NC Sep-Oct 2022

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 

THE NETWORK COMPUTING AWARDS STRIKE BACK! 

Discover this year’s winners inside 

WAN PERFORMANCE 

The role of SD-WAN in 

digital transformation 

BEYOND PERIMETERS 

Increasing security via a 

Zero Trust architecture 

IOT EVOLUTION 

How the Internet of 

Things is reaching maturity 

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2022 VOL 31 NO 03

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COMMENT 

COMMENT 

WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS 

At the time of writing significant areas of England and Wales are still experiencing a 

hosepipe ban and drought conditions, with no end and precious little rain in sight. But 

are we also in danger of edging closer to a different, but equally concerning, form of utility 

crisis? In August South Staffs Water was subject to a cyber attack from a ransomware group. 

In a statement the water utility said that, while they experienced disruption to their IT network, the 

attackers failed to compromise the water supplies in any way. However "The attack demonstrates 

that even non-nation state attackers are now getting more brazen in their attempts at high value 

targets," according to Stephen Kines, COO of cyber security hardware start-up Goldilock. 

"Whilst many APT (advanced persistent threats) groups don’t have the skills to penetrate to the 

actual industrial control systems, it shows there is potential to severely disrupt the IT networks that 

surround them, freezing up daily operations and impacting customers," he added. 

This isn't the only instance of a water utility being subject to a cyber attack that we've looked 

at recently - or even the most alarming. In our Jan/Feb issue David Higgins at CyberArk 

detailed the failed attempt to poison the water supply of a Florida city. In this instance the 

threat actor was only thwarted by the swift actions of a water plant operator who spotted the 

attack as it was taking place - but not before the attacker "allegedly boosted the concentration 

of sodium hydroxide in the water by a factor of 100." As David wrote at the time, "For a variety 

of reasons the public utilities industry is particularly vulnerable to threat actors. For one thing, 

much of the infrastructure that controls industrial control systems - the systems supporting key 

services - was developed in the 1980s or 1990s. Because of the crucial nature of utility operations, 

the creators of these systems had to prioritise system availability and interoperability over 

security. As these systems got more integrated with internet-connected IT over time, they 

became more appealing targets for hackers." 

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The fact that the South Staffs Water ransomware attack took place during a national drought 

is also alarming, and could indicate that threat actors are now deliberately targeting authorities 

during critical periods. And our current water shortage could also have significant implications 

for UK data centers, according to David Bicknell at GlobalData: "With the UK experiencing its 

driest summer for 50 years - and water companies failing to reduce leaks - operators hoping 

to use 25 liters of drinking water an hour to cool data centers as a cheaper alternative to energy-guzzling 

refrigeration systems are finding their options running dry." 

On a more positive note Phil Beecher, CEO and President of Wi-SUN Alliance, writes in his 

article in this issue that the utilities sector is set to benefit from new IoT initiatives that include 

water loss/leak detection. This is according to the findings of Wi-SUN’s latest IoT research study. 

With three in four organisations planning to implement these initiatives "the opportunities for savings 

and increased efficiency in some of these use cases are high." We'll drink to that... NC 

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CONTENTS 

CONTENTS 

COMMENT.....................................3 

When it rains, it pours 

INDUSTRY NEWS.............................6 

The latest networking news 

ARTICLES 

A QUESTION OF TRUST...................8 

By Mark Cooke at Xalient 

WAN PERFORMANCE...........20 

David Trossell at Bridgeworks offers a guide 

to achieving higher WAN performance, and 

Simon Hill at Certes Neworks explains why 

CISOs should now be looking at SD-WANs 

- or risk being left behind 

IOT REACHES MATURITY.......26 

After many years of hype, the Internet of 

Things is finally maturing to a point where 

organisations are turning strategies into 

reality and planning into action, according 

to Wi-SUN Alliance’s Phil Beecher 

A U G U S T / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 2 

BEYOND PERIMETERS............16 

As cybercriminals continue to develop new 

attack techniques the traditional notion of a 

strong external perimeter being the best 

defence against compromise has shown 

itself to be inadequate 

THE SASE APPROACH TO 

NETWORK SPRAWL...............22 

Sprawling networks and long lead times - is 

there another approach we can take? Justin 

Day, CEO and Co-Founder of Cloud 

Gateway, shows us the way 

NETWORK COMPUTING 

AWARDS 2022....................28 

Held in London in July, the 16th annual 

Network Computing Awards celebrated 

industry success stories from the past twelve 

months. Discover who won what inside! 

WHY EMPLOYEE WORKSTATION 

SECURITY CAN’T BE FORGOTTEN....12 

By David Higgins at CyberArk 

OVERSIGHT ABOVE I.T. 

TRANSFORMATION........................14 

By Mat Clothier at Cloudhouse 

DOWNTIME DOLDRUMS AND SMART 

SOLUTIONS...................................15 

By Alan Stewart-Brown at Opengear 

STAY AWARE OF RANSMOMWARE..18 

By Florian Malecki at Arcserve 

WHY CISOs MUST NOW 

EMBRACE SD-WAN........................20 

By Simon Hill at Certes Networks 

WAN ACCELERATION OR EDGE 

COMPUTING?...............................24 

By David Trossell at Bridgeworks 

PRODUCT REVIEW 

NETALLY ETHERSCOPE EXG-300......10 

PROGRESS FLOWMON 

COLLECTOR 12.1..........................14 

04 NETWORKcomputing AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2022 @NCMagAndAwards 

WWW.NETWORKCOMPUTING.CO.UK

INDUSTRY NEWS 

NEWSNEWS 

NEWS NEWS 

NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS 

NEWS NEWS 

Keeping data centres cool during heat waves 

Vertiv has issued new guidance to data centre operators and 

associated businesses to help them navigate the increasing 

challenge of heat waves, which have caused outages and 

disruptions at data centres in the UK. The heat waves have also 

led to Thames Water launching a review of the increasing 

demand data centres are putting on water supplies, particularly 

in the Slough area, which is set to become the second biggest 

data centre hub in the world. 

To keep systems cool and help ensure data centre availability, 

Vertiv experts recommend that, depending on the data hall 

load, operators should run as many units as possible to reduce 

the load on each cooling unit. Typically, an organisation would 

run all redundant units, but if the IT load is not 100%, one 

should run enough units to get the per-cooling unit as close as 

possible. This keeps the refrigerant pressures lower so there is 

not a risk of trips on high pressure with the high ambient 

temperature. It also provides a more efficient operating point. 

They should also schedule a regular maintenance plan. Vertiv 

recommends its customers schedule preventive maintenance 

quarterly. For compressor-based (DX) units, they recommend 

quarterly or more frequent cleaning of the condenser coil, as 

the lack of proper and regular cleaning can cause more of a 

reduction in the overall thermal unit capacity than the ambient 

temperature itself. Additionally, properly maintaining the 

refrigerant charge level helps to enable the design capacity and 

operating efficiency to function smoothly. A refrigerant charge 

that is too low or too high, can cause operational inefficiencies 

"If one thing is clear, it is that we need to be prepared for these 

extreme weather conditions to become more commonplace, so 

adapting to this inevitability is crucial” said Karsten Winther, 

president for Vertiv in EMEA. Our service teams have proved 

invaluable in providing the guidance and support required to 

not only manage the immediate impact, but to discuss with 

customers how they can plan ahead to build in resiliency." 

Expereo acquires Breeze Networks 

Breeze Networks is a managed service provider of cloudbased 

(SD-WAN) network connectivity and security solutions 

for enterprises and government agencies. An innovative and 

flexible network integrator, Breeze sources and manages the best 

SD-WAN networking and security solutions on the market. As 

part of the acquisition, Expereo welcomes Matthew Lea, CTO of 

Breeze Networks as Technical Portfolio Lead. His expertise will be 

a great addition to the knowledge base of Expereo's Technical 

team, led by CTO, Kristaps Petrovskis. Lea will drive Expereo's 

expansion plans for its SD-WAN/SASE practice, solidifying the 

company's presence in the UK market in his new role at Expereo. 

"This acquisition comes at an exciting time, as we expand our 

SD-WAN services to address the growing need for agile, costeffective 

cloud access and global network solutions in the 

market. With our shared vision to simplify global connectivity 

and provide world-class customer experience, the expertise of 

the team of professionals behind Breeze Networks will contribute 

great value as we join forces," said Expereo CEO Irwin Fouwels. 

Giganet selects Neos Networks for network expansion 

Neos Networks has been chosen by Giganet, an 

established ISP, to provide backhaul and data centre 

connectivity to support its new southern counties network and 

its ambitious plans to rollout gigabit Fibre-to-the-Premise 

(FTTP) services. Through strategic network partnerships, 

Giganet is already able to offer full fibre broadband services to 

millions of homes and businesses all over the UK. The next 

step for Giganet is an expansion which will see it cover more 

homes and businesses, beginning in the south of England 

using its own network. In the next four years, Giganet plans to 

build to 300,000 homes across Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset 

and West Sussex with its own fibre network rollout. 

Endpoint Detection and Response Beta from VIPRE 

VIPRE Security Group is preparing to add a new 

cybersecurity tool to its comprehensive suite of offerings. 

The new solution, VIPRE Endpoint Detection and Response 

(EDR), is designed to help SMBs and IT partners navigate the 

complexities of EDR management from a single, easy-to-use 

console. While VIPRE EDR will be available publicly towards 

the end of 2022, the company is ready to launch its Beta 

program and seeks global users to test the product and 

provide feedback. The VIPRE EDR Beta sign-up will be 

available here: https://bit.ly/3QFHU4 



INDUSTRY NEWS 

Hibs get dibs on new Acronis and Dunedin IT partnership 

Hibernian FC has announced an innovative multi-year 

partnership with Acronis and Dunedin IT, one of Scotland's 

most trusted and experienced technology and connectivity 

providers providing end-to-end services. Acronis will provide 

hybrid cloud solutions for backup, disaster recovery, secure file 

sync, and data access, to become Hibernian FC's Principal 

Cyber Protection Partner. This partnership will be supported by 

the expertise of Dunedin IT, which will deliver Acronis cyber 

protection solutions to improve data storage and access, 

creating a more efficient and collaborative workflow. In what is 

a significant agreement for the team, Acronis and Dunedin IT 

will have Principal Partner status at the club. Dunedin IT will 

have its logo printed on the lower back of the men's first team 

home, away, and third kits for the 2022/2023 season. 

Increasing IT complexity impacts ROI, finds SolarWinds 

With hybrid and remote work amplifying the challenge of 

managing distributed IT environments, 84% of IT 

professionals believe the ROI of their projects has been 

negatively impacted in the last 12 months, according to new 

research from SolarWinds. The report, which examines the 

acceleration of digital transformation efforts and its impact on IT 

departments, also shows a third (33%) of IT professionals think 

complexity added between four and seven months of extra work 

to get their project to completion. 

Commenting on the news, SolarWinds President and CEO 

Sudhakar Ramakrishna said, "Many organisations are struggling 

to drive forward transformation amidst increasingly distributed 

and complex IT environments. "Amplified by a global move 

towards hybrid and remote work, applications and workloads are 

now run across both cloud and on-premises infrastructure. This is 

not only hindering the ability to deliver benefits to end users in a 

timely fashion but also significantly impacting the bottom line. 

"In this challenging landscape, IT professionals are increasingly 

looking towards observability to manage these growing levels of 

complexity. By understanding where to prioritise their efforts, 

teams can manage hybrid IT realities more effectively and 

achieve the ROI targeted in their planned projects, which spells 

long-term success for teams, businesses, and their customers." 

Fusion IT appoints new CTO and earns ISO accreditation 

Yorkshire-based IT support and solutions provider Fusion IT 

Management has announced the appointment of James 

Robinson as its new chief technical officer (CTO). James 

previously held the role of IT operations manager and, during his 

time with the business, has successfully built the firm’s cloud 

platform, evolving from a handful of servers to a large multiredundant 

array of complex systems, helping the business reach 

new heights. Commenting on his new role, James said: "I'm 

excited for this next chapter in my new role as the CTO of Fusion 

IT. I want to express my gratitude to Jamie for trusting and 

supporting me to grow in the past three years." 

James Robinson 

Fusion IT has also welcomed two new recruits to the wider 

team. Karolina Mroz joins Fusion in the role of MatterSphere 

developer, after having successfully completed an undergraduate 

course in Computer Science at Sheffield Hallam University. 

MatterSphere is a robust client and matter management system 

that provides legal firms with a single, unified way to view and 

manage day-to-day activities. Joining her in the MatterSphere 

team is Kamil Sora, who will work as a support developer. A 

Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence graduate, Kamil will 

support the development team with the MatterSphere product to 

generate and produce data reports to help ensure that the most 

effective solution is implemented to meet the clients' needs. 

To top off a fine period of achievement for Fusion, the firm has 

also announced its achievement of ISO 9001 and 27001 

standards. Fusion IT is one of only a small number of IT 

businesses based in West Yorkshire to achieve this status. 

NEWS NEWSNEWS 

NEWS 

NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS 

NEWS 


OPINION: ZERO TRUST 

A QUESTION OF TRUST 

ZERO TRUST IS NOW A BUSINESS IMPERATIVE TO ENABLE THE 

SECURE, HYBRID WORKING ENTERPRISE, ACCORDING TO MARK 

COOKE, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER AT XALIENT 

Without a doubt, cybersecurity will 

continue to be a topic riding high on 

the C-Suite agenda throughout 

2022. With intensifying trade disputes, an 

escalating threat landscape, a highly 

distributed workforce, supply chains stretched 

to breaking point by the pandemic, and extra 

pressure exerted by the ongoing effects of 

Brexit and other geo-political issues, having a 

secure, productive, agile and cost-effective 

security framework in place will be paramount. 

It's evident that today's enterprises conduct 

business and use digital technologies in ways 

that are evolving constantly. This digital 

transformation is making traditional perimeterbased 

cybersecurity IT infrastructure redundant. 

The days when every user and every device 

operating from within an organisation's 

premises or firewall could be automatically 

trusted are over for good. The last two years 

have accelerated the global shift to the 

cloud as enterprises look towards digital 

transformation and the need, brought into 

even sharper focus by the pandemic, for 

business agility and higher productivity, 

while also adapting to the new 'here for 

good' model of hybrid working. And with 

this come new challenges for cybersecurity. 

The traditional security perimeter is rendered 

ineffective in this new world, and most legacy 

security systems, which were designed for a 

data centre rather than a cloud-centric world, 

equally so. This is because the traffic between 

an employee and a cloud-based application 

can now completely bypass the traditional 

security perimeter, together with any incumbent 

security controls or policies. The network is no 

longer a secured enterprise network. Instead, 

the insecure internet has fast become the new 

corporate network. It's time for organisations to 

take action if they are to keep attackers out 

and keep their businesses and people safe. 

As working from home has now become 

globally widespread, security technologies and 

processes based purely on established 

geographic location are becoming irrelevant. 

Millions of workers across the world shifted 

from being office-based to working from 

home, where they share broadband 

connections with family and friends. With a 

remote workforce, the use of potentially 

unsecured Wi-Fi networks and devices 

increases security risks exponentially. The 

change in workers' expectations, with regards 

to being able to work from home, means 

remote working is unlikely to be a passing 

trend. Subsequently these challenges and risks 

around connectivity and security are here for 

the long term. 

A popular, but now outdated, option in 

providing secure connectivity to corporate 

applications has been to use a Virtual Private 

Network (VPN). Whilst this will encrypt traffic 

between a device and an application, and 

provide a level of authentication, a VPN 

provides access to the corporate network as 

well as the applications that are served from it. 

As a result, this can give inappropriate levels of 

access to applications and functions that are 

outside an employee's job role or profile. This 

significantly increases the risk of a cyber security 

incident. For today's sophisticated threat actors, 

it is a trivial task to deduce that an organisation 

is using a centralised firewall and launch a 

DDoS attack via an online service that seriously 

impacts productivity. So, if VPNs are no longer 

fit for purpose, is there a better way? 

ADAPTING TO ZERO TRUST 

In short, yes there is. In this new environment, 

more and more enterprises are adopting a 

Zero Trust approach. Zero Trust is a security 

concept centered on the belief that 

organisations should not automatically trust 

anything inside or outside its perimeter, and 

instead must verify anything and everything 

trying to connect to its systems before granting 

access. Zero Trust employs "never trust" and 

"always-verify" principles, offering a secure 

platform for users to access applications, from 

anywhere, whether housed in data centres or 

the cloud. Security becomes all about context - 

where a user is, what role they have, what data 

they need and when - rather than about 

location - inside or outside the organisation's 

firewall. And Zero Trust ensures constantly 

adaptive levels of trust and verifications as 

these parameters change. 

As the pressure to protect enterprise systems 

and data grows significantly, and attacks 

become more sophisticated, CIOs and CISOs 

are moving the implementation of Zero Trust 

across all aspects of their infrastructure, to the 



OPINION: ZERO TRUST 

top of the corporate agenda. By removing the 

centralised approach to policy enforcement 

and moving towards a distributed model 

where security is delivered via the cloud, 

organisations can begin to move to a model 

where users and devices can be connected to 

applications and data securely and efficiently - 

regardless of geography. 

CHALLENGES AND BENEFITS 

It is undoubtedly a challenge for most large 

enterprises with established IT teams, that have 

worked on a 'trust but verify' basis using 

corporate firewalls and VPNs, to change 

direction and move towards a Zero Trust 

framework. But in our view, adopting this 

approach does bring considerable benefits. 

Without the concept of a fixed network 

perimeter, users can be anywhere and on any 

device. It's also true today that the devices 

employees are using are much less likely to be 

ones assigned by their employer. Employerowned 

laptops and phones are traditionally 

managed, patched, and kept up to date with 

security tools and policies. However, in the era 

of remote working, employees may forget 

basic cyber hygiene skills and start, or indeed 

are actively encouraged, to use their own 

devices to access corporate resources. If the 

enterprise moves to a Zero Trust approach, 

CISOs can reduce the attack surface of the 

business by only giving employees access to 

the applications they need to work with. 

A MODULAR ZERO TRUST APPROACH 

In our experience, one of the key questions 

when adopting a Zero Trust approach is 

"where do we start?" When trying to secure key 

milestones of the journey between an 

employee (or indeed more often a sensor or 

other IoT device) and an application, the sheer 

amount of technology touchpoints involved 

can prove overwhelming. Most enterprises 

typically have a subset of existing tooling that 

address some key aspects of trust, e.g. 

multifactor authentication, identity and access 

management, network access control etc. 

Extending the approach across multiple 

technology towers, however, is challenging. 

This is where a modular approach can work 

effectively. Separating out key functions or 

"journeys" into modules can allow a more 

focused approach to the application of a 

security policy, from a procurement, 

implementation and budgetary perspective. 

Although every enterprise will have its own 

priorities that dictate the appropriate starting 

point and path taken. In our view, there are 

four key areas to a Zero Trust journey that 

need to be considered. Firstly, Identity and 

Access, enabling you to recognise and 

authenticate user and device access, ensuring 

appropriate levels of access are granted 

dependent on role-based policies, rather than 

location. If your current landscape of IDAM 

systems is complex today, as so many are 

following acquisitions, disposals and global 

reorganisations, then these can now be 

simplified with a single cloud overlay. This 

takes away complexity, acting as a central 

repository of users and devices, managing 

starters and leavers, and much more. 

The second consideration is the network itself, 

ensuring you can connect users and devices to 

apps and data over a high performing, secure 

and constantly optimised pathway - using 

cloud solutions such as SD-WAN for example. 

And of course, being able to monitor the entire 

pathway is more crucial than ever, helping 

spot, avoid or remediate issues before they 

impact your business operations. We use an 

advanced proprietary AI-powered tool called 

Martina that not only does this, but 

automatically fixes issues too; in many cases 

even before a user sees a problem. Monitoring 

these new complex data pathways is critical to 

both performance and security. 

The third area we focus on is the Secure 

Service Edge - this ensures a secure gateway to 

the cloud, helping you get users on and off the 

internet quickly, efficiently and securely, using 

cloud on-ramp solutions, while ensuring a 

high-quality digital experience. Finally, we look 

at your Apps and Data, a vital stage ensuring 

these are properly segmented to protect 

against cross-infection should a virus occur. 

As an example, if the network itself is your 

most pressing area for action, we see SD-WAN 

as a core solution component in the journey to 

Zero Trust. It makes management of network 

infrastructure easy, allowing IT to avoid 

complex network-security architectures, whilst 

providing the highest security through a clouddelivered 

model. All traffic is securely 

connected through a cloud-delivered service, 

whatever the connection type - mobile, satellite 

or home broadband. And because the 

intelligence of the network is software-driven 

and orchestrated centrally, it can manage the 

user's journey through an insecure internet to 

the location of the application, at the same 

time compressing other applications to 

improve the user experience. 

An SD-WAN solution can be procured and 

implemented as a standalone initiative - but 

the real zero trust value comes when it's 

incorporated as part of a total security and 

networking solution, often known as SASE, 

Secure Access Service Edge. 

Addressing all four areas described above 

will leave your enterprise secure, resilient, 

agile and connected - providing firm 

foundations for successful digital 

transformation. At Xalient we call this our Zero 

Trust Framework - and by using this framework 

we ensure that we consider every stage of the 

journey through the lens of Zero Trust. It's our 

belief too, that to achieve successful and 

ongoing digital transformation, enterprises 

must address the challenges of security 

transformation right at the outset. 

THE CIO AND CISO IMPERATIVE 

Now is the time for CIOs and CISOs to work 

together to design their Zero Trust journey 

together - investing in modern technologies, 

rather than trying to retro-fit legacy systems, to 

ensure their organizations are successful and 

secure in today's work-from-anywhere and 

cloud-centered world. NC 



NetAlly EtherScope 

EXG-300 


PRODUCT 

REVIEWPRODUCT RE 

NetAlly's EtherScope nXG bowled us 

over when we first reviewed it as this 

ruggedised handheld device delivers 

a stunning range of wired and wireless 

diagnostics features. Not content to rest on 

its laurels, NetAlly has launched the new 

and improved EXG-300 model which 

delivers full visibility into Wi-Fi 6 and 6E 

networks and supports all three 2.4GHz, 

5GHz and 6GHz bands. 

A feature that makes the EtherScopes very 

appealing to technicians and engineers is 

that they run an Android-based OS - anyone 

that can use a mobile will find the EXG-300 

very easy to use. The large 5in. colour 

touchscreen presents a wide selection of 

icons for all tasks and the screen's FAB 

(floating access button) opens floating action 

menus offering instant access to further 

analysis tools related to the selected task. 

The EXG-300 offers a wealth of wired 

cable testing and network diagnostics 

features and supports 10GbE copper and 

fibre, multi-Gigabit and Gigabit 

connections, plus it can uniquely display 

data gathered from wired and wireless 

networks simultaneously. It can analyse and 

report on PoE switch ports and supports the 

802.3af/at/bt standards, all classes from 0 

to 8 and Cisco's proprietary UPoE. 

The device is, indeed, very easy to use and 

we started by analysing the lab's Wi-Fi 6 

network using the AutoTest profiles. The 

default Wi-Fi profile includes a set of 

predefined tests covering areas such as 

SSIDs, channels, AP details, DNS connectivity 

and so on, and once we had connected it to 

our Zyxel WAX610D Wi-Fi 6 AP, the EXG-300 

automatically created a new test profile for us 

which we started with one tap. 

The test only takes a few seconds and the 

EXG-300 returned a wealth of wireless 

information presented as 'cards' in its screen, 

each with colour coding to indicate 

warnings or errors. Tapping on the SSID 

card revealed graphs and tables for signal 

quality, channel utilisation, retries and PHY 

transmission rates, while the Channel card 

confirmed that our AP's 160MHz channels 

were operational, showing all others in use 

and their frequency range. 

All this is just to whet your appetite as tapping 

on the main WiFi icon reveals everything 

about all discovered internal and external 

wireless networks in your vicinity. Along with 

channel maps and overlap graphs, it shows all 

channels, their active SSIDs and the APs using 

them, every detected SSID and their security 

status and all clients along with their 

associated SSIDs and the encryption standard 

being used plus RF and traffic statistics graphs. 

There's more, as the integral AirMapper app 

is provided for indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi site 

surveys and creating signal heatmaps. Copy a 

site map to the EXG-300, create a survey, add 

your datapoints and the results can be 

uploaded with one tap to the NetAlly Link-Live 

cloud portal for further analysis and sharing 

with colleagues. 

We aren't done yet, as along with the Test 

Accessory iPerf server unit and a tri-band 

directional antenna, the EXG-300 kit option 

includes NetAlly's NXT-1000 dual-band 

spectrum analyser. We plugged it into the 

device's upper USB port, tapped the Spectrum 

icon and were presented with frequency 

spectrum heat map, historical waterfall and 

real-time signal level graphs - great for 

spotting rogue devices that may be interfering 

with your wireless services. 

We didn't think it was possible to cram any 

more features into the EtherScope nXG - but 

NetAlly has proved us wrong. The compact 

and portable EXG-300 teams up an incredible 

range of wired and wireless diagnostics and 

troubleshooting tools with extreme ease of use, 

making it the perfect partner for network 

engineers - especially those tasked with 

installing and maintaining high performance 

Wi-Fi 6/6E wireless networks. NC 

Product: EtherScope EXG-300 

Supplier: NetAlly 

Website: www.netally.com 

Telephone UK: +44 (0)141 816 9600 

Telephone US: +1-719-755-0770 

Price: From £8,575 exc VAT 



OPINION: ENDPOINT SECURITY 

WHY EMPLOYEE WORKSTATION SECURITY CAN'T BE FORGOTTEN 

DAVID HIGGINS, SENIOR DIRECTOR, FIELD TECHNOLOGY OFFICE AT CYBERARK GIVES US SIX 

ENDPOINT SECURITY RULES TO ISOLATE ATTACKER ACTIVITY, REDUCE THE IMPACT OF A BREACH 

AND ALLOW ORGANISATIONS TO REGAIN CONTROL OF THEIR ENVIRONMENTS 

Arecent Accenture study found that 63% 

of high-growth companies have 

already adopted 'productivity 

anywhere'. It's a switch which, two years later, 

is still causing issues for businesses - 

specifically their security teams. This is mainly 

as a result of employee workstations now 

being put at the edge. Far beyond the 'walls' 

of the traditional corporate network, they're 

an easy route in for attackers looking to 

compromise identities, launch ransomware 

attacks, exploit privileged credentials and 

infiltrate sensitive corporate networks. 

PROTECTING THE ENDPOINT 

Having these workstations - or endpoints - in 

such an unsecure situation is leaving 

organisations at an unnecessary and increased 

risk of an endpoint attack. This is especially 

worrying as we know that, during these types of 

attack, by the time incident response specialists 

are called in the environment has already 

become overrun by threat actors. 

It is vital to an organisation's overall security 

posture that they don't neglect endpoints - 

especially workstations. Doing so will inevitably 

end in a cyber assault. While this might sound 

like a big task, there are actually only six steps 

which security teams need to adhere to in order 

to protect them. These are fundamental identity 

security rules and safeguards: 

1. Remove local admin rights: Administrator 

accounts are vital. Not only are they used to 

install and update workstation software and set 

up system preferences, but they are critical to 

the smooth running and management of user 

accounts. The security issues arise however, as 

admin accounts are privileged, making them 

more valuable to attackers and more 

susceptible targets for those looking to run 

ransomware and other malicious software, 

disable antivirus, and block disaster recovery 

tools. Moving local admin powers away from 

normal users and into a secure digital vault with 

credential rotation is the quickest and most 

straightforward way to secure employee 

workstations. Doing so reduces the ability of 

attackers to move through networks, while 

lessening the impact of employee mistakes. 

2. Implement least privilege: Employees 

frequently need to carry out an action which 

requires administrative privileges. While these 

are usually legitimate and necessary tasks, justin-time 

privileged access enables teams to 

safely carry out work both in accordance with 

policy, and appropriately. 

3. Policies for application control: The endpoint 

must be able to defend against attacks, as well 

as allow or deny known applications. To do 

this, and lessen the risk of threats such as 

ransomware, organisations must be able to 

"greylist" apps and implement advanced control 

policies, ensuring workers use only secure, 

trusted applications. 

4. Don't forget cached credentials: Credential 

theft is one of the greatest risks to 

organisations. These can be saved in memory 

by many common business apps, and web 

browsers and password managers store 

application and website credentials 

locally. The fact threat 

actors can easily and 

frequently get cached 

credentials without 

requiring admin 

capabilities, makes 

having an 

endpoint security 

layer even more 

essential to overall security. 

5. Leave and set traps: It may sound left-field, 

but endpoint protection technologies that 

support privilege deception functionality, such 

as the capability to generate phoney "honeypot" 

privileged accounts, can help identify potential 

attackers in real-time. 

6. Monitor privileged activities: Attackers are 

sneaky and often go unnoticed when testing a 

network's defences. By proactively monitoring 

privileged workstation activity, organisations 

can automatically identify and stop adversaries 

before they move laterally, elevate privileges, or 

do significant harm. 

FINAL THOUGHTS 

Endpoint security has been something 

organisations have been battling against for 

years, and the added challenges they face 

thanks to the proliferation of hybrid working are 

cause for concern. With inadequately protected 

employee workstations posing as the perfect 

vulnerability for attackers to exploit, it's 

imperative for organisations to act swiftly to 

protect endpoints. NC 




Progress Flowmon 

Collector 12.1 


PRODUCT 

REVIEWPRODUCT RE 

NetOps and SecOps teams that 

demand full visibility into their 

networks will find the Flowmon 

product family from Progress delivers precisely 

what they need. The suite provides a wealth of 

network traffic flow monitoring, analysis and 

reporting tools and the best part is they are all 

managed centrally from a single web console. 

Features include traffic, application, server 

latency and end-user experience monitoring 

along with packet capture and analysis. This 

latest version takes monitoring into the cloud 

with support for native flow logs from AWS, 

Azure and Google Cloud. 

Previously, monitoring these cloud platforms 

required a probe installed to the relevant 

service and traffic mirroring configured - 

requirements that will ramp up ongoing costs, 

making cloud flow monitoring very expensive. 

Flowmon's support for native flows means 

probes aren't required and as much smaller 

quantities of data are generated, cloud data 

transfer charges are reduced significantly. 

The Flowmon network operations solution on 

review comprises the Flowmon Collector, 

Probe, agentless APM (application performance 

monitoring) and packet investigator modules. 

SecOps teams should consider the full 

Flowmon network and security operations 

solution as it adds the ADS module which 

provides detection services for unknown threats, 

malware, ransomware and malicious activity 

along with incident response and forensics. 

The Flowmon Collector appliances handle 

collection, long-term storage and analysis of all 

industry standard log flow formats including 

NetFlow, IPFIX, sFlow, jFlow and NetStream 

and can receive them from a wide range of 

network devices including load balancers, 

routers, switches, firewalls, packet brokers and 

dedicated Flowmon Probes. The Collector 

includes an integral Flowmon Probe for native 

collection of L2/L4 information along with L7 

statistical data and more external Probes can 

be added as needed. 

Collector deployment options include turnkey 

hardware rack-mount models, installation on 

cloud services such as AWS, Azure and Google 

Cloud Platform or virtualisation on VMware, 

Hyper-V and KVM hosts. We chose our 

VMware vSphere host and swiftly deployed the 

Collector using the supplied OVF template, 

placed our Probe monitoring ports on separate 

vSwitches and dedicated physical adapters with 

promiscuous mode enabled and cabled them 

to our switch span ports. 

The web console's home page provides easy 

access to the Flowmon Monitoring Center 

(FMC) which manages flow sources, provides 

traffic graphs for each one and offers an Analysis 

section for drilling down for more information. 

The smart Chapters feature combines profiles 

and source data channels to present information 

on areas such as problematic connections, top 

talkers, L7 analysis for service usage and, of 

course, cloud flow monitoring. 

Configuring AWS cloud monitoring was a 

lengthy process but the detailed documentation 

and assistance from Progress' knowledgeable 

support staff helped us over any hurdles. Once 

we had AWS IAM access, EC2 instance 

network interface flow logging and an Amazon 

CloudWatch log group configured, we used 

FCC to enable AWS flow logs and watched as 

FMC spotted the new source for the monitored 

Linux instance. 

The Dashboard and Report console presents 

an incredible amount of graphical information, 

and widgets allow it to be easily customised to 

your requirements. We added a Chapter for the 

AWS source, used it to create a new widget and 

after dragging it to a prominent position on our 

dashboard, could see all traffic and IP addresses 

related to our EC2 instance and set monitoring 

periods of between one hour and three months. 

Progress Flowmon is the perfect partner for 

NetOps and SecOps teams as it provides a 

stunning amount of information on network, 

service and application performance. Fully 

centralised management makes it easy to 

identify and analyse problem areas while the 

native cloud flow monitoring services add 

valuable new dimensions and keep cloud costs 

to a minimum. NC 

Product: Flowmon Collector 12.1 

Supplier: Progress Software 

Website: www.flowmon.com 

Sales: support@flowmon.com 

WWW.NETWORKCOMPUTING.CO.UK AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 13 


@NCMagAndAwards

OPINION: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION 

OVERSIGHT ABOVE I.T. TRANSFORMATION 

EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT TRANSFORMATION IN THE I.T. 

SPACE, BUT DO PROFESSIONALS HAVE COMPLETE VISIBILITY AS 

TO WHICH DEVICES, SYSTEMS AND APPLICATIONS ARE 

UNDERGOING THIS PROCESS? MAT CLOTHIER, CEO AT 

CLOUDHOUSE GIVES US HIS TAKE 

Digital transformation is nothing new, but 

we are living through a period of 

particularly rapid change. Internal and 

external factors have combined to accelerate 

this trend. The Covid pandemic brought with it 

a seismic shift in the way people work and 

consume products, and this change is here to 

stay. Enterprises are busy making positive 

changes, driven by a desire to provide best 

levels of service to customers and ensure the 

business remains fully compliant and resilient 

in the face of change. 

COMPLEXITIES OF THE CLOUD 

Arguably the biggest transformation still 

playing out in the IT industry is moving to the 

cloud, with predictions that the global cloud 

computing market will continue to grow at 

pace to the end of 2028, as small and 

medium enterprises make their migration and 

businesses seek to improve efficiency with the 

adoption of advanced technologies such as 

big data, AI and machine learning. 

Using multiple cloud providers has become 

the standard for many organisations, with 80% 

using both public and private clouds in a hybrid 

model. The hybrid model offers agility and 

competitive advantage, but having your IT 

estate spread out in this way can create its own 

problems. Maintaining oversight of all parts of 

the estate is essential for resilience but can 

prove complex and time consuming in practice. 

While human resources in the business are 

busy working on positive change, it's as crucial 

to ensure that technology can enable 

monitoring of those developments. With so 

much at stake, monitoring is essential to 

minimise disruption and ensure a seamless 

customer experience. It is also an important 

element in making sure regulatory standards 

and compliance are maintained. 

The risks of breaching regulatory 

compliance, with the potential consequences 

of legal action and fines, as well as 

reputational damage, are well documented. 

For example, data for 2021 shows that data 

breach costs rose to an average total of 

$4.24 million, the highest ever recorded - but 

the same report noted that costs were 

significantly higher for organisations that 

lagged in areas such as security AI and 

automation and cloud security. And the costs 

are not just financial: there is huge potential 

for reputational damage. For those operating 

in highly regulated industries, such as finance 

and healthcare, the consequences of 

breaching regulatory compliance can be even 

more severe. 

OVERSIGHT TOOLKIT 

CTOs and CIOs, now more than ever, need to 

keep on top of their IT transformation, monitor 

change and have full oversight of their estates. 

Being across so many things at once can be 

daunting and laborious, especially for those 

working with a matrix management structure. 

So how can they best achieve oversight? 

This is where configuration management 

tools come to the fore. These tools give a toplevel 

overview - a clear and unambiguous 

assessment of every element of the full suite - 

all in one place, and can find and fix 

compliance and change management issues 

quickly. They allow omnipresence, facilitating 

best practice oversight over even the most 

complex transformation projects. 

Having all this information in one easy-toaccess 

place also makes it easier to bring 

teams together - particularly beneficial for 

those working with a matrix management 

structure. You won't miss a thing. 

Change management is made simple as the 

tools look at the different environments across 

the estate and compare them, giving full 

transparency on where you are on the journey 

to migration. They allow oversight of the 

tracking, testing and deployment of updates, 

pre-empting issues before they arise. What's 

more, they work across server, desktop and 

network as well as multiple vendors, making 

them ideal for those working with hybrid cloud 

systems, giving full peace of mind. 

Management tools not only identify issues 

when they happen: they can also provide a 

further layer of protection by allowing CTOs 

and CIOs to take full control by setting policies 

and permissions to pre-empt compliance 

problems before they occur. Policies can be 

created or selected from the Center for Internet 

Security's 20 critical security controls, which 

satisfy regulatory requirements like PCI and 

SOX. This means companies can automatically 

achieve compliance by setting policies 

according to best practice configuration. 

The automated health checks offered by 

configuration management tools act as an 

early warning system, building a company's 

resilience by allowing them to act fast not just 

when problems crop up, but by catching 

misconfigurations before they can be 

exploited. Configuration management tools 

are a powerful addition to the CTO and CIO 

toolkit. NC 



OPINON: NETWORK DOWNTIME 

DOWNTIME DOLDRUMS AND SMART SOLUTIONS 

ALAN STEWART-BROWN, VP EMEA AT OPENGEAR CONSIDERS THE 

TOP TRENDS FOR NETWORKS THAT WANT TO STAY ONE STEP 

AHEAD OF DOWNTIME 

With hybrid working now becoming 

the strategy of choice for numerous 

businesses, many have had to 

undertake a re-evaluation of their network 

infrastructure to facilitate collaboration and 

productivity while at home and in the office. 

However, the road to integrated networks has 

proven to be a bumpy ride. As more firms 

leverage IoT and smart devices, this 

increases the risk of disruptive downtime due 

to the increased strain on networks. So what 

trends are allowing businesses and their 

engineers to effectively escape the downtime 

doldrums? 

THE CONSTANT THREAT TO UPTIME 

Network outages are nothing new, but in 

2021, downtime managed to impact some 

of the largest enterprises in the world. Even 

social media giant Meta was impacted 

globally for almost six hours over two days in 

October 2021, affecting access to 

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. While 

detrimental to the technology firm, it also had 

ramifications for the people and businesses 

around the world that rely on its services. 

The biggest causes of downtime for 

enterprises will typically be software upgrades 

gone wrong, cyber attacks or 

misconfiguration errors, such as when writing 

a configuration file. The issue is also 

compounded by the widespread adoption of 

IoT devices. Due to constant connectivity 

being needed, any outage will also affect 

these endpoints. 

Content delivery networks (CDNs) are also 

under sharp focus due to their role in 

improving site performance and user 

experience. Software configuration updates 

can trigger bugs in such systems and lead to 

severe disruption. In a handful of cases, 

natural disasters can prove catastrophic to 

intercontinental global data traffic, proving 

the fragility of the interconnected world. 

However, with correctly chosen solutions, 

businesses are able to manage their 

infrastructure remotely and securely, 

minimising downtime as much as possible. 

With today's network challenges, 

organisations require access to advanced 

technologies to streamline their operations 

and agile tools to provide insights into 

virtualised environments. 

KEEPING DOWNTIME AT BAY 

At the core of keeping downtime at a 

minimum is an independent management 

plane, which essentially allows engineering 

teams to roll-back or undo any inadvertently 

uptime-threatening actions. This is part of a 

wider Smart Out-of-Band management 

setup, which unlike In-Band solutions, allows 

network engineers to securely connect to 

remote equipment during an outage. 

Engineers can then also lock down the most 

critical functions on the production network 

to prevent access from other users. 

Smart Out-of-Band interfaces can also be 

paired with Failover to Cellular. These 

capabilities use 4G LTE, so in the case of 

disruption, engineers can leverage bandwidth 

to access critical applications when 

undergoing issue remediation, even when the 

primary network is down. This bandwidth not 

only provides the remote access to determine 

the root cause of an outage, but also acts as 

a path for remote site production network 

traffic, ensuring network resilience. 

TOWARDS NETOPS AUTOMATION 

Another aspect of maintaining uptime is via 

the adoption of a NetOps approach for 

growing, virtualised environments. Across the 

hybrid workforce, it's more important than 

ever for enterprises to be able to automate 

certain processes, such as the testing of 

network processes for latency purposes or 

securely provisioning new sites. NetOps 

makes this possible, with a growing 

awareness of its benefits among businesses 

and IT departments. 

The NetOps approach provides advantages 

such as upskilling and business efficiency, 

with opportunities for employees to build 

programming skills in Python and 

understanding of Docker containers, plus 

other commonly used toolsets such as Chef, 

Puppet and Ansible. Together with the 

independent management plane, NetOps 

automation ultimately helps reduce the threat 

of downtime and ensures business continuity. 

KEEPING THE NETWORK UP AND 

RUNNING 

Outages ultimately lead to organisations 

losing money and can have a significant 

impact on industry reputation. The hybrid 

working era has required businesses to be 

more agile and offer a network that's secure, 

connected, and scalable for employees to 

benefit, regardless of where they are based. 

To ensure downtime is kept to a minimum, 

enterprises need to be proactive in securing 

their network resilience with trending 

technologies such as the independent 

management plane, Smart Out-of-Band 

technologies and NetOps to ensure optimum 

business continuity and keep the network up 

and running. NC 

WWW.NETWORKCOMPUTING.CO.UK AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 15 


@NCMagAndAwards

SECURITY UPDATE 

HOW TO INCREASE SECURITY VIA A ZERO TRUST ARCHITECTURE 

AS CYBERCRIMINALS CONTINUE TO DEVELOP NEW ATTACK TECHNIQUES AND BECOME MORE 

SOPHISTICATED, THE TRADITIONAL NOTION OF A STRONG EXTERNAL 

PERIMETER BEING THE BEST - AND OFTEN ONLY - DEFENCE 

AGAINST COMPROMISE HAS SHOWN ITSELF TO BE 

INADEQUATE. SANJAY RADIA, CHIEF SOLUTIONS 

ARCHITECT AT NETSCOUT EXPLAINS WHY 

Nowadays, 

perimeter-based 

network access 

controls are unable to detect or prevent 

compromise, as vectors of attack have 

evolved and the threat surface continues 

to grow. Evidence of this can be seen 

with direct attacks, such as the recent 

log4j vulnerability, as well as indirect 

attacks, an example of which is phishing 

with malware. Prevention at the edge has 

been the saviour side of the arms race 

but has always, and will always, come in 

second place. 

Things get worse when we consider the 

implicit security assumption that 

everything inside an organisation's 

network is trustworthy. This means that if 

threat actors are on the network, they 

have the ability to move laterally within it 

- allowing them to seek further 

compromise. The concept of a Zero Trust 

architecture was introduced to allow 

services that drive digital transformation, 

while improving the network's security 

posture. 

ZERO TRUST 

The National Cyber Security Centre's 




(NCSC) Zero Trust design principles 

present a new method of solving an ageold 

problem - securing networks and 

information. As a result, organisations of 

all sizes are rethinking their security 

architecture, processes, and procedures 

to adopt Zero Trust features. 

According to the NCSC, "Zero Trust is an 

architectural approach where inherent 

trust in the network is removed, the 

network is assumed hostile and each 

request is verified based on an access 

policy". In order for a request to be 

deemed trustworthy, context must be 

sought. This relies on a number of factors, 

including strong authentication, 

authorisation, the health of the device, 

and the value of accessible data. 

An example of a Zero Trust approach is 

multifactor authentication (MFA). MFA 

adds an extra layer of security by 

requiring additional factors to prove 

the identity of users. For example, 

users may be required to scan their 

fingerprint or confirm a PIN sent to 

their device before they can access a 

resource. From a Zero Trust architecture 

perspective, MFA is utilised as a doublecheck 

against its own security measures, 

ensuring that users are indeed who they 

are claiming to be. This significantly 

reduces the possibility of bad actors using 

compromised credentials to access data, 

devices and systems. 

CREATING A SAFER, MORE SECURE 

ENVIRONMENT 

The Zero Trust model can be easily 

visualised as a set of pillars representing 

different security areas, such as devices, 

applications, and users. Beneath all of 

these pillars lie the foundational aspects 

of a Zero Trust architecture. These are: 

analytics, visibility, automation, and 

governance. 

Zero Trust adoption is a gradual and 

continual process. As enterprises begin to 

refine their architectures, their solutions 

become increasingly reliant on 

comprehensive visibility and monitoring, 

automated processes, and systems, in 

addition to becoming closer to full 

integration across all of the pillars. This 

enables organisations to be more 

dynamic in their decisions around policy 

implementation. 

Implementing and developing a Zero Trust 

architecture takes time. The architecture will 

continue to develop as policies, processes 

and tooling are upgraded. Nevertheless, 

verification and ongoing auditing of Zero 

Trust models is vital to knowing and 

demonstrating that an organisation's 

security measures are working. 

A key characteristic of a Zero Trust 

architecture is that it comes with no false 

sense of security. In traditional perimeterbased 

models, anything taking place 

inside the network is considered 

trustworthy, due to the assumption that 

any users or activities taking place in the 

network have already passed 

authentication and are authorised to be 

there. Therefore, this architecture 

assumes that insiders are never 

dangerous or destructive and that 

perimeter security is faultless. 

However, there are obvious flaws with 

this model. There are numerous scenarios 

in which users and events inside your 

perimeter shouldn't be trusted - for 

example, when a cybercriminal has 

gained access using compromised 

credentials, enabling them to abuse 

privileges or move laterally through the 

network. A Zero Trust architecture 

prioritises protection against potential 

insider threats, thus preventing a situation 

like this from unfolding. 

VISIBLE BENEFITS 

When it comes to implementing a Zero 

Trust architecture, comprehensive visibility 

of the entire network is a requirement for 

all organisations. This ensures that the 

Zero Trust model is effective. In addition, 

the architecture should contain network 

taps to mirror traffic from the wire, as well 

as a tool that is capable of replicating 

and distributing packets to existing 

cybersecurity monitoring tools. 

Only with this level of visibility will 

enterprises be able to detect potential 

threats, view historical usage, trace 

interconnected devices, and assist in 

orchestrating mitigation through 

Application Programming Interfaces 

(APIs). Additionally, organisations should 

have the capacity to utilise protection 

groups so as to classify networks, servers 

and services based on the risk posed to 

them. This will allow for the rapid 

adoption of a Zero Trust architecture. 

Whether an organisation is just starting 

out on its Zero Trust implementation 

journey, or is are already well on its way, 

it is vital to ensure visibility and analytics 

are major components within the 

detection and validation of their Zero 

Trust architecture design. NC 



STAY AWARE OF RANSOMWARE 

RANSOMWARE ATTACKS ARE GROWING IN COST AND 

FREQUENCY. FLORIAN MALECKI, EXECUTIVE VICE 

PRESIDENT MARKETING, ARCSERVE OFFERS 5 STEPS THAT 

COMPANIES SHOULD TAKE TO PROTECT THEMSELVES 

Ransomware attacks continue to impact 

organisations worldwide - and the 

costs are staggering. A new global 

survey of over 1,100 IT decision-makers at 

small and midsize companies found that 

50% had been targeted by a ransomware 

attack, with 35% asked to pay over 

$100,000 in ransom, and 20% asked to 

pay between $1 million and $10 million. In 

the UK, 50% of respondents said they had 

no choice but to pay the ransom. 

These numbers are not expected to 

improve soon. The sad truth is that, despite 

spending billions on cybersecurity tools, 

businesses are still poorly prepared for 

ransomware attacks. Less than a quarter 

(23%) of all respondents to the survey said 

they're very confident in their ability to 

recover lost data in the event of a 

ransomware attack. Smaller businesses are 

even less well prepared. Under 20% are 

very confident in their ability to recover lost 

data in the event of a ransomware attack. 

Meanwhile, the attack surface continues 

to expand as organisations using 

technologies like IoT, artificial intelligence, 

and 5G generate even more data - data 

that can be compromised and held captive 

by ransomware attackers. Remote working 

adds to this attack surface. 65% of UK 

respondents said they didn't have a 

backup and recovery plan for all their 

remote workers. 

For this reason, companies must take a 

new approach to data resilience. They must 

strengthen their disaster recovery strategies, 

backup systems, and immutable storage 

solutions to prevent the loss of missioncritical 

data. 

Many are. The survey found that 92% of 

organisations are making additional 

investments to protect against ransomware 

attacks, with the top areas of investment 

being security software (64%), training 

and certification (50%), and managed 

services (43%). 

While these investments are encouraging 

more should be done as, for most 

companies, it's not a matter of if their data 

will be compromised; it's a matter of when. 

With ransomware attacks increasing yearly, 

data backup and recovery should be at the 

very top of every organisation's priority list. 

Here are five steps businesses can take 




now to reduce their exposure to 

ransomware and avoid staggering losses. 

1: Educate employees 

It's essential to invest in training for staff so 

that they're aware of how ransomware 

works. From there, employees will be better 

prepared to recognise and prevent it. They 

should know that ransomware can sneak in 

from anywhere. The training should remind 

them to scrutinise every link in emails and 

not open attachments in unsolicited emails. 

Employees should be reminded to only 

download software - especially free - from 

websites they know and trust.When 

possible, employees should verify the 

integrity of downloaded software through a 

digital signature before execution. 

2: Focus on cures as well as prevention 

Companies continue to invest loads of 

money in cybersecurity solutions like nextgeneration 

firewalls and extended detection 

and response (XDR) systems designed to 

prevent attacks. Yet these same companies 

are still falling prey to ransomware and 

being forced to pay a hefty price. 

It's time for companies to stop focusing 

entirely on prevention. They should also 

invest in curative measures like backup & 

recovery and immutable storage that allow 

them to quickly restore their data and 

avoid paying the ransom when attackers 

break in. 

Regular data backups and encryption play 

a key role in protecting an organisation's 

data. A consistent backup schedule will 

enable you to seamlessly restore any 

compromised systems or data. Encrypting 

your sensitive data is also highly 

recommended. After all, if ransomware 

attackers gain access to your critical assets, 

encryption has the benefit of keeping data 

from being read and further exploited by 

the bad guys. 

3: Place a premium on data resilience 

Your data resilience is only as strong as 

your weakest link. Monitor your 

weaknesses, fix them when you find them, 

and you can bounce back quickly from 

disruption and return to normal operation. 

To do this, you must have the technologies 

required to back up your data and recover 

it if necessary, along with the proper 

mindset. That means a defensive posture is 

regularly sustained with drills that simulate 

an intrusion to measure your resiliency and 

bolster it where necessary. 

Many companies develop a strategy and 

then neglect to test it. That's like a basketball 

team devising a sophisticated defense and 

never bothering to practice it. All companies 

should regularly test their data backup and 

recovery plans to ensure they can effectively 

restore their data and systems if an attack or 

natural disaster occurs. 

4: Know what data is most critical 

Data varies in value. If you're concerned 

about costs, as most organisations are these 

days, you don't have to store or back up all 

your data in the same place. Look into 

storage solutions that provide options like 

data tiering. These enable you to place lessimportant 

data in less-expensive levels of 

storage or "tiers." 

Another upside of data tiering is lower 

energy costs. You'll use less compute power 

if you're not storing every last byte of your 

data at the highest security level. 

5: Put a disaster-recovery plan in place 

Despite all the preventive measures you 

take, you need to prepare for the possibility 

that you will get hit. So, it would be best if 

you had a disaster recovery plan. You need 

to be able to back up data as often as is 

appropriate-ideally every 15 minutes for 

critical data. You also need to easily verify 

that your whole environment is backed up, 

including your remote workers and any 

SaaS applications you use, such as 

Microsoft 365. 

A good disaster-recovery solution will back 

up your data to a location of your choice 

and on a schedule that suits you. It will also 

be easy to test, which is crucial because 

testing is the only way you can validate that 

your recovery-time goals can be met. It may 

seem obvious, but this is where a lot of 

solutions fall short. Your disaster-recovery 

solution must be able to recover your data 

every time and on time. When ransomware 

hits, you want to be confident you can 

recover your data and get on with business 

as soon as possible. 

FINAL TAKEAWAY 

There is no perfect defense against 

ransomware. The best approach is a 

multilayered one that includes educating 

your staff, investing in reliable data backup 

& recovery and immutable storage solutions, 

and having a robust disaster recovery plan. 

That's how organisations can stay ahead of 

this growing threat and protect their data 

and bottom line. NC 


FEATURE: WAN PERFORMANCE 

WHY CISOs MUST NOW EMBRACE SD-WAN 

SIMON HILL, HEAD OF LEGAL & COMPLIANCE AT CERTES NETWORKS INSISTS THAT 

IT’S TIME FOR CISOs TO TAKE A LEAD ROLE IN THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION 

PROCESS - OR RISK BEING SIDELINED FOR GOOD 

Digital transformation has become a 

business imperative, yet rather than 

pulling together to enable essential 

change, the friction between network and 

security teams is increasing. The business 

needs to move away from data centres and 

traditional Wide Area Networks (WAN) to 

exploit the cost, flexibility and agility 

provided by the cloud and Software Defined 

WANs (SD-WAN). Chief Information 

Security Officers (CISOs), especially those 

working in regulated industries, insist the 

risks associated with public infrastructure 

are too high. Stalemate. 

Until now. Organisations are pressing 

ahead with digital transformation plans 

and excluding the CISO from the 

conversation. But at what cost? Who is 

assessing the implications for regulatory 

compliance? At what point will the Chief 

Risk Officer prohibit the use of the SD- 

WAN for sensitive data, leaving the 

business running legacy and new 

infrastructure side by side, fundamentally 

undermining the entire digital 

transformation project? 

A new attitude is urgently required, one 

based on collaboration, understanding 

and a recognition that a Zero Trust security 

posture can safeguard even the most 

sensitive data, while unlocking all the 

benefits associated with SD-WAN. 

ACCEPT CHANGE 

CISOs need to face up to the fact that 

digital transformation is happening - with 

or without them. Organisations need to 

embrace the agility, flexibility and cost 

benefits offered by the cloud, by Softwareas-a-Service 

and, critically, the shift from 

expensive WAN technology to SD-WAN. 

For CISOs, while the migration to SD- 

WAN extends the attack surface, adding 

unacceptable data vulnerability, saying no 

is not an option any more. CISOs risk 

being left out of the digital transformation 

loop - and that is not only adding 

significant corporate risk but also 

compromising the expected benefits of this 

essential technology investment. 

Network and IT teams are pressing 

ahead, insisting the risk is acceptable. 

How do they know? For any organisation, 

this is a dangerous compromise: critical 

risk decisions are being taken by 

individuals who have no understanding of 

the full implications. For those 

organisations operating in regulated 

industries, these decisions could result in 

an exposure to $10s millions, even $100s 

millions of penalties. 

Failure to embed security within the initial 

digital transformation strategy is also 

compromising progress. What happens 

when the CISO or Chief Risk Officer 

discovers the business is in the process of 

migrating from the old WAN to a new SD- 

WAN environment? Suddenly the brakes 

are on, and the call is for sensitive data to 

be encrypted before it hits the network. 

Adding Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) 

tunnels will degrade performance - so the 

business is then stuck using the legacy 

WAN for data connectivity while still 

paying for the SD-WAN and failing to gain 

any of the agility or cost benefits. More 

frustration and friction between teams that 

should be working together to support 

business goals. 

DRIVE CHANGE 

Security is a fundamental component of 

digital transformation - indeed of 

corporate operating strategy. Rather than 

avoiding change, CISOs have a 

responsibility not only to secure the 

organisation but to proactively advocate 

change, with security as the key enabler of 

digital transformation. 




Digital transformation does not by 

default create an inherently insecure 

environment - but it will require 

organisations to, somewhat belatedly, 

embrace a Zero Trust model. It has been 

clear for many years that there is no 

correlation between ownership and trust. 

Just because a company owns 

infrastructure and assets does not 

automatically infer total trust over data 

security. Similarly, infrastructure outside 

the business is not inherently 

untrustworthy. 

The key is to build trust into a secure 

overlay to protect data that will allow a 

business to operate across any 

infrastructure, whether it is owned or public. 

A High Assurance SD-WAN overlay, for 

example, uses crypto-segmentation to 

protect and ensure the integrity of 

sensitive data. With this Zero Trust 

approach, High Assurance SD-WAN 

means whether the network is public or 

private, trusted or untrusted, is irrelevant: 

the data security team simply needs to 

define the policy and, with ownership of 

the cryptography keys, can be confident 

that data is protected at all times 

wherever it goes. 

WORKING TOGETHER 

Adopting a Zero Trust security posture 

changes the outlook for CISOs - and 

provides a foundation for vital 

collaboration with the networking and IT 

teams. With confidence that the data is 

secure regardless of network location, 

everyone involved in digital 

transformation can achieve their goals: IT 

and network teams can embrace the 

flexibility and agility of the cloud, SaaS 

and SD-WAN, while the security team still 

has control of the security posture. 

This can only be achieved if the business 

embraces a different mindset. It is 

essential to think about security by design 

from the outset - and to break down the 

barriers between network, IT and security. 

The introduction of the Secure Access 

Service Edge (SASE) framework provides 

clear guidelines for the convergence of 

these teams to drive additional business 

value but the onus - and opportunity - lies 

with the CISO to ensure the entire 

organisation truly understands the digital 

transformation objectives. 

This also demands an essential shift 

away from a regulatory compliance 

focused security posture - something that 

is inherently flawed due to the 

impossibility of creating regulations that 

keep up with the ever changing security 

threats - towards a truly business driven 

approach. Working together to plan the 

digital transformation process may take a 

little more time up front but it will result in 

a secure foundation that will remove any 

constraints to innovation and agility. 

CONCLUSION 

It is time for CISOs to change. There is no 

value in endlessly blocking essential new 

technology projects; and no upside in 

being excluded from vital plans as a 

result. By taking a proactive stance and 

driving digital transformation strategies, 

CISOs can redefine the role, become a 

key strategic player within the business 

and act as an enabler, rather than a 

constraint, to operational success. It is 

time to find a way to say yes to secure 

digital transformation - without 

compromise. NC 


OPINION: SASE 

THE SASE APPROACH TO NETWORK SPRAWL 

SPRAWLING NETWORKS AND LONG LEAD TIMES - IS THERE ANOTHER APPROACH WE CAN TAKE? 

JUSTIN DAY, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER OF CLOUD GATEWAY, SHOWS US THE WAY 

There's no denying that, post-pandemic, IT 

teams are more focused on architectures 

and investments to help them better 

manage change, whilst delivering seamless 

experiences and keeping their organisation's 

infrastructure secure. However, for many 

organisations their digital estate has expanded, 

with an increasing number of cloud-based 

technologies and services provided by multiple 

suppliers, with multiple agreements to monitor 

and manage. 

The thing is, getting cloud services up and 

running isn't the end goal for IT teams. They 

understand that the real aim is to easily 

connect and secure all the organisation's 

resources, data and users in an agile, cost 

effective and scalable manner. 

GRADUAL CHANGE IS ACHIEVABLE 

Many organisations still use legacy technologies 

and networks that stifle growth, leaving IT teams 

with hard-to-manage siloed technologies and a 

more complex route to cloud adoption. Change 

shouldn't be feared. While the larger telecoms 

providers will tell their customers to stick out the 

current chip shortage, there are gradual steps 

that can be taken to remove dependence on 

legacy networks. The key takeaway here is that 

gradual change is achievable and acting now is 

a positive way to stop adding to technical debt. 

It's important to point out that migrating 

applications to a cloud infrastructure requires 

scale and performance. Achieving this can be 

challenging due to limited visibility into the 

network and the fact that each platform has 

proprietary controls for networking and security. 

This is where taking a different approach can 

be beneficial. By consolidating multiple network 

and security solutions into a single, cloud native 

managed service, organisations can build a 

digital foundation that will deliver greater agility, 

flexibility and choice for the business. This 

framework, known as Secure Access Service 

Edge (SASE) allows IT teams to reach that goal 

of eliminating the time and costs involved with 

unnecessary network complexity and managing 

multiple vendor contracts. 

The components of SASE are not new, rather 

they are well-established technologies that have 

been around for a long time. Software-defined 

wide-area network (SD-WAN), Secure Web 

Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker 

(CASB), Firewall-as-a-service, and Zero Trust 

network access (ZTNA). However, the SASE 

approach takes this collection of technologies to 

deliver a fresh, modern networking solution - 

one that supports increased traffic, improves real 

time communications, delivers secure cloud 

connectivity and facilitates digital growth. This 

reduces the administrative burden on IT teams 

and facilitates cost savings compared to 

traditional networking infrastructure. 

With SASE, all traffic - no matter where it 

originates from - can be tracked, cleansed, and 

recorded. This level of detail provides 

organisations with full control over which cloud, 

technology and connectivity providers are 

utilised. This means the right tool or 

technologies can be selected in a timescale and 

budget that meets their individual requirements. 

Ineffective or expensive services and 

infrastructure can be phased out more easily 

and as the needs of the organisation evolve, 

there is no reason to be tied to a vendor who is 

delaying the project or isn't innovating. 

EMBRACING CHANGE 

SASE is all about enabling a simple and secure 

access experience. Organisations need the 

ability to provision scalable, secure connectivity 

between their physical sites, on premise and 

cloud environments, partner ecosystems and 

remote workers. SASE delivers network and 

connectivity solutions that behave and act like 

the cloud, so that IT teams can get a site, 

application or service online within minutes 

rather than waiting weeks or months. As new 

technologies emerge, a SASE approach can 

deliver the scalability needed alongside a 

solution that protects against data breaches and 

threats, whilst also providing complete visibility 

of the network, users and data for an optimised 

user experience. 

For most organisations, the skills and resources 

needed to effectively manage their network and 

security operations are in short supply. Look for a 

partner that is well-versed in the movement of 

critical data and secures it in transit, one that can 

support you with the tools to future-proof 

performance, reliability and the security of your 

network. That way, no matter where you are in 

your journey you can rely on your partner to help 

you adopt SASE in a phased manner, at a pace 

that suits your organisation, and which doesn't 

cause disruption to staff or customers. NC 



EVENT ORGANISERS: 

Do you have something coming up that may 

interest readers of Network Computing? 

Contact dave.bonner@btc.co.uk 

FORTHCOMING EVENTS 


2022 


27-28 

SEPT 

06 

OCT 

20 

OCT 

16-17 

NOV 

INTERNATIONAL CYBER EXPO 

Olympia, London 

www.internationalcyberexpo.com 

CIO/CISO UK SUMMIT 

Etihad Stadium, Manchester 

https://bit.ly/3z7gRcc 

CIO/CISO FRANCE SUMMIT 

Paris, France 

https://bit.ly/3IDLSHI 

DATACENTRES IRELAND 

RDS Dublin 

www.datacentres-ireland.com


WAN ACCELERATION OR EDGE COMPUTING? 

DAVID TROSSELL, CEO AND CTO OF BRIDGEWORKS, ON DELIVERING HIGHER WAN PERFORMANCE 

The effects of the pandemic over the past 

couple of years has hastened the move 

towards digital transformation and the 

cloud for many companies. Organisations 

concerned for the safety of their personnel and 

what shape organisations will look like in the 

future, moved from a traditional capital 

expenditure (CapEx) model, to a work from 

home and operational expenditure- (OpEx) 

based SAAS model. At the same time, there is 

a push for IoT devices to monitor and manage 

many aspects of our daily lives. 

Asynchronous IoT devices only monitor and 

report. Many of them are semi-synchronous, 

meaning that they not only monitor but also 

manage resolutions. However, they are not 

time critical. Then there are the IoT devices that 

offer fully synchronous monitoring, and which 

enact resolutions immediately. These typically 

use the cloud for reporting back to a central 

collection and decision point. However, we are 

seeing more sophisticated IoT applications that 

are latency-sensitive and require considerably 

more computing resources. 

To support the time-sensitive aspect, many 

have added an intermediate computing node 

between the IoT device and the central cloud 

compute and storage node. This can be on 

premise of a locally-managed service provider. 

CAPTURING DIGITAL 

TRANSFORMATION 

Laura LaBerge, a director at McKinsey & 

Company of capabilities for digital strategy; 

Kate Smaje, a senior partner; and Rodney 

Zemmel, a senior partner at the firm, write in 

their analysis of a survey entitled, 'Three new 

mandates for capturing a digital 

transformation's full value': "As organisations 

continue to navigate an era of massive 

uncertainty and disruption, digital tech is an 

increasingly critical differentiator of both 

strategy and performance. The actions of 

today's best-performing companies reflect that 

fact. For all other companies, three lessons 

emerge: use digital tech to achieve strategic 

differentiation on customer engagement and 

innovation; build proprietary assets, such as 

software, data and AI, then combine them with 

a scalable, cloud-based architecture to create 

a strategic advantage; and focus the quest for 

digital talent on C-suite and other executives, 

given the talent integration challenges that 

many companies continue to face." 

EDGE CONCERNS REMAIN 

Part of the digital transformation equation - 

particularly with the rise of the Internet of 

Things - is the growing use of edge computing. 

But while the pandemic has certainly led to a 

growth in edge and fog computing, as with 

digital transformation itself, some concerns 

remain. With edge computing, there is an 

increased number of attack points open to 

cyber-attacks. Also, the distance from the IoT 

devices creates limitations, and so there is a 

need to put computing power into the edge 

computing environment because of latency. 

Nevertheless, much still depends on where the 

'edge' is, and it very much depends on the 

communications infrastructure. That aside, with 

more storage and compute capacity at the 

edge, organisations can implement AI 

functionality, further reducing the workload at 

the central cloud compute node. 

With latency being a concern, to what extent 

does edge computing rely on artificial 

intelligence and machine learning to boost 

WAN performance? Well, for example, the 

pandemic has reshaped the way in which we 

now consume entertainment. There has been a 

massive transition from free to air television, 




cable TV and cinema to streaming services 

over the internet directly to the home. At 

present, autonomous vehicles are also 

nascent, and their foretold prediction is coming 

to fruition. Whilst streaming services are a big 

consumer of bandwidth, the individual data 

volume and speeds are not that great. It's the 

new high-volume applications that are causing 

problems in transmission times both to and 

from the edge. Even with edge undertaking 

data validation, there are massive amounts of 

data involved with each connected and 

autonomous vehicle. 

Traditional methods using compression and 

deduplication techniques will struggle to move 

this data between and across clouds - with 

their inherent latency issues, as well as 

requiring heavy compute capabilities. The only 

option that can move this volume of data with 

low compute overheads is WAN optimisation 

that uses AI to manage the data flow. However, 

it isn't capable of transferring encrypted data, 

nor does it completely fulfil its promise in terms 

of improving WAN performance. 

WAN ACCELERATION BOOST 

WAN Acceleration is, therefore, the answer, 

and it's needed where you have a lot of data - 

including where there is a certain amount of 

edge computation that needs to go back to a 

central location. That data includes what is 

received and transmitted to and from 

connected and autonomous vehicles, road 

and smart city infrastructure. 

There are two key factors that affect data 

transmission over long distances - latency and 

packet loss. Bandwidth is a factor as well, but 

past 10-15ms of latency. So, adding more 

bandwidth has little effect on data throughput. 

WAN Optimisation, which uses dedupe 

technology, is a great system if you are 

transmitting data that you have already seen 

(warm data), and when you have compressible 

data streams. If the data is "new" (cold data), 

then the process is typically slow. Every byte 

sequence has to be inspected. With cloud data 

that is transmitted over the internet, encryption 

is a must. If the data is already encrypted then 

WAN optimisation can only optimise the data if 

it has the keys - it first has to decrypt, optimise 

and re encrypt before it can transmit the data. 

Storage and power means it requires a larger 

edge node and therefore can increase costs. 

WAN optimisation and compression 

manipulate the data. WAN Acceleration 

approaches the issue from a different angle: 

the only way to reduce latency is to move the 

two nodes physically closer together. So, 

rather than manipulate the data, it manages 

the data flow across the connection to 

mitigate the effects of latency and packet loss 

by using parallel data streams across the 

network managed by AI. Utilisation and, 

therefore, throughput, is 90%+ of the 

network bandwidth. 

As the data is not manipulated in any way, the 

process is data agnostic and means there is no 

need to provide keys. WAN Acceleration is 

data agnostic and can transmit encrypted data. 

So, the transmission rate is the same as every 

other data type. Companies looking to deploy 

digital transformation, edge computing, IoT 

and the analysis of Big Data could benefit from 

WAN Acceleration. 

HIGHER WAN PERFORMANCE 

My top 4 tips for achieving higher WAN 

performance to enable the innovation for 

digital transformation, edge computing and 

IoT as a result of this are: 

1. Remember that throwing more bandwidth at 

latency and packet loss won't increase WAN 

performance. This very rarely solves the issue 

and only increases your cost. If your 

throughput requirements aren't high and your 

data is compressible, think about implementing 

SD-WANs. Many of these have encryption and 

WAN optimisation options. 

2. Avoid, if possible, solutions that use UDP 

as the transmission protocol. It tends to be 

CPU intensive as it is trying to replicate a 

TCP/IP protocol and tends to have a low 

bandwidth capability - again increasing the 

cloud node costs. 

3. If your data is uncompressible or 

encrypted and you have high latency links 

with packet loss, the WAN Acceleration is an 

optimum choice. 

4. If network performance is key, select your 

edge and central node capability on 

network capacity. 

Ryan Perera, Vice President, Asia Content & 

Subsea Networks at Ciena, claims that the 

world is now operating on a distributed cloud 

computing environment. Consumer workloads, 

enterprise workloads, and now even telco's 

internal function workloads are being moved 

to the cloud: public, private, hybrid; then there 

is also the growth of edge computing. 

"Edge computing is an important part of this 

distributed cloud computing 

environment…[and it is] a natural extension of 

the core cloud", he writes in his article for The 

Economic Times' Telecom supplement. He 

believes there are several key macro trends that 

will impact on the distributed cloud computing 

world. They include the advent of 5G, the rise 

in residential networks demand and the high 

traffic across data centres. 

In addition to his own predictions, it's 

important to remember that when there are 

multiple edge instances, SD-WANs are a great 

technology. Bridgeworks has proved this with 

one large, international IT security company, 

and it has been shown that SD-WANs and 

WAN Acceleration are very complementary. 

They can work well together to support digital 

transformation, IoT, cloud and edge 

computing. SD-WAN performance is increased 

with an overlay of WAN Acceleration with 

solutions, such as PORTrockIT. To summarise, it 

is not always an either-or case. Technologies 

can complement each other. NC 


OPINION: IOT 

HOW THE INTERNET OF THINGS IS 

REACHING MATURITY 

AFTER MANY YEARS OF HYPE, THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT) IS 

FINALLY MATURING TO A POINT WHERE ORGANISATIONS ARE 

TURNING STRATEGIES INTO REALITY AND PLANNING INTO ACTION, 

ACCORDING TO PHIL BEECHER, CEO AND PRESIDENT, WI-SUN 

ALLIANCE 

This maturing of IoT comes across clearly 

in Wi-SUN's recent IoT research study, a 

follow up to the one we published in 

2017. It's clear that IoT is a much bigger IT 

priority for organisations than it was five years 

ago. Half of the research sample - IT decision 

makers in UK and US organisations across a 

range of industries - view IoT enablement as a 

top three priority for the next 12 months. It's 

also most likely to be the single top priority 

among respondents. 

Implementations and the technology itself are 

maturing and ambitions are growing. Decision 

makers see their peers benefitting from IoT 

initiatives and are looking increasingly to the 

technology to differentiate themselves in the 

market. More than 90% of respondents believe 

that they must invest in IoT over the next 12 

months to remain competitive. 

IoT can help to make them more agile - a 

key driver for adoption. This equips users to 

meet volatile operating conditions during a 

pandemic that has changed the operating 

rules, and new challenges we face in a rapidly 

changing world. 

Businesses and public sector bodies need to 

enhance their user experiences, both internally 

and externally, as they look for new ways to 

engage people in no-touch and remote 

environments. This is especially true for smart 

cities, which must find safe ways for 

increasingly dense populations to co-exist 

alongside each other. 

CHANGING IOT INITIATIVES 

Overall, plans to roll out IoT initiatives have 

grown. In 2017, respondents were asked 

about their plans to implement a series of 

different IoT-related projects, and the 

proportion stating that their organisation was 

'very likely' or 'definitely' going to deploy them 

within 12-18 months ranged from 57%-77% 

across various projects. In 2022, this rose to 

72%-87%. 

While the use cases for utilities, including 

distribution automation and advanced meter 

infrastructure, remain popular, we are starting 

to see new opportunities emerge both for 

smart utility and smart city environments. Waste 

management sensors, for example, which 

could monitor bins and alert councils when 

they need emptying. 

With more vehicles on our roads and traffic 

congestion a growing problem, it's no surprise 

that traffic management is an area of 

increased focus for smart cities adopting IoT. 

More organisations are planning to implement 

traffic lights and controls, with an 18% 

increase, while smart parking saw the biggest 

rise since 2017, with 77% planning to deploy 

this, compared to 57% in 2017. It's clear from 

the report that environmental and 

sustainability-focused use cases are also 

moving up the IoT priority list, particularly for 

smart city initiatives. 

With the global urban population predicted 

to more than double by 2050, according to 

the World Bank, we will see smart technology 

playing an increasingly important role. This 

includes devices like pollution sensors that 

monitor air quality, acoustic sensors that 

measure noise levels, and an electric vehicle 

charging infrastructure that can cope with 

growing demand for electric vehicles. 

Two new initiatives on our list for 2022, 

include water loss/leak detection and 

mandatory carbon monitoring, with three in 

four organisations planning to implement 

these. The opportunities for savings and 

increased efficiency in some of these use cases 

are high. 

But it's not just about environmental 



OPINION: IOT 

outcomes and efficiencies. Large-scale 

streetlighting projects are being rolled out 

across many cities, with three-quarters of 

respondents planning to deploy streetlighting 

projects in the next 12-18 months, up from 

61% in 2017. 

Such initiatives enable city developers and 

municipalities not only to control energy usage 

and costs across large installations, but also to 

maintain safety and security for residents and 

workers. Almost one in eight respondents in our 

report cite improving citizen safety and quality 

of life as a top driver for implementation. 

DRIVERS TO IOT ADOPTION 

When it comes to drivers to adoption, cost 

reduction is still the top one, but the 

motivations for implementing the technology 

are shifting. Just 6% of respondents rank 

reduction of operational costs as their top 

driver in 2022, compared to 16% five years 

ago. The focus, it seems, has shifted largely to 

the need for competitive advantage, which 

perhaps demonstrates a maturing of IoT 

business cases, with organisations reimagining 

the technology as a way to stand out in a 

highly competitive marketplace. 

We introduced some new potential drivers 

this year, and one stood out; improving agility 

and the ability to react to the market, 

reinforcing the shift from internal efficiencies to 

a more external, user-focused approach. 

We saw another marked change 

demonstrating a shift from simple cost 

management to more sophisticated drivers 

affecting external stakeholders. One in ten 

respondents say that their top reason for 

implementing IoT initiatives and processes is 

that "everyone is doing it or thinking of doing 

it". Five years ago, only one respondent cited 

this as a reason. There's a sea change 

happening here; as more organisations deploy 

successful IoT projects and demonstrate the 

benefits of investing in this technology, others 

are taking notice. 

RECOGNISING THE CHALLENGES 

The journey to IoT maturity isn't without 

stumbling blocks, however. Smart cities, utilities 

and others adopting IoT still face challenges 

that prevent them from fully implementing the 

technology, but even these are shifting as their 

goals and understanding evolve. 

Our study has highlighted some interesting 

developments. While the number of 

respondents reporting extreme difficulty in 

implementing IoT went up slightly to 17% from 

14% in 2017, the number of people 

experiencing no challenges at all also went up 

to 14% from 9% in 2017. These increased 

numbers eroded the middle ground. Those 

experiencing only moderate difficulty fell 12% 

to 45% in 2022 compared to 57% five years 

ago. This suggests that as IoT projects continue 

to mature, adopters are becoming more adept 

at solving the easier problems while the harder 

ones remain, or sourcing expertise that can 

help them along the right path. 

While some of the barriers to adoption are 

certainly easing, others are increasing, as 

companies comprehend the full implications of 

designing and deploying an IoT solution. One 

that stands out is IT infrastructure complexity, 

concerns over which have risen by 10% in the 

last five years. 

As organisations look to more sophisticated 

use cases for IoT, integration challenges will 

naturally arise. IT and IoT have different 

technical and operating characteristics, 

ranging from the scale of implementation to 

the remote management challenges involved 

in IoT projects and data aggregation. It's 

understandable to see concerns as the 

approach to IoT migrates from discrete 

projects to more strategic initiatives. 

The much-reported shortage of technical 

talent is more evident as companies realise the 

complexity of creating and integrating IoT 

solutions. In 2017, 34% of respondents cited 

recruiting sufficient IoT talent as a challenge. 

This has now risen to 41% in the latest report. 

In 2022 and in a post-pandemic period, 

organisations are also less able to devote time 

or resources to IoT solutions in the face of other 

challenges. Over a third of respondents cite a 

need to reprioritise spending due to COVID- 

19. This has a direct impact on funding 

projects, with 35% of respondents citing 

pandemic-related budget cuts as an issue. 

THE ADVANTAGE OF OPEN STANDARDS 

The biggest change for IoT adopters is the 

importance of industry-wide open standards. 

One reason for this increased focus could be 

expansion. Companies that enjoyed benefits 

from IoT projects early on might have become 

more confident in the technology and explored 

other complementary projects. A city that 

deploys a smart lighting canopy, for example, 

can then use this distributed infrastructure as 

an integration point for other IoT initiatives, 

such as air quality sensors and traffic 

management. Open standards make it easier 

to integrate new IoT equipment and software 

with existing infrastructure, while lowering the 

cost of further deployments. 

IoT adopters are also thinking more about 

keeping their connectivity options open by 

supporting multiple network topologies. In the 

latest report, 68% prefer a hybrid network 

topology, supporting both star and mesh 

configurations, up from 58% five years ago, 

reflecting a move towards mesh-based 

networking. Star topologies lost significant 

traction, with 12% preferring it exclusively in 

2022, down from 21% in 2017. 

Five years ago, the market was less mature 

with many smart city and smart utility projects still 

in their infancy. Our latest research shows that 

organisations are becoming more ambitious 

and more sophisticated in their thinking - IoT is 

now a bigger priority than ever. NC 

To see the full Wi-SUN alliance report visit 

https://wi-sun.org/iot-maturity-model/ 


AWARDS 2022 

SPONSORED BY: 

Photo gallery: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjzYZk6 

YouTube: https://youtu.be/X6IL_D5o2YA 

The Network Computing Awards strike back! 

After being delayed due to the July 

rail strikes (perhaps we should've 

presented Network Rail with an 

award for 'Most Disruptive Network') we're 

very pleased to report that the 2022 

Network Computing Awards took place 

on July 21st at the Leonardo City Hotel in 

London. While the disruption and 

rescheduling ultimately affected the 

number of guests and nominees able to 

attend on the night there was still a great 

atmosphere at the evening awards 

ceremony, as talkSPORT's Paul Coyte 

revealed this year's winners assisted by 

Network Computing's David Bonner. 

Our 2022 winners include Fluke 

Networks, who won the New Product of 

the Year award for the FiberLert live fiber 

tester, Brigantia, who were named 

Distributor of the Year, and ExaGrid, who 

took home a trio of trophies including 

Company of the Year. 

Over the following pages you'll find a 

complete round-up of all of this year's 

winners and runners-up. We'd like to thank 

everyone who took the time to nominate 

and vote online, our awards sponsors, and 

all of our guests and nominees on the 

night, and offer our congratulations once 

more to all of this year's winners. We hope 

to see you all again next year - ideally 

without any more train strikes! 

www.networkcomputingawards.co.uk 




NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: Zyxel Networks - Zyxel XS3800 

RUNNER-UP: Extreme Networks - Extreme IQ Site Engine 

The XS3800 switch is suitable for network aggregation such as SMB or campus network that require low latency and high-density 10G 

backbone architectures with basic routing capability. There are 16 dedicated 10G fibre ports and 8 Multi-gigabit combo ports that can be 

used as copper or fibre making it flexible for your networks. The XS3800 is also Nebula Flex Pro, which allows you to easily switch 

standalone management and intuitive Nebula cloud management platform with 1-year Pro Pack bundled anytime, with just a few clicks. 

DATA PROTECTION PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: Veritas Technologies - Veritas Backup Exec 

RUNNER-UP: Cohesity - Cohesity DataProtect 

With Backup Exec, you get a simple, powerful solution that ensures your business-critical data is never at risk of being lost, stolen, or 

corrupted. And as your data management needs grow, Backup Exec seamlessly scales to meet them-providing confidence and cost-savings 

over the long term. 

The speed of recovery is also crucial. Backup Exec provides Instant Recovery and Recovery Ready capabilities for VMware and Hyper-V 

virtual machines, and Instant Cloud Recovery with seamless failover for Microsoft's Azure Cloud in case of disaster. Support is also available 

for other generic S3 compatible cloud storage solutions like AWS and Google. 

TESTING/MONITORING PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: Netreo - Netreo 

RUNNER-UP: Endace - EndaceProbe Analytics Platform 

Netreo's full-stack IT Infrastructure Management (ITIM) solution features AIOps and high-performance Network Performance Monitoring and 

Diagnostics (NPMD) to empower enterprise and IT leaders with AIOps-driven observability, actionable insights, process automation, and 

accelerated issue resolution. By having real-time intelligence on all resources, devices and applications deployed in cloud, on-premises and 

hybrid networks. 

Netreo users have the confidence to deliver more reliable and innovative internal and external customer experiences. Netreo is one of Inc. 

5000's fastest-growing companies, trusted worldwide by thousands of private and public entities managing half a billion resources per day, 

and available via subscription in on-premises and cloud deployment models. 

TELEPHONY PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: CloudCall - CloudCall 

RUNNER-UP: MyPhones - Altos 

CloudCall helps businesses solve challenges by bringing people and technology closer together. We're an intelligent phone system, that 

captures the value of conversations and stores them within your CRM system; helping you to take control of your teams, work well from 

anywhere and complete more tasks, faster. 

As the only communications platform that's dedicated to businesses using CRM's, we work with some of the world's leading CRM systems 

across the recruitment, sales, and customer service sectors. 

WWW.NETWORKCOMPUTING.CO.UK @NCMagAndAwards 

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2022 NETWORKcomputing 29


STORAGE PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: ExaGrid - Tiered Backup Storage 

RUNNER-UP: Veritas - Veritas Backup Exec 

ExaGrid Tiered Backup Storage has a disk-cache Landing Zone tier for fast backup and restore performance, and a repository tier for the 

lowest cost long-term retention, as well as a scale-out architecture that ensures a fixed-length backup window as data grows, eliminating 

forklift upgrades and product obsolescence. 

In addition, ExaGrid offers the largest scale-out system in the industry-comprised of 32 EX84 appliances that can take in up to a 2.7PB full 

backup in a single system, which is 50% larger than any other solution with aggressive deduplication, and offers the only backup storage 

approach with a non-network-facing tier, delayed deletes, and immutable objects to recover from ransomware attacks. 

REMOTE WORKING PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: OneUp Sales - OneUp Sales 

RUNNER-UP: Mitel - Mitel Teamwork 

BEST SUPPLIER TO THE DATABASE 

WINNER: Prism DCS 

RUNNER-UP: Sudlows 

Prism DCS provides solutions for the data centre including hot aisle containment, cold aisle containment, caging and data centre cabinets. 

As the UK’s market leader, Prism has the right network rack, data or server cabinet for any application with secure online ordering and next 

day UK delivery. Each Prism cabinet can be pre-configured to suit your requirements and a wide range of off-the-shelf server rack 

accessories are available for both Prism PI and FI Range of cabinets. 

Call: 01923 698231 email: sales@prismdcs.co.uk 

NETWORK MANAGEMENT PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: Perle Systems - IOLAN SCG LWM Secure Console Server 

RUNNER-UP: Progress - Progress WhatsUp Gold 

The Perle IOLAN SCG LWM Console Server is a hardware solution that provides Out-of-Band (OOB) access to securely reboot ITequipment 

that has crashed or been powered down during network outages. The core idea is to preserve 24/7 network uptime by 

establishing secure direct access to the USB, RS232, or Ethernet console management port of critical IT assets like routers, switches, 

firewalls, servers, power, storage, and telecom appliances. 

Disruption and downtime are minimised by providing better visibility of the physical environment and the physical status of equipment. This 

ensures business continuity through improved uptime and efficiencies. 




EDUCATION & TRAINING PROVIDER OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: CNet Training 

RUNNER-UP: Mindflex 

THE RETURN ON INVESTMENT AWARD 

WINNER: Veritas Technologies - Veritas BackupExec 

RUNNER-UP: OneUp Sales - OneUp Sales 

Veritas Backup Exec is the enhanced 'go-to' application to protect your data with fast and effective protection or recovery. Ransomware 

Resilience is just one of a number of vital data management tools available in the unified backup and recovery solution. Information is 

perpetually in a fluid state and can be held on private, public or hybrid clouds in Microsoft, Linux, UNIX or virtual workloads. Integrated with 

VMware, Microsoft and Linux platforms Backup Exec can protect one to thousands of servers and virtual machines from one user console. 

DISTRIBUTOR OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: Brigantia 

RUNNER-UP: Nuvias 

Formed from a management buyout from Claranet in 2016, Brigantia saw an opportunity to create a real value-adding cybersecurity and 

communications distributor that could serve channel partners across the UK & Ireland. 

Brigantia offers a complementary portfolio of market-leading vendors focusing on "layers" of protection. A portfolio that meets and exceeds 

every customer need, but which also offers the best managed service features, support, recurring revenue opportunities and margin for 

partners. An energised and award-winning team, led by Angus Shaw and headquartered in Ripon, North Yorkshire. Brigantia prides itself on 

putting customer service at the forefront of everything they do. 

RESELLER OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: Storm Technologies 

RUNNER-UP: 101 Data Solutions 

Established in June 2000, Storm has grown from strength to strength as a focused IT value-added reseller. Our business aim is to deliver 

exceptional service to our customers in corporate and public sector organisations. Whether you require developing a specific technology 

strategy or just looking for some knowledgeable and friendly guidance, we maintain top-tier accreditations to ensure we can bring you the 

best possible expertise and pricing. The success of your projects is what drives us. Our people and operations are second to none, we listen 

to you and deal with your enquiry quickly and efficiently irrespective of the size of your business. 

Storm Technologies are delighted to have won Reseller of the Year 2022 for another year running! We are incredibly proud of every member 

of the team at Storm, our success wouldn't be possible without them. 




NETWORK PROJECT OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: Boras Stad / Extreme Networks 

RUNNER-UP: The Inspiration Trust/Zyxel Networks 

In partnership with NetNordic, Extreme Networks has established one of the largest cloud-managed network infrastructures in Borås Stad, 

Sweden, transforming the municipality into a smart city. The new infrastructure delivers faster and more advanced connectivity, extending 

secure public Wi-Fi for its citizens, local government, schools, and services, while automating and simplifying network management for the 

IT team. The transition to smart cities is designed to provide more sustainable resources to residents, while improving quality of life and 

fueling business innovation. 

BENCH TESTED PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: ExaGrid - EX84 RUNNER UP: Progress - Progress WhatsUp Gold 2022 

ExaGrid stands tall in the enterprise data backup and disaster recovery market as its Tiered Backup Storage family of EX appliances deliver a 

unique data protection solution with a sharp focus on performance and reduced storage costs 

Enterprises looking for new ways to energise their data protection strategies and reduce ongoing storage costs will find this ExaGrid and 

Commvault team provides an innovative solution. ExaGrid's scale-out architecture delivers huge, cost-effective backup capacities, its smart 

Landing Zone provides a boost in performance, and combining its Adaptive Deduplication with Commvault's own highly efficient data 

reduction technologies offers industry-leading storage savings. 

HARDWARE PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: Vertiv - Vertiv VRC-S Edge-Ready Micro Data Center System 

RUNNER-UP: Endace - EndaceProbe Analytics Platform 

Vertiv VRC-S is a micro data centre solution, fully assembled at the factory and designed specifically for IT edge applications. Available in 

various configurations, the Vertiv VRC-S is delivered in days and installed in hours. Choose from four different cabinet sizes with two 

separate cooling methods (split and self-contained) with back-up, and the option to integrate a UPS. Plus, an intelligent switched PDU, 

including monitoring of all components, and a comprehensive software package completes the offer. 

SOFTWARE PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: Rohde & Schwarz Cybersecurity - R&S®Browser in the Box 

RUNNER-UP: ExaGrid - ExaGrid Cloud Tier to AWS 

Developed with the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), the fully virtualised R&S®Browser in the Box surfing environment 

offers an innovative, multi-level concept for secure and convenient Internet surfing and optimum protection against malware for public 

authorities and companies. 

The virtual browser closes the "Internet" security gap by enabling a digital quarantine for attacks: malware is isolated before it even comes to 

execution. Instead of detecting malicious code - as with antivirus programs - execution is prevented from the outset. All potentially 

dangerous activities are isolated in a closed virtual browser. 




CLOUD BASED SOLUTION OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: Juniper Networks - Mist AI 

RUNNER-UP: Extreme Networks - Extreme Cloud IQ 

Mist AI uses a combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science techniques to optimise user experiences and simplify 

operations across the wireless access, wired access, and SD-WAN domains. 

Data is ingested from numerous sources, including Juniper Mist Access Points, Switches, Session Smart Routers, and Firewalls for end-to-end 

insight into user experiences. These devices work in concert with Mist AI to optimise user experiences from client-to-cloud, including automated 

event correlation, root cause identification, Self-Driving Network operations, network assurance, proactive anomaly detection, and more. 

THE INSPIRATION AWARD 

WINNER: Andy Hirst - Sudlows 

RUNNER-UP: Angus Shaw - Brigantia 

As Managing Director of Sudlows, Andy heads the full critical infrastructure department. Andy has served as Chairman of the ECA ICCT and 

is an incorporated Engineer and Fellow of the IET. Andy promotes the upskilling of young engineers and is a mentor for the IET, and holds 

the uptime institutes' ATD and the TIA942 accreditation. Andy encoureages continual learning within his team and as a testimony to this has 

recently studied and attained his MSc in Data Centre Leadership and Management. Andy's drive within Sudlows has lead him to open up 

offices in the Middle East and India. 

THE CUSTOMER SERVICE AWARD 

WINNER: Prism DCS 

RUNNER-UP: Veritas Technologies 

Prism DCS is an award-winning data centre solutions provider specialising in the design, manufacture and installation of bespoke solutions 

including hot and cold aisle containment solutions, security caging and data centre cabinets. We utilise expert in-house design, 

manufacturing and installation teams to provide a high quality service with unrivalled lead times. 

Call: 01923 698231 email: sales@prismdcs.co.uk 

THE INNOVATION AWARD 

WINNER: Veritas Technologies - Backup Exec's Ransomware Resilience 

RUNNER-UP: Paessler - New sensors for PRTG 

Veritas has introduced Ransomware Resilience in its latest release of Veritas Backup Exec, the leading data management and security 

solution. Ransomware Resilience prevents data files on a wide range of media servers from being modified by unauthorised processes. It 

uses AI processes to monitor and actively inform administrators about data attacks. This is just one of a number of vital data management 

tools available in the unified backup and recovery solution. 

Backup Exec provides Instant Recovery and Recovery Ready capabilities for VMware and Hyper-V virtual machines, and Instant Cloud 

Recovery with seamless failover for Microsoft's Azure Cloud in case of disaster. Support is also available for other generic S3 compatible 

cloud storage solutions like AWS and Google. 




NEW PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: Fluke Networks - FiberLert 

RUNNER-UP: Trend Networks - LanTEK IV-S 

The FiberLert from Fluke Networks is an elegantly simple and eminently safe testing solution that is designed to detect active fibre signals, 

allowing it to be used to troubleshoot switch and host ports, transceivers, cables and polarity. It detects active signals in single-mode and 

multimode fibre with an infrared range of 850nm to 1625nm and can be used for ports and patch cords, SM, MM, UPC and APC 

connections. The FiberLert takes all the guesswork out of troubleshooting fibre activity, polarity and connectivity. It's very affordable and we 

found it so simple to use - right-thinking network engineers won't leave home without it. 

THE ONE TO WATCH COMPANY 

WINNER: Vertiv 

RUNNER-UP: Exclusive Networks 

With a deep history of industry-changing solutions and a well-earned reputation for innovation, Vertiv and its partners continue to raise the 

bar in the areas of power, cooling, access and control, monitoring, and manageability. 

Driven by customer satisfaction Vertiv supports any application with an extensive service offering including installation, startup, 

commissioning, maintenance, replacements, 24x7 remote monitoring and diagnostics,and much more. Vertiv offers the expertise you 

need, the reliability you demand, and the resources only a global partner can provide. 

PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: Rohde & Schwarz Cybersecurity - R&S®Browser in the Box 

RUNNER-UP: ExaGrid - Tiered Backup Storage 

Browser in the Box offers proactive protection against cyber attacks. Thanks to the separation of the Browser from the rest of the PC, you and 

your corporate network are protected against Trojans, ransomware, APTs and zero-day attacks. Java, JavaScript, Flash and the opening of 

dangerous links are no longer a threat. Developed in cooperation with the BSI, R&S®Browser in the Box provides full virtualisation and 

separation of Internet and intranet, delivering optimal protection against malware including harmful email attachments, along with the 

proactive blocking of all telemetry services. 

COMPANY OF THE YEAR 

WINNER: ExaGrid 

RUNNER-UP: Zyxel Networks 

"We are honoured to win the Company of the Year award" said Bill Andrews, President and CEO of ExaGrid. "Our company is solely 

focused on offering the best backup storage possible - by improving the performance, scalability, and economics of backup, and offering 

the best customer support in the industry. Many thanks to everyone who voted for us and to the editorial team at Network Computing, we 

are truly grateful." 

34 NETWORKcomputing AUGUST/DEPTEMBER 2022 @NCMagAndAwards 


On-Prem Cloud Success Stories 

IDC Interviews with Three IT Leaders Achieving Superior Cost, 

Control and Competitive Advantage 

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Learn more at 

www.supermicro.com/en/on-prem-cloud

NC Sep-Oct 2022

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