We are CACI Network Services and we are here to bring you interesting content in the world of DevOps, Network Automation, Cloud, Network Engineering and IT Service Management.
In an era marked by evolving cyber threats and a dynamic work landscape, traditional security models are proving insufficient to protect organisations' digital assets. Enter Zero Trust Architecture – a paradigm shift that's redefining cybersecurity strategies. As Certified Zscaler Architects, let's delve into the basics of Zero Trust and the key considerations for organisations looking to fortify their defences.
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With the rise of remote work and cloud applications, organisations face challenges in maintaining security and user satisfaction. Cisco Secure Access addresses these concerns by consolidating security and networking services in a cloud-based Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution.
The promise of DevOps against Waterfall was always around accelerating your Application Development and Infrastructure Operations velocity in delivering features, stability, capability and uptime when compared to traditional, linear practices. However, much of that promise erodes if you aren't continuously measuring - and benchmarking - your organisation's processes, procedures, frameworks, tooling and culture against your competitors.
Time was the Internet consisted of just a few Top Level Domains (TLDs) - .com, .net, .org and a few others - but not anymore. TLD-List reports there are now over 3,745 domain extensions and growing, with even some brands having their own Organisation Extensions such as .barclays and .bbc in use for Careers Sites, Product Pages and more.
Call it Secure Access Service Edge (SASE); call it Secure Services Edge (SSE); call it Zero Trust Network Architecture (ZTNA)... even call it the Service Edge (Bono and U2 would be proud) - you might be forgiven for thinking talk about VPN is everywhere the moment, and wondering why everyone is Cloudwashing what you've know as Remote Access VPN for many years.
Capacity Management has been a stable of IT Service Management (ITSM) for many years, often historically associated with practices such as Just In Time (JIT) hardware provision to achieve Network, Storage or Compute low-watermarks which sustain Service Level Agreements (SLAs). However, as the move to commodified on-demand workload prevails - as enabled through Cloud and DevOps Provisioning practices - Capacity Management begins to become less optimal as a practice to sustain the delicate balance of cost versus performance for an IT System.
For years, the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) has been an integral part of IT Service Management (ITSM) for organisations. It has been the go-to tool for managing the Configuration Items (CI) of an organisation's IT environment, including hardware, software, and relationships between them. Indeed, this is to the extent that most people raising Change Requests even call them "CIs" without necessarily knowing what that stands for. But no longer.
Cisco have recently complemented their various Training and Learning Platforms (including Cisco Digital Learning, Cisco Learning Network and Cisco Live) with a new user-friendly offering - Cisco U. While some of the content is pricy, we've found some completely free-of-charge Network Automation Courses that we think you should know about.
Observability as a discipline distinct from Network Management is still in its infancy within the Network Engineering realm, with newer job titles such as Network Reliability Engineer (NRE) looking to extract the same organisational value that the more DevOps-aligned Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) provide to the more traditional SysAdmin space. Network as a Service (NaaS) is a new approach to Network Operations, which often distils down to two commonly accepted meanings:
With the recent announcement that Cisco has created its own Continuing Professional Development (CPD) scheme - Cisco Continuing Education Program - it is now possible to recertify your CCNP or CCNA Certification using an exam-free approach, and with some studying and time applied, this can even be done free of charge!
In today's hybrid-working world, many employees often work remotely from the Branch - at Home, Hotels, Conferences, Coffee Shops and the like. This effectively moves the Network Perimeter from the traditional Branch and Office Boundary right into the heart of the Endpoint Laptop device itself - increasing the possible attack surface for organisational Network WANs. Zero Trust is one approach that can help to overcome some of the cybersecurity challenges that hybrid working can create.
With every business looking to drive down costs and increase efficiencies, it should be no surprise that the Telecommunications Industry is (slowly) moving towards the Public Cloud to run some of it's mission critical backend systems, chiefly those provided by Operational Support System (OSS) and Business Support System (BSS) which underpin the business and revenue-generation model for a modern Telco. With pioneers such as Totogi, it is inescapable that the Management Plane of a modern Telco Network won't somehow interact with some form of Cloud Service Provider (CSP) offering.
NetDevOps and associated Network Automation are constantly evolving fields, and as such have what seems like a never ending amount of cool-named Tools, Frameworks and Libraries available for you to use to simplify your NetOps life. We've curated a few of our favourites, which we hope will help you in your journey towards NetDevOps. As always, let us know what you think of these, or if we can help you in your NetDevOps journey.
CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) pipelines are a modern DevOps practice that automates the process of packaging, testing, and deploying code in small increments. This practice has made software development agile and reliable, and it holds the same promise for networking as more environments transition to the infrastructure-as-code (IaC) mode. In network engineering, CI/CD pipelines help implement network changes quickly and push them into production with speed and accuracy.
DevOps and ITIL are two different approaches to managing IT services. DevOps is a philosophy that focuses on improving software deployment, while ITIL is a highly structured model built to boost productivity and offer statistics for IT teams. DevOps emphasises speed and delivering new features and updates as quickly as possible, while ITIL prioritises managing and improving existing services.
Cisco IOS and Nokia SR Linux are two popular operating systems used in networking. While both have their strengths, they differ in several ways - SR Linux is chiefly a microservices-led, Containerised Network Operating System (NOS), whereas Cisco IOS is a monolithic NOS; with Cisco having made enhancements to their approach in the NOS under IOS-XR, IOS-XE and NX-OS.