong list. The StarLeaf Cloud, 

a global communications network, offers 

businesses an end-to-end solution 

combining an app, meeting room systems, 

conferencing, cloud interop, and 

management platforms that don't rely on 

third-party products. 

Ribbon Communications has closed its 

acquisition of Edgewater Networks, who 

specialise in Network Edge Orchestration 

for the distributed enterprise and Unified 

Communications (UC) market. The 

company sees the acquisition as significant 

and projects that Ribbon will become the 

market share leader for enterprise Session 

Border Controllers (SBCs) and Network 

Edge Orchestration. Ribbon will be able to 

offer its customer base a complete core-toedge 

product portfolio, unrivaled end-to-end 

service assurance and analytics solutions, 

and a fully integrated SD-WAN service. 

Fritz Hobbs, President and Chief Executive 

Officer of Ribbon Communications said, 

"The acquisition aligns perfectly with our 

strategic initiatives [and] allows us to 

immediately extend Edgewater solutions 

internationally, expand our cloud offerings, 

and enter the SD-WAN market." 

Zero-risk enterprise cloud storage 

company Zadara has signed a $25 million 

funding round led by IGP Capital with 

participation from existing investors subject 

to the approval of a general meeting. This 

brings the total equity raised to over $60 

million, and Zadara plans to use the 

investment to accelerate growth, including 

expanding worldwide sales, dev-ops and 

engineering teams, as well as its service 

provider partner channel. 

Zadara uses a combination of industrystandard 

hardware and patented Zadara 

software to deliver powerful enterpriseclass 

data storage and management via 

the convenience of the cloud. Their CEO 

and co-founder, Nelson Nahum, said, 

"Zadara is dedicated to delivering zerorisk 

enterprise cloud storage. The new 

funding supports our mission by helping 

us to provide customers with industryleading 

enterprise data storage 

solutions… as a fully-managed service, 

with a 100 per cent uptime guarantee and 

consumption-based pricing." NC 

Disclaimer - all information published in this article is based upon fuller submissions provided under general release. Any interested party is urged to verify 

any information printed here, prior to using it in any way. Neither Network Computing nor it publishers accepts any responsibility for the accuracy of the 

information contained in this article. 



NETWORKNEWS 

NETWORK NEWS - MOVES, ADDS AND CHANGES 

A REGULAR LOOK AT THE STORIES INVOLVING PEOPLE, COMPANIES AND SOLUTIONS 

It would be difficult to ignore the 

upsurge of interest in IoT that has 

taken hold and is continuing to 

advance. One of the key reasons for 

deploying IoT is to gather data, frequently 

and sometimes in real-time, to 

enable better understanding and control 

of business processes, and to be able to 

better serve customers, in a more profitable 

way. For commercial organisations, 

improvement at the bottom line 

will be an important investment objective. 

IoT deployed at scale is likely to 

generate a lot of raw data that needs to 

be processed, analysed and enacted. 

Recent research from Inmarsat reveals 

that, "The vast majority of mining companies 

are struggling to access, analyse 

and extract full value from the data gathered 

by Industrial IoT (IIoT) solutions." Of 

the 125 mining organisations surveyed, 

half reported that a lag between data 

collection and availability for analysis 

was preventing them from generating full 

value from their IIoT data. 

Commenting, Joe Carr, Director of 

Mining at Inmarsat Enterprise, said, 

"Mining businesses rely on IIoT technology 

to extract, haul and process raw 

materials. The data produced often has 

a shelf life… To secure the significant 

benefits that IIoT offers, businesses must 

ensure that they can view and analyse 

mission critical data in real-time, which 

requires a robust and reliable communications 

network." 

The 2008 banking crisis frequently justifies 

ongoing austerity, and this includes 

IT spend. According to a study by 

Spiceworks, 90 per cent of European 

organisations expect IT budgets to grow 

or stay steady during 2019, with 65 per 

cent planning to increase budgets to 

upgrade outdated IT infrastructure. This 

research, the first part of the Spiceworks' 

annual State of IT Report, examines 

international IT budgets and tech trends 

in organisations across North America 

and Europe. In Europe, organisations 

plan to spend 36 per cent of their budgets 

on hardware purchases, up by 5 per 

cent from last year. Cloud services have 

also grown from last year, whilst software 

budget allocations have decreased. 

While it seems that IT decision makers 

will have their say, Business Managers 

are more likely to either sign off on final 

approval or veto proposals. 

If hardware, infrastructure and software 

replacement has been on the back burner 

then succession planning, in all areas 

of IT, has hardly surfaced. It seems that 

this tech oversight is not limited to IT 

professionals, and the IT industry itself 

could be setting a bad example. 

Aldermore says that a recent survey indicates 

that over half of small and medium-sized 

IT sector businesses do not 

have a succession plan. Over half of UK 

SME decision makers in the IT sector 

believe the biggest threat to their business 

is the departure of senior executives 

and yet, over half have no plan for leaving 

their business. Handing the business 

to a family member is the most common 

way out for bosses who have already 

planned their departure. 

Aldermore's Future Attitudes report 

found the younger generation of UK 

SME owners across all industry sectors 

seem to be more organised when thinking 

about their eventual departure. The 

research also revealed that 56 per cent 

of those aged 18 to 34 have a succession 

plan in place. 

Carl D'Ammassa, Group Managing 

Director, Business Finance, at Aldermore, 

said: "For UK SME leaders in the IT sector 

who have planned their departure, 

they aim to leave their company within 

the next two years… there are fewer senior 

executives with a formal business 

succession plan compared to a year 

ago. Running a business can be very 

time consuming. These challenges exert 

substantial pressure on leaders, so it is 

vital that a succession strategy is 

planned out to ensure businesses do not 

suffer when change occurs." NC 


PRODUCTNEWS 

VERSION X 

VERSION X 

VERSION X 

VERSION X 

VER 

WITH PRODUCT ANNOUNCEMENTS RANGING FROM THE TRIVIAL TO THE BIZARRE, THE EDITOR 

DISTILS THE ESSENCE OF THOSE THAT ARE OF INTEREST TO THE NETWORKING COMMUNITY 

Discussing its new managed detection 

and response service in the 

UK, Fidelis Cybersecurity cites 

increasing cybercrime rates and nationstate 

threats that SOCs often do not have 

the staff or skills in-house to effectively 

monitor and respond to, as a primary 

driver. The company said that, "This is 

especially pertinent in the UK, where the 

chasm between employer demand and a 

ready supply of cybersecurity expertise is 

the second largest in the world, and especially 

acute for smaller enterprises." 

Nick Lantuh, President and CEO at 

Fidelis Cybersecurity said, "With the risk 

enterprises face each day, organisations 

need more than just an MSSP partner. 

Our experts are true threat hunters, not 

just alert watchers. Most come from US 

Government Department of Defence 

Cyber Security Units and Intelligence 

Community backgrounds with deep hunting 

and incident response experience. 

They are empowered by our advanced 

analysis engine which provides rich metadata 

and content to expose and understand 

the context behind an alert, to gain 

full life-cycle visibility during an attack 

and to rapidly and accurately find, contain 

and eradicate threats." 

Vodafone says that it will double the 

number of European cell sites in its 5G 

Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) 

network footprint by the end of 2019. The 

firm says that this major prioritisation of 

NB-IoT within their existing capital expenditure 

plans reflects the demand it has 

seen from enterprise customers. The 

world's biggest, international NB-IoT network 

will be available in 10 European 

countries, including planned launches in 

the UK, Romania and Hungary. 

NB-IoT is the industrial grade Low Power 

Wide Area technology that will provide 

connectivity to many smart city applications 

such as streetlights, connected 

healthcare monitors and wearable devices 

at low cost and with equivalent security to 

4G. It will also significantly benefit the 

agriculture industry in rural areas, giving 

rise to new crop monitoring systems, 

automated feeding for crops and herds, 

and even support for animals giving birth, 

all helping to shape the connected farm 

of the future. 

NB-IoT operates in licenced spectrum to 

guarantee customers quality of service, 

and provides strong coverage over large 

areas - even when devices are underground 

or deep within buildings (+20 

decibels coverage versus GSM) - along 

greater power efficiency, so devices can 

run on batteries for 10 years or more on 

a single charge. It also provides Vodafone 

with the ability to support upwards of 

50,000 devices in a single cell without 

congestion, for the first time. 

Edge cloud services provider Limelight 

Networks has been explaining what it 

claims is the industry's first globally scalable, 

sub-second live video streaming solution: 

Limelight Realtime Streaming. 

Natively supported by major browsers and 

devices, the new service supports integrated 

real-time data, making it possible to 

create interactive live online experiences. 

Streams of live events are typically delayed 

from the broadcast feed by 30 seconds or 

more which can cause poor viewing experiences, 

loss of reputation when viewers publicly 

express displeasure, and ultimately loss 

of revenue. Limelight Realtime Streaming 

eliminates these challenges, enabling 

organisations to stream live video from anywhere 

in the world to anywhere in the 

world, in less than a second. 

Claiming it to be the industry's first 

cloud-scale programmable router, 

Huawei says that the NE40E-F1A provides 

a capacity of 2Tbit/s and ultrahigh-density 

interfaces and supports SRv6 

flexible programming. The NE40E-F1A, 

one of the key components of Huawei's 

CloudMetro, helps telecom operators 

embrace advanced telco cloud bearer 

networks and DC-centric simplified metro 

networks to accelerate telco cloud service 

innovation. To deliver a better user experience 

of 5G, 4K, and VR services, operators 

are gradually moving towards a 

distributed telco cloud, however, this is 

bringing uncertainties in the connections 

and traffic between data centres. 

Through its modular design, flexible programming 

and plug-and-play capability, 

the cloud-scale programmable router 

NE40E-F1A will help operators develop 

scalable, flexible, and highly automated 

telecom networks to rapidly build new 

telco cloud services. 



PRODUCTNEWS 

SION X 

Zyxel Communications has unveiled a 

new access point that they claim makes 

it more practical for hotels, dorms, and 

offices to deliver reliable, high-speed 

wired and wireless internet. The 

NWA1302-AC integrates cutting-edge 

AP technology and a Gigabit switch with 

PoE and is installed one per room. 

There is no need for a network switch 

which simplifies deployment. Using a 

unique RF-first approach it optimises the 

radio frequency design for every hardware 

element in order to deliver maximum 

coverage and increase data transfer 

rates. Its smart antenna and beamforming 

technology dynamically customise 

signal direction for each device 

to create the best path to deliver Wi-Fi 

signals while mitigating interference 

from neighbouring APs. 

Uninterruptible Power Supplies Limited 

(UPSL) has launched the PowerWAVE 

9250DPA, positioned as "The latest addition 

to its range of premium, highly efficient 

modular UPS products." It is 

designed specifically for medium-sized 

critical power applications, the lowest 

cost of ownership in its class, delivering 

module and system efficiency above 97 

per cent and significantly reducing power 

loss when compared with similar products. 

It also supports Xtra VFI, which further 

minimises power consumption by 

intelligently configuring the number of 

modules required to support the current 

critical load requirements. 

UPSL Operations Director Alex Emms, 

said, "It sets a new benchmark for midrange 

power protection in the UK. With 

its modular design and low TCO, it 

offers the best scalability and flexibility in 

its class." 

Announcing "groundbreaking solutions 

and enhancements" to its analytics platform, 

Sumo Logic says that it will 

"empower enterprises to win in the analytics 

economy." The demand for machine 

data across the enterprise is accelerating 

at a faster pace than expected. According 

to a 451 Research study, more than 54 

per cent of survey respondents say their 

companies are already using machine 

data tools for business insight, and 50 

per cent use these tools to support the 

end-user experience. Legacy analytics 

tools have failed organisations because 

they cannot deliver the visibility needed 

to support the investment being made in 

modern architectures, at cloud scale. 

Ramin Sayar, President and CEO at 

Sumo Logic said, "By operating one of 

the most sophisticated pure-cloud services 

in the world over the past eight years, 

and now serving 50,000 plus users, 

Sumo Logic is quickly becoming the data 

steward for modern businesses and we 

are just getting started." 

Security certification is an important 

indicator. When it comes to safe storage 

of data, how do you choose between the 

options? iStorage has recently passed the 

prestigious FIPS 140-2 Level 3 certification, 

which is in addition to the NCSC 

CPA, NLNCSA BSPA & NATO Restricted 

Level. iStorage claims that they are the 

world's first and only company to have all 

these security certifications. 

It is becoming clear to all that Artificial 

Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning 

(ML) are technologies that have the 

potential to differentiate businesses in a 

congested and competitive market. Cisco 

has launched its first server built from the 

ground up to manage and power these 

AI and ML workloads. The new Cisco 

UCS server speeds up deep learning, a 

compute-intensive form of machine 

learning that uses neural networks and 

large data sets to train computers for 

complex tasks. Businesses will require an 

IT architecture that is capable of taking 

in vast sets of data and using it to learn, 

so this technology is required to power 

these initiatives. 

Roland Acra, SVP and GM for Cisco's 

Data Center Business Group says, "Over 

the next few years, apps powered by AI 

and ML will become mainstream. While 

this solves many complex business issues, 

it also creates new IT challenges. This 

addition to the Cisco UCS line up will 

power AI initiatives across a wide range 

of industries: our early-access customers 

in the financial sector are exploring ways 

to improve fraud detection and enhance 

algorithmic trading. Meanwhile in healthcare, 

they're interested in better insights 

and diagnostics, improving medical 

image classification, and speeding drug 

discovery and research." NC 


SHOWPREVIEW 

PREPARING FOR 

LIFT-OFF… 

IP EXPO EUROPE 2018 TAKES 

PLACE AT EXCEL LONDON IN 

OCTOBER, AND WELCOMES 

FORMER ASTRONAUT COLONEL 

CHRIS HADFIELD AS ITS 

KEYNOTE SPEAKER 

IP EXPO Europe, which is colocated with 

Digital Transformation EXPO 2018, returns 

to London on the 3rd and 4th of October. 

The two day event will be opened by 

Astronaut Chris Hadfield with a keynote that 

will share his truly unique perspectives, 

experiences and lessons concerning the next 

steps for mankind. 

Alongside IP EXPO Europe, the full spectrum 

of the technology industry will be present at 

Digital Transformation EXPO, offering expert 

speakers in the following areas: 

IP EXPO 

Many organisations exclusively depend on 

cloud-based ecosystems. Speakers at IP EXPO 

will share their knowledge and strategies to 

expose the full potential of the cloud. 

Speaker Mayank Prakash, Chief Digital and 

Information Officer at DWP will offer advice 

concerning the critical ingredients required to 

drive digital transformation at pace - from 

embedding a digital mindset to empowering 

multidisciplinary teams, whilst investing in an 

innovative ecosystem. Other speakers 

include Margarida Correia, Architect at 

Juniper Networks and Alexandra Gates, 

Principal Product Marketing Manager at 

Aerohive Networks. 

CYBER SECURITY X 

With GDPR firmly in place, it's time to hear the 

discussions around the impact it's having. At 

the show, expert speakers will offer a fully 

rounded look at cyber security, from 

protection to mitigation and detection. 

Attendees will also have the opportunity to 

explore the world of hacking, with the Cyber 

Hack showcase offering a glimpse of how the 

bad actors can attack. 

Eye-opening talks will be delivered by key 

cyber security leaders, including Dave Lewis, 

Global Security Advocate at Duo Security, 

Doug Howard, Vice President of Global 

Services at RSA, Lisa Forte, Partner at Red 

Goat Cyber Security LLP and Security Analyst, 

Graham Cluley. 

DEVELOPER X 

The role of the developer has never before 

been so crucial in this digitally transforming 

world. Speakers at Developer X will include 

Paul Fletcher, Enterprise Architect at 

Sainsbury's, Marcus Robinson, Technical 

Evangelist at Microsoft, and James Allen, 

Cloud and DevOps Solution Architect at 

Red Hat. Together they will take stock of the 

rapid speed of change as disruptive new 

technologies and practices become 

established. 

AI-ANALYTICS X 

AI has been the hottest topic for years and 

2018 is no different. IP EXPO Europe will 

explore new innovations in AI and machine 

learning, driven by data. The insights gained 

through analytics are incredibly powerful, and 

can be used to grow an organisation. 

Speakers, including Dr Hannah Fry, Lecturer in 

the Mathematics of Cities at UCL, Areiel 

Wolanow, Managing Director at Finserv 

Experts and Oliver Gindele, Data Scientist at 

Datatonic, will together deliver insight and 

solutions to help visitors to store, manage and 

analyse data on a massive scale. 

INTERNET OF THINGS X 

With over 23 billion connected devices in use 

worldwide, with that figure set to more than 

double over the next few years, enterprises in 

all verticals are seeing the huge opportunities 

for their organisation from harnessing IoT 

technology. Internet of Things X will explore 

the very latest capabilities offered by IoT 

solutions with input from IoT experts including 

Yodit Stanton, CEO of OpenSensors and John 

David, CEO and Founder of Amnick. 

BLOCKCHAIN X 

Blockchain is no longer tomorrow's future 

megatrend: it is here, today, and has the 

potential to change technology forever. 

Covering subjects such as performance, 

resilience, integration and platforms, 

Blockchain X will provide attendees with the 

information that they need to help them 

understand the opportunities and applications 

for business operations. 

Carrie Osman, CEO & Founder at Cruxy & 

Company will be speaking at Blockchain X 

and educate attendees on how best to tackle 

Blockchain and gain business benefits. NC 

IP Expo Europe is poised to challenge, 

inform and lead todays IT professionals. For 

further information and to register for IP EXPO 

Europe 2018, visit: www.ipexpoeurope.com 



FEATUREBLOCKCHAIN 

THE CURRENCY OF BLOCKCHAIN 

BLOCKCHAIN IS MORE - MUCH MORE - THAN BITCOIN. 

JONATHAN WILKINS, MARKETING DIRECTOR AT EU AUTOMATION 

EXPLAINS HOW BLOCKCHAIN CAN AUTOMATE A RANGE OF 

BUSINESS PROCESSES 

Blockchain was invented in 2008 by 

Satoshi Nakamato. He is thought to 

be a man living in Japan, born in 

1975, but there remains speculation about 

the inventor's true identity. 

The technology was intended as a digital 

ledger for the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Its 

success led to the use of the technology to 

automate a range of processes, from asset 

traceability to accountancy. But, according 

to IDG Connect, only 13 per cent of IT 

leaders have a plan to use blockchain. 

TAKING AUTOMATION TO THE 

NEXT LEVEL 

Blockchain adds to the automation 

capabilities that Industry 4.0 has already 

provided. For example, most manufacturers 

have started to integrate components such 

as smart sensors and programmable logic 

controllers (PLCs), which allow them to 

automate equipment maintenance. Plants 

can now add blockchain between the 

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software 

and the parts supplier, so that machines 

can autonomously place orders for their 

own replacement, before they break. 

Businesses still using paper-based records 

should transfer them directly to blockchain 

to reduce the risk of data being lost or 

damaged. Many companies still use paperbased 

legal contracts, but with blockchain, 

they can produce smart contracts that 

automatically execute when certain 

conditions are met. Ethereum is an 

example of a platform that runs smart 

contracts using blockchain. It manages the 

release of assets to the owner using 

predetermined conditions to prove their 

ownership. 

As well as automating individual business 

processes, blockchain dramatically 

improves the ability of companies to safely 

share information. 

THE CHAIN 

When a document is shared on a 

blockchain, a block is created that attaches 

to previous blocks, forming a visible chain. 

This allows for advanced supply chain 

traceability and means businesses can 

rapidly detect and address problems. For 

example, if a manufacturer that uses 

blockchain needs to initiate a product 

recall, every product can be identified, 

located and quickly recalled. It's efficient 

and secure. 

Blockchain could also help to reduce the 

amount of greenhouse gases that 

organisations emit. Approximately 1,000 

industrial plants and power stations in the 

UK are covered by the Emissions Trading 

System (ETS). They are issued a limited 

number of carbon credits by government. If 

they do not use all their carbon credits, 

they can trade them to other companies. 

IBM and Energy Blockchain Labs are 

developing a blockchain marketplace to 

increase the visibility and traceability of 

carbon credit trading. 

Despite the increased clarity and visibility 

of records that blockchain allows, it is also 

seen as a safer means of digital 

information transmission than the 

alternatives. 

SAFETY MOMENT 

An April 2018 Cyber Security Breaches 

Survey found that over four in ten UK 

businesses suffered a cyber breach or 

attack in the previous twelve months. As 

more devices become connected across the 

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), cyber 

security will become a bigger concern. 

Blockchain is extremely tamper-resistant: 

by the time a hacker has hacked into a 

block, multiple new blocks have been 

created. Alex Tapscott, CEO and founder 

of Northwest Passage Ventures, explained, 

"You wouldn't just have to hack one system, 

you'd have to hack every single computer 

on that network." 

Blockchain uses a powerful cryptography 

that gives individuals ownership of their 

own data, reducing the risk of identity 

fraud. In addition, the technology uses long 

cryptographic keys that work in a similar 

way to long, complex passwords, making 

accounts challenging for hackers to access. 

While he keeps his identity private, the socalled 

Satoshi Nakamato is probably 

astonished by the vast benefits that his 

invention can bring to organisations across 

all industries. In coming years, we can 

expect to see many more applications for 

blockchain, including some that may not 

have been considered yet. NC 



FUELLING THE CHAIN 

OF DISCOVERY 

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IS OFTEN 

IMPEDED BY FEAR. EITAN 

KATCHKA, CHIEF OPERATING 

OFFICER OF MATERIALSZONE 

EXPLAINS WHY BLOCKCHAIN 

WILL UNLOCK COLLABORATIVE 

SCIENCE AND ACCELERATE 

DISCOVERY 

Science has always been a race. The 

scientist or researcher who has the 

most published works or finds a 

potentially world-changing discovery will 

take home the funding and the fame. This 

race, however, has been slowly smothering 

innovation and discovery. 

It is estimated that 95 per cent of scientific 

research is inaccessible or lost. This is due to 

fears surrounding intellectual property, a lack 

of incentive for researchers to publish their 

data, and very few platforms where they can 

do so. Therefore, under the current publishing 

and academic models, most researchers are 

reluctant to share their data out of fear that 

their findings will get scooped by other 

researchers. This creates an insurmountable 

barrier for science to shift into an open science 

approach, resulting in billions of data entries, 

studies and experiments from all research 

fields not being shared, which obstructs 

innovation and scientific breakthroughs. 

In an ideal world, international scientists and 

researchers would work together toward the 

common goal of discovery. Unfortunately, the 

current model of research demonstrates that 

this isn't feasible. Even though there have been 

many efforts by the EU and US regulators and 

other large organisations to shift to an open 

science approach, published work is still the 

measure of a researcher's success. In the 

meantime, the world is falling apart faster than 

we can stick it back together. For example, 

global warming is an issue that entire 

continents are trying and failing to combat. 

Technological innovation may yet untie the 

hands of science so it can get to work 

unhindered. Blockchain technology opens up 

a great deal of possibility for the science 

community. 

For example, MaterialsZone utilises Sample 

Protocol to allow researchers in materials 

science to share and monetise their data on 

the blockchain - whilst securing the creators' 

intellectual property by means of immutable 

timestamping. Blockchain can also provide a 

decentralised place to publish data, so no 

single entity will have ultimate control of the 

data which is being recorded. 

Building an environment like this will 

incentivise researchers to upload their data 

onto a marketplace and sell it for use, and in 

turn build an open science economy. The 

benefits aren't confined to the researchers. 

Research organisations can then make the 

most of their funding and time as it wouldn't 

be spent on research already conducted, 

which will free up research time for other work. 

Research and measurements aren't the only 

items to be dealt with. 'Failed' result data can 

also be incredibly valuable. If one laboratory 

has tried an experiment a number of times 

and failed then why should every laboratory in 

the world repeat it? Also, the outcome of that 

experiment may be a failure for one 

researcher but an interesting lead for another. 

The failed result data could be freely and 

easily shared, or even sold - once more giving 

value to the work and saving the time and 

money of others. There are estimations that 

eliminating the failed results from research can 

free up 30 to 50 per cent of research time. 

In an economy such as this, smart contracts 

on the blockchain guarantee every party 

speed and efficiency. What's more, some 

parameters can be set to ensure that 

everybody gets a fair reward for their work. 

For example, if a laboratory purchases a 

year's worth of research data from an 

organisation, it can be set up to ensure that 

the researchers, assistants, the laboratory 

and funders of the research etc. all receive 

their share. 

Those research findings on a USB stick, 

buried in a draw, could be the data that leads 

a researcher to discovery. Blockchain is key to 

unlocking data and creating a truly 

collaborative scientific ecosystem, so that 

researchers are properly incentivised to share 

their data and fuel the fire of discovery. NC 



BLOCKCHAIN TAKES OFF 

BLOCKCHAIN'S SINGULAR ASSOCIATION WITH 

BITCOIN IS BEING SLOWLY DISMANTLED. THANE 

HALL, DIGITAL TRUST ACCOUNT MANAGER AT 

THALES UK EXPLAINS HOW BLOCKCHAIN CAN 

RADICALLY IMPROVE THE AEROSPACE AND 

DEFENCE SUPPLY CHAIN 

According to a recent Accenture report 

entitled 'Launchpad to Relevance: 

Aerospace & Defense Technology 

Vision 2018', 86 per cent of aerospace and 

defence (A&D) firms say that they expect to 

integrate blockchain technology into 

corporate systems by 2021. But why are 

they thinking blockchain? 

Essentially, blockchain offers a permanent 

(immutable) data store even when publically 

accessible and without the need for a thirdparty. 

Bitcoin has proven that blockchain 

technology is secure enough to hold 

£100Bn of value in the public domain. It 

uses a combination of mechanisms which 

including cryptographically locking blocks of 

transactions into a chain (hence blockchain) 

and then replicating that data in multiple 

instances globally, bound with a mechanism 

to ensure that they all agree on the true 

state of the ledger (hence distributed ledger 

technology). The immutability of this data is 

ensured through the cryptographic locks 

and the many distributed instances that 

maintain consensus. 

Blockchain is evolving rapidly, although 

many still associate this technology with 

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This is a 

distraction that inhibits understanding of its 

potential value in multiple application areas. 

COMPLEX SUPPLY CHAINS: VISIBILITY 

Blockchain technology was originally 

devised to help businesses improve their 

transparency and accountability. This is 

particularly relevant in the A&D industries 

especially concerning the securing and 

simplifying of a transparent and reliable 

supply chain for parts. 

A blockchain can store any transaction or 

data you wish to immutably store, and not 

just financial transactions. The advantage of 

being immutable with no need for a third 

party means that organisations can trust that 

the data is correct and that no participating 

stakeholder has changed it. In essence, it is 

a 'trustable database' and therefore the 

parties using it can better trust each other; 

an essential principal for good business. 

There are hundreds of different suppliers 

involved in the manufacture of a single 

aircraft and each one must maintain 

impeccable and trustworthy visibility 

concerning the manufacture and supply of 

their components. This requirement makes it 

easy to understand the role that blockchain 

technology can play. 

FUTURE APPLICATIONS, TODAY 

Research is currently underway to better 

understand the potential applications of 

blockchain technology in this area, including 

a new blockchain-based system that could 

help secure and streamline the complex 

global supply chains that support the A&D 

industry. Driving this innovative research is the 

clear need for manufacturers, especially in 

A&D, to establish accountability and eliminate 

both counterfeit or grey-market components 

and suppliers from its supply chain. 

One such project is based on 

Hyperledger, an open source blockchain 

project managed by The Linux Foundation. 

The prototype combines blockchain, the 

internet of things and other innovative 

technologies, including a Physically 

Unclonable Function (PUF) solution for 

FPGA silicon chips and tamper-proof 

cryptoseals. 

This gives aircraft manufacturers, 

suppliers, maintenance firms, as well as 

airlines, an unparalleled ability to 

accurately track and secure trustworthy data 

throughout their supply chain. They can all 

know the exact configuration of any aircraft 

that is in service, at any point in time. This 

helps to avoid unnecessary time delays (in 

sourcing and delivering required parts, for 

example), increased costs, and the potential 

risks arising from faulty or counterfeit parts. 

This is just one very good example of how 

blockchain can be used to increase and 

maintain supply chain standards and 

improve mission assurance. It will ensure 

authentic parts and materials enter the 

supply chain, provide a unique identity and 

then use this identity for supply chain 

transactions in a blockchain to establish 

their authenticity. 

Blockchain has incredible potential to 

increase efficiency and trust in an entire 

market. Theories will soon be turned into 

practice and a whole new use case for 

blockchain will have been born. NC 




THE BLACK MARKET BLOCK 

IF LEFT UNCHECKED, COUNTERFEIT 

AUTOMOTIVE PARTS CAN CAUSE DEATH. 

STEVE KUH, CEO AT BONAFI EXPLAINS 

HOW A BLOCKCHAIN-BASED SOLUTION 

CAN ARREST THE GROWTH IN THIS BLACK 

MARKET FOR CAR PARTS 

It is shocking how counterfeiters will go 

to any length to make money, even if it 

can potentially result in someone's 

death. The pharmaceutical industry is no 

stranger to the world of counterfeiting. 

However, an equally profitable domain for 

counterfeiters is in the aftermarket 

automotive parts industry, where they are 

using every possible method to persuade 

people to buy inferior, low-quality and 

possibly dangerous replacement car parts. 

They will either sell the car part for a few 

dollars less than the manufacturer's 

suggested retail price or charge the cost of 

the original car part and deceive buyers by 

placing a brand name label on the 

counterfeit component. In either case, 

both the consumer and authentic brand 

owner suffer. 

Consumers need to realise the 

importance of purchasing authentic car 

parts. BMW recently conducted a test with 

aftermarket counterfeit parts for their 

reliability, and the results were shocking. 

The international car brand found that a 

car with fake braking components could 

travel up to 25 meters more after applying 

their brakes than a vehicle with authentic 

parts. That added distance can be deadly 

when moving at high speeds. 

The use of blockchain technology can 

help to deter the issue of counterfeiting 

worldwide. Blockchain is an immutable 

public ledger system. It is immutable and 

public since records are shared and 

agreed upon among the many computers 

connected by the network. For example, it 

is virtually impossible to make a false entry 

on the blockchain without the knowledge 

of the other computers on the network. If 

the computers connected to the network 

are 100, then it would be necessary to 

access each one of those computers to 

falsify a record. But, if the number of 

computers on the network is in the 

millions, then it is virtually impossible to 

falsify in that way. That is why data 

recorded on the blockchain is considered 

to be immutable. 

While blockchain technology is based in 

software, it still requires a hardware 

component to interface with goods when 

it is used as an anti-counterfeiting 

solution. It has to be able to identify 

every single item as a unique and 

individual component. 

For example, imagine having a small 

NFC tag attached to an item that users 

can scan. Scanning the tag with a 

smartphone application is the most 

practical way to offer this. As soon as the 

user scans the product, the consumer can 

see the details of that product on their 

screen. The details may include the 

manufacturer's name, product ID, and 

other supply chain details to help establish 

authenticity. 

The tag is crucial to the system for the 

following reasons: 

The end user receives verification when 

they scan the item using the phone app 

It becomes an identified as an 

authentic item 

The tag, as it moves through the 

supply chain is used to store required 

information by recording and updating 

data held on the blockchain 

It is also beneficial to include an owner 

registration for the aftermarket auto parts 

using the phone app and the tag. This 

would allow the manufacturer to notify the 

authentic owner should the parts need to 

be recalled in the case of a discovered 

problem. The blockchain, the phone app, 

and the tag would identify the 

components and the registered owners 

would be alerted of recall notices should 

this be needed. 

The worldwide counterfeiting industry is 

not going to slow down on its own. If a 

blockchain-based solution is out there, 

consumers and brand-name manufacturers 

alike need to make use of it to put an end 

to counterfeiting. If not, the black market 

will continue, costing billions of dollars for 

the original parts makers. NC 



COLLABORATIVELY ENGINEERING BLOCKCHAIN 

THERE IS A LOT TO POTENTIALLY CONSIDER IF ORGANISATIONS 

WANT TO DEPLOY BLOCKCHAIN BEYOND ITS BITCOIN MEME. 

TRAVIS BIEHN, TECHNICAL STRATEGIST AND RESEARCH LEAD AT 

SYNOPSYS EXPLORES THE ISSUES 

Cryptocurrency hacks are prevalent 

and one of the most recent in the 

digital currency space was the one 

that took place on South Korea's Bithumb 

exchange; it is thought that virtual currency 

valued in excess of $31 million was stolen. 

With such events wreaking havoc on public 

blockchain ventures, why are organisations 

rushing to implement blockchain solutions in 

their business? Let's consider a few clarifying 

factors between public and enterprise 

blockchain potential and the impact that this 

emerging technology can have. 

Enterprise blockchain platforms have their 

roots in established public systems like Bitcoin 

and Ethereum. However, they also have 

significant functional and security-relevant 

differences. Public blockchains allow 

everyone to participate in the network, using 

differing degrees of access. Private 

blockchains on the other hand regulate 

access using membership control such as 

consortium consensus, IP whitelisting, 

certificate validation and the use of a central 

authority. Unlike Bitcoin, the private 

blockchains' primary use case isn't to store 

and transfer value, but to provide a platform 

for inter-organisational collaboration and to 

enforce arbitrarily complex business logic. 

While the open source community has 

been enamoured with the success of 

Ethereum, the enterprise community has 

been quietly building the next generation of 

distributed trustless applications on 

permissioned blockchain technologies. 

Enterprise blockchain adoption seems to 

have reached fever pitch in 2018. 

Meanwhile, the security community has not 

yet developed strong idioms for hardening 

these platforms against attack. 

We have witnessed blockchain technology 

both evolve and fragment over recent years 

and have been commercially engaged with 

blockchain technology since 2015. In the first 

half of 2018, we performed over 3,000 

hours of threat modeling on systems built 

around enterprise blockchain platforms, and 

even more in source code review and 

dynamic testing. 

Through our team's experience, we have 

found that the most crucial gaps in 

understanding the security impact of 

blockchain technology occur in four key areas: 

Whole System: This involves the shared 

custody and operation of a component 

lifecycle which depends on cooperation with 

competitors. Additionally, distributed systems 

engineering is a rare skill that is essential for 

risk analyses of all types. 

Software Design: The concept of identity is a 

common source of deep design flaws. It's a 

consideration throughout blockchain 

components and requires mapping to higherlevel 

systems. 

If development libraries are absent, every 

team must develop them from scratch and 

that means missing out or deploying their 

own model of security controls. 

Authentication and authorisation are difficult, 

and controls both in smart contracts and in 

upstream systems must be created. 

Data Management: This involves 

compliance to regulation and understanding 

how to thoughtfully minimise private data 

while still gaining the benefit of the 

blockchain components. 

Platforms: Usage, metering and audit 

resource capabilities are not easily 

accomplished with new platforms. New 

execution environments and sometimes 

languages can often pose challenges to 

process, tools, and people. 

Decisions made close to blockchain 

components have critical fault but they only 

make up a small fraction of issues. More 

importantly, architects and developers can 

make the wrong assumptions about the 

security properties provided by these 

platforms, and those mistakes can lead to a 

large majority of exploitable issues. 

The most widely used platforms are often 

difficult to configure and dangerous to 

expose to untrusted components. Thankfully, 

businesses do not have their heads in the 

sand regarding this risk and are taking a 

cautious approach to evaluation. It is during 

this period that security leaders should 

collaborate with system stakeholders, 

architects, developers, business leaders and 

operators. The goal of collaboration is to 

refine the security properties of the systems, 

develop processes for managing platform 

secrets and component lifecycles, and mature 

these capabilities of evaluation, prevention, 

detection, and response, over time. NC 



OPINION 

DIGITAL WISDOM 

WITH DATA VOLUMES AND 

AVAILABILITY GROWING 

UNIMAGINABLY, THE PRACTICAL 

USE OF DATA HAS BECOME A 

CHALLENGE. ERIC YU, CEO AT 

GTCOM CONSIDERS HOW WE 

CAN THRIVE IN A WORLD OF 

INFORMATION OVERLOAD 

American scientist E.O. Wilson 

observed that, ''We are drowning in 

information, while starving for 

wisdom.'' This statement is as true today as 

it was thirty years ago. The availability of 

infinite amounts of content, data and 

discussion offers incredible possibilities, 

but at its worst it can cause delays and 

distractions, potentially impacting on 

productivity and producing poor quality 

decision making. 

It's vital that we base decisions on clear 

and accurate information if we are to 

make the best choices and prepare our 

organisations for success. According to a 

survey by Helical IT, the success rate of 

decisions made based on data is 79 per 

cent higher than those using intuition 

alone. It is therefore vital that the 

information we require can be accessed 

quickly and easily and is straightforwardly 

presented using clear hierarchy and 

structure. 

This challenge is currently more 

pronounced than ever. The General Data 

Protection Regulation (GDPR), data privacy 

concerns brought to light through recent 

scandals at Cambridge Analytica, and 

data breaches at the likes of Uber, Equifax 

and Yahoo make data collection and 

usage a focal point for all organisations 

who must act in a responsible way so that 

people can trust them enough to share 

their data. 

Additionally, we work and live in a global 

marketplace, with access to information 

published in many different languages. As 

breakthroughs are made, this provides 

access to more opportunities to develop our 

work and explore that of others. However, it 

also intensifies the challenges around 

dealing with large amounts of data. 

2018 will be a pivotal year for many 

industries as artificial intelligence works its 

way into a wide variety of devices and 

services. Researchers and innovators need 

to be informed about patents long before 

they dive into a specific research project 

and kept up to date about breakthrough 

insights across multiple disciplines that 

could impact their work. 

This kind of informed global approach 

can only enhance our work, make us more 

competitive, and help organisations to 

expand. But to do this we must work 

through more information than ever, and 

many of the challenges around efficiency 

and productivity become even more 

pronounced. Traditional networking 

environments lack the flexibility and 

computing power to cope with the volume 

of data from multiple sources that must be 

analysed to generate smart solutions. 

To overcome this, many business leaders 

and academics are turning to data 

research and analytics tools to do some of 

the heavy lifting and secure the best 

quality and most appropriate information 

as quickly as possible. 

There are an impressive range of 

qualitative analysis tools available, that 

can improve upon traditional quantitative 

analytics by analysing a full range of 

written text, including theories, code and 

discourse, vital to those in network 

computing environments. For example, 

having access to this kind of global 

information can help business intelligence 

units and R&D departments to evolve 

products and services more efficiently and 

more quickly identify any international 

property rights issues, ensuring that they 

remain ahead of any potential legal risks. 

A good AI and Big Data-powered research 

platform can save time for entrepreneurs and 

R&D departments and provide them with 

access to the information they need to be 

successful. Such platforms are often updated 

with more than 30 million news articles and 

500 million pieces of social data, daily. 

The pace of change and evolution of 

knowledge is moving so rapidly, that the 

amount of available information can be a 

challenge, rather than an opportunity. The 

available qualitative analysis tools allow us 

to benefit from access to vast amounts of 

data in a way that our existing networks 

alone cannot. This allows our research and 

development departments to design 

products and services using wisdom. NC 


FEATURESD-WAN 

RESILIENT 

CONNECTIVITY 

ONE SIZE OF SD-WAN DOES 

NOT FIT ALL. BEWARE OF U.S. 

BASED SUCCESS STORIES SAYS 

NICK JOHNSON, CEO AT 

EVOLVING NETWORKS, WHO 

EXPLAINS HOW TO MAKE SD- 

WAN WORK FOR BUSINESSES 

IN THE U.K. 

The business landscape is moving at 

pace, driven by the need for flexibility 

and the increasing adoption of cloud 

services. One of the consequences of this is 

the need for improved connectivity. Users 

want more capacity, faster speeds, better 

quality. And this demand is growing, 

especially as more emphasis is placed on 

distributed working practises and SaaS. As a 

result, the need for resilient connectivity is 

now business critical. What this means for 

organisations is that they're looking for 

solutions that can deliver against both their 

current and future needs. 

Traditionally, this is where MPLS would come 

in. It's robust, supported by SLAs and is an 

established technology. However, it's also 

expensive, inflexible, takes time to provision, 

and it's a challenge to integrate with cloud 

services. Importantly, packet prioritisation is an 

expensive option, which means that the quality 

of VoIP phones could be compromised if they 

are run alongside other connectivity-based 

services that might saturate the available 

bandwidth capacity. 

SD-WAN will increasingly provide the 

solution to this connectivity problem. Globally, 

it's a growing market sector and Gartner 

forecasts that by 2020, we'll be spending 

$1.24 billion on the technology. 

SD-WAN can deliver stable, low latency and 

intelligent connectivity and is easily integrated 

with cloud apps: this is a key factor for most 

businesses now. It's a much newer technology 

than MPLS, more agile and cost-effective - all 

of which are critical in a world where budgets 

are always being scrutinised. But the one 

major advantage of SD-WAN is that it is much 

more resilient, especially when deployed using 

multi-path aggregated connectivity, which 

ensures diversity through the infrastructure 

layer and low latency where required. 

SD-WAN can be particularly effective at 

simplifying network topology, linking multiple 

sites together in an effective and efficient way. 

Unlike MPLS, SD-WAN is also easily scalable, 

allowing businesses to add sites and 

additional lines quickly and cost-effectively 

because of its software-defined nature. 

While the technology has a head start in the 

US market it is making definite inroads in the 

UK. The key to its success in the UK, however, 

is not to rely on US-centric technology or 

mere resellers of that technology, but on 

solutions designed for the local market and 

network infrastructure, deployed by partners 

who understand the market and its 

challenges. The broadband infrastructure in 

the US is a very different beast to ours, and 

as a result the standardised SD-WAN 

products are not fit for our purpose. 

A case in point is the recent news that Cisco 

is preparing to include an SD-WAN upgrade 

in its routers. While this is a positive step for the 

market in the UK, it's important to remember 

this software was developed in the US for a 

broadband infrastructure that is of a much 

higher quality and where vendors compete on 

that quality, instead of price. As mentioned, the 

UK market is very different, which makes it a 

little challenging for businesses to get the 

promised benefits of SD-WAN. 

There is little doubt that change is afoot in 

the connectivity market; driven by the everincreasing 

demand for better, faster, more. So, 

while SD-WAN may indeed be the connectivity 

solution that UK businesses are looking for, we 

can't rely on the approach and technology 

developed by our cousins across the Atlantic 

to help us deliver its benefits. Instead, we need 

SD-WAN solutions designed for our needs, 

with UK broadband infrastructure in mind, 

deployed by vendors that understand the 

challenges businesses face, developing their 

own software based on localised experience. 

We are now in a time where ISPs who deliver 

SD-WAN solutions with no disconnect 

between the software and underlying network 

layers will be best placed to deliver. NC 



FEATURESD-WAN 

GIVING WAN AN EDGE 

SD-WAN IS NOW MAKING ITS 

CASE. ALLAN PATON, DIRECTOR 

OF UK AND IRELAND AT SILVER 

PEAK EXPLORES THE 

EVOLUTION OF SD-WAN AND 

HOW IT WILL REPLACE THE 

COMPLEXITY OF ROUTER- 

CENTRIC WAN ARCHITECTURES 

In recent years, the software-defined WAN 

(SD-WAN) market has experienced 

significant growth around the world, with 

new SD-WAN acquisitions, partnerships and 

investments gaining momentum. As the 

benefits of SD-WAN become increasingly 

apparent, Gartner has predicted that by 2019, 

companies that have deployed SD-WAN will 

rise from less than one per cent, where the 

market is today, to 30 per cent. SD-WAN 

offerings are fast evolving to address the 

changing requirements of enterprises as they 

embrace cloud and digitally transform. 

Underpinning this evolution is the mass 

migration of applications and services to the 

cloud. Organisations are realising that their 

existing router-centric WAN architectures can't 

keep up with the changes in network and 

application traffic. As such, businesses are 

turning to SD-WANs, which promise the 

flexibility to use any combination of transport to 

connect users to applications and intelligently 

route traffic across the network efficiently and 

securely. It's therefore not surprising that, 

according to the Frost & Sullivan global SD- 

WAN survey, 94 per cent of businesses report 

that they have deployed, are deploying, or will 

deploy SD-WAN over the next two years: 

demand will surely continue to increase. 

THE BUSINESS-FIRST NETWORKING 

MODEL 

Increasingly, enterprises are moving beyond 

the constraints and complexity of router-centric 

WAN architectures. Routers are burdened by 

decades of complexity and still retain a lengthy 

and arduous device-by-device configuration 

process using an inconvenient and arcane 

Command Line Interface (CLI). Now, 

businesses are seeking more efficient and 

secure access to SaaS and cloud applications. 

There's a greater need to connect users directly 

and securely to the cloud and this requires a 

software-driven WAN edge architecture that 

can intelligently steer traffic based on 

application-driven policies. As such, SD-WAN 

solutions are increasingly evolving to empower 

highly-distributed enterprises with a new 

business first networking model that yields 

consistent application performance, robust 

security and operational efficiencies. 

LESS: THE NEW MORE 

In its first WAN edge report published in 2017, 

Gartner considered the future of enterprise 

networking as a consolidation of "several 

branch-office WAN edge functions, including 

routing, SD-WAN, WAN path control, security 

and WAN optimisation". By deploying a thin 

branch SD-WAN solution, distributed 

enterprises would be able to dramatically 

improve business agility and lower costs, and 

improve network and application 

performance, availability and security, while 

aligning their networks to ever changing 

business requirements. 

In the Frost & Sullivan survey, respondents 

indicated that network managers are looking 

to embrace SD-WAN appliances with 

integrated routing and WAN optimisation 

functions, while keeping existing CPE-based 

solutions at other sites until maintenance 

contracts expire. Indeed, interoperability with 

existing WAN edge infrastructure will be critical 

when migrating to a business-driven WAN 

edge until organisations completely replace 

traditional routers. A flexible deployment 

model, fully compatible with routers, firewalls 

or other pre-existing devices at the branch, will 

enable enterprises to complete the transition at 

their own pace. 

UTILISING INTELLIGENCE 

Through advancements in artificial intelligence 

and self-learning, a unified SD-WAN Edge 

platform will also go beyond today's 

automation and templates to reach a selfdriving 

wide area network that gets smarter 

every day. A self-driving wide area network 

with centralised and adaptive orchestration 

enables self-learning and continuous control to 

ensure ongoing alignment with business intent. 

Ultimately, the consolidation of network 

functions - such as SD-WAN, WAN 

optimisation, routing and more - into a single, 

centrally orchestrated software instance is the 

final stage of evolution for SD-WAN 

technology. In the next 18 months, SD-WAN 

will become a priority for businesses, 

particularly in the banking and financial 

services space. We will also see an increasing 

need for integrated network functions at the 

WAN edge, as well as a demand from 

enterprises for centralised cloud-based network 

management from their SD-WAN vendor. NC 


FEATUREIOT 

IoT IN THE SHADOWS 

BYOD IS A THING OF THE PAST - 

OR IS IT? GARY COX, 

TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR FOR 

INFOBLOX IN WESTERN 

EUROPE, EXPLORES THE 

TROUBLING RISE OF SHADOW 

IoT AND HOW TO DETECT IT 

With the Internet of Things (IoT) 

continuing to grow, and with 

employees connecting an 

increasing number of consumer devices to 

enterprise networks, IT teams find 

themselves faced with greater complexity 

and more security issues than ever before. 

The scale of the problem was illustrated by 

the findings of a recent Infoblox survey 

which revealed that, while three quarters of 

businesses have over 1,000 approved 

devices such as PCs and company mobiles 

connected to their networks, more than a 

third reported at least 5,000 non-approved 

devices, including personal phones, laptops 

and e-readers. 

Typically offering very poor security, many 

of these consumer devices provide 

cybercriminals with an ideal point of entry to 

an organisation's network, and this 

represents a very real threat to that 

organisation and its business. 

IDENTIFYING PREY 

Many businesses reported having a 

significant number of non-business IoT 

devices such as fitness trackers, Smart TVs, 

and digital assistants connected to their 

enterprise network. There are, however, a 

number of tools readily available that will 

enable cybercriminals to exploit the control 

of such devices. In 2017, for example, 

details of a CIA tool dubbed 'Weeping 

Angel' were published on WikiLeaks. Here, it 

was explained how the tool was used by 

agents to transform Samsung smart TVs into 

live microphones. 

The identification of vulnerable devices 

can be achieved with worrying ease. A 

basic search on sites such as Shodan, a 

search engine for internet-connected 

devices, can deliver a wealth of 

information, including details of a device's 

banner, along with their open ports 

including HTTP, SSH, FTP and SNMP. 

It's worth noting that the site is not, in itself, 

illegal. The details it provides, however, 

could be used by even the lowest level 

criminals as a means of identifying 

potentially vulnerable devices connected to 

corporate networks. 

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA 

Social media is being used as a means of 

spreading malware. Cybercriminals often 

exploit the fact that users tend to lower their 

guard on social networks, making them 

more likely to click on links with unknown 

sources. The fact that around two in five 

employees claimed to have accessed social 

media on their personal devices while 

connected to their organisation's network 

should therefore ring alarm bells. 

Equally worrying is the claim by a quarter of 

the survey's respondents that they downloaded 

apps to their personal device while connected 

to an enterprise network. This is especially 

concerning when you consider that even apps 

from legitimate download sites have been 

found to contain malware. 

TAKING ACTION 

Introducing a security policy for connected 

devices is a sensible first step in managing 

the threat that they pose although, according 

to the report, employees can't necessarily be 

relied upon to follow it. IT administrators 

should therefore be able to enforce policy, 

restrict access to certain sites and types of 

content, and review non-compliant activity 

throughout the organisation. 

By providing unified visibility into all 

devices, IP Address Management (IPAM) will 

enable IT admins to manage those devices 

more effectively, and DNS-based security 

will provide essential context and visibility, 

alerting IT admins of any network 

anomalies, and enabling them to identify 

and block malicious activity more quickly. 

What's more, with threat intelligence data 

integrated into their DNS management, 

security teams will be able to monitor and 

prevent access to Newly Observed 

Domains, the creation of which tends to 

indicate that an attack is forthcoming. 

A plethora of connected devices, approved 

and otherwise, have made Shadow IoT a 

reality, and one which affords cybercriminals 

the opportunity to exploit vulnerable devices. 

To minimise this risk, enterprise teams must 

discover and identify what's lurking on their 

networks, and take the steps necessary to 

protect it from external threats. NC 



SECURITYUPDATE 

MINE YOUR OWN BUSINESS? 

ORGANISATIONS OF ALL TYPES ARE UNDER THREAT FROM 

CRYPTOJACKERS. KARL SIGLER, THREAT INTELLIGENCE MANAGER 

OF SPIDERLABS AT TRUSTWAVE, DETAILS THE THREAT 

Cybercriminals are always on the 

lookout for new technology to 

exploit for easy profits. Accordingly, 

the increasingly high profile around one 

such opportunity, cryptocurrency, has 

attracted the attention of opportunists 

around the world. 

Specialised software or web script can be 

used to harness a machine's CPU or GPU 

to solve complex equations and earn 

coins, but this must be done on a huge 

scale for it to become profitable. Web 

based cryptomining has been trying to 

become more legitimate, for example, 

when a website asks permission to use 

some of a visitor's processing power while 

on the site. In fact, many sites have begun 

to explore this as an alternative to 

advertising. 

Criminals however will run their code 

covertly without asking permission. This 

practice is known as cryptojacking. 

Cryptojackers will usually insert mining 

code into a legitimate website without the 

owner's knowledge, enabling them to steal 

processing power from anyone visiting that 

site. Much like the malvertising tactics used 

by other cyber-attackers, criminals can also 

infect an ad and spread their mining code 

to any site within the ad network. 

THE ENTERPRISE GOLDMINE 

An ideal mining host site will be one that 

receives a high number of visitors and 

ideally the connection will be left open for 

long periods of time. This has made 

streaming sites particularly useful, as they 

are naturally open for potentially hours per 

visit. Enterprise homepages and portals 

are also ideal targets: a large company 

might have thousands of users visiting its 

page who potentially leave it open during 

their workday. 

Pre-made mining scripts are easily 

acquired online and are so simple to use 

that even a complete novice can run one. 

Coinhive is one of the most popular 

choices for cybercriminals to exploit, as the 

JavaScript-based programme also mines 

the anonymous Monero currency. Monero 

requires less effort than other popular 

currencies such as Bitcoin before becoming 

profitable and is also designed to be used 

anonymously. While it is also very widely 

used by legitimate users, these features 

make it ideal for a criminal. Coinhive is so 

popular that it was found to be present in 

13 of the Alexa top 1000 sites. 

HOW DOES CRYPTOJACKING HARM 

AN ENTERPRISE? 

Most illicit mining scripts steal just enough 

processing power to cause an irritating 

slowdown for affected machines. While it 

won't be as damaging as more harmful 

malware, for example ransomware, the 

presence of an unwanted mining script 

embedded into a compromised website 

can still deliver a damaging blow to the 

site owner's reputation. There have been 

several instances of customers complaining 

because they thought that an infected site 

was intentionally running a mining script 

without permission. 

Cryptojacking also poses a greater threat 

to an enterprise target because the 

combined effects of thousands of machines 

running a mining script can put a 

significant strain on the company network. 

The drain on processing power will result 

in an increased electricity bill, as well as 

costs for the IT resources required to 

troubleshoot the estate of slow and 

crashed machines. 

DETECTING A CRYPTOJACKER 

While cryptojacking is becoming 

increasingly popular as a low-effort and 

reliable money-maker for cybercriminals, it 

is fortunately easy to identify and prevent 

by using good security hygiene. 

Good practices such as keeping sites 

and systems regularly patched and 

updated will see off most cryptomining 

attempts. Any existing mining script can be 

discovered with a thorough audit and 

vulnerability scan, and future attempts to 

compromise the site can be detected by 

actively monitoring for attempts to access 

and edit the web code. Taking action now 

will help to prevent your network being 

admitted to the unauthorised mining 

community later on. NC 


OPINION 

DIGITAL VISIBILITY 

AS NETWORKS GROW IN 

COMPLEXITY, FULL VISIBILITY IS 

ESSENTIAL TO THE DELIVERY OF 

DIGITAL PERFORMANCE. 

RICHARD PIASENTIN, CHIEF 

STRATEGY OFFICER AT 

ACCEDIAN EXPLAINS 

When a software application is 

performing poorly or stops working, 

the network usually gets blamed, 

but it's not usually the culprit. According to 

IHS, the network is at fault less than half the 

time. To rapidly pinpoint the root cause, the 

IT operations team need a detailed view of 

how applications and the network actually 

relate to each other. This is especially true in 

the case of hybrid cloud applications that rely 

on the coordination of physically diverse data 

centres, clouds, and Software-as-a-Service 

(SaaS) to deliver a responsive user 

experience. As the network and applications 

become delicately intertwined, there's a 

growing demand for better visibility. 

IDC supports this view, estimating that 

$2.8 billion will be spent on network and 

application performance monitoring 

(N/APM) in 2018. But, for organisations 

under pressure to transform, what are the 

main considerations? 

DRIVING DEMAND 

For today's enterprises, IT and business 

processes are becoming more complex. 

New technologies and the capabilities that 

digital transformation brings, such as 

cloudification or DevOps, are increasing 

this complexity and reducing visibility across 

the network and application layer. To 

maintain an acceptable user experience, it's 

no longer enough for enterprises to manage 

the network in its silo parts. 

Today's highly distributed and heterogeneous 

enterprise networks mean that enterprises 

need monitoring solutions that embrace this 

complex infrastructure and move away from 

systems traditionally split into the separate 

functions of network performance monitoring 

and application performance monitoring. 

While both have served their purpose, the 

need to deliver means that both of these 

network disciplines must be unified. 

WHEN TWO BECOME ONE 

Unifying network and application 

performance monitoring will benefit 

enterprises in several ways. First, the ability 

to monitor network and application using 

one platform provides IT teams with a single 

source of truth. While traditional monitoring 

solutions typically force teams to act in silos, 

separated from each other, a unified system 

promotes collaboration between teams. 

Through this single platform, network 

operations, development and business line 

owners can understand the interactions 

between infrastructure, application, and 

user experience. 

Then in turn, this single source of truth 

becomes invaluable for reducing mean time 

to resolution (MTTR). The holistic view it 

provides allows IT teams to quickly pinpoint 

impairments inside the application or 

network chain, identify their scope and 

origin, and escalate cases to the right team 

with clear, supporting evidence. This 

ultimately prevents degradations in the 

network or application chain from impacting 

the end-user. 

POWER OF INSIGHT 

These benefits go some way towards end-toend 

performance visibility, but true granular 

visibility is impossible without insight. By 

unifying network and application 

performance monitoring into one platform, 

enterprises benefit from a wide-angle view, 

across each and every layer. Not only does 

this prevent gaps in coverage, but it also 

enables enterprises to decode every layer 

and application transactions, benefiting from 

the insights that long-term historical trends 

and trace-level diagnostics provide. 

It's only by using a common monitoring 

platform that enterprises will be able to 

correlate common network behaviours and 

patterns, understand how to predict failures, 

and which steps to take to avoid them from 

recurring. Ultimately, enterprises can only 

solve degradations if they have a full picture 

of their network and its application chain. 

UNIFY OR DIE 

While there are alternatives to unified 

N/APM solutions, the reality is that 

organisations failing to implement an 

effective visibility solution will be unable to 

maintain an adequate user experience. This 

will be especially challenged as the 

organisation digitally transforms. 

Quite simply, enterprises do not have the 

choice to opt in or out. N/APM is a must if 

they are serious about delivering end-to-end 

monitoring visibility. The solution is clear, the 

case is made: it just needs implementing. NC 



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PRODUCTREVIEW 

Allied Telesis Hybrid 

Wireless Solution, 

using the AP5403 

Access Point 

PRODUCT REVIEW 

PRODUCT 

REVIEWPRODUCT RE 

Wired network connections are 

becoming less dominant. Persistent, 

trouble free WLAN connections, 

everywhere, is the default expectation. But it's 

only now that vendors can offer solutions fit 

for purpose. 

Many WLAN networks are configured 

around wireless cells, each using a different 

channel (frequency) and susceptible to 

interference. Mobile users rely on Fast 

Roaming (802.11r) to retain connectivity: IP 

telephony and wireless scanners for example. 

Manual reconnection isn't acceptable - Fast 

Roaming improved connection transfer time 

from 200ms to less than 50ms, but it's still 

too long. 

Previously, Extricom created (patent now 

owned by Allied Telesis) Channel Blanket 

(802.11ac). Bonding multiple APs 

broadcasting the same SSID, authenticated 

users enjoy seamless connectivity throughout 

the coverage range. Each Channel Blanket 

AP listens to all in range devices, but only one 

transacts. Where a user moves closer to 

another AP, data handling responsibility 

seamlessly transfers with a connection transfer 

time of zero: Zero Wait Roaming. 

Both architectures have merit, depending on 

use case. The density of connected devices, 

mobility and application sensitivity to 

connection transfer will vary widely within a 

physical space. Until now, a choice between 

architectures often meant an unacceptable 

compromise. 

The AP5403 has three radios (2.4GHZ and 

5GHZ) providing Hybrid Wireless. Within the 

same environment, using the same APs, it's 

possible to provision Cell and Channel 

Blanket based Wi-Fi, offering new, powerful 

flexibility, control and value without 

compromise. In Cell architecture, connected 

devices determine which AP to connect to, 

but with Channel Blanket, because all APs 

listen, they decide which one assumes 

connection duty, ensuring that mobile devices 

remain connected to the best AP. 

IT could implement policies that, for 

example, connect laptops to a cell WLAN 

and mobile devices to a Channel Blanket for 

reliable IP telephony. In some environments - 

a warehouse for example - physical space 

alters, impacting radio wave propagation. 

Channel Blanket ameliorates this without user 

intervention or awareness. 

We used a four AP infrastructure and a WEB 

GUI. We could have used the Allied Telesis 

AWC plug-in to the AT-Vista manager EX, or 

the admin port of an Allied Telesis firewall. 

Familiar WLAN configuration options were 

simple to set. Administration options and AP 

capability mean this solution can scale across 

the full range of WLAN applications. 

With two LAN ports - one PoE - a DC jack 

for external power, and a Kensington lock 

port, this AP can be installed on a table, 

wall or ceiling. It is the hybrid cell and 

Channel Blanket ability that really make it 

stand out. 

Using a custom app to display our APs and 

connected devices, we moved devices 

around and could see them quickly and 

seamlessly connect to the nearest AP. We set 

up a phone-to-phone video conference and 

detected no disruption as we moved. 

The hybrid nature of this device makes it 

an important asset in WLAN provisioning. It 

can operate at scale and integrate with the 

extensive Allied Telesis network range using 

a single management interface, providing 

scaled flexibility in diverse settings. 

WLAN is advancing, and this hybrid AP 

solution is simple to implement, manage, 

and use - factors that might prove critical 

when provisioning business class WLAN. NC 

Product: Allied Telesis Hybrid Wireless 

Solution 

Company:Allied Telesis 

Website: www.alliedtelesis.com 

Email: uk_sales@alliedtelesis.com 

Phone: 01793 501 400 

Price: Subscription: based on throughput 

and sites 



OPINION 

NETWORKING FAST 

GIGABIT FIBRE IS STARTING TO 

TAKE HOLD, AND IS JUSTIFYING 

ITSELF BY DRIVING THE TAKE-UP 

OF NEW SERVICES. KARIM TAGA 

AND GLEN PERES OF ARTHUR D. 

LITTLE PROVIDE AN OVERVIEW 

We increasingly see deployment of 

applications and services 

provisioned using underlying 

gigabit broadband infrastructure. This is 

enabling people, machines and applications 

to collaborate effectively and intelligently and 

enhance their quality of life, improve 

mobility, grow economies and empower 

decision-making. Fibre optic broadband 

infrastructure continues to be deployed 

throughout the world: there are 20 plus 

markets with at least 50 per cent fibre 

coverage, and 8 plus markets with more 

than 90 per cent. 

We expect fibre rollout to expand to 

more markets as non-telco operators such 

as utilities, municipalities and private 

equity firms also invest in fibre 

infrastructure. Fibre take-up will continue 

to increase and it will be driven by 

effective migrations and competition for 

higher speeds, in turn creating demand for 

new and innovative services. 

INTELLIGENT COLLABORATION 

ENHANCES QUALITY OF LIFE 

Deployment of applications and services 

provisioned by underlying gigabit broadband 

is enabling people, machines and 

applications to collaborate in a new and 

more effective way. The increasing 

availability of fibre-based broadband is in 

turn driving the take-up of other innovative 

services such as gigabit-speed broadband to 

the home, 4K TV, an increased share of 

triple/quadruple play services and the use of 

high-end gigabit routers. The recent 

PyeongChang Olympics 2018 and FIFA 

World Cup 2018 saw large-scale availability 

of 4K live sports content broadcast in more 

than 30 countries for the first time. 

Google WiFi was one of the first to 

popularise high-end routers in 2016, and 

Singapore was one of the first countries to 

bundle high-end routers (for example, 

StarHub providing Google WiFi routers to its 

customers) with 12 and 24 month contracts. 

Ooredoo Qatar also provides Netgear Orbi 

mesh WiFi routers to its customers with 

attractive multi-year contract options. 

FIBRE TAKE-UP DRIVES 

INNOVATIVE SERVICES 

Fibre take-up has shown a big jump since 

the 2016 edition of our "Race to gigabit 

fibre" report, largely driven by effective 

migration and competition. Fibre markets 

are increasingly becoming demand driven 

instead of supply driven as they were in the 

past. As customers demand higher 

broadband speeds, demand for fibre also 

increases. Markets that have shown the 

biggest jumps in fibre take-up are Qatar, 

Singapore, the UAE and New Zealand. 

Success in fibre take-up in these markets has 

been driven by migration and competition. 

Fibre to the home, in turn, is driving takeup 

of innovative services such gigabit 

broadband, 4K TV and other ancillary 

products. Telco operators are moving away 

from providing just high-speed broadband to 

also bundling services enabled by this highspeed 

broadband. As telecom operators 

increase their presence inside their 

customers' homes with high-end WiFi routers 

and services such as 4K TV, this might 

become an ideal platform from which to 

deliver future smart-home services. 

FIBRE GROWTH WILL EXPAND 

OUTSIDE TELCOS 

We have seen fibre rollout continue to 

increase in most markets. The most common 

model used for fibre deployment continues 

to be incumbent led with government 

support. We believe successful fibre 

investments are built around partnerships 

with the government, investors, 

municipalities, or other operators. 

There are still some markets which have not 

yet shown large gains in fibre deployment: 

examples include the UK, Germany, Austria 

and Italy. In such markets, non-telecom firms 

are making inroads into fibre deployment, 

investing into the gigabit future of their 

respective markets. A recent success story is 

that of open fibre, which announced an 

ambitious plan to roll out fibre to more than 

18 million homes in Italy with funding of 3.5b 

euros from various banks in August 2018 to 

fulfil its business plan. We will have to watch 

and see who will take the lead. Customers 

are demanding higher speeds, and telecom 

operators will have to act soon. NC 


OPINION 

MOVING RECOVERY 

TO THE CLOUD 

DAVE PACKER, VICE PRESIDENT 

OF PRODUCT AND ALLIANCE 

MARKETING AT DRUVA MAKES 

THE CASE FOR MOVING DATA 

MANAGEMENT TO THE CLOUD 

TO SUPPORT SOFTWARE-AS-A- 

SERVICE APPLICATIONS 

The use of cloud-based applications 

continues to grow at pace. Microsoft's 

Office 365 now has over 135 million 

active business users and they expect more 

than two thirds of their business customers to 

be in the cloud during the next fiscal year. 

Use of other Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) 

applications such as Salesforce and Google 

G-Suite is also showing decisive growth. 

The data that these SaaS applications 

create has to be protected from loss, 

corruption and accidental deletion, just as if 

you they were running on-premise. 

Traditionally, business continuity and disaster 

recovery planning would be predicated on 

protecting identified data against identified 

risk. This approach must also be applied to 

SaaS application data as well as application 

availability and response. 

MEETING DATA NEEDS 

For companies that have already moved to 

cloud applications, and for those planning 

their move, several elements should be 

considered. Check the contract with your 

cloud service provider concerning data and 

management. Alongside general security and 

privacy management standards, confirm how 

data is protected for your benefit, and how it 

can be recovered when you need to. 

If this does not reflect your existing disaster 

recovery plan - and it's likely that there will be 

significant differences - analysis will identify 

the weak spots. You can then bridge these 

with appropriate data management 

processes and tools. 

You must also confirm how long your cloud 

provider will take to recover data and make 

sure that this is acceptable. For most cloud 

applications, this can be much longer than 

your existing service level agreements or 

recovery time objectives. For example, 

recovering data from Salesforce takes around 

a month. It's therefore more effective to 

manage your own data protection and 

recovery and control your recovery objectives. 

CHALLENGING DISASTER 

The way we think about disasters can also be 

a challenge. Cloud service providers 

normally have higher redundancy than 

traditional data centres, reducing the impact 

of big disasters. However, most DR incidents 

are due to issues caused by the loss of 

information through individual error, 

accidental deletion, or files being overwritten. 

These are much more likely to regularly affect 

business operations and cause interruption. 

Data corruption can also take place 

through ransomware or malicious deletion. 

For the cloud providers, spotting these 

mistakes or unauthorised actions is difficult in 

the context of the many daily legitimate 

activities. Guarding against this might mean 

making your own copies of the data you 

create. If the need arises, you can then 

recover that affected data on your own terms. 

At this point, it's worth considering how far 

along you are in your journey of data 

management. For new companies that are 

born in the cloud, managing cloud data is 

easier. For larger companies with existing IT 

assets and infrastructure, things may be 

more complicated. 

CLOUD-BASED RECOVERY 

Consolidating your data management for all 

your systems, from cloud applications 

through to virtualised environments, PCs and 

internal applications, should help overcome 

this challenge and make good management 

practice achievable. It should help to meet 

your recovery objectives across all data and 

improve visibility as well. By applying one set 

of policies, you create a disaster recovery 

capability that is manageable and affordable. 

One option could be to move some or all of 

your data management to the cloud, relying 

on cloud services to protect your SaaS 

applications and your internal IT: it makes 

more sense than bringing that SaaS data 

back from the cloud for backup. 

Cloud applications can help you to improve 

IT services for the organisation. However, you 

must not overlook risk management and 

business continuity. With care, cloud data 

management can deliver the right 

combination of agility and security for 

important data. NC 




THE SERVER THREAT EXPOSED 

BECAUSE OF THEIR BACK OFFICE AND CLOUD 

LOCATION, SERVER PROTECTION HAS NOT 

RECEIVED ADEQUATE ATTENTION. PAUL MURRAY, 

PRODUCT DIRECTOR AT SOPHOS CONSIDERS 

SERVER-SPECIFIC THREATS AND POSSIBLE 

RESPONSES 

Servers are the crown jewels in the IT 

estate of any organisation. They 

represent a large target with a rich 

pay off and cybercriminals know this, so 

they increasingly target them. 

According to SophosLabs, exponential 

damage is one of the main threats. 

Because servers contain mission critical 

data and are the daily workhorse of 

organisations, a well targeted attack could 

devastate an organisation. Consider, for 

example, an endpoint that is compromised 

by the likes of WannaCry or SamSam. This 

will cause huge inconvenience, damage 

productivity and create immediate, direct 

and indirect costs. However, if the same 

attack strikes a server with thousands of 

vital and critical files, the issue is 

significantly compounded. Indeed, 

targeting file servers is a tactic used by 

some cybercriminals because they know 

they can demand higher ransom payments. 

BEYOND RANSOM 

And it does not end with the ransom 

threat. When cybercriminals infect the 

servers of an organisation with malicious 

code, or exploit vulnerabilities to gain 

access, they can then dive deep into the 

network. They have secured a platform 

from which to inflict some serious damage. 

Servers are very often the final destination 

of an attack mounted to steal sensitive 

company information that is specifically 

useful for spear-phishing programs. 

Perhaps worst of all, this access itself is a 

commodity for sale on the Dark Web, 

which means that the damage can 

continue being inflicted long after the 

breach is resolved. 

Add to this the new challenge of large 

scale cryptojacking, where breached 

servers act as proxies to redirect traffic to 

malicious websites and install cryptominers 

on server farms and cloud accounts to 

generate cryptocurrencies at scale. Here 

they are stealing CPU, RAM, electricity and 

other resources. 

For organisations with direct visibility of 

their servers, the immediate impact of 

cryptominers on performance is a clear 

indicator of compromise. But for larger 

enterprises with extensive global facilities 

including cloud services, the distributed 

pools of computing provide great cover for 

cryptojackers to hide in. By spinning up 

servers in other regions, often invisible to 

the end user until they receive a bill, 

cryptojacking cybercriminals have a short, 

but lucrative window of opportunity. 

SPECIFIC RESPONSE 

Whilst endpoint security is now thankfully 

common, server specific security is often 

conspicuously absent. This is typically 

because businesses don't want to deploy a 

security agent on a server and risk 

impeded performance. This legacy of older 

technologies causing poor performance is 

thankfully resolved by new, lightweight 

next-gen technology. 

This protection includes predictive, deep 

learning neural networks that can predict 

new attacks as well as the occasions of 

cybercriminals just getting lucky. For 

example, WannaCry saw servers suffer 

accidental collateral damage. 

The predictive element of deep learning 

neural networks, trained on hundreds of 

millions of samples, looks for suspicious 

attributes of malicious code and prevents 

never-before-seen attacks. This also learns 

as it goes to provide constantly evolving 

protection for servers. 

One other important area of the server 

specific response is that of developing 

whitelisting into a full, operational server 

lockdown. As plentiful, virtual servers can 

be set to run very specific tasks - a given 

set of applications for example - this 

expected behaviour and technology profile 

enables a business to double down on the 

security. Knowing how a server should 

normally behave, it can be locked down 

into a known good state where only those 

legitimate applications and trusted updates 

can take effect. 

The fact that cybercriminals assess how 

servers are utilised, what's stored there and 

what can be leveraged for multiple crimes, 

demonstrates the critical need for serverspecific 

security. This response is growing 

and businesses are beginning to 

appreciate the need to protect these 

important IT assets. NC 


OPINION 

TAKE IT ON THE CHIN? 

ARE BRITISH BUSINESSES FIRING EMPLOYEES UNFAIRLY AS A 

RESULT OF POSSIBLE DATA BREACH NEGLIGENCE? IAN 

OSBORNE, VICE PRESIDENT UK & IRELAND AT SHRED-IT, TACKLES 

THIS THORNY ISSUE 

We all know that humans are 

invariably the weakest security 

link, and data breach after data 

breach reminds us of this fact. It may be 

an inevitable reality, but it is often a 

frustrating one for those responsible for 

networks. After all of the hard work and 

dedication that comes as part and parcel 

of maintaining the security and integrity 

of a network, it's understandable that 

networking professionals and business 

leaders alike take simple data security 

mistakes pretty badly. 

Research from Shred-it and Ipsos 

conducted early in 2018 found that 

nearly a third of businesses that suffered 

a data breach, have terminated a 

negligent employee's contract as a result. 

Is that a fair response? 

Clearly, a sense of accountability is 

required, and the seriousness of 

maintaining best practice needs to be 

underlined now more than ever given 

GDPR. Many will feel that the only way 

to do that effectively with employees is by 

making a strong example of those that 

are negligent. 

It is easy to think this way. After all, 

many of the most common attack vectors 

that bring down networks and lead to 

data breaches could seemingly be 

prevented by common sense. Think twice 

before clicking on an email link to 

ensure the source is trusted, don't use 

public Wi-Fi to access confidential 

information or work systems, etc. The 

trouble is, its common sense not to leave 

the fridge door open or leave the car 

lights on, only to return to spoiled food 

or a car that won't start, yet many of us 

have done these or similar things. We 

are busy, we are human and we make 

mistakes. If we want to prevent routine 

mistakes in data security, businesses must 

train people to be ever vigilant and make 

best practice a habit - something they 

currently do not do. 

In our research, just over half of large 

British businesses have trained their 

employees on using public Wi-Fi, but only 

70 per cent provided training on 

identifying fraudulent emails: the latter 

was the highest response concerning 

critical security training. Overall, just 46 

percent of small businesses offer any of 

the key employee training that is 

necessary at all, with only a quarter 

having provided training on the use of 

public Wi-Fi and a third having offered 

training on identifying fraudulent emails. 

In addition, two-thirds of large British 

businesses and a quarter of small 

business owners have offered their 

employees specific GDPR related training. 

As an employee sacked for clicking on 

a spear phishing attack based on an 

apparently authentic email from their 

boss, for example, would you have a 

right to feel aggrieved if you had never 

received any training on how to identify 

fraudulent emails? Opinion will be split, 

no doubt. That is why it is important that 

we have a debate and that 

representatives from IT, HR, and the C- 

suite consider the question. 

It is my personal view that enhanced 

training has the benefit of building better 

trust with employees. Team members will 

feel supported and also understand their 

responsibilities in terms of safeguarding 

and information security. It will also 

reduce the likelihood that network 

security can be undone in the simplest of 

ways. Fundamentally, demonstrating that 

these training steps have been 

universally implemented will help to 

make a better response to the ICO in the 

event of a data breach; simply saying 

that you have sacked a low-ranking 

employee may not impress. 

It's time for you to decide. Should 

simple data security mistakes that lead to 

a data breach always lead to the 

dismissal of an employee, or should 

organisations accept that this issue isn't 

going away, and take responsibility to 

better train staff? NC 



OPINION 

OMINOUS CLOUDS 

BUILDING THE NETWORK TEAM INTO THE CLOUD 

WILL IMPROVE BUSINESS OUTCOMES. STEVE 

BROWN, DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT MARKETING AT 

VIAVI SOLUTIONS LOOKS AT THE KEY FINDINGS 

AND TAKEAWAYS FROM A RECENT STUDY 

Now in its eleventh year, the State of 

the Network is conducted annually 

amongst enterprise network 

engineers, IT directors and CIOs. This 

year the study found that while enterprise 

clouds flourished, IT teams were unsure 

how to handle the associated cloud 

migration challenges. 

Enterprises are losing control of 

infrastructure and services that are 

migrating to the cloud. Concurrently they 

are also trying to support staff working 

remotely, maintain performance and 

resolve issues. 

ENTERPRISE DILEMMAS 

65 per cent of respondents to our recent 

study said that network teams were 

responsible for troubleshooting cloud 

issues, 24 per cent said they were not, while 

11 per cent were unsure. This is happening 

because network teams are not being 

engaged during the initial migration to the 

cloud, which causes unnecessary confusion. 

Decisions are being taken in business unit 

silos and network teams are only called on 

after an incident occurs. 

This year, and last year, the majority of IT 

professionals revealed that their top 

challenge was determining whether 

problems were caused by the network, 

application or system - especially 

concerning remote staff. This issue was 

deemed by network teams to be more 

critical than handling bugs and patches or 

managing latency and bandwidth issues. 

NEW ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS 

Over the past 12 months, 79 per cent of 

those surveyed deployed new server 

virtualisation technology, 60 per cent for 

private clouds, 56 per cent for public cloud 

and 43 per cent utilised SDN. This has been 

a major headache for network teams who 

must now grapple with this dramatic growth. 

As enterprises grow more reliant on the 

cloud, so does their need for bandwidth. 

42 per cent of enterprises expect their 

demand to grow between 51-100 per cent 

from 2018 to 2020. Sustainability will be 

a challenge. 

The key takeaways from this year's study 

suggest that IT must be engaged at the 

onset of any cloud migration program. 

Also, engineers should be able to provide 

analytics and metrics, no matter whether it is 

a private, public or hybrid cloud. IT teams 

are finding that many network tools can't 

provide performance insight into most SaaS 

applications. This hampers efforts to identify 

and rectify user problems. 

CLOUD IMPAIRED VISIBILITY 

Network engineers must have full visibility 

and insight into every aspect of the journey 

for each application, from the user, right 

through the cloud, to the data centre, and 

then back. Network teams must have the 

capability to conduct performance analysis 

from any local data centre to any SaaS 

resource. This is critical, as more than 90 

per cent of enterprises have staff accessing 

their network remotely. 

When remote users encounter problems, 

they tend to complain about issues with a 

high level of subjectivity, making it difficult 

for network engineers to verify and 

troubleshoot erratic issues and optimise 

performance. Different use cases require 

different data and insight, from active 

testing, to metadata, to trending and 

baselines. With better intelligence IT teams 

can quickly drill down to granular packetlevel 

data for root cause analysis. 

This year's State of the Network paints a 

picture of network teams struggling to tame 

enterprise infrastructure and services as 

demand for cloud services grow at a 

phenomenal rate. The study mirrors the 

findings from a recent Gartner report, which 

estimated that the public cloud market could 

grow to $186.4 billion in 2018 - up over 

20 per cent from 2017. The Infrastructure 

as a Service (IaaS) segment grew the fastest. 

With a plethora of applications and 

protocols to manage, there are issues with 

interoperability. Virtualisation and cloud 

technology might make life agile and easy 

for users, however the clouds have 

darkened the outlook for many IT and 

networking teams. NC 



OPINION 

THE CURRENCY THREAT 

MUCH IS SAID ABOUT CRYPTOCURRENCIES. LESS IS UNDERSTOOD 

REGARDING THEIR INSIDIOUS PRESENCE IN NETWORKS. FABIAN 

LIBEAU, VP EMEA AT RISKIQ DISCUSSES THE VULNERABILITIES OF 

THE CRYPTOCURRENCY LANDSCAPE 

There is no doubt that the 

cryptocurrency landscape is 

booming, but with the massive 

growth in the value of cryptocurrencies 

comes an increased risk to those investing 

in them. We are currently seeing 

cybercriminals actively augmenting their 

activities in this space with phishing and 

fraudulent cryptocurrency mining proving 

to be popular tactics. 

Cybercriminals are always developing 

new ways to ply their trade, or new 

methods to deploy the more classic attack 

vectors within new environments. This can 

be seen in recent phishing tactics used to 

trick Ethereum investors. One approach 

we reported on was a phishing automated 

transfer system (ATS) dubbed MEWKit 

which targeted users of the Ethereum 

exchange MyEtherWallet. This attack used 

a phishing page mimicking the 

MyEtherWallet site and a server-side 

component that handles the wallets to 

which attackers transfer stolen funds. The 

attackers exploited the fact that investors 

were given direct access to 

MyEtherWallet's Ethereum network 

through their browser - functionality that 

means that there were few hurdles 

between the attackers and a payday. 

We also reported on a fake Telegram 

MyEtherWallet support group which 

currently has over 9,000 members. The 

cybercriminals used phishing tweets to 

their members urging them to download a 

new official MyEtherWallet Android app 

which in fact decrypts and steals their 

credentials, giving the criminals access to 

their account. Gone are the days where 

phishing attacks consisted of badly written 

emails directing people to poorly 

designed websites. Today cybercriminals 

use a combination of social media, 

mobile apps and well-designed websites 

to catch victims off-guard. 

In addition to crypto-theft, 

cybercriminals have discovered a new way 

to exploit the crypto-craze through 

cryptocurrency mining. According to some 

of our research, more than 50,000 

websites have hosted the mining service 

Coinhive in the past year, and recent 

research into the websites of FT30 

companies uncovered 11 instances of 

Coinhive still active. By installing 

JavaScript code that mines cryptocurrency 

using the computing resources of website 

visitors, Coinhive allows actors to 

monetise the online sessions of 

unassuming website visitors. 

The reason cryptocurrency mining is on 

the rise is due to the extreme levels of 

costly computing power needed to mine 

even a single coin. To bring their costs 

down, cybercriminals are siphoning 

computing resources from unwitting users 

across the internet by hosting 

cryptomining scripts on highly visited sites. 

While some brands knowingly capitalise 

by running cryptocurrency mining scripts 

in the background of their own websites to 

leverage the computers of their visitors 

legally, threat actors exploit this blind spot 

to hack vulnerable sites or spin up fake, 

illegitimate websites, often using 

typosquatting domains and fraudulent 

branding. It is not uncommon for 

organisations to be completely unaware 

of these activities. 

Our research has shown that some 

cryptomining scripts illegally hosted on 

popular sites have been active for over 

160 days. The success of cryptomining 

activities clearly highlights the fact that 

organisations lack visibility into the 

components running on their websites and 

into brand infringing domains being 

registered and exploited by others. These 

assets form part of an organisations' 

digital attack surface which now needs to 

be defended alongside the more 

traditional network and endpoint security 

activities that have been the primary focus 

of security teams for some time. 

It is unlikely that the cryptocurrency 

landscape's expansion will show signs of 

slowing down anytime soon, and the 

potential gains will continue to attract 

opportunistic investors and cybercriminals 

alike. Both organisations and investors 

need to up their game in order to defend 

themselves - organisations by increasing 

their visibility into how their Internet assets 

are being exploited, and investors by 

increasing their vigilance through 

understanding the current tactics being 

used against them. NC 



THE INTELLIGENCE NETWORK IS LAUNCHED 

IT IS TRUE THAT CYBER DEFENCE TENDS TO BE PERSONAL - AFTER 

ALL, WHO CAN YOU TRUST? JAMES HATCH, BAE SYSTEMS APPLIED 

INTELLIGENCE, CYBER SECURITY DIRECTOR INTRODUCES A NEW 

WAY TO COLLABORATE 

Collaboration between public and 

private sectors is of critical 

importance when it comes to 

fighting cybercrime, but there is another 

relationship that is just as important: that 

which exists between large and small 

organisations. It is with this in mind that 

The Intelligence Network was launched in 

July 2018. It is an initiative to safeguard 

society in the digital world and aims to 

engage, unite and activate a global 

community of security professionals and 

industry influencers from organisations of 

every size. 

SMALL ORGANISATIONS 

It's no secret that we don't always 

collaborate well when tackling 

cybercrime, but what is often overlooked 

is the impact at a grass roots level. 

Economic incentives and the buying 

power of the largest organisations add 

further complexity and impose a divisive 

layer in the cyber security marketplace: 

many small organisations are excluded. 

As the world wakes up to the need for 

effective cyber security, small 

organisations are being left behind. They 

don't receive the necessary support and 

struggle with integration and 

implementation. This is a problem, as 

small organisations are targets for 

hackers on their own account and as a 

means to access the networks of their 

customers. We must break down this 

segregation and encourage a 

collaborative model that works for all 

organisations and creates collective ways 

of dealing with the threats we face. 

The Intelligence Network is an initiative 

that aims to safeguard the digital world 

and empower the entire community. 

Rather than taking a reactive approach 

and being vulnerable to criminal 

demands, companies must ensure they 

are proactive, prepared and resilient. And 

what better way to achieve this than by 

collaborating as a community? 

SUPPORT FROM SMALL 

Some companies fail to defend 

themselves against cybercriminals simply 

because they are too slow to react. There 

are valuable lessons to be learnt from the 

agility that small organisations 

demonstrate. 

For example, the default assumption is 

that cyber criminals are quicker and more 

advanced than those trying to counter 

them. It is true that cyber criminals use 

creativity and collaboration to operate at 

the cutting edge of technology, but small 

organisations often do the exact same 

things and can move just as quickly as 

attackers. Cyber security in the long-term 

needs a new and radical approach, as 

well as rethinking and reengineering, but 

for established organisations the dynamic 

pace can be more of a challenge. 

What's more, business diversity can be 

an advantage - large organisations have 

their perspective on the world, problems, 

and solutions and younger companies 

have theirs. Small organisations offer a 

passion and drive to share their 

technology. They play by a different set of 

rules, allowing them to do things in a way 

that larger companies wouldn't or can't. 

Because of their nature, small 

organisations and start-ups alike are in a 

better position to innovate new ways to 

solve universal problems. 

CRITICAL COLLABORATION 

Cyber defence is a communal duty, for all 

organisations. Only by taking a more 

united stand against cybercriminals can 

organisations of all sizes expect to win the 

cyber-war. After all, the size of an 

organisation does not prevent it from 

being a target. 

I encourage small organisations to join 

The Intelligence Network. The traditional 

structures through which we think about 

organisations are becoming obsolete in 

the digital age and organisations must 

move away from working only for 

themselves. For this collective cyber 

immune system to become a reality, we 

must have a level playing field where 

enterprises can work together inclusively. 

Working in siloes creates criminal 

opportunity. We must develop not only 

technical defences, but also a collective 

sense of responsibility that transcends 

organisational size and boundaries: a 

unified response to cybercrime for the 

benefit of all. NC 



OPINION 

IP CCTV: THE NETWORK CHALLENGE 

IP CAMERAS ARE EASY TO CONNECT. HOWEVER THEIR EFFECT ON 

AN EXISTING NETWORK CAN AT BEST BE UNPREDICTABLE. DAN 

BARRERA, GLOBAL PRODUCT MANAGER FROM IDEAL NETWORKS 

EXPLAINS HOW TO OVERCOME THIS 

Because IP CCTV cameras connect to an 

Ethernet LAN, business users often 

install camera systems onto their 

existing network to reduce costs. However, 

doing so requires that there is a large and 

sufficient amount of available bandwidth. 

Without enough bandwidth, installing 

cameras will only congest the network and 

disrupt existing network services and the 

employees that use them. 

When adding IP cameras to a network there 

are three things to carefully consider, and 

each in its turn will affect the amount of 

bandwidth that is required to provision a good 

service and avoid adverse impact. The first 

consideration is the number of cameras. Each 

requires a certain amount of bandwidth, so 

more cameras exert more pressure on the 

network. Next is the image size. Depending 

on the application, cameras can record using 

low or high-resolution video (mega-pixel 

specification) and this again will affect the 

volume of data being transmitted. And then 

there is compression, determined by what 

CODEC and video frame rate is used. 

Bandwidth could be saved by increasing 

compression, but this will result in choppy and 

blocky video which may not be acceptable for 

the required application. 

There are alternatives to consider when 

deploying IP cameras. Using the existing 

network is simple and low cost but without 

careful planning it will create problems for 

other network systems and might deliver poor 

quality video. Creating a separate network, on 

the other hand, will ensure that cameras are 

given dedicated bandwidth and do not impact 

the production network. Additional equipment 

and infrastructure will obviously increase costs, 

but could also help with network security. 

If these options aren't suitable then Virtual 

LANs (VLANs) might be the answer. Operating 

on production network hardware, VLAN uses 

software to segregate the virtual network, 

which allows bandwidth to be dedicated to the 

CCTV system, with the rest available to the 

production network. Because it is planned and 

managed, congestion is avoided - providing 

that the overall available bandwidth is 

sufficient of course. 

PERFORMANCE 

No matter which option is chosen, IP CCTV 

cameras can still suffer performance issues, 

and when troubleshooting, there is a 

knowledge gap among installers and 

integrators. IP cameras require a totally 

different troubleshooting process to analogue 

cameras in order to identify why, for example, 

image quality is poor. 

A common complaint is that video is choppy 

or pixelated. IP cameras detect congestion on 

the network and will automatically 

compensate by lowering their output 

bandwidth by reducing the frame rate or 

increasing compression, resulting in poor 

quality video. However, at the network level, 

the camera settings may look totally fine and 

not reflect the characteristics of the actual 

video stream. 

To avoid this, integrators should stress test 

the network before installation. Network 

transmission testers are available with IP 

CCTV functions that allow installers to input 

network and camera details and simulate 

how the network will cope before anything 

is installed. 

It is then possible to see how adding CCTV 

to the network will work, allowing options to 

be carefully considered. The measurements 

and statistics will inform the decision and 

prevent adverse performance, call-backs, and 

disrupted users. 

WHAT'S NEXT? 

Ever higher-resolution cameras are entering 

the market, but without the network to support 

bandwidth requirements they will not ensure 

better quality. This may drive a need for 

separate networks, and for installers to 

properly understand them. 

Those installing or updating IP CCTV 

cameras should also be aware that the 

industry is moving from H.264 to H.265 

video compression protocol and should select 

test equipment that can support this. H.265 

offers more efficient compression, and 

provides good quality video from less 

bandwidth. Consider the latest H.265 

products from the outset. NC 


OPINION 

STITCHING UP THE 

CLOUD 

MULTIPLE CLOUDS ARE AN 

UNFOLDING REALITY, BUT THERE 

IS AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. 

MATTHEW PARKER, UK SALES 

DIRECTOR AND COUNTRY 

MANAGER AT INTERCLOUD, 

EXPLORES THE ISSUES 

Cloud computing is now so 

pervasive for individuals and 

organisations, especially those 

whose operations depend upon the likes of 

Salesforce, Amazon, and Microsoft, that its 

basic premise is well-accepted, established 

and little challenged. But as the variety of 

cloud platforms proliferate in an 

enterprise, an inconvenient truth emerges, 

namely that multiple clouds can give rise 

to a very unsatisfactory user experience, 

with poor performance, unavailability of 

relevant data across applications and even 

compromised security. 

Problems with cloud proliferation have, at 

their root, the patchwork nature of our 

existing enterprise computing architecture. 

As the Cloud Industry Forum has said, 

"Every cloud is built differently" and data 

doesn't necessarily flow easily across 

multiple clouds. However, data is the 

lifeblood of successful enterprise, and if it 

can't get to the extremities where it's 

needed, in a timely way, then those 

extremities will start to develop the 

business equivalent of organ failure. 

Business agility will suffer, or, worse, users 

will start operating with inaccurate or 

insecure data - and the enterprise as a 

whole is placed at risk. 

The key challenge, therefore, is not just 

migrating to the cloud, but, once there, 

ensuring that the different cloud platforms 

can communicate and that data can pass 

easily and safely between them. 

Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) don't 

necessarily help this situation - each CSP has 

a vested interest in attracting as much 

business as possible to its own platform, 

rather than cooperating with others. In turn 

the IT function has the unenviable task of 

stitching together disparate cloud 

environments, adding, shifting and discarding 

pieces of the patchwork as the organisation 

evolves and users come and go. 

Faced with this cloud-to-cloud scenario, 

there are three key things the CIO should 

seek: the ability to connect cloud 

environments as easily as possible; the 

need to make sure that this is done 

securely; and to accomplish both of these 

quickly. Business agility is very often 

dependent upon the right supporting 

technology being in place at the right time. 

There's no point in having the best solution 

if your competition already had it six 

months ago. 

Larger pipes from each of your various 

CSPs is, at best, a partial solution and not 

the most cost-effective approach - and you 

may end up struggling to prevent your own 

network becoming the bottleneck that 

slows data transfer between your various 

CSPs. If you want to get solutions live as 

quickly as possible, application 

segregation is the key; it's the applications 

that support the business, so line them up 

against a holistic view of the business 

goals to enable a clear view of data 

access requirements. Also, look for a way 

to connect your various CSPs at the 

periphery of your network, to minimise 

traffic across it. 

Finally, ensure that you find a way to 

extend your organisations' security policies 

to cover the cloud applications and 

services that your business needs to be 

agile, efficient and secure. NC 

MULTI CLOUD CONSIDERATIONS 

Treat this issue holistically and focus 

on the business problem you are solving 

Priority must be connecting cloud 

environments quickly and securely 

Application segregation can 

efficiently prioritise cloud apps: their 

importance is not equal to the business 

Connect CSPs at the network edge 

or cloud platform to reduce network 

overhead 

Work only with CSPs with relevant 

expertise, and then only connect to 

cloud platforms that support your 

security policies. 



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