RSA 2014: Secure Web Gateway (feat Moses)

I grab Joel Moses, Director Product Management Engineering, to understand how F5 simplifies web security policy creation, protects enterprises and employees from web threats, malware, and data loss. Secure Web Gateway protects your organization by validating the integrity of users and their devices as well as the Internet sites that users are accessing. Joel gives a great demo and explains the benefits of the solution.

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Related

• RSA 2014: Find F5
• RSA 2014: Anti-Fraud Solution (feat DiMinico)
• F5 at RSA 2014
• Secure Web Gateway
• Web Fraud Protection
• F5 YouTube Channel

Technorati Tags: rsac,f5,rsa,security,big-ip,synthesis,sdas,silva,video,anti-fraud,anti-malware,swg

 

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You Got a Minute?

Like most of us, I try to read the entire internet on a daily basis but for some reason, these slipped through.  They both came out in 2011 and I am sure the numbers have changed in many cases.  For instance, the graphic shows 70+ domains registered every minute and for Sept 3 (thus far for today), on average 78 per minute have been registered.  Yet for twitter, the chart indicates 320 new accounts per minute but my look up today, if my math is correct, shows 94 new twitter accounts every minute but with 546,000 (vs. 98,000+) tweets per minute today.

Regardless, the somewhat, slightly dated info is still mind boggling and it is always fun to see historical data.

Things that happen on the Internet every 60 Seconds circa 2011.

And the products we use:

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Related:

60 Seconds – Things That Happen On Internet Every Sixty Seconds [Infographic]

Technorati Tags: data,60 seconds,stats,internet,web,social media,application delivery,silva

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Interop 2012 - F5 in the Interop NOC Statistics

I meet with F5's Professional Services Consultant Sam Richman to review some of the stats from the World’s Largest Portable Network.  Highlights  included:  BIG-IP Data Center Firewall pushed a Terabyte of data; BIG-IP Web Accelerator delivered 100 gigabytes of content from cache; almost 70% of the Interop website was delivered thru cache; 16 million syslog messages and the Nerf N-Strikes had a peak of 12 Nerf darts per second.

Interop 2012 - F5 in the Interop NOC Statistics

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Related

• F5@INTEROP
• Interop 2012
• Interop 2012 - Find F5 Networks Booth 2137
• Interop 2012 - F5 in the Interop NOC
• Interop 2012 - Application Delivery Optimization with F5's Lori MacVittie
• Interop 2012 - F5 Technical Certification Program with Ken Salchow
• Interop 2012 - The F5 & HP Partnership with Jeff Stathatos
• Interop 2012 - Splunk Reports for BIG-IP Data Center Firewall with Danny Luedke
• Interop 2012 - Interview with Brian Monkman of ICSA Labs
• Interop 2012 - F5 in the Interop NOC Statistics
• Interop Las Vegas 2012 - "F5: Pick the Right Tool for the Job"
• F5 Secures and Optimizes Application and Network Services for the Interop 2012 Las Vegas Network Operations Center
• F5 Helps Organizations Improve User Experience and Simplify Management with First Integrated SPDY Gateway
• F5’s New Technical Certification Program Helps Define and Measure the Skills Required for Today’s IT Complexities
• F5 YouTube Channel

Technorati Tags: F5, interop, Pete Silva, security, business, education, technology, internet, big-ip, nerf, statistics, NOC

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Does Social Media Reflect Society?

A Community within our Society

You are what you eat; You become what you believe; I am not my art.  A 2011 study from the University of Texas at Austin's Department of Psychology titled "Manifestations of Personality in Online Social Networks: Self-Reported Facebook-Related Behaviors and Observable Profile Information" found that Facebook users are no different online than they are offline. The study also declared a strong connection between someone’s real personality and their Facebook-related behavior. Social and personality processes, according to the study, accurately mirror non-virtual environments.  It was published in the academic journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.  Professor Samuel D. Gosling and his team looked at the big five personality traits - openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism and found that self-reported personality traits are accurately reflected in online social networks such as Facebook.  Extroverted users reported the most friends and the highest engagement while conscientious types had the least.  Simply, extroverts engaged more than introverts.

Merriam-Webster defines society in part as, companionship or association with one's fellows : a voluntary association of individuals for common ends : an organized group working together or periodically meeting because of common interests, beliefs, or profession : an enduring and cooperating social group whose members have developed organized patterns of relationships through interaction with one another : a community, nation, or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests.

Social media has changed society in many ways.  We used to just live in a society – our neighborhood, town, city – and (hopefully) looked out for each other, cared for each other and got together for specific causes. This is our community.  The human social creature needed human contact/interaction and participated within that society…but the circle was somewhat limited to a geographic region.  Granted, some societies are nationwide clubs, groups, memberships or associations that span greater distances – Toastmasters, Kiwanis or college alumni for instance.  Now, our circle of friends or association with one’s fellows requires no physical gathering.  We live in our physical geographic society but also engage in our cyber communities that span cities, states, countries and with SETI, universes.  Years ago I often wondered if the internet would create a society of hermits since no one really needed to go outside and interact with others in the real world.  But we are social creatures and our survival requires us to participate in a non-cyber way.  Of course there are people that do not want anything to do with society and live in secluded locations to avoid any human interaction.  Most of us, however, like it or not, must interact in society on a daily basis.

Often our social cyber-interaction is in response to events in the physical society.  We use social media as a way to report, learn and engage with those who are experiencing anything from turmoil to joy in their physical society. World events.  Even the Occupiers, who have used social media to great extent, still came together physically – within their geographic circle(s) – to form their mini-societies.  In some situations, social media has been the only avenue for ‘breaking’ news getting out to the masses.  (Incidentally, it seems like every story on news websites is ‘breaking’ these days – it seems to have lost it’s power) 

Breaking Bad, on the other hand, is a darn good show.

In societies we often share – information, goods, ideas, secrets – for the benefit of the society.  Many of us have heard the warnings from security experts about keeping passwords a secret.  Now, as a form of affection and devotion, teens are sharing their passwords to email, social networks and other accounts.  Since it is risky and relationships can quickly sour via social media, they feel that the symbolism is powerful.  Apparently, the world’s first divorce by Facebook occurred back in 2009 and more recently Deion Sanders announced his divorce on Facebook this past December.  In addition, a survey conducted by UK divorce website www.divorce-online.co.uk in December 2009 found that 20% of behavior petitions contained the word “Facebook.”  A follow up survey in December 2011 found that number has greatly increased during 2011 to 33% of behavior allegations in petitions.

Even the crooks are involved.  We’ve seen the stories about hijacked accounts, malware distribution and the ever popular, ‘I’m stuck in some foreign country, lost my wallet and need to pay the hotel’ scam.  I’m amazed that just a decade ago, security experts warned that you shouldn’t say, ‘We’re not home right now,’ on your answering machine.  That tells riff-raff that the property is ripe for the pickings.  Yet, just a few years later people are posting that they are over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house some 300 miles away.  Their coordinates are available, their home town and sometimes a picture of the actual empty home are posted on the social network.  And then they wonder how they could have been burglarized.  It’s has also caught/captured the idiot criminals who feel the need to share their misdeeds.  In some cases, we share too much and don’t even realize that we’re diminishing our own privacy.  And, of course, there are some who can’t get enough exposure with 24 hour cams following their every move.

Social networks have become one of our society’s primary tools for communication and as a society it is important to communicate effectively.  I’ve always felt that the internet, particularly the web, was a reflection of society.  It’s chronicled, reflected and magnified our lives along with automatically storing and archiving almost every move we make.  People have fallen in love, ordered goods, started movements, spread rumors, gotten arrested/fired/dumped, done banking, filed complaints/kudos, kept in touch, tracked progress, committed crimes, shared ideas and pretty much anything else that didn’t require physical contact.  It’s our journal, reminder, mirror, confidant and has certainly wiggled it’s way into and become part of society.  A community within our society.  But remember, What Happens on the Internet, Stays on the Internet.

ps

Related:

• Your Parents on Facebook: To friend or not to friend?
• Alarming increase in Facebook related divorces in 2011
• Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites
• Young, in Love and Sharing Everything, Including a Password
• Study: Your Facebook Personality Is The Real You
• Husband dumps his wife with online message in 'world's first divorce by Facebook' 
• Employers, workers navigate pitfalls of social media
• 6 painful social media screwups
• The effect of social media on Occupy
• Our Digital Life Deciphered
• Best Day to Blog Experiment – The Results
• How Terms Have Changed over Time

Technorati Tags: blog, social media, comscore, music, statistics, society, web traffic, digital media, mobile device, analytics

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Do You Splunk 2.0

A little over two years ago I blogged Do you Splunk? about the reporting integration with our FirePass SSL VPN and BIG-IP ASM.  The Splunk reports have provided customers valuable insight into application access and user behavior along with deep analysis of application violations, web attacks and other key metrics.  Recently, Splunk and F5 have been working behind the scenes and now you can also get 22 different templates for detailed reporting on the BIG-IP Access Policy Manager.  BIG-IP APM is a flexible, high-performance access and security solution that runs as a module on BIG-IP LTM.

Splunk is the data engine for IT. It collects, indexes and harnesses the fast-moving IT data generated by all of your IT systems and infrastructure - whether physical, virtual or in the cloud and correlates various pieces of data sources to provide new views and new insights.  Splunk makes it possible to search and navigate data from any application, server or network device from a web browser, in real time. Logs, configurations, messages, traps, alerts, and scripts: if a machine generates it, Splunk will index it.  The Splunk for F5 App provides real-time dashboards for monitoring key performance metrics. Reports from Splunk support long-term trending and can be downloaded in PDF or Excel formats or scheduled for email delivery. The F5 App supports core Splunk functionality such as deep drill-down from graphical elements, robust role-based access controls and Splunk’s award-winning search capabilities.

The following are a sample of the reports available in this version of Splunk for F5 using ASM, APM and FirePass data:

• Request Status Over Time 
• Top Attacker
• Top Sites
• Top Violations
• Active Sync by Device Type
• Top Device Type
• Top User
• Geo-location Reports
• Session Duration and Throughput
• Authentication Success/Failure
• Connections by User
• Failed Connections by User
• All Connections Over Time

Splunk also has the unique ability to augment data from FirePass and ASM by connecting to and gathering data from Active Directory or LDAP and asset management databases that can highlight asset or application owner information.

Businesses are faced with competing challenges when it comes to granting their mobile workforce access to company data. The data must be readily accessible to users on the go but at the same time companies must protect and safeguard their internal systems that contain sensitive information. Robust monitoring controls are a must for maintaining auditing access, enabling dynamic application access and preventing data loss and availability issues.

Resources:

• Splunk for F5
• F5 Networks Partner Spotlight - Splunk
• Knowledgebase: Splunk for Use with F5 Networks Solutions
• Video: Splunk for Use with F5 Networks Solutions
• Splunk Templates for BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (pdf)
• Splunk for FirePass SSL VPN (pdf)
• Splunk for Application Security Manager (pdf)
• ASM & Splunk integration
• F5 Security Community Group on DevCentral
• Do you Splunk?

Technorati Tags: Pete Silva,F5,security,application security,network security, business, splunk, education, reports, technology, metrics, compliance, data analysis, partners

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Our Digital Life Deciphered

comScore always has some very interesting statistics when measuring the digital world and these recent reports are no different.  The 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review has great info both in understanding media trends and knowing what the end user is actually doing out there.  The 2010 Mobile Year in Review is also interesting in looking at mobile device and OS trends and the differences worldwide, both in models and what users are utilizing them for.  There are tons of graphs and analysis covering areas like U.S. Retail E-Commerce Spending, Percent of Time Spent for Top 5 U.S. Web Properties,  U.S. Unique Visitor Trend for Leading Social Networking Sites, Percent Share of Searches Among U.S. Core Search Engines, Growth in Total U.S. Online Video Market, Top Mobile Activities in the U.S. and many more.

These were a few that I found interesting - taken directly from the reports.

* 9 out of every 10 U.S. Internet users now visit a social networking site each month.

* Facebook now accounts for 12.3% of time spent online in the US - up 7.2% just a year ago. 

* After Portals, Social Networking now ranks as the next most engaging activity at 14.4 percent of time spent online (up 3.8 percentage points), while Entertainment ranks third at 12.6 percent (up 0.8 percentage points). As communication continues to shift to other channels, including social media and mobile, usage of web-based email declined 1.5 percentage points to 11.0 percent of time spent.

* An average of 179 million Americans watch video each month and the average American spent more than 14 hours watching online video in December, a 12-percent increase from last year, and streamed a record 201 videos, an 8-percent increase.

* In September 2010, smartphone ownership crossed the 25 percent threshold, marking a significant milestone in smartphone adoption in the U.S. By December 2010, smartphone penetration had reached 27 percent of the mobile market.

* Samsung unseated last year’s OEM (original equipment manufacturer) leader, Motorola, to rank as top OEM provider with 24.8 percent of devices owned by mobile subscribers in December 2010, up 3.6 percentage points from the previous year.

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Related:

• The 2010 Mobile Year in Review
• The 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review
• Why Video Advertising Needs to Dump Impressions and Move to 'Cost Per View'
• Android overtakes BlackBerry in US marketshare
• Seven million smartphone owners in Japan
• Facebook Cracks ComScore US Ad Survey Top 10 for First Time
• Yahoo, Tax Sites Attract Most January Visitors
• F5 YouTube Channel

Technorati Tags: blog, social media, comscore, music, statistics, blog traffic, web traffic, digital media, mobile device, analytics, video

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