Tags: Application Ready Network, ARN, F5 Networks, Ken Salchow

Tags: F5, Joe Hicks, Web Acceleration, Web Accelerator, CDN

Tags: CDN, F5, Joe Hicks, Web Acceleration, Web Accelerator

Tags: Virtualization, client environment, Data Center, storage, delivery networks, application server, Data Center, F5

Tags: F5 Networks, Product Marketing, BIG-IP

Tags: Saxon Amdahl, F5 Networks, byte caching, compression ratios, network latency, Web Accelerator, CIFS optimization, TCP Stack, file caching

Tags: Saxon Amdahl, F5 Networks, dynamic caching, static caching, WebAccelerator

Tags: RSA, Martin McKeay, Network Security Podcast, F5, Alan Murphy, Lori MacVittie

Tags: RSA, F5 Networks, Brian Hatch, BIG-IP, Alan Murphy, security

This is an F5 podcast.

Tags: RSA, F5 Networks, Lori MacVittie, Martin McKeay, Network Security, DevCentral

Tags: RSA, F5 Networks, Alan Murphy, BIG-IP

Tags: RSA 2007, F5 Networks, Lori MacVittie

Tags: Peter Silva, F5 Networks, secure remote access, business disaster preparedness, the “people factor”, and F5’s [tag]Firepass

Tags: remote access, security, Peter Silva, F5 Networks, disaster recovery

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Transcript:

Host: Michael Johnson - PodTech
Guest: Martin McKeay - Network Security Podcast
Guest: Stephen Toulouse - Microsoft
Guest: Richard Stiennon - Fortinet
Guest: Richard Mogull - Gartner
Guest: Bruce Schneier - Schneir.com
Guest: Lori MacVittie - F5 Networks
Guest: Eric Green - Larstanpodcasting.com
Guest: Ron Gula – blog.tenablesecurity.com
Guest: Ryan Singel - 27bstroke6
Guest: Brian Krebs - Washington Post
Guest: Michelle McLean - ConSentry Networks

Michael Johnson - PodTech
This is Michael Johnson and we’re here at the Foreign Cinema restaurant in San Francisco, a very unique restaurant in which many of the nights they show movies outside, projected on a wall. We’re here at the site and on the occasion of the RSA 2007 Conference, and we’re here with a lot of people from across the country that are security bloggers, we’re going to talk to a few of them to see what’s on their minds or what they’ve been blogging about lately.

Martin McKeay - Network Security Podcast
I mean this is only happening once a year, there is a lot of us with a lot of voices out there, and well, we like to talk. So, it’s a really good thing to have this group together and (Voice Overlap). So, I wanted to give our sponsors, Microsoft and Fortinet, a couple of minutes to talk and they will tell you why they decided that it was worth sponsoring this event.

Stephen Toulouse - Microsoft
Hello everyone, I’m a Mac

Speaker
Don’t do that to me, I want to be the Mac.

Speaker
(Inaudible)

Stephen Toulouse - Microsoft
He said, I believe the exact phrase was, if I were shopping for a computer today, I would want to buy a Mac, that’s what he said, in that email, he’s being purposely dramatic, but that was Jim, as those who have ever talked to him know.

Speaker
That was Jim in the past tense.

Stephen Toulouse - Microsoft
Yeah, well, he retired, he retired, he’s gone. So, I want to talk a little bit about why we really wanted to help put this together. Most of you actually probably don’t know me as Stephen Toulouse, you probably know me as Stepto, which is what everybody calls me, it’s my email name at Microsoft, stepto@microsoft.com and my blog is stepto.com. I actually began — I’ve been with Microsoft since April of 1994 and I started off supporting Windows 3.1 and DOS 5.0, which I am proud to say had no remotely exploitable hole in the default install.

Speaker
Have you gone through that?

Stephen Toulouse - Microsoft
Had no network stack, but yeah, that it will, so we’ve come a long way since then. One of the things that Microsoft has done over the past couple of years, thanks to people like Scoble and thanks to a lot of the people that work at Microsoft and do blogging is we’ve embraced the blogging culture. So, last year we held a little lunch in, got some people together, it was just a dozen people, it was a lot fun, so when we heard the idea to do it again and do something a little bit bigger, a little bit fancier and invite more people, we jumped at the chance. I’m so glad, I mean seriously I’m so happy there are so many people here, there’s going to be so many great conversations. We’re just happy to be here, and happy to sponsor. I wish more of us were here, but planning for the next version of Windows is currently going on in Webinn (ph), so there is a lot of…

Speaker
Next after Vista?

Stephen Toulouse - Microsoft
Next after Vista, so there’s a lot of split. So, as I said diverse a few minutes ago, I know it sounds a little bit crazy to say for a company that has $34 billion in the bank, but it’s a resource issue, so we don’t have everybody down here, but I’m here, happy to be here, and happy to be with Fortinet in sponsoring this. So, thank you very much for coming, we don’t want to spend a lot of time in (Voice Overlap), so you guys have great conversations and Richard, what did you want to say?

Richard Stiennon - Fortinet
Cool, so I don’t have a lot of time to talk.

Stephen Toulouse - Microsoft
You’ve got as much as you want, you’re sponsoring.

Richard Stiennon - Fortinet
(Inaudible) Technorati ranking, somewhere way north of 12,000. I think that it is being a little site a Technorati blog ranking is kind of interesting when we all get together and meet, but what’s really, really, really interesting is that we are changing how people access information, because we all are in our own right experts or we all are in our own right good communicators and we know that because people are coming to our blogs, we’re all reading each others blogs, and doing the back and forth thing. This is new, we all know that, this is, in the security world for certain, this is the way that the end users are going to learn new stuff, we highlight things that just don’t get into the press, the press just doesn’t focus the same way that we do.

I’m super, super excited about what the blogging community does, so of course, when the opportunity came up, the timing was just right, I could say, Hey Rich, we’ll sponsor that, we’ll get there, that’s very cool.” As everybody talks to me this evening, I need a little help, I’ve got a bloggers dilemma, I’ve lost my bloggers voice, as you may have noticed, I can’t post anymore. Last week, for example, so TJX gets totally whacked by hackers, steals 40 million credit cards, I can’t find anything to say about it, because I have to check with our VP of North American sales to see if we’re doing a deal with TJX. That just stops you dead in your tracks, I could no longer be the (Inaudible) bloggers.

Speaker
Talk about that.

Richard Stiennon - Fortinet
Yeah, there was (Inaudible), so what do I do. I personally want to settle on a travel log because I travel a lot. So, I’m going to blog about shady hotels, and how they don’t have enough power plugs and stuff like that. Anyway, any other ideas, please let me know, and just thanks for everybody contributing to the community that we are, here it goes.

Martin McKeay - Network Security Podcast
Rich Mogull said he had a couple of (Voice Overlap) to say.

Stephen Toulouse - Microsoft
Yeah, Rich you want to say something?

Martin McKeay - Network Security Podcast
He’s the originator of this whole problem.

Richard Mogull - Gartner
You guys are joking, but — never mind, I’ll save that for when the camera’s not on. I want to thank everybody for coming, I got to be honest this went far beyond my expectations, I thought there would be a dozen guys, sitting in a room, paying for our own drinks…

Martin McKeay - Network Security Podcast
You’re paying for ours actually.

Richard Mogull - Gartner
Yeah, I though I was going to buy a round or two and that was going to be the end of it. When I started blogging as an experiment, it was, let’s just see what this is about, let’s see what’s going on out there in the community and it was mind boggling how valuable it was. The ability to have a — so let’s look who’s in the room? We have Brian from the Washington Post, reporter from a major newspaper here. We have representatives from all parts of the vendor community. We have representatives from the analyst side and we have end users everywhere. There is no place else in the world where we can all have a dialogue on a common issue, and at the same time, people read this stuff. If you were at the opening session for — I don’t normally go to the keynotes because come on, who needs to see Bill speak again. Hey now, that’s the truth really.

One of the things that Ze Frank said was, he called us the defenders of the renaissance. When you want to see the thought leadership, there’s two sides, there’s the back room, development being done, the really smart guys. When you want to see the people who are influencing, — I think that is us, but people who are influencing the community. If you look at where security came from and where security is going, I don’t care what Art (ph) says, security is not going away in two to three years, not going to be all embedded into the infrastructure.

There is a new wave of security thought readers that are building in this industry. There’s the old wave, first and then — so I love the dialogue, it’s incredible that we can all talk in an open environment, especially guys like Allan and Richard now, talking about analyst side versus vendors versus end users, all of this, (Voice Overlap). So, I’ve talked too long, thank you all for coming, I know there is more people coming on the way, let’s go drink more, and make fun of each other.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
We’re here with Bruce Schneier. Bruce, tell me a little bit about what you do?

Bruce Schneier - Schneir.com
Oh God, I am a Security Technologist, I write, I speak, I work for BT Counterpane, and I piss of the government, I do a lot of things.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
What have you been excited about over the last year or so, and what’s been some of the more interesting things that you have documented in some of your studies and some of your blogs?

Bruce Schneier - Schneir.com
Well, what I wrote about — writing about now, what I posted this week, and what I talked about here at the RSA Conference is the psychology of security, how we perceive security. Security is both a feeling and a reality, and they’re different. You can feel secure and not be secure and you can be secure and not feel secure, and there’s a lot to learn in that difference, why it happens, what about the human brain makes us get security wrong? I’ve been reading a lot of psychology, a lot of human brain physiology, a lot of — there are studies about risk, there’s a whole lot of research being done in the psychology community, that we’ve never seen here in the security community, but I think is directly relevant to what we’re doing.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
That sounds fascinating, I think it is a concept of security that people are thinking about more these days, because certainly in the United States and in other places as well, this idea of what our security is, is certainly being called into question.

Bruce Schneier - Schneir.com
Right, and there’s a lot of crap security, I call it security theater (ph), security that doesn’t do anything good, but just makes you feel better, and that’s security that doesn’t target to the reality, but targets to the feeling. There are times, they’re not common, but there are times when that kind of thing is useful. There are times when it’s really bad, and how do you know the difference. I think there’s a lot of stuff there.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
What times would you say we’re in now; say the perspective of obviously the United States and Homeland Security, that’s a big name right now, but it seems to sort of be talking more to that feeling part that you’re addressing?

Bruce Schneier - Schneir.com
We’re definitely in the stupid security season, what happened in Boston last week is an example, that happens every time you get on an airplane, security is really stupid right now.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
If folks wanted to check out your blog and see some of the stuff that you’re writing about, where can they go?

Bruce Schneier - Schneir.com
Schneir.com, actually I think if you just type security blog into Google, I pop up as the first name, but its www.schneir.com, easy to find.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Bruce Schneier, thanks a lot.

Bruce Schneier - Schneir.com
Hey, thanks for having me.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
We’re here with Lori MacVittie who is the blogger for F5 Networks, and welcome to the party Lori.

Lori MacVittie - F5 Networks
Thanks, it’s very exciting thus far.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Well, it’s a really interesting group of security bloggers, we’re on the occasion of the RSA 2007 Conference in San Francisco, tell me a little bit about what you blog about for F5?

Lori MacVittie - F5 Networks
I blog about a number of things, security and otherwise, but generally just trying to apply all sorts of new technology to use in our products and how they can be used and extended and just trying to be innovative and then also commenting on what other people have to say about anything related to SOA, AJAX Security, those kind of topics.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
What excites you about this, what are the things that you find really interesting in this security portion of the blogosphere?

Lori MacVittie - F5 Networks
Well, I think that emerging technology, security is very exciting because it’s new and it’s different and we have to come up with innovative ways to solve that, something that we at F5 take very seriously, but also just some of the social issues. We were just having a conversation about teenagers and security and social networking, and it’s a very interesting problem that we have to solve because it’s not necessarily a technological problem but a people problem. So, it’s something different that we have to solve, so it’s a challenge, I like that.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
We were speaking with Brice Schneier a little bit early about the sort of the concept of security and how we have a lot of solutions around, and now it’s a question of getting those things implemented, are you seeing that implementation happening now slowly but surely, or is it something that’s going to take a while do you think for the concept to sort of follow the implementation of these things?

Lori MacVittie - F5 Networks
I think as usual, unfortunately security comes last. People wait until there is a problem to actually solve it. You don’t change locks on your doors until someone breaks in. I wish that we could change that view so that people thought of it upfront, but I still think it’s a after the issue problem.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
If folks want to check out your blog, where could they go?

Lori MacVittie - F5 Networks
You can go to devcentral.f5.com/macvittie

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Alright, Lori MacVittie of F5 Networks, thanks for being with us here, enjoy the party.

Lori MacVittie - F5 Networks
Thank you.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Tell me your name?

Eric Green - Larstanpodcasting.com
I am Eric Green.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Eric, what do you blog about or Podcast about?

Eric Green - Larstandpodcasting.com
We’re across a lot of different spaces, I mean personally I’m our security guy, so we do a lot of stuff on Information Warfare, Information Operations and a couple of other security Podcasts. Company wise, we do — we cut across personal finance supply chain technology and cross technology, we do a lot of federal government stuff as well.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
What kind of interesting stuff have you come across in the last number of months?

Eric Green - Larstandpodcasting.com
The last number of months have been interesting on the IO space for me. So, if you look at Info Operations and Info Warfare, the critical infrastructure side of being sort of finance and telecommunications on the security side has seen a lot of people — like a resurgence of people wanting to talk about IT security, everything all the way up to SIOPs, it’s the psychological warfare and the like. So, it’s fun being back at RSA to see what people are saying on the floor about things like that.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
So, tell me your names.

Ron Gula - blog.tenablesecurity.com
I’m Ron Gula.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
What’s your blog?

Ron Gula - blog.tenablesecurity.com
I’m blog.tenablesecurity.com.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
And you?

Ryan Singel - 27bstroke6
I’m Ryan Single, my blog is 27bstroke6, which is blog.wired.com/27bstroke6.

Brian Krebs - Washington Post
I’m Brian Krebs of the Washingtonpost.com and I blog on Security Fix.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
So, what have you — I saw you three talking in a circle, what have you been really excited about, or what have you been putting in your blogs lately, is there been any dialogue between all of you other than here in person or is it been happening on the blogosphere?

Ron Gula - blog.tenablesecurity.com
Well, right now, one of the good things about getting together is, you have a lot of different disciplines. These two are from the media side of the house, I’m a vendor, so we were just kind of talking about different things that we can blog about, we all blog about dramatically different things.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
What’s your favorite topic?

Ron Gula - blog.tenablesecurity.com
I like to talk about computer security, vulnerabilities, intrusion detection, that kind of thing.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
What do you like to blog about?

Ryan Singel - 27bstroke6
You should jump to Brian on that one, because you guys do kind of similar things.

Brian Krebs - Washington Post
I mean basically for me this is great because I’m getting to meet a lot of the people whose blogs I read everyday and put a name with the face.

Ryan Singel - 27bstroke6
So, I do a little bit of the higher level kind of things. We cover government databases, privacy, kind of higher level security, so a lot of these folks know a lot more than I do at the — sort of nitty-gritty, kernel level kind of stuff, whereas we’re kind of higher level, a little bit more snarky.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Now, one of the things I’ve been hearing here at the conference as well as in this group is that the thinking about security, has to really be the thing that has to change for a lot of people, not so much we have the technologies, we have a lot of solutions at the show. At RSA, we certainly see hundreds of solutions that are offered up, but the thinking about security has to change, what do you think about that?

Ron Gula - blog.tenablesecurity.com
Well, everything is related. Long time ago, if you were the firewall guy, you just had to worry about the firewall, or the virus guy just had to worry about making sure the viruses were update. Nowadays, everybody realize everything is linked, the operating system, the router, the policy, everything is together, and you’re probably seeing vendors start to offer solutions along those lines and consultants talk along those lines and people blog about that kind of stuff, so I’m happy to se that kind of change.

Ryan Singel - 27bstroke6
Oh, it’s kind of interesting to hear a lot of people getting sort of some of the old time religion, which is about securing the data not about securing the firewall or securing the perimeter. I’m still waiting for the sort of the big change, where security becomes easy and the Internet becomes safe and it’s not here yet.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
How long do you think it’s going to take?

Ryan Singel - 27bstroke6
Forever.

Brian Krebs - Washington Post
I write generally for a much wider audience, so I don’t tend to write much about technology solutions and things like that. Basically, I’m writing for people, the everyday Joe, average Internet user, and so I think that’s a constant education effort because it’s real easy to I think over estimate people’s grasp of technology and security issues, and that’s a dangerous thing.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Do you think information is getting out from the blogosphere to the general public, where people read it, or does the pubic need to know more about what goes into security or do you think it actually has to stay at the enterprise level and got to go down from there?

Brian Krebs - Washington Post
I’d like to see more mainstream publications covering this important issue. I happen to think that most of the people who really need to know most about what it is they need to do, to stay secure online, don’t read blogs, I mean they’re still reading mainstream publications.

Ryan Singel - 27bstroke6
I think the mainstream folks that really need to know what they do should go to his blog, because I pick things up from you, he’s one of the best at sort of translating — like he understands the high level stuff, but translates it into what does this means for you, how do I get Flash 8 off my system, when you didn’t even know you had it on there.

Brian Krebs - Washington Post
It is always Flash 8, why do I need it?

Ron Gula - blog.tenablesecurity.com
Yeah, I mean the biggest failure of the vendor so far is all the solutions we offer are extremely technical, the average person doesn’t know, should I click this, should I not click that, am I going to be safe, am I going to lose my credit card data, it’s very difficult, so, things are getting better, we just have a long way to go.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Alright, well, thanks for speaking with us and enjoy the party.

Michelle McLean - ConSentry Networks
Hi, I’m Michelle McLean with ConSentry Networks

Michael Johnson - PodTech
What do you do at ConSentry, Michelle?

Michelle McLean - ConSentry Networks
I’m actually in charge of Product Marketing.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
And you blog?

Michelle McLean - ConSentry Networks
I do, we’ve just recently launched the En Garde blog and there are several of us posting to it by commenting on security, how security is being perceived, what we’re seeing in the customer business that we have, and just how the market is evolving around how to secure what happens on the LAN, inside the enterprise.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
What’s the importance of the blog to ConSentry Networks?

Michelle McLean - ConSentry Networks
It’s multidimensional, there is the notion that for your customers, you’re trying to give them a little bit of an inside view into what’s going on, helping them understand their peers. There is definitely this notion of an industry level dialogue, where you know that press and analysts and other bloggers are reading some of your thoughts and it fosters the dialogue, it’s definitely a level of discussion that’s more fast moving and a little bit more straightforward than what you can see in the press necessarily, that’s just the nature of the flexibility of the medium. You can be very quick to get a whole dialogue going and in two days worth of comments you’ve moved the whole goal line forward around what the industry’s thinking about the topic, it’s really dynamic.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Do you think it really helps the industry?

Michelle McLean - ConSentry Networks
I think it does, because I think you end up shaping how people talk about the problems, the solutions, how they’re trying to cope with certain issues in the enterprise. I used to be a journalist and an analyst actually for nine years, and it’s really nice to be back in that thought leadership domain that a blog can give you, it’s a lot of fun, and I do think it benefits both the consumers of technology as well as those who are charged with thinking about and writing about the industry.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Michelle McLean of ConSentry Networks, thanks for talking with us.

Michelle McLean - ConSentry Networks
Thank you so much, it’s good to see you.

Richard Mogull - Gartner
Richard Mogull, and I’m an analyst with Gartner and mostly contribute to the Gartner blogs.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Obviously you’re doing something about security, right?

Richard Mogull - Gartner
Yeah, exactly, I’m on the information, security and risk team over there, so that’s — well, it’s pretty much what I’ve been doing since I was 16.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Since you were 16?

Richard Mogull - Gartner
Believe it or not, I started in physical security back when I was in high school and eventually got into — it was at PC tech job, and eventually that led to my information security career.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
What has been the most interesting thing for you or what area do you focus on a particular, and what over the last few years has been some of the top one or two security issues?

Richard Mogull - Gartner
Well, it has been really fascinating actually, I’ve been covering data security for about five, maybe six years now, and back then it was something nobody would pay attention to, the research wasn’t read very frequently, not a lot of conversations about it. Last year, data security has exploded, protecting people’s private information, protecting corporation’s intellectual property, incredible amount — vendors all over the place addressing it, we couldn’t go to a keynote without a mention of data security. So, I think it has been just fascinating to watch it over this five year period, as this has finally developed and has finally started to hit the mainstream.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
What do you think changed, what was it that sort of pushed it over the edge?

Richard Mogull - Gartner
Oh, to be honest, it’s because of couple of factors. One is we actually start putting things back up on the Internet and making them potentially available that people had monetary value. There were no safe crackers except for 14 year teenage boys until people put money in the safes, then the bad guys figured it out. We put those things up there, the bad guys had a little bit of time to realize not only what was there, but learn the techniques to get at it. So, now all of a sudden, information security, we’ve always called it information security, it was network security, now we’re getting back to the information, we’re getting back to the data, we’re protecting private information, we’re protecting our intellectual property.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
So, has the mindset caught up, because it’s the scene that I’m hearing at RSA, I’m hearing it tonight, has the mindset of the enterprise community that deals with that data, whether it’s data in flight or data at rest, and even some of the marginal network, firms that are out there, large storage firms that are out there, have they really caught up with the idea about what security is?

Richard Mogull - Gartner
I think we have a lot of work to do there. We know there is a problem. Now, a lot of it right now is mostly compliance driven, so people are implementing data security as much for compliance as anything else, and a lot of part of it is we don’t really know how big or how bad the problem is. Over the next few years, we’re really going to start raising that awareness, we’re going to start understanding how to build security as opposed to just layering it on, and we will get back to the concept that it’s about protecting the data, and it’s about protecting our sensitive information. So, we got a little ways to go, it’s not quite there yet.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Thanks for talking with us, enjoy the party.

Richard Mogull - Gartner
Thank you very much, this is great.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
So, that wraps it up for our blogger evening, security bloggers from all over the country, all over the Web, all of the blogosphere, coming together here in San Francisco at the Foreign Cinema restaurant as part of the RSA 2007 Security Conference in San Francisco, I’m Michael Johnson, well see you next time.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: RSA 2007, security bloggers, Foreign Cinema, network security, Martin McKeay, Shift, Kristalle Ward, Fortinet

Transcript:

Host: Martin McKeay - PodTech
Guest: Brian Hatch - F5 Networks

Martin McKeay - PodTech
Hello this is Martin McKeay from the Network Security Podcast and I am here today at the F5 Networks’ booth at RSA and I am here for PodTech interviewing Brian Hatch. Brian, how are you doing today?

Brian Hatch - F5 Networks
Very well, thank you.

Martin McKeay - PodTech
Brian is an F5 employee and you are also the author of ‘Hacking Exposed Linux’ versions one and two. Correct?

Brian Hatch - F5 Networks
Yes I am.

Martin McKeay - PodTech
So what do you do for F5?

Brian Hatch - F5 Networks
At F5 I am the Manager of the IT department for network and operations so our position is to create the infrastructure that allows us to do all the standard things every company does. We are responsible for the email, responsible for the public facing, DMZs with the Websites, we are responsible for access to file servers, and everything a normal IT organization would do, we do. The one thing we do differently the most is, we use all the F5 products extensively.

For example, first of all we get them cheaper than most of them. We have big IPs, used in places that are completely unnatural and the other environments because we can. We like to use them in ways that are different because we can find out different things you might do in other customer environments and find out problems that might occur. For example, we have had them in place where routers would be that the customers would actually do whereas we also have between our remote offices, we have WANJets which are used to compress links and speed up data transfers like most companies would use. So, we have a great opportunity of trying out all the F5 dog-food before it comes out and it will be released to customers.

Martin McKeay - PodTech
Do you have a lot of problems — a lot of fun using some of these technologies in ways that weren’t necessarily meant to be originally?

Brian Hatch - F5 Networks
We find that all too often we realize the capabilities of our software that even if there might be another solution, we will take the F5 product route because it is there, it is ubiquitous for us. So, it gives us chance to find new opportunities to create bizarre best utilizations of network hurdles.

Martin McKeay - PodTech
I can imagine you can come up with some very interesting technologies or new uses for technologies when you do that on a daily basis.

Brian Hatch - F5 Networks
That is nice.

Martin McKeay - PodTech
So, tell me a little bit about Linux Exposed. What was the genesis for this idea?

Brian Hatch - F5 Networks
Well, there was obviously the first book ‘Hacking Linux Exposed’ written by number of other individuals and that was focused on all sorts of different operating systems. So, we had some section for Mac, had some section for Windows, had some section for network, had some section for UNIX. We wanted to say that “Hey, Linux and UNIX in general, really deserve its own book. It has so much discussion about it. They can fill up to some 500 pages.” We took that to talk about different protocols in much more depth with a Linux and a UNIX focus as opposed to how does it work on this particular OS independent.

Martin McKeay - PodTech
So, what was your favorite part of? Maybe I should say what was your favorite hack of the book?

Brian Hatch - F5 Networks
For me for writing it the most interesting part was describing the (Inaudible) attack against FTP. This is not Linux specific. This will be available to any different kind of OS that would run FTP. FTP is just two channels instead of just one which is what most protocols use and allows for some trick or we can take one machine and trick it into getting data another one even though it did not request it and writing it down, showing at the command line how you can use UNIX tools to actually create that without having specialized software, was really quite fun.

Martin McKeay - PodTech
A lot of those tools are now becoming usable on Windows through Cygwin and things like that and through virtual machines. Have you played with that and with those of your virtual machines as well?

Brian Hatch - F5 Networks
The first thing I do if I have a Windows box if I am not wiping it and installing Linux would be installing Cygwin, pretty much if I do not have access to a UNIX like command environment, then I feel pain.

Martin McKeay - PodTech
I understand that, do you foresee Linux taking some of the place of Windows as being a desktop client in the future?

Brian Hatch - F5 Networks
If you had asked me that five years ago, I would have said the answer is no. Five years ago, the people who were really developing things for Linux were very focused on “I am a developer, what would I want?” Nowadays there are lot more people out there and there are some companies that are developing for Linux that want to get stuff that is usable for the actual users out there and the people who do not want to write their own device drivers, who want to be able to use the mouse, click to menus, find exactly what they need without jumping down to command line, typing “find/| this”.

Martin McKeay - PodTech
What sort of differences have you seen in the last couple of years between when you originally wrote the Linux Exposed book and Security on Linux now?

Brian Hatch - F5 Networks
A lot of time has been put into making distributions easier to update so that they can either inform the user updates that are required, pre-download them make them available for installation right away. To make it easier for users to keep their systems up-to-date. A lot of those updates are not security related they might be just bug fixes. So, you have seen 25 updates available, that probably means one of them at most is a security bug.

So, that is probably just making easier for users to keep their machines up-to-date at all times. The other one is there is a growing group of people who are using more advanced Linux security protections, for example grsecurity and NSA Linux which is SE-Linux and all these other security modules and they put into the Linux kernel to give you different ways of protecting a Linux system. Those are becoming more accepted nowadays.

Martin McKeay - PodTech
So, do you have another book in the coffer yet?

Brian Hatch - F5 Networks
I do have another security book coming out soon as I finish writing it.

Martin McKeay - PodTech
As soon as you finish writing. Well Brian, thank you very much for taking some time and talking to us today.

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Tags: F5 Networks, Martin McKeay, Linux, RSA 2007 Security Conference

Part one here.

Transcript:
Host: Michael Johnson - PodTech
Guest: Kevin Hohenbrink - F5 Networks

Michael Johnson - PodTech
This is Part 2, in our discussion with F5 Networks’ Kevin Hohenbrink, talking about Data Replication, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity and how F5 Networks’ WANJet product can help?

Now, one term that’s floating out there is business impact analysis. Now, how is this important to the overall Business Continuity and the Disaster Recovery Plan?

Kevin Hohenbrink - F5 Networks
Sure, an enterprise to undertake a business impact analysis to map their dependencies between critical business operations and the people resources applications and physical IT assets that they rely upon. In today’s environments, business process rely on multiple integrated applications, database and storage systems and so on. So, in order to restore a business process in the event of a disruption, you have to be certain replicating and coordinating the recovery of all these dependent applications. When you’re defining RTO and RPO application by application and selectively replicating data, it could mean, you’re only going to get a partial restoration of your business process.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
One of the other terms that’s out there, Kevin, it’s the term Consolidation. Now, how does this relate to protecting sites that you’ve got, say in remote areas? A lot of businesses right now have data centers, information applications and people information out in remote centers, especially as we’re expanding across greater and greater areas with globalization. How does Consolidation work?

Kevin Hohenbrink - F5 Networks
Sure, so data loss at remote sites is currently a huge risk exposure for most enterprise customers. Leveraging existing investment and existing data centers on recovery sites to offer Consolidation Backup Solutions from remote sites where centralized facility is critical. So, Consolidation will help ensure the backups to run regularly and very successfully. They’ve improved the manageability with their central administrators by providing visibility into remote site data center protection and potentially the ability to remotely configure and manage this protection, all with the goal of enabling their remote office to recover from the localized disaster.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
So, business maybe thinking about — maybe putting in some additional bandwidth to support those remote sites that we’ve been talking about or maybe improve some of the performances, some of their existing Data Replication Technologies or expand them as well. When is it important for a business with this kind of set up, to consider WAN Optimization and the products that are out there for it? What kinds of things should they look at and what’s an important consideration?

Kevin Hohenbrink - F5 Networks
Sure, so when you’re considering a WAN Optimization Solution, an important aspect of the WANJet appliance is that F5 has already taken the time and made the investment to test the interoperability of WANJet appliances with independent software vendors, storage vendors and storage network vendors like EMC and Double-Take. We’ve gone to the trouble of creating case studies in customer reference and it can provide customer references to prove out its capabilities and of course its intended benefits to our interested customers.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Okay, so you have some folks that are looking at their networks. What kinds of things should they be considering in designing that network when they are looking at a Disaster Recovery Preparedness Plan?

Kevin Hohenbrink - F5 Networks
To achieve the desired RTO and your RPO with the greatest possible distance between the sites, enterprises are often going to design multi-site disaster recovery configurations to combine synchronous, asynchronous or even batch or schedule replication technologies. Site preparation is crucial because enterprises need locate their recovery site far enough away to escape the likeliest of local and regional threats, such as natural and man-made disasters. Synchronous Replication ensures the zero data loss because technically speaking, it does not return a right acknowledgment to their application until the data is being run to their recovery site. So, as a result, Synchronous Replication requires high-bandwidth, very low latency between the data centers in a metro area and the distance is no more than a 150kms apart.

Asynchronous on the other hand are typically deployed for long distances. With Asynchronous Replication the primary and secondary sites will be slightly out of sink and there’s some chance of data loss in the event of a disaster or a business disruption. However, applications are not forced to wait for the remote site to confirm a right acknowledgment before processing can continue and that’s the difference between those two.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
So, when companies are looking at the idea of data replication today, what are some main factors that are challenging folks and how can they be solved?

Kevin Hohenbrink - F5 Networks
Sure, so some of the key network challenges are, the expanding distance between DR sites. RPOs and RTOs are decreasing and a larger volume of data is needed to be replicated and of course TCP is becoming more common for all applications. This typically results in the WAN being seriously impeded from a performance perspective for it’s replication solution. So, how we’re going to resolve this? Well, you’re not going to ask the customer to replicate lost data, that’s not going to happen. Should the customer release more bandwidth? Well, an option, but it’s not a desirable choice, as this represents — as we talked about earlier, 20-30% of cost for data replication and it’s also recurring cost monthly. Accelerating a traffic — well, this is the most cost-effective method and this is what drives a solution like WANJet. Prioritizing the data replication traffic and guaranteeing bandwidth. This is what we talked about the quality of service capability of WANJet. This protects the traffic from WAN congestion or latency concerns.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Can you tell me some of the factors, WANJets got operate in the real world too. So, what would be some factors that would affect the ability of a WANJet to accelerate that replication traffic?

Kevin Hohenbrink - F5 Networks
Sure, so the factors you are going to need to understand are the amount of repetition in data, even at the byte level, amount of compressible capability in the data. IE text is easily compressible, images are less, so all right. Another factor is the amount of different types of traffic competing for the same bandwidth. This requires WANJet to begin enforcing bandwidth guarantees which we can significantly improve performance of the important traffic at the expense of less important traffic. As I’d alluded to you before about the quality service capability.

Then the variability of data, when traffic is highly variable, congestion levels that would otherwise bring a replication process to halt, can now be prevented using bandwidth allocation because now we’re guaranteeing the bandwidth to that replication application.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Okay, so tell me your company installs the WANJet appliance, what would be some measurable benefits that they could expect to see in their data replication strategy right away?

Kevin Hohenbrink - F5 Networks
Sure, so F5 has several customers who have deployed WANJet with industry leading storage replication vendors like EMC, Symmetric Solution and Double-Take. Some of the measurable benefits we’ve found were — doing our testing was the customers can meet their RPOs and RTOs without upgrading bandwidth or data replication solution infrastructure and they were able to accelerate replication traffic as much anywhere from five-ten times faster. They also were able to utilize 70% to 90% less bandwidth because we guaranteed the bandwidth and we prioritized for data replication applications over non-data replication traffic. So, you were able to guarantee the bandwidth for your data replication traffic because you can do the prioritization.

You’re also able to mitigate the total effective latency, affecting the replication process. We also enable them in their networks to adopt dynamically to data replication applications needs and congestion. We’re also it was kind of cool it was that we move more of the control of RAM resources into the hands of the storage team to depend on it and typically they have never had that kind of control or visibility, and then lastly, we were able to encrypt all traffic using SSL and of course this is a optional benefit on all WANJets.

Customers found that they can reduce the cost of meeting these RPOs by using a fraction of the bandwidth to replicate the same data, we were also able to provide a comprehensive view of WAN performance matrix and bottleneck so we could tell them who are the trouble spots were and then we were able to reduce the tangible and intangible cause to troubleshooting which sort of raises a big question for people. Back to the customers don’t have to incur the cost of bringing out the storage replication vendor on site.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Well, Kevin you gave a lot of information here today. Is there a Website that folks can go to at F5 Networks or a particular place so they can go to find out little bit more about the WANJet Optimization Product.

Kevin Hohenbrink - F5 Networks
Sure, you’re going to go to F5’s new Website www.f5.com under products and you’ll search for WANJet and there is plenty of great white papers on the technology, white papers on our data replication, interoperability story with companies like Double-Take and EMC.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Okay, so that’s www.f5.com, look under products it will we search for WANJet.Kevin Hohenbrink - F5 Networks
That’s correct

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Alright, Kevin Hohenbrink is the Product Manager for the optimization product WANJet from F5 Networks, it’s been a fascinating conversation Kevin, and hope to continue this as well as we explore more ideas about how to really make businesses and disaster recovery and threats to business and all of that easier through these types of products and it’s been great talking with you today on the Podcast.

Kevin Hohenbrink - F5 Networks
Well, thank you very much.

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Tags: Kevin Hohenbrink, F5 Networks, disaster recovery, WANJet

Part two here.

Transcript:

Host: Michael Johnson – PodTech
Guest: Kevin Hohenbrink – F5 Networks

Michael Johnson – PodTech
This is Michael Johnson and we have on the line with us today Kevin Hohenbrink who is the optimization product manager for the product WANJet over at F5 Networks. So welcome to the podcast, Kevin.

Kevin Hohenbrink – F5 Networks
Well thank you.

Michael Johnson – PodTech
Now today we’re going to talk about some interesting things that have to do with how a business runs. We are going to talk about Disaster Recovery and Continuity. Now these are couple of terms that we hear are RTO and RPO and its importance to the Continuity Disaster Recovery Plan. Let us define what those terms are and explain how that works in this picture.

Kevin Hohenbrink – F5 Networks
So the two terms RTO and RPO, Recovery Time Objective and I’m going to use some sort of industry definitions that are pretty accepted by everybody. This is the maximum viable downtime after an outage for recovering systems, applications and functions. RTO provides the basis for developing cost effective recovery strategies and effectively getting the resources up and working again and implementing these recovery strategies during a disaster situation. Typically companies will measure in minutes to hours the downtime, their RTO and RPO. There was a recent study done by Forrester that talks about – in the event of a primary data center site failure, that 45% of North American respondents and 47% of European respondents recover in five hours or less. However, only a small percentage of those respondents, 8% North America and 7% European Theater could measure their recovery time in 120 minutes or less. Recovery point objective as per the industry standard definition, defines how current or fresh the data is after a disaster. Recovery point objective, the RPO, is really the earliest point in time which systems and data must be recovered after an outage. RPO typically defines maximum amount of data that the organization is willing to sacrifice after a disaster. And the zero RPO business continuity solution can survive a disaster without any loss of data and that typically tends to be very expensive. Another data point from a Forrester study — the same Forrester study, in the event of a primary data center site failure there was as much as 55% of North American respondents and 59% of European respondents. They would lose about five hours of data or less. 28% of the North American respondents and 27% of the European respondents could measure their data loss in less than 120 minutes. So when you put these two together RTO and RPO, they provide a measurable target for business continuity and Disaster Recovery Solutions. At any time you can improve the RTO and RPO, you got to increase your investment in networking and storage technologies as a result. The physical distance between your data center is typically and how well your applications tolerate network latency affect how close you’re going to get to zero RPO. This is why you should limit your RTO and RPO to whatever levels your organization can tolerate from a cost perspective.

Michael Johnson – PodTech
Well let’s talk a little bit talk about that cost and what’s the impact of the WAN on those recovery objectives when we talk about that distance and how far out your network goes?

Kevin Hohenbrink – F5 Networks
Okay. So a comprehensive Disaster Recovery Solution typically requires an investment, multiple hardened (ph) recovery sites, duplicating the IT assets such as your servers and your storage arrays, your networking equipment and you typically do it at all these sites and then having the replication software and the necessary bandwidth between these sites. Typically, the cost of bandwidth is often a significant component of the cost of Disaster Recovery Solutions that rely on data replication between these sites. There was a Forrester survey that said 25% of North American enterprises and 26% of the European enterprises reported that cost of bandwidth was representing between 20 and 30 percent of the total cost of data replication and again these are recurring monthly costs.

Michael Johnson – PodTech
Let’s talk a little bit more about that network — the idea of the transport network. How does that affect your recovery objectives in the long run?

Kevin Hohenbrink – F5 Networks
So the amount of bandwidth and the type of network transport selected whether it’s Wavelength Sonic Ethernet or IP is really the key to achieving desired recovery objectives. Limiting the impact and latency to the business applications and increasing the distance between the sites. WAN connectivity issues such as latency, reliability limit to service options and limited bandwidth may make significant impacts in improving recovery objectives and we’re going to talk more about this as we go through this, I’m sure.

Michael Johnson – PodTech
Let’s talk a little bit more about some of those characteristics and break that down a little bit more because I think it’s — we kind of went over it kind of quickly but I think they’re pretty important points.

Kevin Hohenbrink – F5 Networks
Sure. So the inherent characteristics you are going to find on a WAN network are latency, this is typically caused by limits to the speed of light over distance. You are going to have packet loss, caused by signal degradation over the network medium, over saturating network links, corrupting packets, rejected in transit or faulty network hardware. Network congestion, a big key point — excessive, lots of data on the network slows overall transmission speed kind of like too many cars on the freeway. Actual bandwidth is not the expected bandwidth often due to a combination of the factors listed above, whether its latency, packet loss or network congestion and of course last is expensive bandwidth. Large pipes can incur significant monthly costs. Unfortunately, such factors as these can often cripple a D R plan. WAN links are often subject to variable congestion caused by other application traffic, file transfers, even possibly other migration or recovery activities. This means your RPO and RTO that are met in minutes, can now be completely unobtainable the next minute due to congestion. So heavy latency do perhaps to extended distances can prevent meeting RPOs and RTOs irrespective of how much bandwidth is used. So adding more bandwidth doesn’t always solve all of your problems.

Michael Johnson – PodTech
Okay and now when people think about networks going down, sometimes they think okay, you know it is time we take a coffee break and you know, that’s kind of what it is but its — we’re talking a lot more stuff is on the table here besides this lost revenue, just things going down. What are some other key factors that are you know going to fuel that need to really improve your recovery capabilities of your business?

Kevin Hohenbrink – F5 Networks
Sure. So it’s also the cost associated with permanent customer loss and the ability of competitors to gain market share. So aside from the cost of downtime, additional drivers feeling the need to improve recovery capabilities are going to include increased risk fiduciary responsibilities to your shareholders, competitiveness in the market and of course regulatory like SOX and HIPAA are additional legal drivers. So based on recent events especially here in North America including terrorist attacks, blackouts, earthquakes, hurricanes wildfires and on and on, the perceived risk level is increasing among enterprises. So and additionally due to a significant number of corporate scandals that led to such government oversight and regulatory Sarbanes-Oxley, enterprises that operate in the business environment have increased fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, partners and customers and even their own employees.

Michael Johnson – PodTech
Okay, now F5 is in the network business. Is there a WAN optimization appliance solution that you have?

Kevin Hohenbrink – F5 Networks
Absolutely. The WAN optimization solution from F5 is the WANJet product. F5’s WANJet is an appliance-based solution that uses compression, acceleration technologies to dramatically improve the speed of application traffic over the WAN. WANJet accelerates a wide variety of application traffic types including data replication which is the focus of this discussion, file transfer, email client/server applications and others. WANJet also has some unique features that enable bandwidth to be efficiently allocated amongst different applications, we call it our quality of service, and thereby ensuring that the most critical traffic receives the priority access to the valuable bandwidth. We buy the bandwidth in lot of cases specifically for a particular application, you want to make sure that that application gets its bandwidth.

Michael Johnson – PodTech
Okay, so can WAN acceleration appliances like this actually help in achieving that goal that we were talking about before, that zero RPO?

Kevin Hohenbrink – F5 Networks
Yes. WANJet appliances help to improve throughput. They also mitigate latency of existing networks through such techniques as this compression, our TDR data reduction and transport protocol acceleration. Often the cost of deploying a WANJet appliance at each end of the link is less expensive than the cost of increasing bandwidth. Typically, these appliances can be particularly helpful for enterprises that want to use replication or remote backup between sites, with limited bandwidth to the corporate data center.

Michael Johnson – PodTech
So how is WANJet going to work in that formula, to mitigate that latency?

Kevin Hohenbrink – F5 Networks
In situations where the WAN link, WAN is the bottleneck, WANJet can improve the performance of synchronous and asynchronous replication solutions which in turn can mitigate application latency and its performance impacts on applications.

Michael Johnson – PodTech
Okay. Now you also have this situation that, you know that enterprises that have some replications solutions in place between their data centers and other sites can the WANJet support replication of more data with existing bandwidth as opposed to say adding more, you know?

Kevin Hohenbrink – F5 Networks
Yeah, absolutely. Traditionally business applications like ERP, SCM, CRM as well as messaging and collaborative applications such as email — these are going to continue to grow steadily each year. These are often the very applications that are supportive with remote replication. The WANJet appliance can help enterprises support to continue replication of these applications with existing bandwidth. WANJet uses a QoS technique to guarantee and prioritize data replication over non-data replication applications as we just mentioned.

Michael Johnson – PodTech
Can it also enable the extending replication of other applications as well?

Kevin Hohenbrink – F5 Networks
Yeah. Do the cost replication — most enterprises are very selective about which applications they replicate and which ones they don’t. Usually they limit it to mission critical apps. Today it’s no longer a one-to-one relationship between a business process and application. Business processes now rely on multiple applications and to restore the entire process that means that they’re going to have to coordinate the recovery of the multiple apps. So customers are going to be very pleased to know that these apps that were once deemed only business critical as opposed to mission critical also require replication to another site.

Michael Johnson – PodTech
That was F5 networks Kevin Hohenbrink. This has been the first of a two-part series on data replication, disaster recovery and business continuity. Tune in next time right here on PodTech for Part two of our conversation with Kevin Hohenbrink.

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