by hannahadmin | Jan 28, 2025 | blog
There are many aspects to network security assuming that you are buying a L3VPN service from the SP delivered over MPLS? As you may already know, MPLS provides no encryption to the traffic which means that all traffic is sent in the clear unless the application itself uses a technology such as SSL or TLS. This may or may not be a concern for you but I thought it was worth mentioning.
If we look at MPLS L3VPN which uses VPN label (BGP) and transport label (LDP) to forward the traffic, it is a secure way of separating customer traffic. There is always the possibility of someone accidentally or intentionally leaking traffic between different VPNs (customers) but if someone has access to the devices, then that would hold true for other technologies as well.
In the end it’s up to you and your security policy if you deem the network to be secure or not. Do you consider external threats as the biggest risk and how would you protect against internal threats?
If all traffic between sites passes your main sites, then all traffic would be inspected which would be more secure compared to if traffic can flow freely between sites. On the other hand, sending all traffic to a central site would increase latency and the bandwidth need at the main sites as well as putting more stress on the firewalls there. Design is always a tradeoff and you have to consider what is most important to you.
The central firewalls will not mitigate local issues though where a virus may spread on a local subnet or a network worm which may utilize all of your WAN bandwidth.
In the end it comes down to how much money you are willing to spend compared to how you grade the risk of something happening and how seriously an incident would impact your business.
One option could be to have a small firewall at each site and run IPSec. On the other hand that would mean that you have 100+ firewalls to manage all of a sudden. From a management standpoint therefore it makes more sense to either send traffic to central sites or if the SP offers a firewalled service. ibm/SEIMless through its Exodus product line has addressed these concerns with “PIET”. Contact us at: in**@**********ss.com for more information.
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by hannahadmin | Jan 28, 2025 | blog, Seimless
Once Bard, now Gemini, Google’s AI Chatbot is the foundation for new Android and iOS apps as well as a subscription service.
The name evoked poetic qualities of a past era, but seemingly not enough of our AI future. Starting Thursday, Google’s Bard AI chatbot will become Gemini, matching the AI model the company introduced in December.
Google’s counter to ChatGPT came a year ago with mixed feelings, but has since seen several updates including, more recently, the ability to generate images.
The name change is intended to help people understand they’re engaging with the Gemini AI model via the chatbot, the, vice president and general manager of Gemini experiences and Google Assistant.
Bard won’t change much, despite the new name, logo, apps and the gemini.google.com website. But now there’s also a premium version, called Ultra, too. It was mentioned, Gemini might mistakenly refer to itself as Bard, as it struggles with self-awareness during the transition period.
Google’s changes aren’t happening in a vacuum. ChatGPT maker OpenAI has released its GPT-4 Turbo large language model and now allows user to create custom AI Apps for its app store. Meanwhile, Microsoft announced that it intends to add a dedicated key on Windows 11 laptops and PC’s to launch its AI tool Co-Pilot. A Less well known but scoring venture capital is the startup Perplexity, a search engine revved up with AI. These are just a few reasons why the generative AI market is projected to reach $1.3 trillion by 2032.
As generative AI shifts from startling tech breakthrough to mainstream tech, these players are all positioning themselves to be the one that captures the most hearts, minds and dollars.
Goodbye, Google Assistant
Along with the name change, Google has two new Gemini apps for Android and iOS, which are also available in the US as of Thursday. Next week, they will roll out in Asia Pacific in English, as well as in Japanese and Korean, “with more countries and languages to come soon.”
Gemini will become the primary assistant on Android phones for people who download the app and opt in. This signals the beginning of the end for Google Assistant, at least on mobile.
Google did not comment on Gemini’s presence elsewhere, but said that Google Assistant is still “present on lots of devices that are not mobile.” That’s because Gemini is “an opt-in experience to start [and] a new type of assistant.”
You can still trigger Gemini with the Google Assistant wake word, “Hey, Google.”
“I think it’s a super important first step towards building a true AI assistant,” the VP said. It’s “conversational, it’s multimodal and it’s more helpful than ever before.”
Multimodal means users can prompt the chatbot with audio, text and images. So, for example, users can share a photo of a flat tire to ask for help or a photo of a pet and ask for a caption for social media.
Gemini also lets you continue chatbot conversations across devices, sort of like ads that follow you from one device to another. Google’s AI Chatbot
But unlike Google Assistant, which offers access to a variety of answers, Gemini is a large language model. It’s an AI trained on books, news stories and similar content so it can learn about words and how they relate to one another to ultimately generate its own output text. While LLMs are improving, they’re still sometimes generate answers that are inaccurate or make no sense. They are also sometimes gullible and can offer different answers to the same question. Google’s AI Chatbot
A Google spokesman pointed to Gemini’s double-check feature, which he said will help people verify responses with content on the web.
Introducing Google One AI Premium
Google also announced Gemini Advanced, a new “experience” that provides access to Ultra 1.0. Google described Ultra 1.0 as “our largest and most capable state-of-the-art AI model.” That’s thanks in part to the ability to perform more complex tasks like coding, reasoning and following “nuanced” instructions.
Gemini Advanced is available through the Google One subscription service, which added a Google One AI Premium plan for $20 a month on Thursday.
Ultra 1.0 allows you to make longer queries and it better understands these questions in the context of previous queries. You can use it for advanced coding, content ideas for digital creations or a personalized tutor. Google’s AI Chatbot
It’s available in 150 countries and territories in English as of Thursday and will expand over time.
“This is the beginning and we will continue to improve Gemini Advanced’s capabilities,” Hsiao said. “We’re going to add new and exclusive features, for example expanded multimodal capabilities, more interactive coding features, deeper data analysis capabilities and much more.”
Google is offering a free two-month trial to start.
Duet is now done. Finally, Google’s Duet AI tools are also adopting the Gemini name for Google Workspace and Google Cloud.
Google One AI Premium plan subscribers will soon be able to use Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Meet.
“Even more people can use these tools to help them write, visualize, organize and so much more,” said the, vice president of product management, collaboration apps and Workspace. “Gemini in Gmail, Docs and more will act as your AI collaborative partner, allowing you to create, synthesize information, communicate, get more things done right from within the tools you’re already using.” Google’s AI Chatbot
That means potentially tapping into information in multiple Google products like emails and Sheets to make, say, assigning a snack schedule for your kid’s soccer team. (Behr also reminded us every customer has control over their data.)
She teased “exciting news to share in the coming weeks about Gemini and in Google Cloud,” but didn’t elaborate.
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by hannahadmin | Jan 28, 2025 | blog
Past outsourcing decisions put the company in this spot, but will break even by 2027, says Intel CEO.
Intel’s chip-making division accumulated $7 billion in operating losses in 2023, Reuters reported on Tuesday, increasing from $5.2 billion 2022. It made $18.9 billion in revenue in 2023, down 31 percent from the $27.49 billion the year prior.
However, CEO Pat Gelsinger’s told investors, the total loss isn’t a total surprise. Gelsinger says these numbers are the result of Intel’s past mistakes catching up with its foundry business, causing them to outsource about 30 percent of all its wafer production to other foundries, like TSMC, one of Intel’s biggest competitors currently.
But now Intel has invested in using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machines from Dutch firm ASML, when previously it decided not to. Gelsinger expects the cost-effectiveness of those tools to help Intel break even by 2027. ASML also says on its website that its technology makes scaling the mass production of computer chips more affordable for chip foundries like Intel.
It sounds like Intel may have made the right call just in time. Intel plans to spend around $100 billion building or expanding its chip foundries in four states. It also will receive up to $8.5 billion in funding from the U.S. government, as part of the new CHIPS Act. But for everything to go according to plan, Intel will need to persuade companies to use its chipmaking service. Microsoft recently signed on as a foundry customer, but it’s unclear how many more companies Intel will need to break even (as planned) in the next few years.
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by hannahadmin | Jan 28, 2025 | blog
Quantum bits, or qubits, are inherently prone to error — this susceptibility is described as being “noisy.” Creating logical qubits is one way of solving this.
So scientists have created a set of “logical qubits” that have error rates 800 times lower than physical qubits — paving the way for useful, fault-tolerant quantum computers in the near future.
Quantum bits, or qubits, are inherently prone to error — this susceptibility is described as being “noisy.” Creating logical qubits is one way of solving this. These are a collection of physical qubits that are tied through quantum entanglement — and they reduce errors by storing the same information in different places. This spreads out the possible points of failure while a calculation is underway.
In a new paper published April 2 to the preprint server arXiv, scientists demonstrated they could perform experiments on four logical qubits made using 30 of the 32 physical qubits in the H2 quantum processor made by Quantinuum, a quantum computing company.
The team, made up of researchers from Quantinuum and Microsoft, ran 14,000 experiments on a basic quantum circuit made up of the logical qubits without generating any errors that weren’t detected and corrected.
They hope this technology can be integrated into a future hybrid supercomputer powered by 100 reliable logical qubits — which would be enough to provide organizations with a scientific advantage, Microsoft’s EVP for strategic missions and technologies said April 3 in a blog entry.
1st problems with scaling quantum computers, beyond the hardware required to run them, is the extremely high error rates of qubits. Bits in conventional computing have an error rate of 1 in 1 billion billion.
When running experiments on a quantum circuit, however, physical qubits have an error rate of approximately 1 in 100, according to Microsoft. The new logical qubits, by comparison, have an error rate of just 1 in 100,000.
The researchers achieved this improvement by applying a technique called “active syndrome extraction” to Quantinuum’s ion-trap qubits and quantum computing architecture, Quantinuum representatives said in a statement.
This technique involves diagnosing and correcting errors while calculations are underway without destroying logical qubits. Because qubits process calculations while they’re in a state of quantum superposition between two binary states (representing the 1 and 0 of computing data), you cannot view them without causing decoherence, in which the superposition collapses.
Active syndrome extraction is a process derived from a paper published in September 2018 and works because of the way this kind of logical qubit was composed. A logical qubit includes a small number of physical qubits — referred to as the ancillary code block — that store no data for calculations, but into which the logical qubit’s information is temporarily stored, so it can be seen. By applying this technique, the scientists were able to peek within the block then identify and correct errors as they appeared, without disrupting calculations.
“Breakthroughs in quantum error correction and fault tolerance are important for realizing the long-term value of quantum computing for scientific discovery and energy security,” Travis Humble, director of the Quantum Science Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who was not involved in the current research, said in a statement. “Results like these enable continued development of quantum computing systems for research and development.”
Microsoft representatives argue this research represented a shift to what they call “Level 2” quantum computing, in which scientists have low-error quantum hardware that can be scaled up to solve problems reliably. Quantum computers today are, by comparison, described as “noisy intermediate-scale quantum” (NISQ) machines.
The aim is to get to Level 3 machines and to achieve so-called “quantum supremacy” — that is, to reach the point at which quantum computers will be more powerful and capable than the fastest supercomputers.
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by hannahadmin | Jan 28, 2025 | blog, Seimless
CIOs are now seriously considering ways to avoid single points of failure and are re-evaluating their cloud strategies to prevent any future ‘blue screen incidents.
The disruption caused by the CrowdStrike software glitch, leading to a global outage of Windows systems, has sent shockwaves through the IT world. CIOs, are now reminded of the inherent risks associated with over-reliance on a single vendor, especially in the cloud.
The incident, saw IT systems crashing and displaying the “blue screen of death (BSOD),” exposed the vulnerabilities of heavily cloud-dependent infrastructures.
While it is being resolved, the potential for catastrophic consequences when a critical security component fails remains. CIOs are now forced to question the resilience of their cloud environments and explore new strategies.
Reevaluating cloud dependencies
Abhishek Gupta, CIO at DishTV is quoting as saying, “When an issue of such magnitude happens and causes such a big disruption, it is important and necessary to revisit your existing beliefs, decisions, and tradeoffs that went into arriving at the current architecture,”. “The outcome of the review may still be the same decision but necessary to review,” Gupta said, adding that DishTV is already re-evaluating its cloud strategy in a phased manner after the Crowdstrike incident.
Saurabh Gugnani, Director and Head of CyberDefence, IAM, and Application Security at Netherlands-headquartered TMF Group, added that a diversified approach to cloud strategies could mitigate such risks. “Yes, they [enterprises] should revisit cloud strategies. It has to be a mix of all the available solutions.”
A Few organizations have already started taking the leap of faith.
Shivkumar Borade, founder and CMD of Mytek Innovations, a victim of the BSOD effect stated “In response to recent disruptions affecting our critical operations, we have proactively updated our Business Continuity Plan to address unexpected downtimes and minimize the impact on productivity and service delivery,”. “Our revised plan includes enhanced communication management, featuring multiple layers to ensure all employees are well-informed about potential issues and their resolution.”
The company’s internal communication was significantly disrupted as its entire network, including Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint, is hosted on Microsoft 365.
“However, our in-house developed application remained unaffected due to GoDaddy’s use of its own hosting infrastructure,” said Borade. “We did experience issues with a few API integrations linked to the Azure platform, which were non-functional for the entire day. This disruption led to interrupted services for both our clients and users.”
Wake-up call for CIOs
Many CIO’s are primarily concerned with vendor lock-in. The reliance on a single cloud provider, as demonstrated by the CrowdStrike incident, creates a single point of failure. If a critical service from that provider is disrupted, it can have far-reaching implications for an organization. To mitigate this risk, CIOs are likely to explore multicloud or hybrid cloud architectures, distributing workloads across multiple platforms.
Allie Mellen, a principal analyst at Forrester, emphasized the critical nature of reliable tools and services in the face of cyber threats.
“Reliability of the tools and services cybersecurity teams use is critical in the face of cyberattacks,” Mellen stated. “An incident like this questions that reliability. This will undoubtedly raise questions and concerns from executives about how to ensure the reliability of enterprise systems, especially with technology as integrated into day-to-day operations as cybersecurity software.”
The incident exposed the fragility of cloud-dependent systems where a single point of failure can have cascading effects across an organization. Sunil Varkey, senior security professional and advisor at Beagle Security, noted, “Trust between cloud and security vendors is now questioned. This breach of confidence is likely to drive a higher emphasis on agentless solutions, which can offer enhanced security without the vulnerabilities associated with traditional agents.”
It is said to be one of the worst cybersecurity events considering the magnitude of the impact. The CrowdStrike incident affected computers running Microsoft Windows across various sectors, including airlines, banks, retailers, brokerage houses, media companies, and railways. The travel sector was notably impacted, with airlines and airports in Germany, France, the Netherlands, the UK, the US, Australia, China, Japan, India, Singapore, and Taiwan facing significant issues with check-in and ticketing systems, leading to flight delays and airport chaos.
Microsoft said around 8.5 million Windows computers were affected.
The impact was so much that SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk had to delete CrowdStrike from all its systems.
Enhanced risk management practices
The incident has highlighted the need for improved risk management practices. Enhanced due diligence, rigorous testing of updates, and phased rollouts are now critical.
“This incident serves as a wake-up call, emphasizing the need for continuous adaptation and improvement in cybersecurity practices across the industry,” said Gaurav Ranade, CTO at RAH Infotech.
D.R. Goyal, senior architect at Rakuten Symphony, advocated for a mechanism to test updates with select users before a full release: “It should have a mechanism to test with certain organizations with a set of users before releasing to the entire community and user base to reduce the impact.”
As the digital landscape evolves, ensuring the resilience of cloud-based systems is paramount. Ashis Guha, founder of An Idea Global Innovations, highlighted broader implications: “The incident has broader implications for the global economy; longer downtimes and recovery times will impact productivity and economics.”
Industry experts recommend several strategies for future preparedness, including phased rollouts, comprehensive testing, and robust backup systems.
Siddharth Ugrankar, Co-founder of Blockchain firm Qila, suggested that a phased deployment and thorough testing of updates could have mitigated the impact: “If CrowdStrike had deployed the update in a phased manner, the impact would have been far less.”
Moyukh Goswami, CTO at Nuvepro Enterprises believes aiming to prevent issues like the CrowdStrike debacle IT leaders should bolster their update management while enhancing testing protocols across diverse environments and implementing rigorous risk assessments, in addition to fortifying change management processes with robust governance frameworks, said
Goswami added “Strengthening monitoring capabilities, refining incident response plans tailored to update failures, and fostering proactive vendor relationships are crucial,” .
The CrowdStrike incident highlights the need for CIOs to revisit and fortify their cloud strategies. By implementing robust risk management practices, enhancing security measures, and diversifying cloud solutions, organizations can better protect themselves against future disruptions.
As the industry deals with the aftermath of this event, the focus should now to building resilient, adaptable, and well-tested cloud strategies to manage an ever increasing complex digital landscape.
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