Cisco CallManager Express Basic Concepts - Part 2
Our previous article, Cisco CallManager Express Basic Concepts - Part 1 covered the very basic concepts of CCME and its operation. This article continues with the Cisco CallManager Express basic concepts will examine and analyse the ephone, ephone-dn concepts, how to configure ip phones and voip-bandwidth considerations.
Understanding Ephone & Ephone-dn
The Cisco CallManager Express system consists of a router (or simply a 'box' for the UC 500 series) that serves as a voice gateway (PBX) and one or more VLANs that connect IP phones and phone devices to the router.
All type of PBXs consist of physical phones and their internal directory numbers (extensions). The same concept applies in CallManager Express. The physical phones are referred to as 'ephone' which stands for 'Ethernet Phone' and the directory numbers as 'ephone-dn' short for 'Ethernet Phone Directory Number':
An ephone can represent any type/model of physical phone available and supported by Cisco. CallManager Express will recognise a physical phone device from its ephone configuration which also contains the device's MAC address.
For example, a Cisco 7945 IP Phone with a MAC address of 0027.0D3F.30B8 represents the ephone. Directory number 32 assigned to this phone represents the ephone-dn number.
Directory numbers are assigned to line buttons on phones during configuration.
This means that each physical IP Phone must be configured as an ephone. Cisco CallManager Express will recognise the physical phone from its ephone configuration MAC Address parameter.
Configuring an IP Phone in CME is a straightforward process and involves the creation of an ephone and ephone-dn entry.
The ephone holds the phone's MAC Address and button configuation, while the ephone-dn the directory number assigned to the IP Phone.
In the example above, the ephone 1 configuration binds the phone's first button (button 1) to the ephone-dn 20. Since ephone-dn 20 has been configured with directory number 300, the IP Phone will be assigned directory number 300.
To ensure we understand this concept, consider the following example:
Using the same scenario we've created three ephone-dn entries, a total of three directory numbers. We would now like to assign Phone 1, directory number 380. All that is required is to map button 1 to the approriate ephone-dn that contains number 380, that is ephone-dn 22. To achieve this, we issue the button 1:22 command under the ephone 1 configuration. IP Phone 1 now has directory number 380!
VoIP Bandwidth - Codecs
VoIP calls, just as any other network resource, require bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth required per call is governed by the type of codec configured by the system. Cisco CME and UC500 series support a variety of different codecs, making the system extremely flexible to cover any requirement.
By default, the codec used by Call Manager Express and UC500 series, is G.711 which requires 64Kbps of bandwidth – the same amount of bandwidth used by telecommunication providers for one call. Note that 64Kbps is the data payload, this means when captured into an Ethernet packet, the total amount of bandwidth will be the data payload plus the IP packet overhead, bringing the total amount to 87.2 Kbps. This is the actual bandwidth required per call per phone on an Ethernet network.
The amount of 87.2 Kbps might not seem large for an Ethernet network, however, when we need to pass the call over a WAN network this changes completely. WAN networks require bandwidth-optimised applications and services and there is no exception for VoIP calls.
For this reason, when we are dealing with situations that require optimised bandwidth control, we switch to different codecs that have much smaller bandwidth requirements, essentially allowing us to conserve precious bandwidth and money. In these cases, the G.729 codec is usually preferred, requiring only 31.2 Kbps, a generous saving of 56Kbps! In practice, this means that you can squeeze almost three G.729 VoIP calls using the same amount of bandwidth required by one G.711 VoIP call!
Apart from the evident difference in bandwidth requirements for each codec, there is also a noticeable difference in the quality of the call, G.711 being far superior in comparison with the G.729. To help provide an example, the quality of a G.711 call is similar to that of a call made between two ISDN land lines whereas a good example of G.729 quality would be a call between two mobile phones.
Taking in consideration that the quality of mobile phone calls is acceptable to everyone today, not many would complain if they had the same quality between site-to-site calls.
Of course there are other codecs that require a different amount of bandwidth, however, the two most important and popular are the G.711 and G.729 codecs. These codecs can be further configured to change their bandwidth requirements, but that's a topic to be covered in the future.
Summary
This article covered the introduction to Cisco's Call Manager Express which runs on Cisco routers and UC 500 series appliances (including UC520, UC540 & UC560). Basic concepts of VoIP technologies were introduced along with some important configuration theory related to CME's operation. Users interested can also read our Cisco CallManager Express Basic Concepts - Part 1 article.
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Figure 4. Configuring Teaming Mode, Load Balancing Mode and NIC Team members
Figure 5. Viewing NIC Teams, their status, speed, Teaming mode, Load balancing mode and more
Figure 6. The newly created NIC Team Adapter in Windows 2012 Server
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Figure 1. Installation Welcome Screen
Figure 2. Altaro Hyper-V Installation Complete
Figure 3. Connecting to the Hyper-V Agent Remotely
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Figure 1. DNS Installation via Active Directory Services Deployment
Figure 2. Selecting Role-based or feature-based installation
Figure 3. Selecting the Server that will host the DNS server role
Figure 4. Selecting the DNS Server Role for installation
Figure 5. DNS Information
Figure 6. Confirm Installation Selections
Figure 7. Installation Progress
Figure 8. DNS Manager & DNS Zones
Figure 9. DNS Forwarders – Add your ISP or Public DNS Servers here
Figure 10. Advanced Options - Scavenging
Figure 11. Root Hints
Figure 12. Monitoring Tab – Configuring Automated DNS Test Queries
Figure 13. Event Logging
Figure 14. Debug Logging – Capturing DNS Packets & Configuring DNS Debugging
Figure 15. Zone Properties
Figure 16. Start Of Authority Settings
Figure 17. DNS Name Servers
Figure 18. Zone Transfers
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Figure 
Figure 1. GPO Objects
Figure 2. Group Policy Settings
Figure 3. GPO Scenario
Figure 4. Open GPMC
Figure 5. Select FW Users and Create a GPO
Figure 6. Creating our Wallpaper Group Policy Object
Figure 7. Editing a Group Policy Object
Figure 8. Selecting and editing Desktop Wallpaper policy
Figure 9. Configure Desktop Wallpaper
Figure 10. User Login
Figure 11. Computer Desktop Wallpaper Changed
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Add Role and Features
Traditional Server Deployment
Hyper-V Server Consolidation
Hyper-V Networking
Figure 2. Windows Server 2012 PowerShell
Figure 4. Windows Server 2012 - Storage Space
On the 1st of August, 2012 Microsoft released Windows Server 2012– the sixth release of the Windows Server product family. On May 21st 2013, Windows Server 2012 R2 was introduced and is now the latest version of Windows Server in the market. Microsoft has released four different editions of Windows Server 2012 varying in cost, licensing and features. These four editions of Windows Server 2012 R2 are: Windows 2012 Foundation edition, Windows 2012 Essentials edition, Windows 2012 Standard edition and Windows 2012 Datacenter edition.
The Show Desktop feature, included with almost all versions of Windows up to Windows 7, allows a user to minimize or restore all open programs and easily view the desktop. To use this feature, a user must simply click Show Desktop on the Quicklaunch toolbar to the right of the taskbar.
Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 (including Professional edition) operating systems provide the ability to turn your workstation or laptop into a secure wireless access point, allowing wireless clients (including mobile devices) to connect to the local network or Internet. This feature can save you time, money and frustration when there is need to connect wireless devices to the network or Internet but there is no access point available.
Figure 5. Network Connections – Ethernet Adapter Properties
Figure 6. Enabling sharing and selecting the newly created virtual adapter
Backing up your Windows License Product Key is essential for reinstallation of your Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 operating system. In some cases, the Genuine Microsoft Label or Certificate Of Authenticity (COA) containing the product key, is placed in an area not easily accessible by users e.g inside the battery compartment in newer ultrabooks/laptops, making it difficult to note the product key.
Figure 2. Running the script reveals our Product Key
Figure 3. Saving your Windows information to a text file
Thanks to the absence of dedicated serial ports on today’s laptops and ultrabooks, USB-to-Serial adapters are very popular amongst Cisco engineers as they are used to perform the initial configuration of a variety of Cisco equipment such as routers, catalyst switches, wireless controllers (WLC), access points and more, via their Console Port. The most common USB-to-Serial adapters in the market are based on Profilic’s PL2303 chipset.
Figure 1. Prolific Adapter in Device Manager
Figure 2. Prolific Adapter Error Code 10
Figure 3. Updating the Drivers from Device Manager
Figure 4. Select Browse my computer for driver software
Figure 5. Select Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer
Figure 6. Install Driver version 3.3.2.102
Figure 7. Driver successfully installed
Figure 8. Fully operational USB-to-Serial adapter
Figure 1. Creating a New Folder
Figure 2. Create a new folder & rename it to reveal GodMode
Figure 3. The GodMode Screen
Figure 1. Hosts & lmhosts.sam files in File Explorer
Figure 1. Running CMD as Administrator
Figure 2. The Administrative Command Prompt Windows 7
Figure 3. Finding Our Network Adapter ID
Figure 4. Verifying Our New Network Settings
Figure 5. Wireless Icon with no Exclamation Mark
Windows 8 & 8.1 hides two types of files so that normally, you do not see them while exploring your computer. The first type is the files or folders with their 'H' attribute set to make them hidden. The other type is Windows System files. The reason behind hiding these files is that users could inadvertently tamper with them or even delete those causing the operations of Windows 8/8.1 to fail. This article explains how you can configure Windows 8 or 8.1 to show all hidden files and folders, plus show Windows system files.
Figure 1. Icons in the Windows Panel
Figure 2. File Explorer showing hidden folders and files
Figure 3. Windows Charms
Figure 4. Control Panel
Figure 5. Control Panel - Folder Options
Figure 6. Folder Options Screen
This article shows you how to see hiddeen files and folders in Windows 7. Windows 7 hides important system files so that normally, you do not see them while exploring your computer.
Figure 1. Icons in the Windows Panel
Figure 2. Organize Menu
Figure 3. Show hidden files, folders and drives & Hide extensions for known file types
Figure 4. Start Menu
Figure 5. Appearance and Personalization screen
Figure 7. C: Drive showing hidden folders
Figure 1. Windows 8/8.1 in Safe Mode
Figure 2. Windows Key +X
Figure 3. Power User Tasks Menu
Figure 4. Administrative Command Prompt - Enable F8 Boot Function
Figure 5. Administrative Command Prompt - Disable F8 Boot Function
Figure 1. Search Settings
Figure 2. Advanced Settings Search Result
Figure 3. PC Settings
Figure 4. Choose Options
Figure 5. Troubleshoot Menu
Figure 6. Advanced Options Menu
Figure 7. Startup Settings Screen
Figure 8. Startup Settings Boot Menu
Figure 1. FW-CL1 IPconfig
Figure 2. System Settings
Figure 3. System Properties
Figure 4. Adding PC to Domain
Figure 5. Enter Domain Credentials
Figure 6. Member of Domain
Not many people are aware that Windows 7 has built-in capabilities that allow it to be transformed into a perfectly working access point so that wireless clients such as laptops, smartphones and others can connect to the local network or obtain Internet access. Turning a Windows 7 system into an access point is an extremely useful feature, especially when there is the need to connect other wireless devices to the Internet with no access point available.
Security researchers at qualys.com yesterday released information on a critical 15 year-old Linux security hole which affects millions of Linux systems dated back to the year 2000. The newly published security hole – code named ‘Ghost’ was revealed yesterday by Qualy’s security group on openwall.com.
In this article, we’ll show you how to setup or install Microsoft Windows 11 on VMware’s ESXi servers and bypass the Trusted Platform Module version 2.0 (TPM 2.0) requirement. We've also made the 
Windows 11 Installation Error in VMware ESXi
Businesses that rely on virtual machines for their day-to-day operations should think twice about securing their infrastructure. Modern use of virtual machines stems from the benefits of virtualization, which include accessibility, reduced operating costs, and flexibility, among others. But your virtual infrastructure becomes obsolete without proper security. One way to achieve that is through virtual machine backup and recovery solutions.
In this article we will cover the differences between VMware ESXi, vSphere and vCenter while also explain the features supported by each vSphere edition: vSphere Standard, Enterprise plus and Plantium edition. We will touch on the differences and limitations between VMware Workstation Player and VMware Workstation Pro, and also compare them with EXSi Free and EXSi Paid editions.
You will notice that this vSphere feature table contains many different technologies which are found in different VMware software components.
VMware Workstation Player and Pro both get installed onto your Windows PC or Laptop, on which you can run your virtual machines. Pro is interesting because you can run as many Virtual Machines as your Windows PC or Laptop hardware can handle making it a great bit of software for running live product demonstrations or testing without needing access to remote infrastructure managed by another team. The key element here is to ensure your laptop or PC has enough resources available (CPU/Cores, RAM and HDD space) for the Virtual Machines that will be running on it.
SysAdmin Day
When considering your 
Backup and Disaster recovery are core considerations for any business with an IT footprint, whether that is on-premises or in the cloud.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of IT operations, organizations are increasingly turning to Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) to streamline their processes, enhance efficiency, and overcome the challenges of managing complex and dynamic IT environments.
Event noise filtering with the help of AIOps (
Effective monitoring and management of 
As technology evolves, so do our networks. Today's sprawling network infrastructures are intricate ecosystems, demanding more from IT teams than ever before. Configuration management, compliance enforcement, and firmware & software updates are just a few of the growing requirements that strain manual processes.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of cyber threats, network security has never been more crucial. With the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks escalating, organizations are under constant pressure to safeguard their networks. According to Sophos' 
Network alerts are vital for maintaining your network's health, efficiency, and security, ensuring seamless daily operations. They act as an 
Demands for Enterprise networks to properly support mobile users is on a continuous rise making it more than ever necessary for IT departments to provide high-quality services to its users. This article covers 4 key-areas affecting mobile users and Enterprise networks: Wi-Fi coverage (signal strength – signal-to-noise ratio), Bandwidth Monitoring (Wi-Fi Links, Network Backbone, routers, congestion), Shadow IT (Usage of unauthorized apps) and security breaches.
In today's interconnected digital landscape, where businesses rely heavily on networked systems and the internet for their operations, the importance of cybersecurity cannot be overstated. Among the essential tools in a cybersecurity arsenal, firewalls stand as a frontline defense against cyber threats and malicious actors.
The utilization of log analyzers, such as 
In the wake of 
This is the process of managing and organizing your firewall rules. These firewall rules and policies dictate the traffic that is entering and exiting your network, and can also be used to block illegitimate traffic.
This article explores the exciting new features of Windows Server 2022 and emphasizes the critical role of analyzing Windows Server logs. You'll also discover how EventLog Analyzer provides comprehensive, helps you achieve 360-degree protection against threats targeting these logs, ensuring robust security for your server environment.
Windows Servers
An event log monitoring system, often referred to as an event log management, is a critical component to IT security & Management, that helps organizations strengthen their cybersecurity posture. It’s a sophisticated software solution designed to capture, analyze, and interpret a vast array of event logs generated by various components within an organization's IT infrastructure such as firewalls (
This article will help you understand TCP SYN Flood Attacks, show how to perform a SYN Flood Attack (DoS attack) using Kali Linux & hping3 and correctly identify one using the Wireshark protocol analyser. We’ve included all necessary screenshots and easy to follow instructions that will ensure an enjoyable learning experience for both beginners and advanced IT professionals.
This article explains how to detect a SYN Flood Attack using an advanced protocol analyser like Colasoft Capsa. We’ll show you how to identify and inspect abnormal traffic spikes, drill into captured packets and identify evidence of flood attacks. Furthermore we’ll configure Colasoft Capsa to automatically detect SYN Flood Attacks and send automated alert notifications .
Brute-force attacks are commonly known attack methods by which hackers try to get access to restricted accounts and data using an exhaustive list/database of usernames and passwords. Brute-force attacks can be used, in theory, against almost any encrypted data.
Colasoft Unified Performance Management (UPM) is a business-oriented network performance management system, which analyzes network performance, quality, fault, and security issues based on business. By providing visual analysis of business performances, Colasoft UPM helps users promote business-oriented proactive network operational capability, ensure the stable running of businesses, and enhance troubleshooting efficiency.
Peer-to-Peer file sharing traffic has become a very large problem for many organizations as users engage in illegal (most times) file sharing processes that not only consumes valuable bandwidth, but also places the organization in danger as high-risk connections are made from the Internet to the internal network and malware, pirated or copyrighted material or pornography is downloaded into the organization’s systems. The fact is that torrent traffic is responsible for over 29% of US Internet's traffic in North America, indicating how big the problem is.
Troubleshooting network problems can be a very difficult and challenging task. While most IT engineers use a network analyzer to help solve network problems, when analyzing hundreds or thousands of packets, it can become very hard to locate and further research conversations between hosts. Colasoft’s Capsa v8 now introduces a new feature that allows us to highlight-colorize relevant IP conversations in the network based on their MAC address, IP Addresses, TCP or UDP conversations.
Figure 1. Selecting our Time-Range, and IP Address of interest from Link Analysis
Figure 2. nChronos HTTP Reconstruction feature in progress.
Figure 3. The HTTP Reconstruction process completed
Troubleshooting network problems can be a very intensive and challenging process. Intermittent network problems are even more difficult to troubleshoot as the problem occurs at random times with a random duration, making it very hard to capture the necessary information, perform troubleshooting, identify and resolve the network problem.
When working with medium to large scale networks, IT departments are often faced dealing with network loops and 
The developers of the popular software PBX, 3CX, have announced another major update to their unified communications solution! The latest release, 3CX v15.5, makes the phone system faster, more secure and more reliable with a number of improvements and brand new features. 
Web-Client provides leading features packed in an easy-to-use GUI
IP PBX Web Client with integrated Web Conferencing Free of Charge!
Click-to-Call Feature from any Web page or CRM
Crazy as it might sound there is one Unified Communications provider who is giving out free fully functional cloud-based PBX systems without obligation from its users/customers.
Thanks to its support for any SIP-based IP phone and mobile device (iPhone, Android, iPad, Tablet etc.) the 3CX IP PBX has quickly become the No.1 preferred solution.
3CX
VoIP/ IP PBXs and Unified Communication systems have become extremely popular the past decade and are the No.1 preference when upgrading an existing or installing a new phone system. IP PBXs are based on the IP protocol allowing them to use the existing network infrastructure and deliver enhanced communication services that help organizations collaborate and communicate from anywhere in the world with minimum or no costs.
Recent and continuous website security breaches on large organizations, federal government agencies, banks and thousands of companies world-wide, has once again verified the importance of website and web application security to prevent hackers from gaining access to sensitive data while keeping corporate websites as safe as possible. Though many encounter a lot of problems when it comes to web application security; it is a pretty heavy filed to dig into.
Without web hosting services most websites would not exist. The most popular methods to host web applications are:regular hosting, where your web application is hosted on a dedicated server that is intended for your website only, and shared hosting, where you share a web server with other users who will in turn run their own web application on the same server.
Most successful attacks against web applications are due to insecure code and not the underlying platform itself. Case in point, 
When using software that has been developed by a third party, the best way to ensure that the code is secure would be to apply the latest updates. A simple web application will make use of numerous components that can lead to successful attacks if left unpatched. For example, both PHP and MySQL were vulnerable to exploits at a point in time but were later patched, and a default Linux webserver installation will include multiple services all of which need to be updated regularly to avoid vulnerable builds of software being exploited.
While updating software will ensure that no known vulnerabilities are present on your system, there may still be entry points where an attacker can access your system that have been missed in our previous tips. This is where firewalls come into play. A firewall is necessary as it will limit traffic depending on your configuration and can also be found on most operating systems by default.
No amount of code reviews and updates can ensure that the end product is not vulnerable and cannot be exploited. Code reviews are limited since the executed code is not being analysed, which is why web vulnerability scanning is essential. Web scanners will view the web application as a black box, where they will be analysing the finished product, which is not possible with white box scanning or code reviews. Meanwhile, some scanners will also provide you with the option to perform grey box scanning, by combining website scans and a backend agent that can analyse code.
It is imperative to know if your web application has been subjected to an attack. Monitoring the web application, and the server hosting it, would be the best way to ensure that even if an attacker gets past your defence systems, at least you will know how, when and from where it happened. There may be cases when a website is brought offline due to an attack and the owner would not even know about the incident but will find out after precious time has passed.
Monitoring, Auditing and obtaining Security Alerts for websites and blogs based on popular CMS systems such as WordPress, has become a necessity. Bugs, security exploits and security holes are being continuously discovered for every WordPress version making monitoring and auditing a high security priority. In addition, multi-user environments are often used for large WordPress websites, making it equally important to monitor WordPress user activity.
SQL Injections have been keeping security experts busy for over a decade now as they continue to be one of the most common type of attacks against webservers, websites and web application servers. In this article, we explain what a SQL injection is, show you SQL injection examples and analyse how these type of attacks manage to exploit web applications and webservers, providing hackers access to sensitive data.
A few weeks back Security Weekly interviewed Ferruh Mavituna, Netsparker’s CEO and Product Architect. Security Weekly is a popular podcast that provides free content within the subject matter of IT security news, vulnerabilities, hacking, and research and frequently interviews industry leaders such as John Mcafee, Jack Daniel and Bruce Schneier.
8th of May 2015, Netsparker annouced yesterday the discovery of critical security vulnerability contained an HTML file found on many WordPress themes, including WordPress.org hosted websites. As reported by Netsparker the specific HTML file is vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks and session hijack. WordPress.org has already issued an official annoucement and patch (v4.2.2) and recommends WordPress administrators update their website files and themes.
In the world of information security there exist many tools, from small open source products to full appliances to secure a system, a network, or an entire corporate infrastructure. Of course, everyone is familiar with the concept of a firewall – even movies like Swordfish and TV shows like NCIS have so very perfectly described, in riveting detail, what a firewall is. But there are other, perhaps less sexy utilities in a security paradigm.
Many websites and web applications are like a human fingerprints, with no two being alike. Of course, many websites may use a common backend engine – Wordpress, an MVC framework like Laravel or Ruby on Rails, etc. – but the layers on top of those engines, such as plugins or custom coded additions, are often a quite unique collection. 
Have you ever tried to make a list of all the attack surfaces you need to secure on your networks and web farms? Try to do it and there will be one thing that will stand out; keeping websites and web applications secure. We have firewalls, IDS and IPS systems that inspect every packet that reaches our servers and are able to drop it should it be flagged as malicious, but what about web applications?
Many automated security tools exist not to test and find security holes, but to exploit them when found. Black-hat hackers intent on disrupting your web application possess automated suites as well, because they too, know a manual approach is a waste of time (that is, until they find a useful exploit, and by then it’s sometimes too late).
Netsparker use open source web applications such as Twiki for a total different purpose than what they were intended for. They used them to test their own web application security scanners.
Long gone are the days where a simple port scan on a company’s webserver or website was considered enough to identify security issues and exploits that needed to be patched. With all the recent attacks on websites and webservers which caused millions of dollars in damage, we thought it would be a great idea to analyze the implications vulnerable webservers and websites have for companies, while providing useful information to help IT Departments, security engineers and application developers proactively avoid unwanted situations.
In late February – early March 2014, the eBay database that held customer names, encrypted passwords, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and other personal information, was compromised, exposing sensitive information to hackers. [Source: bgr.com website]
In June 2014, JPMorgan Chase bank was hit badly and had sensitive personal and financial data exposed for over 80 million accounts. The hackers appeared to obtain a list of the applications and programs that run on the company’s computers and then crosschecked them with known vulnerabilities for each program and web application in order to find an entry point back into the bank’s systems.
In February 2014, the Forbes.com website was succumbed to an attack that leaked over 1 million user accounts that contained email addresses, passwords and more. The Forbes.com Wordpress-based backend site was defaced with a number of news posts. [Source: cnet.com website]
In January 2014, Snapchat’s popular website had over 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers exposed due to a brute force enumeration attack against their Snapchat API. The information was publicly posted on several other sites, creating a major security concern for Snapchat and its users.
In 2013 a massive underground attack was uncovered, revealing that over 160 million credit and debit cards were stolen during the past seven years. Five Russians and Ukrainians used advanced hacking techniques to steal the information during these years. Attackers targeted over 800,000 bank accounts and penetrated servers used by the Nasdaq stock exchange.
In 2010, a major security breach on AT&T’s website compromised over 114,000 customer accounts, revealing names, email addresses and other information. AT&T acknowledged the attack on its webservers and commented that the risk was limited to the subscriber’s email address. 
In 2013, during the period 27th of November and 15th of December more than 98 million credit and debit card accounts were stolen from 1,787 Target stores across the United States. Hackers managed to install malware on Target’s computer systems to capture customers cards and then installed an exfiltration malware to move stolen credit card numbers to staging points around the United States in order to cover their tracks. The information was then moved to the hackers computers located in Russia.
This article expands on our popular 
In June 2014, Evernote and Feedly, working largely in tandem, went down with a DDoS attack within two days of each other. Evernote recovered the same day, but Feedly had to suffer more. Although there were two more DDoS attacks on Feedly that caused it to lose business for another two days, normalcy was finally restored. According to the CEO of Feedly, they refused to give in to the demands of ransom in exchange for ending the attack and were successful in neutralizing the threat.
Domino's Pizza had over 600,000 Belgian and French customer records stolen by the hacking group Rex Mundi. The attackers demanded $40,000 from the fast food chain in exchange for not publishing the data online. It is not clear whether Domino's complied with the ransom demands. However, they reassured their customers that although the attackers did have their names, addresses and phone numbers, they however, were unsuccessful in stealing their financial and banking information. The Twitter account of the hacking group was suspended, and they never released the information.
Companies and users around the world are struggling to keep their network environments safe from malicious attacks and hijacking attempts by leveraging services provided by high-end firewalls, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), antivirus software and other means. While these appliances can mitigate attacks and hacking attempts, we often see the whole security infrastructure failing because of attacks initiated from the inside, effectively by-passing all protection offered by these systems.
Cybercriminals are now focusing their attention on small and mid-sized businesses because they are typically easier targets than large, multinational corporations.
This is the age of networks. Long ago, they said, ‘the mainframe is the computer’. Then it changed to ‘the PC is the computer’. That was followed by ‘the network is the computer’. Our world has been shrunk, enlightened and speeded up by this globe encapsulating mesh of interconnectivity. Isolation is a thing of the past. Now my phone brings up my entire music collection residing on my home computer. My car navigates around the city, avoiding traffic in real time. We have started living in intelligent homes where we can control objects within it remotely.
secure documents were stolen. This resulted in an internal cyber man-hunt. The bait was laid and all further intrusions were monitored. A team of 50 Federal Agents finally tracked down 2 hackers who were using US based social networking systems to hack into the Airforce Base. But it was later revealed that the scope of intrusion was not just limited to the base itself: they had infiltrated a much bigger military organisation. The perpetrators were hackers with the aliases of ‘datastreamcowboy’ and ‘kuji’.
2005: Miami, Florida. A Miami hacker made history in cyber theft. Alberto Gonzales would drive around Miami streets looking for unsecured wireless networks. He hooked onto the unsecure wireless network of a retailer, used it to reach the retailer’s headquarters and stole credit card numbers from its databases. He then sold these card details to Eastern European cyber criminals. In the first year, he stole 11.2 million card details. By the end of the second year he had stolen about 90 million card details.
The “Cisco Firepower and Advanced Malware Protection Live Lessons” video series by Omar Santos is the icing on the cake for someone who wants to start their journey of Cisco Next-Generation Network Security. This video series contains eight lessons on the following topics:
Kevin Wallace is a well-known name in the Cisco industry. Most Cisco engineers and Cisco certification candidates know Kevin from his 
Vivek Tiwari holds a Bachelor’s degree in Physics, MBA and many certifications from multiple vendors including Cisco’s CCIE. With a double CCIE on R&S and SP track under his belt he mentors and coaches other engineers. 
Akhil Behl is a Senior Network Consultant with Cisco Advanced Services, focusing on Cisco Collaboration and Security architectures. He leads Collaboration and Security projects worldwide for Cisco Services and the Collaborative Professional Services (CPS) portfolio for the commercial segment. Prior to his current role, he spent 10 years working in various roles at Linksys, Cisco TAC, and Cisco AS. He holds CCIE (Voice and Security), PMP, ITIL, VMware VCP, and MCP certifications.
GFI has once again managed to make a difference: They recently published a free eBook named "Cloud-based network monitoring: The new paradigm" as part of their GFI Cloud offerings.
The screenshot above gives you an idea of what the Server Administration page looks like, which is the first page that would open up once the user has logged in. This is the System Information page. On the left pane you will find several other pages to look at i.e. Basic Settings which displays default port info and HDD info of the host machine, User Account (name says it all), and Audit Log (which will basically show the audit trail of user activity.) 
The Internet connection is vital for many Small to Medium or Large-sized enterprises, but it can also be one of the biggest headaches. How can you know who is doing what? How can you enforce a usage policy? And how can you protect your organisation against internet-borne threats? Larger companies tend to have sophisticated firewalls and border protection devices, but how do you protect yourself when your budget won’t run to such hardware? This is precisely the niche GFI has addressed with GFI WebMonitor.
Many of the displays are clickable allowing you to easily drill down into the data, and if you hover the mouse you’ll get handy pop-up explanations. We were able to go from the overview to the detailed activities of an individual user with just a few clicks. A user here is a single source IP, in other words a particular PC rather that the person using it. Ideally we would have liked the product to query the Active Directory domain controller and nail down the actual logged-on user but to be honest given the reasonable price and the product’s undoubted usefulness we’re not going to quibble.
GFI Software has just revealed GFI OneConnect Beta – its latest Advanced Email Security Protection product. GFI OneConnect is a comprehensive solution that targets the safe and continuous delivery of business emails to organizations around the world.
Ensuring users follow company policies when accessing the internet has become a real challenge for businesses and IT staff. The legal implications for businesses not taking measures to enforce acceptable user policies (where possible) can become very complicated and businesses can, in fact, be held liable for damages caused by their users or guests.
For every business, established or emerging, the Internet is an essential tool which has proved to be indispensable. The usefulness of the internet can be counteracted by abuse of it, by a business’s employees or guests. Activities such as downloading or sharing illegal content, visiting high risk websites and accessing malicious content are serious security risks for any business.
In this era of constantly pushing for more productivity and greater efficiency, it is essential that every resource devoted to web access within a business is utilised for business benefit. Unless the company concerned is in the business of gaming or social media, etc. it is unwise to use resources like internet/web access, and the infrastructure supporting it, for a purpose other than business. Like they say, “Nothing personal, just business”
In our previous article we analysed the risks and implications involved for businesses when there are no security or restriction policies and systems in place to stop users distributing illegal content (torrents). We also spoke about unauthorized access to company systems, sharing sensitive company information and more. This article talks about how specialized systems such as WebMonitor are capable of helping businesses stop torrent applications accessing the internet, control the websites users access, block remote control software (Teamviewer, Remote Desktop, Ammy Admin etc) and put a stop to users wasting bandwidth, time and company money while at work.
Senior IT Managers, engineers and administrators surely remember the days where controlling TCP/UDP ports at the Firewall level was enough to block or provide applications access to the internet. For some years now, this is no longer a valid way of application control, as most ‘unwanted’ applications can smartly use common ports such as HTTP (80) or HTTPS (443) to circumvent security policies, passing inspection and freely accessing the internet.
Apart from the imminent security risk, users who have uncontrollable access are also wasting bandwidth – that’s bandwidth the organization is paying for - and are likely to slow down the internet for the rest who are legitimately trying to get work done. In cases where VPNs are running over the same lines then VPN users, remote branches and mobile users are most likely to experience slow connection speeds when accessing the organization’s resources over the internet.
One of the largest problems faced by organizations of any size is effectively controlling user internet access (from laptops, mobile devices, workstations etc), minimizing the security threats for the organization (ransomware – data loss prevention), user copyright infringement (torrent downloading/sharing movies, games, music etc) and discover where valuable WAN-Internet bandwidth is being wasted.
Most Businesses are completely unaware of how serious these matters are and the risks they are taking while dealing with other ‘more important’ matters.
While illegal downloading is one major threat for businesses, stopping users sharing company data and sensitive information (aka Data Loss Prevention or DLP) is another big problem.
In late 2015, popular Ammy Admin – a remote control software, was 
Figure 2. GFI LanGuard custom software deployment using a parameter for silent installation
GFI LanGuard Agents are designed to be deployed on local (network) or remote servers and workstations. Once installed, the GFI LanGuard Agents can then be configured via LanGuard’s main server console, giving the administrator full control as to when the Agents will scan the host they are installed on, and communicate their status to the GFI LanGuard server.
This article shows how any IT Administrator, network engineer or security auditor can quickly scan a network using GFI’s LanGuard and identify the different systems such as Windows, Linux, Android etc. More importantly, we’ll show how to uncover vulnerable, unpatched or high-risk Windows systems including Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012 R2, Domain Controllers, Linux Servers such as RedHat Enterprise, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, openSuse, Fedora, any type of Windows workstation (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1,10) and Apple OS X.
Cisco announced a major update to their CCNA, CCNP and CCIE certification program at Cisco Live last week, with the changes happening on the 24th February 2020.
So you’ve heard all about Windows Server 2019 - now you can see it in action in a live demo webinar on November 8th! The last WS2019 webinar by Altaro was hugely popular with over 4,500 IT pros registering for the event. Feedback from gathered with that webinar and the most popular features will now be tested live by Microsoft MVP Andy Syrewicze. And you’re invited!
Downloading all necessary drivers and firmware upgrades for your HP Proliant server is very important, especially if hardware compatibility is critical for new operating system installations or virtualized environments (VMware – HyperV). Til recently, HP customers could download the HP Service Pack (SPP) for Proliant servers free of charge, but that’s no longer the story as HP is forcing customers to pay up in order to get access to its popular SPP package.
February 23, 2016 – Colasoft LLC, a leading provider of innovative and affordable network analysis solutions, today announced the availability of Colasoft Capsa Network Analyzer v8.2, a real-time portable network analyzer for wired and wireless network monitoring, bandwidth analysis, and intrusion detection. The data flow display and protocols recognition are optimized in Capsa Network Analyzer 8.2.
Figure 1. Dual firewall configuration 
Broadband access to the Internet by cable modem promises users lightning-fast download speeds and an always-on connection. And recent converts to broadband from dial-up technology are thrilled with complex Web screens that download before their coffee gets cold.
Firewall.cx’s download section now includes the 
Cisco Lab No.3 - Three high-end Cisco switches flooded in blue lighting, making VLAN services a reality.
