Podcasts about sd wan

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2026

GEODIS Brings an End-User View of Cisco Infrastructure Modernization to Cisco Live, Podcast, GEODIS shares how Cisco IQ, Cisco Services and SD-WAN are helping a global logistics company move from reactive IT to proactive lifecycle management By Doug Green “I'm just a guy in IT that's using an extraordinary product that I feel deserves the attention that it's getting.” In this Cisco Live podcast, I spoke with Scott Malone, Vice President of IT Infrastructure for GEODIS, about how a global supply chain and logistics company is using Cisco technology to strengthen visibility, resilience and operational control across a complex enterprise environment. GEODIS is an end-to-end supply chain company supporting freight forwarding, contract logistics, distribution, express delivery and road transport. For a company operating across multiple lines of business and global markets, infrastructure reliability is not just an IT concern. It is part of the company's ability to serve customers and keep logistics operations moving. Malone brought a valuable end-user perspective to the conversation. Speaking shortly after presenting on stage at Cisco Live, he described GEODIS as a company working to modernize critical IT infrastructure while giving teams better tools to understand, manage and secure the environment. A central theme of the discussion was the shift from reactive maintenance to proactive lifecycle management. Through Cisco IQ, GEODIS has gained greater visibility into infrastructure health, vulnerabilities and areas requiring attention. That insight helps the IT team prioritize work, focus resources and move faster on remediation. Malone also discussed how GEODIS is working with Cisco Services and Cisco SD-WAN to build a more resilient architecture. The company's goal is to support high availability across a distributed footprint while continuing to modernize remote access and LAN core infrastructure. For Technology Reseller News readers, the GEODIS story offers a clear look at what enterprise IT buyers value in today's environment: visibility, security, uptime, lifecycle intelligence and trusted support. The conversation also shows how Cisco's broader portfolio can help large organizations move beyond point solutions toward a more proactive operating model. As logistics, data, applications and customer expectations become increasingly dependent on always-available networks, GEODIS provides a practical example of how infrastructure modernization is becoming a business requirement. Learn more at: https://www.geodis.com/

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NB575: AI Multipath Protocol Goes to Open Compute Project; Cisco Shrinks Workforce as Income Swells

Packet Pushers - Network Break

Play Episode Listen Later May 18, 2026 29:02

Take a Network Break! In this week’s Red Alert we suggest an audit of your Azure environment after Microsoft says it patched four critical vulnerabilities. On the news front, Nvidia has brought the Multipath Reliable Connection (MCR) protocol to the Open Compute Project, AT&T rolls out quantum-resistant SD-WAN services, and HPE introduces new Wi-Fi automation... Read more »

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NB575: AI Multipath Protocol Goes to Open Compute Project; Cisco Shrinks Workforce as Income Swells

Play Episode Listen Later May 18, 2026 29:02

technology news project tech microsoft networking income markets wifi analysis workforce nvidia protocol cisco azure red alert hpe shrinks sd wan swells open compute

NB575: AI Multipath Protocol Goes to Open Compute Project; Cisco Shrinks Workforce as Income Swells

SANS Internet Stormcenter Daily Network/Cyber Security and Information Security Stormcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 18, 2026 29:02

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SANS Stormcast Friday, May 15th, 2026: Website Fraud; Outlook Link Preview Bug; NGINX Vuln; Cisco 0-Day

Play Episode Listen Later May 15, 2026 6:54

Tearing apart website fraud to see how it works. (@sans_edu) https://isc.sans.edu/diary/%5BGUEST%20DIARY%5D%20Tearing%20apart%20website%20fraud%20to%20see%20how%20it%20works./32958 Simple bypass of the link preview function in Outlook Junk folder https://isc.sans.edu/diary/Simple%20bypass%20of%20the%20link%20preview%20function%20in%20Outlook%20Junk%20folder/32990 NGINX Vulnerability https://depthfirst.com/nginx-rift Cisco SDWan 0-Day https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-sdwan-rpa2-v69WY2SW

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514 - Attack Analytics

Reversim Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 6, 2026

פרק מספר 514 של רברס עם פלטפורמה - Attack Analytics. בפרק זה רן ואורי מארחים את ד"ר גיא וייזל, Tech Evangelist בחברת Cato Networks, לשיחה מרתקת על האופן שבו בינה מלאכותית משנה את חוקי המשחק בעולם הסייבר. דיברנו על מודלי AI מתקדמים, כיצד הם מאיצים מתקפות של האקרים אך גם משפרים את יכולות ההגנה, ואיך פרוטוקולים עתיקים יכולים להוות נקודת תורפה מסוכנת לתשתיות פיזיות. [00:00] ל"ג בעומר, כנס רברסים ופתיחת הפרק חג שמח! מקליטים על הדרך למדורה של רבי שמעון. עדכונים לגבי כנס רברסים 2026: אנחנו כבר עובדים במרץ ומגייסים ספונסרים לכנס הקהילתי. אם הארגון שלכם מעוניין לתמוך, מוזמנים לשלוח לנו מייל ל-team@reversim.com (או כל וריאציה אחרת שעובדת לכם). קול קורא (CFP) להגשת הרצאות לכנס ייפתח ממש בקרוב. [01:05] הכירו את ד"ר גיא וייזל ואת חברת Cato Networks גיא משמש כ-Tech Evangelist ב-Cato Networks, תפקיד היושב בתפר שבין קבוצות ה-R&D והמוצר לבין עולם השיווק, החדשנות, ועבודת השטח בעולמות הסייבר וה-AI. קצת על קייטו נטוורקס: החברה, המונה כ-1,800 עובדים (עם מרכז פיתוח גדול בתל אביב), חלוצה בקטגוריית ה-SASE (Secure Access Service Edge). הפלטפורמה מספקת איחוד של רשת ואבטחה כשירות בענן - מעין "כיפת ברזל" לסניפים ומשתמשים של ארגונים ברחבי העולם. במקום להסתמך על ריבוי מוצרי נקודה (Point Solutions), הארגון מקבל תמונה מלאה וקונטקסט רחב על הכל תחת פלטפורמה אחת (הכוללת SD-WAN, DLP, CASB, Zero Trust ועוד). [06:07] עידן ה-"Mytus Moment" והשפעת ה-AI על מתקפות סייבר רן מזכיר מודל מיתולוגי ומתקדם ממשפחת Claude של Anthropic שמסוגל לאתר ולנצל פרצות אבטחה ביעילות מפחידה. גיא מתאר את המצב כ-"The Mytus Moment" – סמן לתעשייה על כניסתם של מודלים מתקדמים (מבית אנתרופיק, OpenAI ואחרים) שמייצרים קפיצת מדרגה בעולם התקיפה (ראו גם: Cato joins OpenAI's Trusted Access for Cyber TAC). מה בעצם משתנה בפועל? מתודולוגיות התקיפה עצמן (Reconnaissance, Lateral Movement) נותרו דומות, אך ה-Scale והמהירות צמחו משמעותית. ה-AI מצמצם את זמן התגובה מגילוי ה-Zero-day ועד לניצול בפועל – משבועות וחודשים לשעות או דקות. במקום סריקות גנריות (כמו של Script Kiddies), סוכני AI יודעים כעת לתפור וקטורי תקיפה מותאמים אישית למטרה ספציפית, ולשרשר חולשות (Vulnerability Chaining) כדי להתקדם ברשת בצורה עצמאית וחכמה. [16:04] כשה-Agents חובשים כובע לבן: איך משנים את תפיסת ההגנה בדיוק כפי שתוקפים נעזרים ב-AI, ארגוני הסייבר חייבים לאמץ Agents הגנתיים כדי להתמודד עם קצב האיומים החדש. מעבר ממנגנונים מבוססי חתימות (Signatures) לזיהוי אנומליות ופעילות דינאמית מבוססת קונטקסט מלא של המשתמש והרשת. שינוי דרמטי במדדי ההצלחה (SLA) של צוותי אבטחה: המיקוד עובר מ-Time to Patch (זמן תיקון החולשה). להתמקדות ב-Time to Protect (זמן ההגנה הרציפה בסביבת הריצה). יש חשיבות גוברת ל-Shift Right (הגנה על ה-Production בזמן אמת) ולא רק ל-Shift Left. מלכודות לסוכני AI: מחקר של קייטו חשף את WebPromptTrap – פרצת Indirect Prompt Injection חדשה שמדגימה כיצד תוקפים יכולים לחטוף סוכני AI דרך תוכן זדוני המוטמע באתרים. [18:04] מתקפות על תשתיות פיזיות: הבעיה עם פרוטוקול Modbus Modbus הוא פרוטוקול תקשורת ותיק (משנת 1979) המשמש לבקרי תעשייה (PLC ו-SCADA), המפעילים תשתיות פיזיות כמו סכרים, מערכות אנרגיה סולארית, משאבות וצנטריפוגות. הפרוטוקול נעדר אבטחה בסיסית או הצפנה, ולמרות זאת, בשל תהליכי מודרניזציה או טעויות אנוש, הוא נחשף לעיתים ישירות לאינטרנט. מחקר של קייטו שבוצע לאורך 3 חודשים חשף שרכיבי Modbus ב-70 מדינות (ביניהן ארה"ב, צרפת ויפן) נמצאים תחת מתקפות אמיתיות. אילו סוגי מתקפות נצפו על ידי המערכות? איסוף מידע (Reconnaissance). מתקפות מניעת שירות (DoS) שנועדו למנוע מהמפעילים לשלוט בבקר. זיהוי סוג המערכת (Fingerprinting). ניסיונות אקטיביים של כתיבה ל-Registers (זיהו מתקפות מתשתית סינית) במטרה לשנות פיזית פעולות של חיישנים ומנועים. שילוב של יכולות ה-Agentic AI – שיודעות לזהות בקר פתוח ולשגר אקספלויט תוך שניות – יחד עם המצב הגיאופוליטי המתוח, הופכים את האיום על תשתיות לאומיות לממשי ומהיר יותר מאי פעם. האזנה נעימה!

time ai attack protect scale analytics openai cfp patch anthropic cato signatures reconnaissance sla zero trust dlp sd wan registers fingerprinting tech evangelist casb modbus

Networking is not sexy until it doesn’t work

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2026 47:06

Doug Houghton, director of global channels at Alkira There’s a line from this episode that’s worth leading with: “Networking is not sexy until it doesn’t work.” That’s Doug Houghton, Director of Global Channels at Alkira, and it’s a pretty concise summary of why his company exists. Alkira was founded by the team behind Viptela – the startup that essentially created the SD-WAN category before being acquired by Cisco. The lesson they carried out of that experience is that SD-WAN, for all its promise, still ran into the limits of underlying infrastructure. You ended up with disparate networks, latency constraints, and complexity that didn’t disappear – it just moved somewhere else. What they built in response is Network Infrastructure as a Service (NIaaS) – a cloud-native, consumption-based global backbone that abstracts multi-cloud connectivity into a single managed plane. The pitch to partners is concrete: consolidate 50 physical firewalls into virtualized functions, reduce total cost of ownership by 40-70%, and do it without a rip-and-replace cycle. The timing matters, and Houghton is direct about why. AI workloads – distributed large language models, agentic workflows reaching across multiple clouds simultaneously – demand a level of network elasticity that legacy infrastructure simply wasn’t designed for. Alkira’s argument is that they’re the smooth road that makes AI-driven infrastructure actually work in practice. For Canadian partners, Alkira has real resources on the ground: a solution architect based in Toronto, a dedicated channel account manager, and publicly referenceable Canadian customers including contact center provider ContactPoint 360. The Connect Partner Program, launched in March 2026, puts approximately 20 percent total margin on the table across base discount, rebates, MDF, and POC SPIFFs – with average initial deals around $500,000 USD and typical expansion of 4x in year one. Canadian partners interested in the conversation can reach the team at partners@alkira.com. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last sixteen years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show. If you were around when SD-WAN was the big disruptive idea in networking – the promise of simplifying branch connectivity, cutting costs, getting smarter about traffic – you probably also remember it didn’t quite deliver everything it promised. Not because the technology was bad, but because the underlying network architecture couldn’t keep up. You still ended up with complexity. It just moved somewhere else. That problem is essentially the founding insight behind Alkira. The company was built by Amir Khan and Atif Khan, the same team behind Viptela, the startup widely credited with creating the SD-WAN category before Cisco acquired it. What they learned in that experience is that SD-WAN, without a proper global backbone, just creates a different set of headaches. So they started fresh and built what they call NIaaS – Network Infrastructure as a Service – a cloud-native, consumption-based approach that abstracts the complexity of multi-cloud connectivity into something you could stand up, as my guest today puts it, with just a username and a password. The timing is not accidental, because what AI demands from a network – elasticity, low latency, the ability to reach distributed workloads almost anywhere instantly – is exactly what legacy infrastructure wasn’t built to handle. My guest is Doug Houghton, Director of Global Channels at Alkira. Doug has been in the channel a long time, knows the technology in a way that might genuinely surprise you coming from a channel chief, and has a lot to say about what it all means as a real business opportunity for Canadian VARs and MSPs. Let’s get right into it, my chat with Doug Houghton. Doug, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Doug Houghton: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me on today, Robert. Robert Dutt: So you were part of the team that built up the SD-WAN market at Viptela back in the day. What did you learn there that told you the next big thing was going to be NIaaS, and why now? Doug Houghton: First off, that’s a great question. I felt a bit like a passenger in a car racing a thousand miles an hour when we were doing software-defined wide-area networking. What we learned was that without organizing your cloud infrastructure properly, your cloud bill gets ridiculously large – especially if you keep your control element decoupled from your data plane in the cloud with all these workloads churning. But what we really learned, and what’s applicable to what we’re now doing at Alkira, is that SD-WAN truly did deliver on its core promise. It allows customers to influence traffic based on link quality and improve the user experience. If you’re on a phone call and it starts to get goofy, you can move over to a better-performing link in real time without dropping the call. That’s powerful. And the same with data traffic. What I hadn’t fully thought through was what happens as global companies start to adopt SD-WAN and disaggregate across locations in Southeast Asia, China, Latin America, and everywhere else. The latency back to the control element isn’t easy to contend with. So you ended up with organizations making decisions that effectively created four separate, disparate networks for latency purposes. And that was not part of the original promise. What we learned was that you need a global backbone that’s high throughput and low latency. The edge can still be SD-WAN – there are real things in SD-WAN that people still want, whether that’s WAN optimization, deduplication, caching, policy-based routing, forward error correction. All of that still has practical application, and site-to-site communications are still needed in many use cases. But Alkira was built inside the cloud first, employing the same principle of decoupling control plane from data plane for scale. By abstracting the cloud infrastructure, we were able to remediate the latency that those four geographically dispersed networks created. We’re the global backbone – that middle mile with high throughput and low latency – and then you connect these clusters of SD-WAN networks together and all of a sudden the promise of SD-WAN gets a lot more consumable. You have a singular network managed from a singular control plane and element management orchestrator, and you can still get all the benefits of SD-WAN at the local sites. Robert Dutt So in plain language, a Canadian MSP or VAR is used to selling network hardware or managing someone else’s infrastructure. How is selling, deploying, and managing NIaaS different from what they’re already doing, and what makes that distinction important? Doug Houghton: Let’s take a half step back and talk about what NIaaS actually is. It’s Network Infrastructure as a Service. What Alkira does is abstract the cloud infrastructure and build a routed overlay on top of it. We think of it as a virtualized colocation facility that connects and normalizes communications across your entire network. For managed service providers and service providers, our solution accelerates bringing their customers to cloud applications, cloud workloads, storage, and everything else the cloud promises. The way I explain it to my mom – and I’ve told this joke once already today because I’m sitting in a partner’s office right now – is this: if you went to Russia, Japan, Argentina, and San Francisco all in one day and had to transact in each place, and you could speak the native language in each one, that would be ideal. What we focused on was normalizing communications regardless of the cloud service provider, colocation provider, data centre – private or public – or whatever type of router is at the branch office. As an MSP or service provider that comes in, what we give to our customers and partners is a username and a password. That lets you come in and – for your old-school folks in the audience – essentially etch-a-sketch your network together. You can turn a couple of knobs, and it’s not that we’ve cranked the amp up to eleven, we’ve just removed all the numbers and automated everything. It just knows what you want to do. It’s a routed BGP overlay with the control plane abstracted from it, so the forwarding plane can route around things like the CrowdStrike outage, or losing an AWS region – which happens more frequently than AWS would like to admit – or any cloud service provider incident. The multi-cloud reality has accelerated adoption, but it presents a new problem: you’ve got an AWS expert on staff, but you don’t have an Azure, GCP, OCI, or Alibaba Cloud expert. Those are all different languages. When I tell my mom that we normalize the communications between all the assets in the network and make it easy to connect to all of them, she gets that. For the MSP looking to monetize something new or add another revenue stream, we offer a couple of compelling things. In the middle of our stack, we place a solution inside the cloud – sitting in a VPC, VNet, VCN, or Google VPC – right in the middle of all the cloud, SaaS, and WAN workloads. We’ve pleased a lot of customers by lowering total cost of ownership through the consolidation of network services they already have in their environment, in the form of virtualized network functions. Take a Palo Alto firewall deployment – say you have fifty Palos out there, all talking to Panorama, with a security engineer managing policy centrally. Instead of having fifty firewalls on the ground, you consolidate them. You go from the ground – five to ten milliseconds to the nearest public cloud PoP – hop onto the Alkira fabric, and terminate that traffic on a virtual port on our exchange point. In the middle of that exchange point, sitting in a VPC or VNet, you place a Palo Alto virtualized network function. You get the IP address of the Panorama server, and if you didn’t tell the security engineer anything had changed, they would not know. The form factor changes, but not how they interact with Panorama, how they build policy, or anything about how they secure the traffic. That remains exactly the same. We virtualize the instance and place it on a global high-throughput, low-latency backbone inside our exchange point. We deploy exchange points in HA pairs, anywhere from 100 Mbps to 40 Gbps. The customer or service provider consumes one, and we maintain the other on their behalf – because every thirty days we’re fixing bugs and doing maintenance. We swing production workloads to the backup, do the work on the primary, then reverse the order, all while keeping these customers up and running. Because we’re delivering this as a service, it has to always be on. One of the most important architectural decisions we made from the start was ensuring those two exchange points are always running active-active in a full mesh configuration, buttressed by hundreds of other exchange points globally distributed – all synchronized and aware of each other’s states. Robert Dutt: You’ve said that legacy networks can’t handle what AI demands, specifically in terms of elasticity. Can you unpack that a little? When an MSP’s customer starts deploying language models or agentic workflows, what is it that actually breaks? Doug Houghton: Good question, and I’ll give you an honest answer. I’ve started to fall in love with Claude – I think it’s one of the coolest things in the world. I can do all sorts of creative things with it. But Claude isn’t talking only to me. He’s a bit of a flirt – he goes to a lot of different places to get knowledgeable about various things and produce the outcomes I’ve asked for. And those other places are where you run into problems. I used to say the three biggest AI providers are GCP, AWS, and Azure. That’s still largely true. But the likes of Anthropic and other AI labs are distributing LLM workloads everywhere. Without the right network underneath that, it’s like buying the hottest car and driving it down a pothole-filled road. What we offer is a high-throughput, low-latency, elastic network. If you need to turn it up in a heartbeat, you can. We helped complete the S&P Global and IHS Markit merger network integration in about a tenth of the time they expected, because we’re natively segmented. Think about those two networks as large datasets that AI agents need to access. You have to secure the traffic, and you need it to be elastic – able to reach anywhere, instantly, to produce the outcome the agent was asked for. The ability to go anywhere on a road that’s smooth as glass, in the hottest car possible – that’s what we offer. Our network infrastructure solution is an abstraction: a forwarding plane that goes everywhere, and your imagination is really the only limitation. Speed, elasticity, and securing access – even for agentic, self-directed workflows – it’s still a critical element. And nobody – I said this earlier today, so I’ll say it again – networking is not really sexy until it doesn’t work. If I have to get in and route-peer and manually configure transit gateways, I’m going to punch myself in the face repeatedly. I just don’t want to do it. It slows everything down. I can automate it with Terraform, sure. But I want to consume it now. I want to prompt it now. I want the outcome now. Robert Dutt: You’ve launched Alkira NIA, your AI co-pilot and network infrastructure assistant, along with an MCP server last year. It’s interesting – you’re essentially putting AI on top of the infrastructure that’s enabling AI. What does NIA actually do for an MSP’s day-to-day operations? Doug Houghton: Maybe I have a limited imagination, but I still use it like a utility. NIA is great because it allows you to search through all our documentation in a more organized way. We have amazing documentation – there’s a lot of it – and when you’re looking for a specific configuration or something captured in a knowledge base, that tool is really useful. But continuing the utility theme: how do I do something? If I want to create a micro-segment to distribute to a bunch of business units, or build an isolated Layer 3 routing table and get it to various business units, and then set up billing with specific billing tags for each segment – I know how to do that because I’ve done it many times. But a new user may not. You can use the NIA agent to search the documentation, search previous implementation notes, best practices, all of that. That’s real value. But you can also ask it something like “why is the sun bright” and it won’t return the answer you expect. I’ve done that too. Robert Dutt: Let’s talk about the Connect Partner Program and the economics. You’ve got the Partner Profit Stack – tiered margins, quarterly rebates, MDF, SPIFFs, the Connect Pipeline Fund. It’s a full toolkit, and it’s stuff partners have seen before. What’s the real math? What does a Canadian MSP at the Premier tier actually walk away with on a typical deal after they’ve done the work? Doug Houghton: Usually about nineteen percentage points – maybe a little more. On the pre-sale side, when we get into a POC, our Premier partners can earn a $1,000 SPIFF. We close about 85% of our POCs, so there’s real value in that. Add in the rebates and MDF access, and the total haul is closer to 20% on each deal. Worth mentioning: we’ve been a 100% channel company since May 2022. My partner David Klubinoff, my technical counterpart – we worked together at Viptela and we started the Alkira channel together. It took a couple of weeks to convince our CEO that going 100% channel was the right call. I think he’s a believer now. We’ve driven significant revenue for the company, and our partners are our thought leaders – out in the market talking about our solution and solving customer problems. I was in Chicago yesterday doing a technical enablement session with thirty-plus SAs and SEs. We had the classic SD-WAN questions, and a lot of questions about segmentation and M&A. There’s enormous consolidation happening in insurance, healthcare, and other sectors, and the overlapping IP address problem that comes with mergers is something MSPs face all the time. We’ve entirely simplified that. You build a NAT policy right in the solution and the overlapping IP issue is resolved within an hour. In the case of S&P Global and IHS Markit, they thought their merger network integration was going to take a couple of years. The issue was largely the overlapping IP addresses – IHS couldn’t talk to the HR applications at S&P, and vice versa, plus all the other interdependencies. You need a fast way to solve the overlapping IP problem before you can even get to the real work. That’s been a core design element of our solution from the very start: take care of the small things, and people can move faster and get to market faster. Our biggest MSP – and this is a publicly referenceable customer – is CEDA, a French-based organization that provides managed network services to 95% of the world’s airlines. For them, it means being able to turn up a new customer faster, connecting on-premises assets to their control elements so they can begin actually managing that network. Speed, and the efficiencies and cost reductions that come from it – that’s what it does for all MSPs. If you’re consolidating fifty firewalls into virtualized functions, you’re making a good commission, getting MDF support, quarterly rebates, and a SPIFF when you engage us collaboratively on a POC. All of that happens at an accelerated rate. I’ve been screaming from the mountaintop about our solution for about four years. Invariably, you’d walk into a room, say “Hi, I’m Doug Houghton from Alkira,” and they’d say “Who?” That’s starting to happen a lot less, which is a genuinely nice thing. Over the last twelve to twenty-four months, the business has grown exponentially, the diversity of our partner ecosystem has increased, and partner margins have been very healthy. The tiered structure was really about celebrating partners who have invested in us. Honestly, I’m waiting for the day my boss tells me to stop incentivizing partners – because when that happens, I’ll know we’ve hit the apex. Our partners will be generating so much revenue that someone gets uncomfortable with what we’re paying out. I can’t wait for that day. Some of the more interesting things in the program came from actually listening. I went around and talked to a bunch of partners about their ideal partner programs and built from there. And one of the realizations – I thought it was significant – was what we were actually doing on the post-sale side. We white-glove every implementation right now, because it’s critically important to us. We haven’t lost a customer, and we intend to keep it that way. But that doesn’t scale forever. So the question became: why don’t we help our partners productize the post-sale work? We built a product catalog, a pricing calculator, and a new partner portal we’re about to release, with its own AI agent for searching market assets. The product catalog was a light bulb moment. We pay healthy margins on the pre-sale side at every tier of Alkira Connect. But we had never touched the post-sale side at all. We’re largely automated and NIaaS is as simple as possible to consume – a username and a password. My thirteen-year-old could configure a network, and she’s really smart. But there’s still some implementation work. You still need to build policies in Panorama. There’s still DDI work. There are still services that partners can benefit from – and all partner types, MSPs, VARs, master agents, sub-agents, service providers, now have a post-sale commission opportunity. Robert Dutt: You mentioned services – you’ve got services attach plays around modernization assessments, segmentation design, migration sprints. Starting from zero, how long does it realistically take a partner to get their first deal with those services attached through the door, and what does the ramp look like? Doug Houghton: There’s a lot in that question. Let’s take a half step back. We have virtual sales and go-to-market training – three modules – and then five or six technical training modules. We’ve got a lab-in-a-box environment, foundational and advanced technical training, and DDI training. Partners typically start there. Then we run regular in-person and virtual sessions – one partner has regular office hours with me, my SE counterpart David, or our architect Christopher Arenas, and we just invite partners to come and ask questions. Getting partners genuinely comfortable with the technology is the most important thing we do, because nobody goes out and sells anything unless they’re confident they can explain how Alkira solves their customer’s problem. That’s what I’m doing in Chicago today. Our customers tend to be fairly large. We’ve got our first Fortune 10 customer now. The more complex the network, the larger and more global the deployment – multiple countries, security vendors, firewalls, DDI providers, load balancers, service providers, colos. We sit right on top of all of that. The average sales cycle is about 190 days – a little over six months. A newly enabled partner might encounter an M&A overlapping IP use case, recognize the problem, and say “I think we can solve this with Alkira.” They go through a POC together with us, the customer commits, and that first deal closes around 190 days. A little class week: it’s actually 190 and a half. The average deal size is about $500,000 USD. We then see significant expansion: typically 4x growth in the first twelve months after the initial close, and around 8x in the second twelve months. Real incentive to stick with it. We’re loyal – if the customer doesn’t kick the partner out, we go to bat with that partner on every expansion deal. We land, then expand, with the same partner. BNSF, one of our other public references, has expanded several times to address more and more use cases. The solution gets sticky and customers are genuinely surprised by how easy it is. On the post-sale side, we come in and help with implementation, especially early on. But we’re reaching the point where more capable partners can handle it themselves. We’re building a post-sale certification for Alkira right now. In the meantime, we ride shotgun through the first couple of implementations – virtually in Slack or in person – until partners are fully up to speed. All partners have access to our Slack channel, along with our entire solutions architecture and SE staff. One partner working on a Fortune 10 engagement has a great habit of putting a subject header in Slack and starting a conversation. He’s been on services at this customer for three or four months – a significant engagement. He’s the one who originally described the network as a “spaghetti mess,” which I still chuckle about. I actually built the product catalog based on those Slack headers – pulled them together, socialized them with a group of partners, got input, and built from there. To directly answer your question: you’ve got to get through that first deal, and we’re going to ride shotgun with you through the first couple of implementations. The partner learns, gets comfortable, can monetize it, and can deliver independently from there. We have no illusions about going back to being a direct company after May 2022. It’s ride or die – 100% channel, and we enable our partners to solve their customers’ problems and support them while they do it. Because our partners have been our biggest growth engine. Robert Dutt: You’ve talked about a goal of doubling revenue through partners. What does the ecosystem look like when you get there? This sounds like it could primarily be a GSI or large integrator play, given the customer complexity you’re describing. Or do you genuinely see a path for mid-market MSPs and VARs to build a meaningful NIaaS practice? Doug Houghton: Another tough question. Yes, I do have GSIs as partners. We have a fairly robust and diverse partner ecosystem, and we see small shops rising up while larger shops are moving a bit more slowly, honestly. We’re still in that brand awareness honeymoon period – people are realizing our technology is compelling, getting themselves enabled. Some large partners we’ve recently brought on are still ramping. The biggest and most established organizations aren’t yet as capable as they will be, but we’re working diligently on that. Some of our smaller partners, on the other hand – I’m thinking of a friend of mine in Utah who is just an absolute champion. He knows our solution better than almost anyone. He closed six or seven deals in the past year, supported the implementations, did it largely on his own, because he’s curious, motivated, read all the documentation, and has been through full implementation cycles with us. He works at a ten-person shop. They just happen to have really good customers, and he knows the solution cold. So we’re at different stages with different partners in terms of maturity. The answer to your question is genuinely both. The small shop in Utah and the large national partner dedicating more resources as they see more customer problems Alkira can solve – we see wins across both. In the networking space, a six-month sales cycle is about as fast as it gets. I’m giving you a username and a password and you’re going in and connecting all of a customer’s assets together. The path exists for partners of every size. Robert Dutt: You’ve called out Canada specifically in your expansion plans, alongside the UK, EU, and the Middle East. What does that look like operationally – localized support, a Canadian channel team – or is it more of a global platform available to Canadian partners? Doug Houghton: Let’s talk personnel. We have a dedicated rep in eastern Canada, based out of New Hampshire, and a brilliant solutions architect just outside of Toronto. We’ve got a channel account manager – very capable teammate of mine, Savannah Stone – and the entire global solutions architecture staff accessible via Slack. We recently closed a very significant logo in Canada – a large insurance company – and our publicly referenceable Canadian customer is ContactPoint 360, a contact centre and BPO provider. They wanted to connect their Latin American operations back to Canada and couldn’t find an effective way to do it without us. We route them through the US West region, and the results have been excellent. We’ve also added CDW Canada as a partner, and I’ve got a value-added distributor that helps with field events. It’s not a massive footprint yet – it’s a bit of “they come first, then we build” – but there is a tremendous amount of opportunity in Canada and in Latin America that I’m genuinely excited about. Nobody’s told me no yet on spending budget, so here we go. A great story on the Canadian side: a gentleman named Chris Thelosinos, an architect and consultant who works with others in our space, is a member at a wine shop in Toronto. During the Toronto International Film Festival last year, we hosted a wine event right next to TIFF. I don’t drink alcohol, so it was entirely about the conversations for me – and I had the best time. We had significant customers come out, and the demand for simplicity, ease of implementation, and everything Alkira does well was just as strong in Canada as anywhere else. The market need is real. We talk about global backbone as a service all the time. Connecting China to San Francisco carries a distance and time tax, but it’s easy to configure. For organizations navigating geopolitical complexity around China access, or needing GPU connectivity in and out, we just abstract the Azure and AWS mainland China instances. They operate the same way as their Canadian or US equivalents. And you can consume it pay-as-you-go – stop using it, stop paying for it. That’s a compelling model for MSPs looking to grow into different regions. Robert Dutt: Last question then. For that Canadian MSP who’s listened to this and is thinking, “This sounds like a real opportunity” – what’s the one thing you’d want them to take away and act on? Doug Houghton: I’d ask them to go to partners@alkira.com and send us a note. And I will ply them with all sorts of content – videos, learnings, deal registration information, everything they need to get started in the space. Tongue in cheek, and also completely seriously: partners@alkira.com. If you’re looking to grow your business as a managed service provider – managed network, managed security, managed load balancing, managed DDI, managed connectivity – we’re a really great place to start. Because it’s never unpopular to walk into a customer and solve their problem quickly and say, “I can help you with X, Y, and Z, and I can do it in the next couple of hours – and that’s going to drive a total cost of ownership savings of 40 to 70%.” Nobody ever kicks you out of the office when you say something like that. Robert Dutt: Amazing. Doug, I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you very much. Doug Houghton: Robert, thank you for the engaging conversation. I hope your listeners get some good stuff out of it. Robert Dutt: There you have it – Doug Houghton from Alkira. I’d like to thank Doug for his time, and honestly for being one of the more entertaining guests I’ve had on in a while. “Networking is not sexy until it doesn’t work” is a line I’m going to be thinking about for a while. Thanks to you for listening as well. If this conversation sparked something – whether it’s curiosity about NIaaS, the AI infrastructure angle, or what roughly 20% total margin on a $500,000 average deal could do for your business – Doug made it easy for you to take the next step. Drop a note to partners@alkira.com. That’s the front door. And from what I heard today, they will absolutely get back to you. Here’s the thing that stuck with me most in this conversation: the argument that the AI moment isn’t just a software or services play. It’s going to force a reckoning with network infrastructure that a lot of organizations have been deferring for years. The partners who treat that reckoning as an opportunity rather than a fire drill are probably going to look very smart in about three years. If you’re finding the In The Channel podcast from ChannelBuzz.ca useful, the best thing you can do is follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most major directories. And if you’re enjoying the show, ratings and reviews are genuinely appreciated – they help other people in the Canadian channel find us. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

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Palo Alto’s Michael Khoury on what’s actually changing for partners in the NextWave revamp

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 10, 2026 41:22

Michael Khoury, vice president of Global Ecosystems Programs at Palo Alto Networks When Palo Alto Networks announced the first comprehensive overhaul of its NextWave partner program in more than three years this February, it raised a lot of questions for partners. What does the shift from transactional incentives to platform adoption rewards actually look like day to day? What happens to loyal, firewall-heavy partners who now face a diversification requirement? And is the promise of dramatically improved economics real, or is it marketing math? Michael Khoury, vice president of Global Ecosystems Programs at Palo Alto Networks, is the architect behind the changes. He joined the company, conducted an extensive listening tour with partners across markets, and built the revamp around the specific frustrations he heard: over-reliance on Palo Alto staff for routine tasks, managed services being valued like resale, incentive structures that looked good on paper but didn’t pay out, and training that wasn’t keeping pace with the platform’s evolution. In this conversation, Michael walks through the mechanics of the new program in detail. He explains why Platinum and Diamond partners will need to generate 20 and 30 percent of their business, respectively, from non-firewall product lineswithin 18 months, and why he believes most strategic partners are already within striking distance. He shares data showing the elimination of discount caps has resulted in 2-to-4x earnings improvements based on modeled past bookings, and explains why they timed the rollout to prevent partners from holding back orders. He discusses how the $25 billion CyberArk acquisition creates a new identity security practice path that counts toward diversification targets, the new Partner Development Fund that reinvests rebate earnings into partner growth, and what Canadian partners specifically should know about how their market stacks up. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show. If you’re a Palo Alto Networks partner, or you’ve been thinking about becoming one, you’ve probably been hearing about the NextWave Partner Program revamp that launched in early February. It’s being called the first ground-up redesign of the program in about three and a half years, and the changes are significant. A shift from rewarding transactional volume to rewarding platform adoption, the elimination of discount caps that were leaving money on the table for partners, new diversification requirements, and a whole new approach to how Palo Alto thinks about managed services. My guest today is Michael Khoury, Vice President of Global Ecosystems Programs at Palo Alto Networks. Michael is essentially the architect of these changes. He joined the company, did a listening tour of what partners were actually frustrated about, and the revamp is his answer to what he heard. We got into the details of what changed and why, the real economics of the new incentive structure, what the 30% non-firewall requirement means for partners who’ve built their business around firewalls, how mid-market MSPs and resellers fit into a program that could easily be optimized for global SIs, and what the recent CyberArk acquisition means for the partner ecosystem going forward. Michael brought real data and real candor, and I think you’ll find it genuinely useful. Let’s get right into it, my chat with Michael Khoury. Robert Dutt: Michael, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Michael Khoury: Thank you, Rob. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Robert Dutt: It’s been about three and a half years, I guess, since the last major partner program update for you guys. What changed in the landscape, or in what you’re hearing from partners, that made this the moment to do a kind of ground-up revamp rather than a refresh and update kind of motion? Michael Khoury: Yeah, great question. Rob, I joined Palo Alto Networks about 18 months ago, and what I did, in addition to getting the internal feedback obviously from the various team members and various stakeholders, I made sure to go out on basically a tour, a listening tour, meeting with partners and getting their input frankly about our program at the time and what are the areas we needed to address. It was obvious to me in a lot of areas we had some challenges that we needed to address as a company. I’d put these things in a way – it’s not like what we had was necessarily bad, but it just didn’t evolve with the way the business kept transforming and evolving. So we needed to update. And if you’ve seen this, probably you’ve seen it with other vendors – it’s kind of common in our industry that every few years you need to evolve the program to keep pace with the business needs ever changing. And as I met with partners – and I met with partners across the globe, various regions, some of them were virtual, other meetings were in person, some of the meetings were larger like partner events that we hosted – the consistent feedback that I kept hearing was this. Number one, it was around “Hey Palo Alto Networks, that’s great that you have a program, but it feels like we need you for everything. We need someone at Palo Alto Networks to do anything with you. So we’re always relying on you to get things.” And those things can be as simple as if we needed to get a quote, if we needed to get a price, if we needed access to more training – we always needed someone at Palo Alto to give us that access. That was consistent feedback number one. Number two, obviously when we got into the program it was particularly with the managed services motion, because that motion has been growing for us at a much faster rate – and I’ll give you some percentages in just a minute – but that motion has been growing at a much faster rate than the traditional VAR motion. So when we discussed with the managed services partners, they were like “Hey, you kind of have a managed service program, but it kind of works like resale, not like truly like a managed service.” So we needed to revisit that. And then obviously the other areas that our partners care about – for partners who provide services, how do we ensure we’re leveraging more of their capability and training them and giving them the right support from a training and enablement perspective so they can build not just a go-to-market motion but also their services around Palo Alto Networks. And lastly, the last area was around the incentives. It was only two years prior to me joining the company that the company – and you’re right, you said three and a half years ago – which was the time when the company launched their first rebates program to partners. However, the feedback that I heard from partners, they said “Michael, you have rebates, you have these incentives for us, but they’re mostly on paper. It seems like it’s very hard for us to earn these incentives.” So we had to open that up and revisit that. So overall, Rob, those were the big themes that I heard from partners and why we needed to evolve the program with bigger changes, and why we did the things that we did and we launched the recent program. Robert Dutt: You’ve talked about moving from rewarding transactional volume to rewarding the platform and selling across that. Can you walk me through what that shift looks like concretely for a partner? If I’m a reseller who’s been doing well selling Palo Alto firewalls, what’s different about how I engage with you guys under this new program versus the old one? Michael Khoury: I found – and this is by the way common across the industry – because sometimes a vendor builds a program and sometimes they look at it almost like a static thing. “Oh, we built it, here’s the requirement.” And sometimes you have to also look at where your own field sellers are measured on and what they need to do. Because if you have the company field sales organization and the partner organization that are not in perfect harmony in terms of what they focus on and what they need to work on, then you end up having more friction. So as we evolved the program, we looked at our expectations from our sales teams and we said “Look, we expect our sellers not just to sell our firewall, but we expect them to support the platformization strategy,” which Nikesh talked about a few years ago. And now every company says “Oh, I have a platform too.” But if you think about that concept of we’re not just a firewall company – yes, that is our history, that’s our legacy, that’s where the company started – but when you evaluate our business, when you look at our next-gen security growing around 34-35% year on year, that’s been a big growth engine for us. So as our field sales organization started to focus on embracing the platform, which means if you look at our product platforms, you have the network security, the NetSec part of the house, where you have the firewall, but you also have SASE, which includes SD-WAN and Prisma Access. And also you have what we call our SOC transformation, which is our Cortex product, which is also part of our next-gen security. And under Cortex you have XSIAM, which is the next-generation SIEM. You have XDR, which is around endpoint detection. And then recently we added identity as well, as you know, with the CyberArk acquisition closing last month. So as we looked at all these things that our field sales organization is going to be measured on, when I looked at our program, there were no requirements toward those next-gen security platforms. It was mostly like if you can do firewall and keep doing firewall – which is not bad, it’s totally fine, we love those partners who continue to embrace us on the firewall side – but we also said in the new program, if you want to be driving bigger growth with us and being more aggressive, you need to do more across the platform. Meaning you need to embrace our SASE, you need to embrace next-gen security around Cortex, you now need to also embrace identity. So now the partners who play with us across the platform can unlock better benefits and have more leverage. And we continue to say, look, if you focus only on one area of the business you can excel, whether you focus on identity or you focus only on firewall, you can excel with us, but that will be your lane. That will be kind of your swim lane. Obviously the partners who are more strategic, who embrace the platform, will be able to unlock more. So what we simply did in the program, Rob, is we said now partners have requirements where they have to meet toward the next-gen security, where in the past there were no requirements. We put specific requirements. It’s very clear what they need to do. And then secondly, what we also did in addition to requirements, we also built the incentives and the rebates that support that motion. So we’re basically telling our partners we’re looking at both sides of the puzzle. And I’ve always talked about programs – people ask me “Michael, what is a partner program?” Frankly, for me it’s a value exchange. On one side you have the requirements of what we expect as a vendor from our partners. And on the other side, what do we offer them in return? What’s in it for them? And the way I look at this, where the two meet in the middle – where the requirements meet the benefit and the incentive – that’s the program. So every program, in order to be successful, needs to have both sides. We made sure in our program we updated the requirements, but we also updated the incentives that go with that. Robert Dutt: A couple of things coming out of that in different lanes. You mentioned setting those goals that folks have to reach outside of firewall and making that a requirement for the first time. You’ve said that 30% of revenues need to come from non-firewall lines of business within 18 months for you to reach both Platinum and Diamond, if I’m remembering correctly. That’s a real requirement. What happens to a longtime, loyal firewall-heavy partner who can’t or doesn’t get there? You say they have their lane, but what does that path look like? And the other side of that – is 18 months realistic for partners who need to build new practices around Cortex or Prisma or the other next-gen areas? Michael Khoury: So look, we’ve done the analysis across our partner ecosystem. And what I found when we did the analysis, even over a year ago versus when we did it recently, we already saw a shift. We already saw an increase over just the first year, even before we launched the program, because we started to signal especially to our key, bigger strategic partners. And you’re right – at the Diamond level we require 30% of their business to come from next-gen security. But the Platinum level is a little bit lower, it’s 20%. So it’s not as high of a bar. And obviously for the Innovator level, we did not put a specific requirement. We felt those partners are smaller in nature, maybe they’re focused on a specific area, they’re still building their business model. We didn’t feel we needed to necessarily be very prescriptive with our requirements in that area. In terms of the 18 months, when we looked at our partners – if I have a partner who’s already, let’s say, a Diamond and doing 20% of their business toward next-gen security, and now by adding identity as well, that adds to that percentage. So some of them actually have an identity practice that they can leverage as well. We know the vast majority of our strategic partners are within striking distance. Yes, they may need to stretch. Yes, they may need to do a little bit more work to get there. But look, this is why we gave the 18 months. This is why we enable our CBMs, our field team, to work with these partners early on to start having those plans. And I think overall, the partners who are committed to us, who are not ad hoc, opportunistic – “Oh, this deal I’ll work with Palo only, I’m not fully invested in them” – I get it, those partners may not get there. But frankly, those partners in the first place, they were not driving that much business and that much impact for us to begin with. They were opportunistic, they were bringing some deals, which is totally fine, but we’re not going to necessarily limit our program evolution and requirements based on those. Overall, I feel pretty confident that our strategic partners will be able to meet those requirements come the 18 months. And here’s what I’ll say – last time I did this when I was at ServiceNow and I evolved their partner program, it’s funny how things happen sometimes in the same way. I was there about 18 months before we launched the program. Somehow it worked out to be about 18 months. I don’t know why, it seems like that’s the magic number. And I recall at the time we gave about 18 months and the vast majority of partners ended up getting to where we expected them to go. Yeah, we had a few we had to work with and figure out a way how they can get there in a few more months, but overall it ended up moving that ecosystem in that direction. Now I understand cybersecurity is different than a workflow optimization company, but at the same time, I’ve done these things when I was at Cisco. I’ve done them at ServiceNow and I feel like this is the right move for us at Palo Alto. And I’m encouraged by what I’m seeing early on. The feedback from our partners seems like “Okay, we like this because it’s going to allow our unique partners to stand out.” And if you have too many that are all special, then no one is special. You know how that goes. So we believe 18 months is the right time and the early indication seems to support that. Robert Dutt: It’s funny how, as they say, history rhymes with the 18-month cadence for you across new roles. Switching to the incentive side of things, you’ve eliminated the discount caps that used to lock partners out of earning a rebate on heavily discounted deals. That sounds like a pretty big one for partners. Can you give me a sense of the magnitude here? You’ve said that some partners could be earning two to four times what they were earning before. Is that the aspirational number, or is that broadly achievable? Michael Khoury: That is the actual data. When I said that two to four times, it was actually based on actual data that we modeled based on last year’s performance. So as a matter of fact, when I’m looking at partners, we are more than halfway into our fiscal year ’26, which you know will end in July. So fiscal year ’27 will start August 1st. When I look at our performance for FY26, which we launched the program only in February, so we’re talking about only the second half of the year where these things are making an impact – as a matter of fact, when it comes to the rebates, we changed it in the last two weeks of the second quarter. We didn’t want to finish the second quarter where partners may be holding back on some orders to wait for Q3 where they can earn more rebates. So we made a decision to say “Hey, we’re just going to do it in the last two weeks of the quarter so we don’t hurt our Q2 numbers.” And it turned out to be a good decision because our data was very strong in Q2. So that was great. But it’s a great question. It’s not aspirational. It’s the actual data on past bookings. And what’s really exciting about it – when you look at our next-gen security, around SASE, Cortex, and obviously identity we’re going to address later – but when you look at SASE and Cortex, for us there were a lot of deals our partners were driving but they were not earning those incentives. And here’s one interesting fact. As we started to make that shift and we started to talk about it, all of a sudden in our deal registration – which means mostly the business that our partners obviously source and bring to Palo Alto – our next-gen security deal registration percentages were not as high. And once we started to make that shift and we’re tracking this, you won’t believe it, all of a sudden we’re starting to see an increase in our deal registration and partner-sourced business for us. So that tells me, even though with only one month or one month and a couple of weeks, because we did that change two weeks into the quarter, I’m starting to see the pipeline. I’m starting to see more booking toward that next-gen security. So it’s a good early indication. Obviously I need to wait a couple more quarters. I’m not going to claim victory only in six weeks that we’ve had this. But the early indication, Rob, seems to show that as we made the changes toward these incentives, especially with next-gen security – because in the past a lot of partners, because of the market and competitive dynamics and the way our list pricing model was set up, they were not able to earn incentives on next-gen security – but now they are. So that’s starting to show early indication of pipelines, early indication of deal reg percentages, and so on. So I’m encouraged by where we’re going to finish the year, but I’m more encouraged for next year. Because it’s funny, every time we do these things, when you launch something new it takes about a couple of quarters for the ecosystem to kind of understand, fully adopt, embrace, and put it into an operational vehicle so they can execute on it. And then you start to see in that third and fourth quarter it starts to get much better, and by the fifth and sixth quarter, that’s when you start reaching a higher level. So again, I don’t know why, but somehow things always end up working toward that 18-month kind of trajectory. Because you’re right, the ecosystem cannot pivot right away. They need time to adjust. But that’s what I’ve seen over the years dealing in this for a long time. That’s typically what it takes to get to a higher level. So I’m really excited about where we’re going to end up in ’26 and even more in fiscal year ’27. Robert Dutt: A lot of the audience are mid-market MSPs and resellers, the 15, 20, 50-person shops. When you designed this program, how much were you thinking about that sort of long tail of smaller partners who aren’t at global SI scale? The platform approach – I understand it, it sounds good in theory – but building specializations across the different areas, across network, across cloud, across SOC, requires investment that might be a reach for a smaller partner. What’s the path for that small partner MSP? Michael Khoury: That’s great. First of all, I said it earlier but I didn’t share the percentage with you. I will share it now. Our managed services route to market is growing over 60% year on year. So I can tell you that that’s where we’re seeing a lot of growth. Even traditional VARs, a lot of the traditional VARs are starting to build and deliver managed services. So the business has shifted from just resale, traditional VAR, to managed service. Regarding what we’re offering to that smaller VAR – or that smaller managed service partner, I should say, but it also applies to even our resellers if they want to build a business and go-to-market motion around Palo Alto Networks – we just launched, actually, as part of this program redesign, the ability to have access for all of our partners with on-demand learning experience. Not just for pre-sales and technical sales, which we had always available as on-demand learning, but we just expanded it for post-sales. So now if you’re a smaller partner, you’re going to have access to on-demand learning experience across sales, technical pre-sales, architect roles which are kind of more pre- and a little bit post-sales, across engineer roles for delivery, and across analyst roles for support. So now they have access to on-demand learning experience across all products, which we started with this quarter, and we’re adding more products within the next quarter as well. So that’s number one. Number two, we now incorporate as part of our training for partners an AI roleplay that is also available to them. And the early feedback from partners – we had solution architects from partners come in and do this AI roleplay not prepared. And their feedback initially was “Michael, it kicked my butt, I wasn’t ready.” And now they feel like it gave them an indication of what they need to do better. The new AI roleplay is enabling our partners’ sellers and technical pre-sales to help them position the product. And it’s also enabling the post-sales engineers, architects, and analysts as well. So we’re giving them access across all of that on the portfolio. In addition, once they have access to the on-demand learning experience, part of the ongoing certification model now includes a roleplay. But they also now have access to labs across the entire portfolio. That’s also available to them through that on-demand learning experience. And in addition to that, we just launched Demo Zone, which is also available through the Learning Center. So they can do demos across the product line, they can come in, get training for about an hour, hour and a half, and be able to do demos for customers, really without needing help from a sales engineer or solution consultant at Palo Alto Networks. I touched on this early on when we started – that was one of the key changes we needed to make. Sure, our partners need to have access to the right training, to the right enablement, so they can be self-sufficient. So technically, if you have a smaller partner who’s embarking on their journey with Palo Alto, they’re going to have access to really a lot of content, training, and capability across all roles, available to them on demand. It’s going to allow them to invest and grow and drive that business growth like never before. And obviously with MSSPs, we provide them with programmatic front-end discount that helps them win in that commercial segment, that mid-market that you touched on, without needing a lot of help from Palo Alto. So in a way, we’re giving them access to the training, the enablement, the tools, and also to the programmatic element from a front-end discount, and to the back-end rebate as well, to ensure they can grow and develop that go-to-market motion. So I’m really excited – even though our managed services was growing at 60%, I’m really excited about where it’s going to go a year from now, because I don’t think we’ve touched its full potential. A lot of those managed services partners are going to be able to reap a lot of benefits across the board, across the entire portfolio. Robert Dutt: The AI roleplay tool – that’s something that I thought was really interesting, really fun to see in there. It’s been interesting seeing AI start to find its way into partner programs. Sticking with the sort of idea of resources and smaller partners, are there any Canadian-specific resources or team support that smaller Canadian partners of Palo Alto should know about? Michael Khoury: Look, in Canada we have a very strong managed service motion with partners. And when I look at just the ratio of percentage of Canadian partners and the investment, I see that our Canadian partners actually invest – just from a percentage of resources to booking and revenue – I see our Canadian partners invest more in technical pre-sales roles and training for individuals than in other markets. So I’m very encouraged to see that in Canada, not just are we driving a strong managed service motion, but we also have more investment from a resources perspective. Because when I look at a partner, I don’t just look at how much booking you did with us, because to me booking is more of a lagging indicator. I look at the investments, and not just by the number of certifications they have – I look at the number of individuals. Because obviously you can have one individual sometimes accumulate multiple certifications. So I do look at the number of certifications by product, but we also look at the number of individuals that a partner has invested in. And I’m encouraged to see that in Canada, particularly in our managed service motion and even in our resale motion, I see more and more partners investing in sales and technical and obviously post-sales as well. I found that was interesting data that I uncovered as I was comparing, for example, US partners to Canadian partners. So that’s encouraging. That means our partners in Canada will be able to have, over time, as they leverage the new program, even bigger market share and better representation. Because the data is very clear – partners who invest more in their enablement and their certification, who really go on that journey, their revenue tends to be much higher than partners who don’t make that same commitment. And that’s why we have something that we’re now making available – it’s called our Partner Capacity Dashboard, something brand new. We’re making it available to our Channel Business Managers first for this year. Next year we’ll make it available to partners so they can have clear visibility on all the individuals, the training, the demos, the AI roleplays, all the things that their people are doing. And we also look at their projection for the year’s business and give them guidance on whether they have enough individuals, enough people who are certified. So it’s going to help them really with their business planning for the future. I’m excited about giving this first to our Channel Business Managers. We have a few things to work through, and then by beginning of ’27 we’re going to make it available to partners to help them on that journey. So that’s another one of those things that we’ve evolved and changed. Robert Dutt: You touched on this a couple of times, let’s discuss it now. The CyberArk acquisition closed in February, $25 billion, added identity security into the fold. And that’s something that we’re hearing a lot more about across the industry and throughout the channel. What does CyberArk being in there mean for partners right now? Is there a NextWave path for identity? And how quickly do you think partners are going to be able to build their capability there, particularly with Palo Alto? Michael Khoury: So this was my message probably a week before we closed the CyberArk deal. I went to a CyberArk event, their global sales kickoff, where we had about 200 or so partners. And one of my messages to those partners in the room, I said “Look, if your business is resale, managed service, or consulting implementation on identity only, that’s totally fine. That is a home for you at Palo Alto Networks.” Now it turns out, when we looked at the data, the vast majority of our partners are joint partners, meaning they are both a CyberArk partner and a Palo Alto Networks partner. We had a very small number of partners who are CyberArk-only partners. And those partners, we were in the process of ensuring we onboard them in the next few months before the new fiscal year starts. So the journey for those partners is, if you’re going to continue with identity, we’re going to give you all the support, all the things that I talked about earlier – from access to training, enablement, demos, AI roleplay, tools – all of that is going to be available for identity. All the incentives that I talked about, which today are not available in the CyberArk portfolio, we are going to be working on that for identity for the new year as well. So partners can be even more profitable when they do business on identity. And both CyberArk and Palo Alto, we both embrace partner delivery and support services as well. Between us and them, we have over 90% of the delivery on CyberArk – and a similar thing on Palo Alto – done by partners. So it’s not just the managed services motion or the support motion, but even the delivery motion as well is done by partners. So there will be a path if you just do identity – and again, those are a small percentage – there’ll be a path for those partners to be able to continue to invest in identity. And they’ll have plenty of time to adjust. And if they don’t ever want to go beyond identity, that’s fine. But again, the majority of our partners are actually joint partners between the two companies. So there is a lot more synergy there. When you start looking at data, you start looking at which partners drive the TCVs and the bookings on Palo Alto, there is a lot of overlap. And we’re rationalizing the rest of our ecosystem as well. But I’m excited about adding identity and being able to incentivize and give more support to those identity partners. And I’m glad to say, by having such a large joint overlap, I think that in itself will open up more business for them and more opportunities for us. And frankly, for the Palo Alto partners who do not sell identity – because we have more of those, Palo Alto partners who do not sell identity – this is going to be a great opportunity for them to embrace identity, get the right training, get the right certification and specialization, and be able, if they want to expand beyond what Palo Alto offers, into the identity space. That’s the bigger area of opportunity. Because as I said, the joint customers – all of the CyberArk partners are actually Palo Alto partners – but we had more Palo Alto partners who are not CyberArk, who don’t sell and support identity. And that’s where I feel there is a big potential for growth in that area. Robert Dutt: Do you have any kind of feel for how many of those partners that you describe, who are Palo Alto but not CyberArk, have made identity bets elsewhere? Michael Khoury: That’s a great question. I don’t have that top of mind to share with you as a percentage. Identity tends to be an area where you need to invest deeper. Let me give you an example – a certified delivery engineer at CyberArk is a minimum six-to-nine-month type investment. So it’s not as easy for a partner to pick it up overnight and say “Yeah, I’m ready to go down that path” unless it is part of their go-to-market motion and they have a plan for it. Now, the way we see the future, with more agentic AI and privileged access going to play a bigger role, we believe identity and the privileged access space is going to be an even more key component of that. So I’m going to see more and more partners – not just the joint partners, but more and more partners are going to start to embrace that. But I don’t have the exact percentage top of mind of, hey, if you are Palo Alto only, have you invested with another company versus us. I think they’re going to find very quickly, with all the things we’ve changed in the new program and implementing those with identity and incentivizing more on identity, I think it’s going to be very difficult for them to turn away, even if they were investing with another vendor, not to come to Palo Alto Networks and invest with our identity solution. Especially as we integrate the products and there’s going to be a lot more capability from a platform perspective by having identity. I think it’s going to be more and more difficult to say “Oh, I’m just going to keep working with another company on this one product only.” I think they will see the value, even if I don’t do all the great things I talked about in the program, which we are doing for identity. But from a product and a technology perspective, I think there is a lot of value there. Robert Dutt: My last question – if we’re sitting here a year from now, what does success look like for this program? What’s the metric or the outcome that tells you this revamp worked? Michael Khoury: Yeah. I mean, if I look at the key metrics that we’re looking for – and I think you heard me talk about them already – I’m going to look at how many more partners have trained individuals on Palo Alto Networks, how many more certifications across next-gen security, how much more booking is coming from that side of the house, what percentage more of deal reg is initiated by partners. I’m going to look across various elements to say, did we actually hit the mark? And obviously the other piece is we’re investing in those partnerships as well. All these things that I talked about to make available for partners, it’s an investment on our part. So I need to have that direct correlation to all these key success metrics. And so far the early indication says we’re heading in the right direction. There is one item we haven’t talked about and I want to mention this. Part of our incentive redesign, we also created a program called the Partner Development Fund. So partners will not just be able to earn rebates from us, but also part of the investment they earn will go into a Partner Development Fund that helps them invest in their future growth. So when I look at that future growth and all the activities that partners can drive with us – whether it’s investment in training, investment in headcount, investment in migration services, competitive takeout, whatever the case may be – they’re going to have funds available to them to make that investment in future growth. So one metric I’m going to be looking at is all these partners – how fast they’re growing, where were they growing with Palo Alto Networks as a percentage of business with us, and how fast that is growing now a year later, as we launch this new program with basically adding fuel to that fire and having a flywheel effect. The better job you do, the more we reward you. And the more we reward you, you have more funds to help you reinvest more in that growth. That part is really going to be a key differentiator for us and for those partners. In addition, frankly Rob, our platform strategy across these different products is going to give them a very real competitive advantage. So when you take all that holistically – from a technology perspective, from a program strategy, from a go-to-market motion – all of that combined with access to more training, more enablement, more funds, more support, I think the story is going to look a lot more positive across all these metrics. So I’m looking forward to, by end of fiscal year ’27, which will be the 18-month mark, seeing how this is going to play out. Robert Dutt: All right, I appreciate that, and certainly a lot going on with the NextWave redesign. I appreciate your walking us through some of your thinking around building the program and getting it out there. Michael, thank you. Michael Khoury: Thank you, Rob. Thanks for having me and great to be here. Appreciate the time. Robert Dutt: There you have it, Michael Khoury from Palo Alto Networks. I’d like to thank Michael for his time. He was generous with it, and more importantly, he was generous with specifics, which is not always the case when you get into a partner program conversation. A few things that stuck out for me with this one. First, the listening tour approach. Michael came in, asked partners what was working, and built the revamp around those answers. That sounds obvious, but it’s rarer than it should be. The four pain points that he identified – partners over-relying on Palo Alto staff for basic tasks, managed services being treated like resale, training and enablement that wasn’t keeping up, and an incentive structure that was, in his words, “mostly on paper” – those are complaints I’ve heard from partners across vendors over the years. The question is whether the new program actually fixes them, and the early signals are encouraging. The two-to-four-times earnings improvement isn’t a projection – it’s based on actual past booking data, and they’re already seeing increased deal registration for next-generation security lines within weeks of launch. Second, the diversification requirement. If you’re a firewall-heavy partner, the 30% non-firewall threshold for Diamond level is real, and the clock is ticking. But Michael made a reasonable case that most strategic partners are already within striking distance, and the CyberArk identity practice now counts toward that number, which opens up a path that didn’t exist six months ago. And third, for the audience here in Canada specifically, Michael noted that Canadian partners invest more per resource in technical pre-sales and certifications than partners in other markets. That’s a competitive advantage worth knowing about and leaning into. Thank you for listening. If you found this one useful, I’d appreciate it if you’d follow or subscribe. You can find the In The Channel podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most podcast directories. And if you have a moment to leave a rating or a review, that goes a long way to helping other channel pros find the show. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

WEI: AI-Driven, Self-Healing Networks and Enterprise Connectivity with WEI Connect, Podcast

ai vice president driven 5g enterprise networks users wei starlink apis connectivity self healing technology solutions sd wan labrie

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 8, 2026

Greg LaBrie, Vice President of Technology Solutions at Worldcom Exchange Inc. (WEI), joined Technology Reseller News Publisher Doug Green to discuss how AI and next-generation connectivity—anchored by WEI Connect and Starlink—are reshaping enterprise networking. WEI, a long-standing value-added reseller founded in 1989, has evolved into a provider of integrated IT and connectivity solutions. With WEI Connect, the company is bringing enterprise-grade structure, visibility, and support to emerging technologies like Starlink, transforming them into fully managed, business-ready services. LaBrie described AI in telecom as the foundation for self-healing, autonomous networks driven by telemetry and real-time decision-making. “For us, AI means having networks that are self-healing and autonomous—collecting data, making decisions, and keeping users connected without them even knowing it's happening,” he said. Starlink plays a central role in this vision, using AI to dynamically select satellites and ground connections to maintain performance. WEI enhances this capability by aggregating data through APIs, applying predictive analytics, and integrating SD-WAN intelligence to determine the best available connection—whether satellite, fiber, or 5G—on a per-application basis. The result is an outcome-based network where connectivity is seamless and resilient. Users experience uninterrupted service—even during live sessions—as traffic is automatically routed across the optimal path. This approach not only improves uptime but also enables new use cases, including real-time telemetry collection in remote or hard-to-reach environments. Looking ahead, WEI sees continued advances in AI-driven automation, with increasing amounts of data enabling more predictive and autonomous network management. As enterprise reliance on connectivity grows, LaBrie emphasized that organizations will benefit from fewer outages, improved performance, and simplified support through partners that unify multiple technologies into a single, managed experience. Learn more: https://www.wei.com/

The Service Delivery Edge: BCN's Blueprint for MSP Success in 2026

EChannelNews Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 8, 2026 13:18

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, we sit down with Tom Boggs, VP of Service Delivery at BCN, to explore why the modern MSP battleground has shifted from basic connectivity to high-level service execution. With over 30 years in the game, BCN is positioning itself as a leader in managed technology solutions—ranging from SD-WAN and SASE to full-lifecycle managed services.Tom breaks down how BCN moves beyond traditional technical metrics by utilizing Experience-Level Agreements (XLAs). By blending real-time customer feedback with process data, BCN ensures that uptime actually translates to a positive user experience. We also discuss the ideal BCN customer—multi-site enterprises requiring robust connectivity overlays—and how BCN is cautiously but effectively integrating AI. From self-healing SD-WAN networks to internal project onboarding tools, Tom highlights a pragmatic approach to innovation that prioritizes data privacy over open AI risks.

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Dual CVSS 10.0 Cisco Flaws, AI Malware Assembly Line, Qualcomm Zero-Day & More | HN65

Exploit Brokers - Hacking News

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 26, 2026 23:25

This week on Hacking News, we're covering five stories that all share one theme: the things we trust most are the things being targeted. Cisco disclosed two CVSS 10.0 vulnerabilities in their Secure Firewall Management Center — the centralized brain that manages entire firewall fleets — giving unauthenticated attackers root access. Pakistan-linked APT36 has turned AI coding tools into a malware assembly line, flooding Indian government networks with disposable "vibeware" variants in a strategy Bitdefender calls "Distributed Denial of Detection." Google dropped the largest Android security update in almost eight years — 129 vulnerabilities — including a Qualcomm zero-day already under targeted exploitation across 234 chipsets. A China-linked threat cluster called UAT-9244 is burrowing into South American telecom infrastructure with three brand-new malware families spanning Windows, Linux, and edge devices. And LexisNexis confirmed a cloud breach after a threat actor exploited an unpatched React app and found the database password was... Lexis1234. ⏱️ Timestamps 0:00 — Cold Open: What do you call a hackable firewall manager? 1:21 — Welcome & CTA 2:01 — Story 1: Cisco Secure FMC — Two CVSS 10.0 Vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-20079 & CVE-2026-20131) 5:33 — Story 2: APT36 "Vibeware" — AI-Generated Malware at Industrial Scale 9:13 — Story 3: Google Android March 2026 — 129 Patches + Qualcomm Zero-Day (CVE-2026-21385) 12:34 — Story 4: UAT-9244 / FamousSparrow — China-Linked APT Hits South American Telecoms 16:26 — Story 5: LexisNexis Cloud Breach — React2Shell, Weak Passwords, Gov Data 20:14 — Recap & Key Takeaways 22:40 — Outro

PP102: What's Driving SASE Adoption?

security driving networking spending adoption engineers cybersecurity compliance sd wan sase

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2026 56:06

Spending on SASE, which combines SD-WAN and cloud-delivered security, is forecast to nearly triple over the next few years, according to Dell’Oro Group. Today on Packet Protector we talk with that forecast’s author about what’s driving that spending. We also explore how SASE vendors are differentiating, architectural considerations for SASE deployments, pros and cons of... Read more »

PP102: What's Driving SASE Adoption?

security driving networking spending adoption engineers cybersecurity compliance sd wan sase

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2026 56:06

Your managed services are hitting every SLA metric and the customer still thinks you’re failing – here’s why

Exploit Brokers - Hacking News

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2026 37:07

Jeff Collins, CEO of WanAware The last time the channel faced a shift this fundamental was the rise of the hypervisor. That transition reshaped everything, but it happened inside the four walls of the data center. What’s different about the current moment, argues WanAware CEO Jeff Collins, is that AI workloads, inference nodes, IoT, and SCADA infrastructure are being bolted onto customer environments without the kind of formal network redesign that virtualization demanded. The result is a growing visibility gap that most MSPs don’t realize they have. Collins points to a striking finding from a WanAware survey conducted in late 2025: when business leaders were asked about their visibility gap, they rated it extremely high. When IT was asked the same question, they rated it low. Both were technically right. IT was measuring visibility against the machines in their purview – Active Directory, database servers, web front ends. The business was measuring it against everything else: Kubernetes workloads, cloud functions, agentic AI processes, and infrastructure that might not exist tomorrow. That disconnect is why MSPs can show perfect MTTR and SLA performance while the customer is saying you’re failing. The conversation covers where traditional monitoring breaks down, why 30% false positive rates persist even after major platform investments, and how ephemeral workloads designed to disappear create alerts that will never resolve. Collins makes a compelling case that MSPs need to push visibility up the OSI stack, from layers one through three into the application and business logic layers where margin is significantly higher. He shares a practical framework for how to start, using vertical industry knowledge – particularly in sectors like Canadian oil and gas, where SCADA networks and AWS IoT Core infrastructure represent opportunities to grow a $1,000-a-month customer into a $30,000-a-month engagement. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to the ChannelBuzz.ca podcast, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and still your host for the show. Today we’re talking about a problem a lot of MSPs and channel partners are starting to feel, even if they don’t always have a name for it yet, and that’s visibility. As AI workloads, hybrid architectures and distributed endpoints become the norm, network traffic is changing faster than the tools that many partners rely on to understand what’s actually happening inside their customers’ environments. My guest today is Jeff Collins, CEO of WanAware. Jeff spends a lot of time with service providers and enterprise teams dealing with this shift, where accountability for performance, security and uptime is increasing, even as environments become harder to see and harder to diagnose when something goes wrong. WanAware operates in the network and infrastructure visibility space, but this conversation isn’t about the tools, the dashboards. It’s about how blind spots form in modern networks, why they’re easy to miss until there’s an outage, a security issue, or an SLA failure, and what partners need to understand as AI-driven infrastructure quietly reshapes traffic patterns and dependencies. In this discussion, we’re going to explore where traditional monitoring starts to fall apart, how partners can rethink what good visibility really means today, and why the ability to see what’s happening across distributed environments is quickly becoming both a risk issue and a business opportunity for MSPs. If you’re responsible for customer outcomes, but you don’t always feel confident you can see everything that matters, this conversation is for you. [MUSIC] Robert Dutt: Jeff, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Jeff Collins: Thanks, Rob. Thanks for having me on. Robert Dutt: You’ve been advising partners, MSPs, VARs, these types of folks through a lot of change over time. Why does this moment with the rise of AI workloads and the continuing trend of hybrid networks feel like a real inflection point rather than sort of just the next evolution of the way things look? Jeff Collins: I think one of the biggest reasons why is because it’s so transformational to what MSPs and resellers and VARs and distributors have dealt with for, let’s say, the last 25 years. If we think about the last major inflection point that they dealt with was really kind of the realm of the hypervisor, this ecosystem where no longer did we have to have a server running an operating system, and that created kind of the whole ecosystem we deal with today. It created cloud, it created containers, all those things were built off this concept of a hypervisor. That was really the last major transformational thing that has happened. Now we fast forward to today and we’ve got this era of AI. We’ve got this era where we’re now taking agentic approaches, generative approaches, to things that our customers deal with every day. When I talk about our customers, those are the customers of the MSP, those are the customers of the reseller, the distributor. Not only are they dealing with that, they’re dealing with this massive evolution in the customer base, but they’re also having to do that same evolution in their own environments. If you’re an MSP and you’re focused on infrastructure, or you’re an MSP and you look more like an MSSP where you’re focused on security, now you’re starting to have to deal with, “Okay, I’ve got these tools, I’ve got these people, I’ve got these agents, I’ve got all these entities inside of my business that are doing something for my customer.” But now I have to think about how am I going to do that faster? How am I going to do that better? How am I going to do that more effectively? Because our customers are getting much more advanced. That’s really one of the biggest things that I see that we’re seeing a lot of, that “Where do I start?” from the channel partner community. When we think about the channel, we know all this stuff is going on, but it seems like such a Herculean lift that I think sometimes it’s hard to know where we make that first step. Robert Dutt: That makes sense. A lot of this, a lot of AI especially, and to a degree sort of the hybridization of the network, that complexity has come on without kind of a formal network redesign. Like you mentioned the transition to hypervisors and that necessitated rethinking how things were done because it was a physical change. Whereas a lot of, especially with AI, it’s kind of being bolted in, added on as you go. Why does that make the environment today harder to understand than maybe it was for past transitions when you’re sitting there watching it as an MSP or other partner? Jeff Collins: Well, I think one of the biggest reasons why this era is so much more difficult than the last transition is because we’re not bound by the four walls of our proverbial house. If we think about when we dealt with the last transition, every customer, their physical server sat inside of something they control. So we’ll refer to it as their house because that’s the easiest kind of comparison we can do. In today’s world, there’s certainly a lot that exists in our customers’ houses and in the houses that the MSP or the reseller or the channel partner or whomever it is are engaged in. But so much of that’s going outside of those walls. And when we think about AI, AI is certainly outside of those walls. I mean, we might be dealing with Anthropic, we might be dealing with ChatGPT or Gemini or the thousand other agentic or generative approaches that are out there. Those are all over the place. And now we’re asking these entities to take oftentimes a process-driven approach that they’ve had for 20, 25 years. And how do you change that process-driven approach when you don’t really know where those workloads, where those assets, where that data is going to reside either today or tomorrow, or even if that data that we’re looking at is even going to exist tomorrow. That’s this whole realm. I mean, we’ve been talking about ephemeral workloads for, you know, let’s call it 14 years, 15 years since really the rise of AWS. But now we’re starting to deal with these ephemeral workloads, not just in the realm of infrastructure, but also in data, in generative concepts, in agents. You know, historically, we had Bob Smith, who might have worked in the NOC. Well, tomorrow, Bob Smith is an agent. What does that look like? It’s AI. What did Bob Smith do yesterday? Did Bob Smith, the new agentic version of Bob Smith, did that person do the right thing, the wrong thing, the incorrect thing? How do we manage that? How do we deal with that? How do we process that? Those are all the things that are across the board, just happening at massive rapid scale. And so, you know, it’s a really difficult time right now to be an MSP or a channel partner, but it’s also an amazing time to be an MSP or channel partner. You know, our world, our capabilities are advancing so fast. You think about one of the simplest use cases that’s out there that all of us think is simple, that MSPs deal with every day, is a circuit outage. You know, a telecom circuit goes down and it’s connected to SD-WAN or it’s connected to a router or it’s connected to some type of device that’s out at the prem. And historically, every MSP on the planet’s dealt with it kind of in a similar way. We get an alert from a monitoring system that feeds a ticketing system. It pops up on a tier one agent’s dashboard. The tier one agent looks at it, they verify power, they verify if the router’s operational, and then they open a ticket with a carrier. And then they, and that’s the hurry up and wait type of world. Well, now in the era of AI, that changes that quite a bit, because every one of those things are very process driven. We don’t need people for that anymore. So now we can have a system take that process flow on, do that. Now, historically, we could use a system to do that. We could write automation and a lot of MSPs did that historically, but the problem with automation is automation is static. When we leverage AI, we can leverage enrichment that helps influence that agentic approach. And so now if there’s a nuance going on, let’s say an example is there’s a global power outage. So let’s say there’s a power outage in the entire Vancouver area. We know that. Well, historically, if we’re looking at that, we see all these customers that are down, we might through a tier one agent approach, a person-based approach that following a process, or even an automated approach, not really correlate that. Because if the MSP is in, let’s say, Montreal, they might not realize there’s a large scale power outage in Vancouver, which is thousands of kilometers away. And so when we think about that, that’s really where these things can change a lot from an agentic perspective. And then the MSP gets the joy of being able to repurpose that person to be much more valuable to their organization, that tier one person can become tier two, and that can really start changing that dynamic a lot. Robert Dutt: Most MSPs would have historically said we have good visibility across what our customers are doing. And probably I would say most believe they have good visibility today. Where does that confidence most often turn out to be misplaced or to start to break down as the model shifts? Jeff Collins: Yeah, so I would 100% agree that most MSPs, when workloads are static, have great visibility. The problem is that in today’s world, so many workloads are becoming dynamic. And we see that change happening consistently. You know, customers, you know, historically MSPs had problems monitoring services inside of a cloud provider. You have ephemeral workloads, you have workloads that aren’t necessarily a server, they’re much more like a service. So you have things that might be a Kubernetes instance, they might be a Kubernetes runtime instance, they might be a function. Those are all things that are crucial to the operation of a customer. They’ve taken those workloads that historically operated on a machine. And they’ve taken those workloads and now they’re in some type of small form factor instance that exists for a very short period of time. That’s been very difficult for MSPs to deal with across the board. But now we take that same concept and that same concept goes outside of the cloud providers. We now have that moving into inference nodes. We now have that moving into IoT and IIoT and OT, where we’re starting to deal with these ecosystems where these workloads are very ephemeral by nature. They might exist for a short period or components of those might exist for a short period, or the way that those are correlated and analyzed might exist. But if you think about inside of a customer from a business risk perspective, those actually carry the highest business risk. An individual Windows 2012 server has some level of business risk. If it’s running SAP, probably a higher level of business risk. But if it’s one Active Directory node and the customer has 100 machines in Active Directory, it doesn’t really matter in the scheme of the world. And so those are the realities of what happens as we kind of think through this stuff. And so for MSPs, this really drives that visibility gap. You know, we did a survey earlier this year, or actually late last year, sorry, in 2025. We did a survey across the board asking business leaders really what the visibility gap was and what they believed. And we asked business leaders and we also asked IT. It was really interesting to see kind of the dichotomy. When you ask the business what the visibility gap was, it was extremely high. When you ask technology what the visibility gap is, it was really low. Now they were both technically right. And here’s why. So IT was thinking about the visibility gap of the machines that they understand, the machines in their purview. So those might be, you know, an Active Directory server, a database server, maybe you have a web front end. Those are all there. And those are 100% being monitored to that IT team or to that MSP. The problem is, is the business itself is operating on a whole bunch of additional workloads that IT doesn’t necessarily have purview to. And so because of that, we start ending up with this difference of visibility. And that’s why oftentimes when you’ll go and you’ll talk to a customer or you’ll go and you’ll talk to the business itself. And the business is saying, why do we have this MSP who works for us? This MSP isn’t doing anything. And the MSP is coming back with these great reports that are showing MTTR is consistently dropping. You know, initial response time, triage time is consistently dropping. We’re blowing out every single metric that we provided you in an SLA or an SLO. And the business is coming back and saying, but you’re failing. And the MSP is saying, I don’t understand. We are not. And here’s all the metrics. And it’s because of this difference in resources that exist, that is what is happening. And so I think that’s one of the big areas that we always have to think through is, you know, as we’re looking at things and as MSPs look at things, they have to continue to be pushing upward inside of the business to understand all those areas that the business is driving that IT, who they’ve historically sold to, may not know about those resources, especially in a lot of these other spaces, AI, IoT, IIoT, OT, ephemeral workloads, cloud workloads, those types of things that are often outside of that scope. Robert Dutt: Yeah. I guess when you’re looking at sort of your visibility stopping basically at the edge of the organization, you’ve got all of this out there, pretty significant impacts on real world issues like latency, like security exposure, like the ability to meet those SLAs that you signed up for, those kinds of things. Jeff Collins: Yeah. Yeah. 100% agreed. And, you know, when you think about the core components that an MSP does, you know, MSPs generally deal with availability and they deal with performance. When you add in the MSSP, now we add in the security component. And some MSPs and MSSPs are more hybrid-based approaches. They may deal with all three. But as you kind of look at those, those core tenant areas have become much more difficult, especially in the last 10 years, certainly in the last year. I mean, the last year has been so disruptive for all that we do. And it’s because those pieces have become much less simple. You know, if I go back 25 years or even 20 years, customers by and large used MPLS networks, rather simple to monitor. You have guaranteed jitter, you have guaranteed latency, you have, you know, all these things that are very easily assumed by an MSP. So if latency exceeds 74 milliseconds between these two individual locations, that breaks the SLA that the provider provides and it’s an easy conversation. You need to go fix this. This is not okay. Well, in today’s world, most of our customers don’t have MPLS networks. Most of them have, you know, sometimes now it’s satellite. They might have Starlink for LEO. They might have 4G or 5G, depending on what portion of the world they’re in. They might have some type of broadband service, fiber broadband, or copper broadband, or some other type of realm. Well, those don’t necessarily have SLAs for that in any way, shape, or form. We may luck out and they have an availability SLA. Maybe it’s three nines or two nines, or maybe not even two nines, depending on what type of service that is. And then when we start moving inside of the network, outside of the service provider, outside of the circuit provider itself, we start moving into other arenas that look like this. You know, historically we had a Dell server, an HP server that had a mean time before failure. Well, that’s pretty easy to understand. If I have a server and it’s going to run for 25,000 hours, it’s easy to understand that life. But when now we’re starting to get services that have an expected failure, and that expected failure is generally measured in less than a year, because the assumption is that the software, the application, resolves that issue. If you’re an MSP and you’re not monitoring the application and you don’t understand the application, you’re now chasing outages that don’t matter. And that’s one of the other things that’s really hard. And we see this all the time. You know, I’ll talk to MSPs and they’re like, “Jeff,” and it goes back to that same conversation we had before of not knowing the business. “Jeff, we get, today we have 30% of our tickets that become false positives. What do we do about that? We’ve gone out and we’ve bought the newest monitoring platform. We’ve implemented AI. We’ve implemented all this automation. We spent $20 million doing that.” These are all real things that I have in conversations with MSPs. And at the end of the day, they still have 30% false positives that they’re working. And the reality is, is because it’s certainly an outage. There was 100% an outage that happened. But the reality is that outage was never going to get restored because the outage was designed. You know, that workload disappeared. A DevOps team or a DevSecOps team deployed a new environment and that workload is now gone. And there’s a brand new workload that you’re not monitoring right now. You know nothing about it. And those are the things that we all collectively have to continually evolve to. It’s that driving up the stack. You know, one of the things that I often see is, you know, we have this proverbial thing that we’ve all dealt with, the OSI model. You know, there’s seven layers to that OSI model. So often in MSPs, we focus on four of them. The problem is, and most MSPs only focus on the first three. They don’t even focus on the fourth one. The issue is, is there’s three more. And those three more are what get driven by the business. And so the more that we can focus on visibility within those three, understanding that, bringing that into our tools, that drives additional value. It also drives significantly larger margin. You know, if we think about margin contribution at monitoring a telecom circuit, that’s a pretty low margin at this point in time. There’s a lot of automation around that. Monitoring a server – that world used to be high-margin, but it’s compressing. Customers are increasingly doing more of this themselves. They’re doing automation directly into their CI/CD pipeline. So it becomes this knife fight. And there’s more and more MSPs that are out there that are also fighting for that same share of market. And so the key is, the more that MSPs can go up market, they can understand, you know, I hate to use this term digital transformation because it literally gets overused every day by every marketing team on the planet. But the reality is, is that if we go behind this marketing abomination of this term, and we actually look at what happens, there’s a ton of value that we can go after. And if we go after that value, and we go after what people are trying to do, we align with that, we can now take those same products, those same processes that we’ve historically had as MSPs, and we can really start evolving that. Moving upward, driving in significant value, taking our tool sets that we may have today, maybe those can evolve with us, maybe we have to make new changes in our tool sets. But the reality is we’re driving that margin upward. So we’re going from maybe our contribution margin to our business today is 30%, let’s say, we can start moving back up into 60, 70, 80% contribution margin from a managed services perspective, which is where we all want to be. We don’t want to be fighting knife fights for 30%. It’s just hard, it’s difficult. Our customer acquisition costs are still generally high. We have salespeople, we have marketing efforts, we have all those things that we’re burning through every day. And we need more and more market share, we need more and more assets that we’re monitoring. And as a result of that, we need better ways that can contribute higher margin and create stickier customers that we’re not in those knife fights with. Robert Dutt: The situation seems to be putting MSPs in a situation where they’re increasingly accountable for outcomes that they can’t fully see the contributing factors of. Before you move on, I just wanted to double click on that just a little bit and just ask, how does that change kind of the risk profile for an MSP when you’re accountable for those things that you don’t completely understand or have complete control over? Jeff Collins: Yeah, I would say a lot of that. And one of the things that MSPs have to think through is a lot of that starts at the sales cycle. If you don’t ask the right questions at the sales cycle stage, oftentimes you get pushed into that ecosystem. When you’re looking at the core functional plumbing behind what a customer is trying to do, and that’s the only thing you’re looking at, you often get siloed into that ecosystem. You’re looking at a server, you’re not looking at SAP. One server going down in SAP doesn’t necessarily mean SAP has a problem. But if that one server is the only HANA server in SAP, that’s catastrophic. You know, it’s this realm of contextual knowledge. Historically MSPs have that contextual knowledge, but it’s all the way at tier three and tier four. That contextual knowledge has to move to tier one. If MSPs want to get to the arena where that is no longer a problem, the contextual pieces have to move downward. You have to go from a hero-based MSP to a process-driven MSP. So many MSPs are built on heroes. It’s really hard to build a scalable business off heroes. You have to have heroes. Heroes are the people that when everything breaks and the world is on fire, they’re the ones who carry you through. And those heroes we want to have, we want to empower them, but they can’t be doing the stuff that should be done at tier one. So if we take that exact same question that you had, Rob, that question is, you know, how do we make, at the end of the day, how do we make MSPs more relevant to their clients and much more aligned with what the client’s trying to do? And that’s by taking the contextual knowledge of what the customer is trying to do, aligning that with the tactical approaches that the MSP is trying to do, and having a very crystal clear playbook of how this tactical component makes up this strategic initiative inside of the business. So we’ll take that, we’ll take that simple example. I shouldn’t say simple. SAP is far from simple. But the reality is, is that SAP is something that customers rely on. And when they rely on that, if SAP goes down the business goes down. And if you have an MSP that’s monitoring that, and at the same second of the same day, the MSP gets 36 tickets. We’ll just pick a random 36 number. 36 severity one tickets come in at that point in time. One of those severity one tickets is for SAP HANA. And the customer only has one instance of that. And that is taking down a large company. So that’s the first ticket. The next 35 tickets are for ephemeral workloads that the customer migrated off of, you got the alert, they migrated to a brand new ephemeral workload. And the 35 don’t matter. They’re false positives. But the one fully matters. In every single MSP on the planet, those 36 tickets are eligible for the same response interval. That’s a pretty tough average to be able to. Are you going to luck out and get the one? Or are you going to luck out, or not luck out, for lack of a better term, and work 35 false positives before you get to the one that matters? Now, most MSPs are going to tell me and they’re going to tell us that, well, we have more than one tier one path. That’s great. But the reality is you need to be responding to that one ticket right now. And you need to understand that that one ticket matters. And the only way you can do that is by starting at the beginning, starting with the sales cycle, understanding what customers are doing. If you’ve already gone down the path and the customer’s embedded, use your customer support teams. Understand what your customers are doing, start layering in that context, start enriching that data, knowing what that actually feeds, and understanding the dependencies and interdependencies inside of that. So if that server goes down, certainly you could by virtue say a database server going down is a SEV-1, but it may not be. If they have four database servers, they’re running in a high availability group, who cares? If one goes down, not the end of the world, go fix it tomorrow. That’s where context, that’s where understanding those dependencies is so crucial. And I mentioned at the beginning of this is how do you take that first step forward? We always take this first step forward and how I instruct MSPs is start doing things like this, take this step forward, break this down into simple programmatic approaches. And when we think about AI, it’s the exact same idea. We move steps forward, we have agentic, we have generative. Pick one, pick an area you want to focus on with your customers, understand the business outcome they’re trying to do. And if you have an inference engine, that’s going to be really crucially important here. So let’s understand that. Let’s monitor that. Let’s understand the intricacies related to how that customer is leveraging it, why it’s important. Are there latency constraints? Are there packet loss constraints? Those types of things. Let’s monitor to that and let’s understand how that happens. And if a customer has an application on the back end, you know, maybe they have New Relic or they have AppDynamics or they have some type of APM toolset, great. Let’s start bringing those into our monitoring. Let’s start bringing that intelligence in, understanding application flows, understanding dependencies, building that to be part of our story. And now we create so much more opportunity for us as an MSP driving that contribution margin northbound. Robert Dutt: So it sounds like we’re kind of defining good visibility in a modern environment and kind of setting up for looking forward as understanding what actually matters to the customer and understanding what kind of flows into it, what all results in that thing that’s important to the customer still being up, still being running, still being functional, and kind of work backwards from there as opposed to the more “this machine is working, this machine is not” kind of approach. Jeff Collins: Yep. Yeah. You want to go from tactical to transformational. That’s really the idea. Robert Dutt: And you shared kind of the idea of the first step to do towards that. I guess as you’re moving towards that first step, you know, is there any one question or kind of mindset that you find works for MSPs to have in mind or asking customers to surface those blind spots and really start to understand what that context is that they have to have? Jeff Collins: Yeah, that’s a really good question, Rob. And, you know, there’s some things that I do tell MSPs to start with before you ever ask that first question. One of them is kind of some of the simple, let’s call it research that you can do before you ever reach out to your customer. One of the easiest things you can do is start by what industry are they in. You know, in Canada, Canada has a lot of oil and gas, lots and lots of oil and gas companies exist in Canada. And so if you have an oil and gas company, we can start right off the bat with a lot of the things that oil and gas companies live and die with. And we’ll just pick on this one as an example. So oil and gas companies have SCADA networks. They have industrial IoT devices that are out there. They’re processing massive amounts of data. That data may be going into the cloud. It may be going into a data center. It may be going into some type of vault or something like that, depending on what they have. But each one of those are things that, as an MSP, you can start out before you ever ask your customer anything. You know that those are the things that exist in their environment. And you can quickly look and see, well, am I monitoring any of those? Well, no, I’m only monitoring Active Directory. Okay, Active Directory is probably important to the oil and gas company. But if it goes down, do they quit producing oil? The answer is probably no. And so if your answer is ever no, you know right off the bat that you’re not monitoring something that’s strategic to your customer. And so the first thing that you should always think about is, okay, if we have this industry, we should be monitoring the things that are strategic. Well, how do we do that? Well, we start with that one step forward. The first thing we talk to them about is just like when we went out and we sold that initial monitoring of Active Directory, they did it because they didn’t have time for it. There’s no oil and gas company on the planet that has time to be monitoring their SCADA networks. They just don’t. They may tell you that they do, but they don’t. So leverage your relationships, leverage your engagement with them and go after those pieces. Understand, you know, if they’re in AWS IoT Core, understand what that looks like. Understand who’s monitoring that. Understand how DevOps is working within that space. Maybe it’s DevSecOps inside of that environment. Understand that convergence of the teams and then start building a story around, you know, let’s take that on for you. Let’s start changing that. Let’s use the same paradigm that we’ve done, driving MTTR down, driving availability up, driving resolution times down, all those types of things. Let’s bring that into the era of SCADA networks, IoT, our core infrastructure. That’s where we start changing the value inside of our customer engagements. And that’s really where I see a huge opportunity for MSPs across Canada, where you can take that environment, you can take those opportunities you already have, and you can grow them from, you know, maybe you bill that customer $1,000 a month. You can grow it to billing them $20,000 or $30,000 a month, but it’s the most crucial $30,000 they spend. Because, you know, if that offshore environment or that, you know, oil sands environment or whatever it might be within the oil and gas space or in the energy sector, whatever it might be, those things are crucial to their business. And so the more that MSPs can kind of make that step forward, and then also start incorporating AI, every single one of those entities is incorporating AI. They’re incorporating it directly into their pipelines. They’re incorporating it directly into their data pipelines, not just the oil and gas pipelines, but each one of those, the more you can incorporate that, the more you can monitor, the more you can show value of everything that you do amazing as an MSP, that’s really where you start creating that intrinsic strategic value and you get out of that tactical approach. Robert Dutt: And the good news is for a lot of these folks in the MSP space, presumably they have some of these pieces already in place, just not necessarily connected up to the technical side, i.e. sales and marketing have been focused on a vertical. And even if they haven’t, because they have customers in this space, they’ve built some of that muscle memory, some of that knowledge of what really matters. Now it’s just a matter, hopefully, of connecting it into the services that they’re offering. Jeff Collins: Yep, totally agreed. Robert Dutt: All right. Well, it’s been a really interesting look at sort of where visibility is at. And I think a real interesting opportunity that you’ve surfaced in terms of how it can be turned into a value conversation. I appreciate your taking the time. Jeff Collins: Sounds great. Thanks so much for having me on, Rob. Robert Dutt: There you have it, my chat with Jeff Collins from WanAware. I’d like to thank Jeff for sharing his insights. The thing that stuck with me from this conversation is how much of what’s changed in the modern network hasn’t been designed in, it’s been bolted on. AI workloads, hybrid architectures, IoT, SCADA, all of it layered into environments without the kind of formal rethinking that happened when we moved to virtualization. And Jeff made a really compelling case that for MSPs, closing that visibility gap isn’t just a risk management play, it’s a revenue opportunity, and potentially a significant one, especially in verticals like energy and critical infrastructure where visibility is tied directly to uptime, safety, and compliance. We’ll be back on Monday with In Case You Missed It, your weekly news roundup. Thanks for listening. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

NVIDIA Blackwell & Vera Rubin $1 Trillion Projections | Tech Field Day News Rundown: March 18, 2026

Gestalt IT Rundown

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 18, 2026 31:37

AI's next phase is arriving fast—and it's reshaping everything from cloud performance to cybersecurity. This week, Amazon Web Services and Cerebras unveiled a new approach to dramatically accelerate AI inference by pairing specialized chips through Amazon Bedrock, while Dell, Nutanix, and CrowdStrike rolled out infrastructure and security innovations at GTC 2026 to support the rapid rise of agentic AI across enterprise environments. At the same time, Zscaler expanded data sovereignty controls to meet tightening global regulations, and Cisco rushed to patch a critical CVSS 10.0 SD-WAN vulnerability that could grant attackers full administrative access. Underscoring it all, Nvidia's Jensen Huang projected a staggering $1 trillion in demand for next-gen AI systems by 2027—making one thing clear: the race to power, secure, and scale AI is only just getting started. This and more on the Tech Field Day News Rundown with Tom Hollingsworth and guest host Dave Graham of MLCommons. Time Stamps: 0:00 - Cold Open0:28 - Welcome to the Tech Field Day News Rundown1:13 - AWS and Cerebras Partner to Accelerate AI Inference in the Cloud2:37 - Critical Cisco SD-WAN Authentication Bypass Vulnerability5:38 - Dell Expands AI Infrastructure Portfolio at NVIDIA GTC7:40 - CrowdStrike and NVIDIA Expand AI Security Alliance11:15 - Nutanix Expands AI Platform to Securely Run Enterprise AI Agents13:59 - Zscaler Expands Data Sovereignty Controls for Global Compliance18:26 - NVIDIA CEO Sees $1 Trillion in Orders for Blackwell and Vera Rubin Through 202728:38 - The Weeks Ahead: Upcoming Tech Field Day Events30:29 - Thanks for Watching the Tech Field Day News RundownTune in every Wednesday for the IT news of the week with a variable degree of snarkyness. Guest Host: ⁠Dave Graham, Head of Marketing at MLCommonsFollow our hosts ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tom Hollingsworth⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alastair Cooke⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stephen Foskett⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow Tech Field Day ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X/Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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Cisco & Dell CVSS 10.0 Exploited for YEARS, Claude AI Jailbroken, ScarCruft Jumps Air Gaps | HN64

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2026 28:07

Two perfect CVSS 10.0 scores in one news cycle. A state-sponsored actor living inside Cisco's SD-WAN platform since 2023. A brand-new lateral movement technique called "Ghost NICs" that leaves no forensic trace. An AI chatbot jailbroken to steal 195 million government records. A North Korean hacking group bridging air-gapped networks with USB drives and an embedded Ruby runtime. And a phishing platform so sophisticated it makes your multi-factor authentication functionally useless. This is Hacking News Episode 64 from Exploit Brokers by Forgebound Research. Five stories, multiple nation-state actors, and some genuinely novel attack techniques. Let's get into it.

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Inside Check Point’s three-acquisition bet on AI security and the MSP market

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Play Episode Listen Later Mar 10, 2026 28:57

Roi Karo, chief strategy officer at Check Point Check Point Software has been on an acquisition tear. Under new CEO Nadav Zafrir, the company has picked up five startups since early 2025, with three announced simultaneously in February: Cyclops, Cyata, and Rotate. But these aren’t opportunistic bolt-ons. They map directly to a four-pillar strategy that Check Point says defines the future of its security platform: Hybrid Mesh Network Security, Workspace Security, Exposure Management, and AI Security. In this episode, we sit down with Roi Karo, Check Point’s Chief Strategy Officer, and Angelo Valentini, head of channel sales for Canada, to dig into the thinking behind the acquisitions and what they mean for the channel. Roi brings an unusual perspective to the table, shaped by 25 years in Israeli defense intelligence and a stint as Chief Risk and Strategy Officer at blockchain infrastructure company Fireblocks before joining Check Point. Angelo Valentini, head of channel sales for Canada at Check Point The conversation covers how each acquisition fits into the broader strategy: Rotate brings MSP-native expertise to the Workspace Security pillar, where Check Point is consolidating endpoint, email, browser, and mobile security under a single management layer. Cyclops completes a full Continuous Threat Exposure Management cycle by adding internal asset scanning alongside CyberInt’s external scanning and Veriti’s automated remediation. And Cyata addresses the emerging challenge of governing autonomous AI agents operating on user endpoints, a category that barely existed a year ago but is evolving fast. We also explore what Check Point means by an “open garden” platform, including how its tools integrate with and remediate across competitors’ products, and how that philosophy plays out in practice for MSPs managing multi-vendor security stacks. Angelo adds a Canadian lens, touching on the opportunity in Canada’s SMB-dominant market and the compliance implications of Bill C-26. Check Point’s MSSP Partner Program offers consumption-based pricing and multi-tenant management for solution providers looking to explore the opportunity. Roi closes with a pointed message for partners: the assumption that there’s still time to learn and prepare is “terribly wrong.” The threat landscape is accelerating, and the window to adapt is narrower than most people think. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and as always your host for the show. Check Point Software has been making some big moves. Under new CEO Nadav Zafrir, the company has acquired five companies since early 2025, including three announced simultaneously in February: Cyclops, Cyata, and Rotate. And these aren’t random bolt-ons. They map to a deliberate four-pillar strategy that Check Point says defines the future of the platform. Those four pillars are: Hybrid Mesh Network Security, covering data centers, cloud, SASE, and SD-WAN. Workspace Security, protecting endpoints, email, browsers, and SaaS applications. Exposure Management, giving organizations visibility into their full attack surface. And AI Security, governing the new wave of autonomous AI agents operating inside enterprise environments. For solution providers, the most interesting piece here might be the Rotate acquisition. It’s an acqui-hire that brings in a team with deep roots in the MSP ecosystem, including veterans of Datto and Kaseya. Cyclops adds a data lake with over 150 integrations for attack surface management. And Cyata tackles a category that barely existed a year ago: identity management for AI agents. To unpack the strategy and what it means for the channel, I sat down with Roi Karo, Check Point’s chief strategy officer, and Angelo Valentini, who leads Check Point’s Canadian partner business. Roi brings an unusual perspective – 25 years in Israeli defense intelligence and a stint as chief risk and strategy officer at blockchain infrastructure company Fireblocks before joining Check Point. Here’s our conversation. Gentlemen, thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it. Roi Karo: Thank you very much. Angelo Valentini: Thanks for having us. Robert Dutt: Roi, before we dive into strategy itself, you come to Check Point from Fireblocks, and before that, 25 years in the IDF and on that side of the world. Pretty unique lens. I’m just curious, how does that shape how you think about security strategy versus someone who’s grown up and spent that kind of time inside the cybersecurity vendor world? Roi Karo: Yeah, that’s interesting. I think it gives a unique perspective, being part of the Israeli intelligence security, and it gives, I think, a wide view of how things are shaping. And it’s part of what we’re trying to answer today. The biggest hurdle I’m trying to uncover is what is going on. What’s going on in the world, what is going on in the market, and of course, how should we react as a security company. And I think my background gives an interesting perspective for that. And stating what is obvious, in Israel, many people in the cybersecurity industry are veterans of the Israeli defense forces. So it’s an interesting background and a very useful background to be part of the security ecosystem in Israel. Robert Dutt: You guys announced three acquisitions simultaneously, and that’s following last year, which saw Lakera and Veriti. That’s an aggressive pace. I guess, what do you see as the strategic urgency driving the acquisitions? Is it about AI creating new categories of risk, or is it about the competitive landscape forcing your hand? Is it a little bit of both? What’s driving this? Roi Karo: Yeah, I think both and maybe some more. Stating the obvious, things are changing faster than before. Everybody’s talking about how AI is changing the world. Something that everybody says in their first sentence: everything is faster. Things that before took years now take weeks and even days. So we can’t just wait. We need to move fast, faster than we moved before. So acquisition is a great way to move faster. When we find a very strong team that has a very good product that can help our portfolio and give us good products that we can suggest or offer to our customers, this is something that we’re very interested in. And I think, as you mentioned, the competitive landscape – competitors are also moving faster. So we need to keep pace. And the last thing I would add, Check Point as a large company offers a wide variety of solutions. We’re very known for our firewalls and network security, but if we’ll have more time, we can talk about the other pillars. And actually all three new acquisitions are supporting and accelerating our other product pillars. So offering a consolidated solution to our customers is one of our biggest strategic moves, and all of those acquisitions are helping us to get faster through this target. Robert Dutt: You kind of presage where I was going next, which is, in your blog post, you frame four pillars of where Check Point is going, what you want to be locking down. And as you rightly point out, Check Point has that history, that strength in network security. The newer bets, especially both exposure management and AI security, which is obviously nascent – it seems like they require different muscles, different skill sets, different approaches from Check Point and from partners alike. Where are the real capability gaps that needed filling? Roi Karo: Yeah, so I think when talking about gaps, there are different types of gaps. One type of gap is mostly on the AI front. Everything is new. So to be very honest, I think that the security industry is still learning how to secure AI. So we have gaps. Everybody has gaps because it’s so new. We’re inventing new things. We’re building new kinds of security solutions. And that’s one type of a gap. A different type of a gap is that we have products for many years and we want to have better solutions, acquiring features or products that can help us accelerate closing those types of gaps. But I think the first type is more interesting because those are purpose-built solutions that did not exist before. This is where the true innovation is happening. And without that, nobody will be able to secure the new types of attacks that we’re seeing in the wild. Angelo Valentini: Robert, if I could just add – on the partner side, I think some of the gaps and concerns are really about visibility, governance, and also about operational efficiency. I think that’s one of the things that we’re trying to help partners with in terms of what their concerns are relative to AI, relative to exposure management, all these areas. Robert Dutt: You describe this whole scenario as an open garden platform, which is a nice framing versus the walled garden approach. For MSPs who are running multi-vendor security stacks and representing multiple security vendors, which, let’s be honest, is the vast majority – what does that open garden mean in practice for them? Roi Karo: Yeah, so I think a couple of things. Our philosophy is openness. We’re not trying to create any kind of vendor lock. We play with all vendors. You mentioned the acquisition from last year of Veriti. That’s a great example because what Veriti offers is the ability to patch or virtually patch all of your security vendors. If you have a threat that you discovered, now you want to make sure that you’re actually being defended against it. So what Veriti does is go over all of those exposures and close them. And when they say close them, they close it using a Check Point security product, but also all other vendors. So we have integration even with our competitors, other types of vendors. So that’s one example of how we try to build our solutions in a way that supports all the other players, because we acknowledge what you said. Most vendors and even most companies, they don’t want vendor lock. They want to use several vendors. They want all of them to play together. So we design our solutions in an open way. It can be used with APIs, it can call to other types of solutions and help MSPs or customers, other types of customers, to build their full stack of solutions. Robert Dutt: That kind of maps, I think, with things that I’ve been hearing more and more from partners. Back in the day, you’d hear a lot of, “I want to work with fewer security vendors.” Still, no one’s saying, “Hey, I want to sign up 400 security vendors and try to understand the nuance of what all of them are doing.” That’s operationally impossible. What I hear more, I think, is the idea of, “I want to have a few strategic security vendors and I want them, where possible, to play nicely together in my environment.” Roi Karo: Absolutely, I can’t agree more. I think consolidation is important. Nobody wants 400. Nobody wants even 40 vendors. It’s hard. But nobody wants one vendor. I think that in a way, we’re trying to figure out this balancing, this sweet spot between having hundreds of vendors and having one vendor. And what we do is – the reason we picked those four pillars is because we truly believe that we’re leaders in each one of them and we have the best solution in each one of them. And anywhere that we don’t have a solution, we partner. So a good example is CNAPP. We have a strategic partnership with and other CNAPP vendors. So we don’t have our own CNAPP solution. We integrate it with another vendor. And everywhere we don’t have the best solution, we’ll integrate with the best vendors that are out there. Robert Dutt: Okay, let’s talk a little bit about the acquisitions that were made that start to build out this platform, or continue to build out this platform. And I wanted to start with Rotate specifically, because I think it’s really interesting for this audience. You acquired them, it seems, primarily for the team. And that team includes key people who come from a background in Datto, in Kaseya – companies that really built up the foundations of the MSP ecosystem of today. What does that signal about how you guys are looking at the MSP market and the MSP opportunity for Check Point? Roi Karo: Yeah, so I will zoom out a bit and then focus specifically. When we announced the workspace pillar, we realized among other things that companies want to manage the whole end user security through one vendor, through one unified management, and not point solutions. So we took our endpoint solution, our email solution, browser, mobile – all the solutions we have around the end user – bundled them together, and are offering a way to manage all of them from a unified management. That is something that is unique and I think is very compelling to all types of customers and mostly MSPs, for obvious reasons. They want to manage all of this end user security from one vendor, from one management. And doubling down on MSPs, we understand their needs. We have many MSPs as customers and we want to provide an easy way to manage all their tenants, all their end users in one single pane of glass. And that’s what we’re building, and this is what we want to accelerate with the team of experts coming from Rotate. Angelo Valentini: So Robert, in Canada, as you know, 90% of the businesses are SMB. So this is a huge opportunity for partners as we go and develop this and enhance that solution for our partners. It’s a huge opportunity. Robert Dutt: And speaking of huge opportunity, the email security business that’s already – I think I saw 160 million is the figure for Check Point’s revenue line there – as well as being one of the most foundational tools that MSPs bring to market and have fueled that business. I’m curious to get your thoughts on how you build from that beachhead that you’ve got established in email security and into that broader workspace security story that Rotate is facilitating. Roi Karo: I think email security, as you said, it’s so fundamental. And when we try to explain to people how AI is changing the hackers, this is the easiest example because it’s most common and easy to explain and imagine. Phishing attacks look different now with AI-based attacks. We all did this training that you need to find spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes to identify phishing. As you can imagine, there are no spelling and grammar mistakes anymore when phishing emails are being built or crafted with AI. So email security is being changed and being reinvented. And we are building new types of email security to make sure that we’re securing also for the most advanced AI-based phishing attacks. Our email security is something that we take a lot of pride in and we can prove that it is better than many others. So that’s, as you said, a great beach entry through many of what we’re doing with our customers. And adding the other capabilities on top of the email is super important. Because again, using a very simple example: someone got a link, they pressed it because it wasn’t blocked. And now they have malware on their computer. You want that endpoint security to be connected to the email security and have one platform that can see everything and can actually prevent attacks before they happen. So we integrated our endpoint solution, our browser extension, our mobile solution, and the email together into one threat intelligence layer that provides data to all of those solutions. Robert Dutt: Cyata is about governing AI agents, which as well as being the buzzword of the day is also a category that didn’t exist a few years ago, because AI agents themselves did not exist a few years ago. For an MSP today, is security around AI agents something that their customers are asking about? Or is this one of those things that’s in a “be ready for this now so you can sell it tomorrow” kind of space? Roi Karo: Yeah, I think that this will grow very fast because, as I’ve mentioned, AI is moving faster than we imagined. When we say agents, I think there are two separate use cases, and one of them is very relevant to the MSP. One that is less relevant is building AI applications that use agents. This is for bigger organizations and more sophisticated organizations that have engineers and are building their own software. But all of us are using agents. ChatGPT and Claude today, you just press a button and you’re running an agent from your endpoint. That is something that is happening. It’s the more advanced user today, but tomorrow it will be all of us using agents running on their endpoints. And one of the things that Cyata built, and we’re now adding to our products, is a capability running on the laptop of the end user, identifying agents that are running there on behalf of the users. It can identify and, first of all, give visibility into all the agents that are running from the end user’s computer, but also provide governance and policy that make sure that they’re doing only things that they’re allowed, that they’re using the right identities, that they have access only to things that they are supposed to have access to. And this is something that I believe will be very relevant to MSPs in the near future, sooner rather than later, because it’s related to all the end users, all the people that are using AI. Angelo Valentini: Robert, this also plays nicely with some of the government compliance developments with the Canadian government. So Bill C-26, for example, is all about governance and compliance. This is a great way in which this acquisition plays right into the government legislation. Insurance is another big thing where we’re seeing a lot of compliance requirements, and also financial institutions. So this is just another way that this plays into that compliance as well. Robert Dutt: Last but not least on the acquisitions, can you give me a bit of a feel for how Cyclops fits in, what they bring to the table, and the opportunity you see there for your partners? Roi Karo: Yeah, absolutely. And again, zooming out and zooming back into Cyclops. We just announced our Exposure Management pillar. We acquired, I think almost two years ago, CyberInt. They’re doing external risk management – they’re scanning the organization from the outside and providing all the data you can achieve from looking at the organization, the company, from the outside. Dark web and the organization itself. Six months ago, we acquired Veriti, that takes all of the data, all of the exposures, all of the threats, and mitigates them automatically. So you have automatic remediation. And now with Cyclops, we completed the full cycle, because they are scanning the organization internally. This is an asset management capability that actually connects to hundreds of vendors that provide data. And then you have the full picture of what’s going on inside your organization. So CyberInt’s capabilities are scanning from the outside, Cyclops’ capabilities are scanning from the inside, and Veriti’s capabilities take all of this intelligence – and all the intelligence we acquired in decades of building our capabilities – and make sure that all of this is being remediated. In this way, we accomplished the full cycle of what Gartner calls CTEM, Continuous Threat Exposure Management, and provide a very unique value proposition to our customers of having the full cycle of understanding what is happening across your attack surface, identifying the threats, and remediating the threats. Cyclops provided a very important piece of the puzzle that we were missing, and we’ll integrate them very quickly into our value proposition and offer a full cycle of CTEM. Robert Dutt: How quickly do these acquisitions – you mentioned the plan for Cyclops there – but how quickly do these become native Check Point experiences rather than adjacent tools that are also on the Check Point line card? Roi Karo: Very quickly in those three cases, because they’re part of a wider value proposition. It’s not a standalone – all of them started as a startup with a standalone capability, but the real magic and the real value will come when we integrate them. That will happen very quickly because all of those solutions are very modern in design, which makes it easier. And part of the due diligence we did around all of them is how quickly we can integrate. So this will be integrated very quickly. And of course, now – as I say, everything is happening faster – we are using AI to build products and integrate products. So that will happen very fast, and this will be offered to our customers immediately. Robert Dutt: Zooming back out to the strategy level, if I’m a Canadian MSP with managed seats numbered in the hundreds – typical SMB-focused MSP – today I’m running Check Point email security, maybe firewalls. When I look at this strategy, what is this going to change about what I sell and how I operate over the next 12 months? Roi Karo: I think CTEM and exposure management becomes even more important than before. Maybe we need to take one step back with your permission. I think that the threat landscape is changing, and that’s something that we all need to acknowledge. Just imagining how the attackers are using AI in order to accelerate their attacks – things that before took attackers months or years to build, to find new vulnerabilities, we’re seeing right now happening much faster. The scale, the sophistication of attacks is changing. And we all need to prepare. Vendors, MSPs, and other types of organizations need to make sure that they are prepared for a new wave of attacks. And for that, you need to have everything that can help you understand. We talked about my background – intelligence is super important to understand what is going on. And exposure management is exactly that: understanding what is going on. Are you attacked? Where are you exposed? Who is attacking you? You can’t fly blind. So the first thing I would add to my portfolio if I’m an MSP is offering threat intelligence, offering exposure management, scanning all of my customers and making sure that they’re not exposed, finding servers they have that are exposed, finding PII that is related to them on the dark web, and making sure that I’m warning them. Many kinds of solutions we have as part of our exposure management value proposition I think will be very interesting for MSPs. So that’s one thing I would explore with Check Point. The second thing is AI, of course. We talked about agents, but even the basic LLM use of end users, that’s something that needs to be governed. Angelo mentioned compliance, it will become part of it. Even if you’re a small law firm and you want to make sure that your lawyers are obeying the rules that you decided – can they use ChatGPT in order to write a legal document? If it’s a small medical company, can they consult ChatGPT on medical issues? What is the PII guidance you give them? Can they put PII in ChatGPT or not? All of this needs to be governed, and our products enable that. They run on the endpoints, they make sure that you’re aware of what all of your employees, all of the people in the company are doing with AI, and they can enforce governance on what you want to allow and what you want to block. Do you allow DeepSeek in your organization? Do you allow other types of LLMs or GPTs? All of this, as part of AI security, is something that MSPs will need to adopt and educate themselves on, and educate their end users very quickly. And what we’re building is a full suite of AI security. We’ll have offerings for small companies, offerings for large enterprises, and everything in between. Angelo Valentini: You touch on AI governance, we talked about exposure management. These are ideas that sound consultative and complex, which is great because channel 101: where there’s mystery, there’s margin, and there is ample mystery here. But again, through the lens of that SMB-focused MSP, how do I get to it? So I guess what I’m getting at is, how are you helping partners productize those conversations they need to have without requiring them to go super deep themselves as AI specialists? I think that’s the bread and butter of partners today, is the service offering. When they see acquisitions like this, we play in all their wheelhouse in terms of all the areas: visibility, governance, and also operational efficiency. So that’s the number one thing. It’s our job to enable our partners as well as part of it. Me in the partner community, we go and enable our partners to understand the technology and understand the opportunity. And there are consulting opportunities here, there’s increased revenue opportunity here. That’s one of the things that we focus on, is really to get awareness to the partners so they understand: hey, there’s an opportunity here for incremental revenue, for increased opportunity in consulting and implementation. And then from there, there’s ancillary AI solution revenue that follows. So it’s up to the partner to decide, but it’s really something that they should consider. Robert Dutt: Just to wrap things up before we go, do you have time to do two quick lightning round questions, quick answers? First of all, what’s one assumption about cybersecurity that you think partners need to stop making right now, or at least over the course of this year? Roi Karo: I think that the basic assumption is that we have time, that sophisticated attacks are not here yet, and we have time to learn, we have time to adjust, and everything will be okay. I think that’s terribly wrong. I think that the attackers, they don’t have the governance and legal obligations that we have as companies. So they’re running very fast. It’s happening now. So I think a wrong assumption that many people have, MSPs included, is: okay, it’s still early, we can learn, we can take our time. I think we need to move fast and we need to move faster than we’re moving. Robert Dutt: And taking that similar lens but turning it inside this time, what’s the hardest internal debate that you’re having at Check Point right now about AI and security, and why isn’t it settled yet? Roi Karo: We understand that we need to offer AI as a part of – we talked about many angles of AI, one that we did not mention, and I will use your question to address it – is using AI for security. We talked about AI for the attackers, we talked about AI that everybody’s using and we need to secure. Part of what we’re building in a very innovative way is autonomous security – AI agents that are running security. And this of course is the biggest promise. And many people feel that we need to move much faster on this front. It’s not easy. And we’re building it in many parallel lanes, because it’s hard to predict what will win. But we understand that the future of security – you need to fight AI with AI, you need to adopt AI. And this is maybe the biggest promise of our industry, when the industry will be able to adopt AI and leverage the power of AI in order to provide better security. And in many ways, in bigger organizations, the department that needs to adopt AI the fastest is the security department. Because for all the other departments, this is a force multiplier, it changes everything, but in a way it’s a nice to have. For security, because the attackers are using AI, if security people won’t adopt AI for themselves and use AI to secure their organization, they will lose. So we’re trying to do our best in offering our customers AI-based security. We have today in all of our pillars co-pilots and MCP servers and agentic capabilities. But we aspire much higher. We want to build real autonomous security, real AI employees – AI security employees that will be part of the team. We have very exciting, innovative teams that are building those kinds of things. And answering your question, the debate is: can we, or how can we, move faster on this front, offering our customers fully autonomous, fully AI-based security. Robert Dutt: That’s a pretty good overview and view of the strategy and of where you think things are at. Good luck with the acquisitions and rolling them in and continuing to broaden out the strategy. And thank you very much for taking the time for this conversation. Roi Karo: Thank you for hosting us. It was a pleasure. We’ll be in touch. Angelo Valentini: Great to be here. Robert Dutt: There you have it, a look at Check Point’s push to reshape its platform around AI security, exposure management, and the MSP workspace, with Roi Karo and Angelo Valentini. The takeaway I keep coming back to: Check Point isn’t just buying technology here. They’re making a deliberate bet on the MSP market, and hiring a team from Datto and Kaseya to build it out is the strongest signal of that intent. Whether you’re already in the Check Point ecosystem or not, the open garden approach they’re describing is worth paying attention to. And Roi’s point about urgency is one that I’d take seriously. The window to learn and prepare is shorter than a lot of people think. Thanks to Roi and Angelo for a great conversation. And thank you as always for listening. Also this week on ChannelBuzz.ca: on Wednesday, ESET’s Tony Anscombe joins me to walk through the security trends and threats solution providers should be watching this year. On Thursday, I sit down with Nutanix SVP Lee Caswell to dig into their latest Enterprise Cloud Index research, including what the data says about shadow AI, data sovereignty, and where infrastructure decisions are heading. And on Friday, a bonus episode – AWS Canada’s Eric Gales joins me for a look back at 20 years of AWS and what it means for partners going forward. If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to subscribe or follow in your podcast app of choice. And if you’re feeling generous, a rating or review goes a long way to helping other solution providers find us. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

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War in Iran, Anthropic v Pentagon, Trenchant zero-day sanctions, AI stock market shocks

Security Conversations

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 28, 2026 128:22

(Presented by Thinkst Canary: Most Companies find out way too late that they've been breached. Thinkst Canary changes this. Deploy Canaries and Canarytokens in minutes and then forget about them. Attackers tip their hand by touching 'em giving you the one alert, when it matters. With zero admin overhead and almost no false-positives, Canaries are deployed (and loved) on all 7 continents.) Three Buddy Problem - Episode 87: We wake up to news of U.S./Israel military action against Iran and the expected fallout, including Tehran's cyber capabilities and proxy risks. Plus: Anthropic's clash with the Pentagon over AI use in warfare, market shockwaves from AI-driven security tools, mass layoffs tied to automation, Trenchant exec sentencing and sanctions in the exploit trade, and fresh questions around Cisco's SD-WAN breach and supply-chain trust. Cast: Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, Ryan Naraine and Costin Raiu.

Cisco SD-WAN Bug Actively Exploited

Cyber Security Today

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 27, 2026 10:15

Cisco SD-WAN Bug Actively Exploited, MCP Azure Takeover Demo, CarGurus Data Leak, and Secret Service Scam Recovery Host Jim Love covers four cybersecurity stories: CSA warns a critical Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN controller vulnerability (CVE-2026-20127) has been exploited since 2023, enabling authentication bypass and rogue peering sessions, and orders U.S. federal agencies to inventory systems, collect logs and forensic artifacts, hunt for compromise, and apply Cisco's fixes by 5:00 PM ET on February 27, 2026, with no workarounds. At RSA, researchers show how flaws in Model Context Protocol (MCP)—a key integration layer for agentic AI—could lead to remote code execution and even Azure tenant takeover, highlighting rising enterprise risk. ShinyHunters reportedly published 12.4 million stolen CarGurus records, raising phishing and fraud concerns tied to vehicle shopping and financing context. Finally, an Ontario tech support scam victim recovers funds through coordinated work by Ontario Provincial Police and the U.S. Secret Service, which traced and froze the money in time. Cybersecurity Today would like to thank Meter for their support in bringing you this podcast. Meter delivers a complete networking stack, wired, wireless and cellular in one integrated solution that's built for performance and scale. You can find them at Meter.com/cst LINKS Cisco Advisory Cisco Security Advisory – CVE-2026-20127 Authentication bypass vulnerability in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-sdwan-rpa-EHchtZk CISA Supplemental Hunt and Hardening Guidance (Cisco SD-WAN Systems) https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/directives/supplemental-direction-ed-26-03-hunt-and-hardening-guidance-cisco-sd-wan-systems Threat Hunt Guide (Technical PDF) Cisco SD-WAN Threat Hunt Guide (jointly referenced in federal guidance) https://media.defense.gov/2026/Feb/25/2003880299/-1/-1/0/CISCO_SD-WAN_THREAT_HUNT_GUIDE.PDF 00:00 Sponsor Message 00:19 Cisco SD-WAN Under Attack 02:48 MCP Azure Takeover Demo 05:28 CarGurus Data Dump 07:16 Secret Service Scam Recovery 09:24 Closing Sponsor Thanks

Hedge 297: MPLS

The Hedge

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 27, 2026 52:51 Transcription Available

Has MPLS really "died" because of SD-WAN services? Scott Robohon joins Tom and Russ to talk about the past and future of MPLS.

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Cisco SD-WAN Zero Day, Google Disrupts Chinese Campaign, and More Cyber on The Pitt

Decipher Security Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 27, 2026 31:56

This week Lindsey rejoins Dennis to talk about the attacks targeting a zero day in Cisco's Catalyst SD-WAN Controller (2:17), Google's disruption of a China-linked cyber espionage campaign targeting telecom infrastructure (6:30), and the new cyber developments on everyone's favorite tech show, The Pitt (13:13)!

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SANS Stormcast Thursday, February 26th, 2026: CLAIR Model; Cisco SD-WAN 0-Day; Cortex XDR Abuse; OpenSSL Vuln;

SANS Internet Stormcenter Daily Network/Cyber Security and Information Security Stormcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2026 6:48

The CLAIR Model: A Synthesized Conceptual Framework for Mapping Critical Infrastructure Interdependencies [Guest Diary] https://isc.sans.edu/diary/The+CLAIR+Model+A+Synthesized+Conceptual+Framework+for+Mapping+Critical+Infrastructure+Interdependencies+Guest+Diary/32748 Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller Authentication Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2026-20127 https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-sdwan-rpa-EHchtZk https://blog.talosintelligence.com/uat-8616-sd-wan/ Abusing Cortex XDR Live https://labs.infoguard.ch/posts/abusing_cortex_xdr_live_response_as_c2/ OpenSSL Vulnerability CVE-2025-15467 https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2026/q1/220

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#539: Agentic AI is breaking your Cybersecurity controls (and how to solve it)

David Bombal

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 20, 2026 22:35

In this video David speaks to Peter Bailey (SVP and GM of Cisco's Security business). AI agents are moving fast inside enterprises, and CISOs are hitting the brakes for one reason: the attack surface is expanding at machine speed. In this interview, we break down how agentic AI changes security, why MCP servers and agent tool access create new risks, and what a zero trust approach looks like when the “user” is a non-deterministic agent. We cover real-world problems like shadow MCP servers, agents touching sensitive systems and PII, and why traditional perimeter controls and firewalls are not enough when traffic is encrypted and actions happen too quickly downstream. You'll also hear what Cisco is doing across the AI lifecycle: AI Defense for model scanning, provenance and guardrails, plus new protections focused on agent identity, dynamic authorization, behavior monitoring, and revocation. On the networking side, we discuss how SD-WAN and secure access (SASE) can add visibility and policy control for AI usage, including prioritizing latency-sensitive AI traffic while still enforcing security. If you're a security engineer, network engineer, or CISO trying to move from AI hype to safe deployment, this video gives you a practical mental model and the controls to start building now. Big thank you to ‪@Cisco‬ for sponsoring this video and for sponsoring my trip to Cisco Live Amesterdam. // Peter Baily' SOCIALS // LinkedIn: / peterhbailey Guest Bio: https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsro... // David's SOCIAL // Discord: discord.com/invite/usKSyzb Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidbombal Instagram: www.instagram.com/davidbombal LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidbombal Facebook: www.facebook.com/davidbombal.co TikTok: tiktok.com/@davidbombal YouTube: / @davidbombal Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/3f6k6gE... SoundCloud: / davidbombal Apple Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... // MY STUFF // https://www.amazon.com/shop/davidbombal // SPONSORS // Interested in sponsoring my videos? Reach out to my team here: sponsors@davidbombal.com // MENU // 0:00 - Coming Up 0:30 - Introduction 01:15 - CISOs Problems with AI 02:35 - Real Issues with AI Agents 04:29 - Growth of the Attack Surface 05:34 - Concern of Poisoned AI and MCP 08:09 - What is the Kill-chain 10:16 - AI with Built-in Security 11:56 - Best Practises for AI Security 14:08 - Cisco Innovations for AI 16:48 - Cisco's Red Team for own AI 18:27 - Secure AI in Public Places 20:09 - Should You get into Cyber Security 21:26 - Advice To Your Younger Self 22:29 - Outro Please note that links listed may be affiliate links and provide me with a small percentage/kickback should you use them to purchase any of the items listed or recommended. Thank you for supporting me and this channel! Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes only. #cisco #ciscoemea #ciscolive

Retiring WAN Technology Debt with an Internet-First Strategy

Staying Connected

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 26, 2026 10:01

Legacy networks are a classic form of technology debt: they work, but they quietly limit agility, drive unnecessary cost and constrain innovation. In this 10-minute episode of Staying Connected, TC2's Keith Cook joins Tony Mangino to talk through how enterprises are shedding that debt by moving to an Internet-first WAN—and how to do it with a clear plan rather than a disruptive leap. We cover how enterprise buyers should think about connectivity mix, supplier selection, SD-WAN strategy, and security design—all before going to market. If you would like to learn more about our experience in this space, please visit our Technology Consulting & Strategy Development Services and Strategic Sourcing webpages.

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2025: Year in Review

Cables2Clouds

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 31, 2025 38:18 Transcription Available

Send us a textThe year felt like it stretched on forever, and in that extra space the networking world reshaped itself. We traded weekly cadence for deeper focus, shipped an AWS Advanced Networking book that the community embraced, and then watched the landscape pivot as vendors consolidated, clouds connected to each other, and AI hype met the hard edges of security and reliability.We dig into the acquisition wave with clear eyes: Arista picking up VeloCloud from Broadcom and what that means for SD‑WAN customers; HPE's Juniper deal clearing regulatory review and the open questions around Mist and portfolio strategy; and why Broadcom–VMware didn't trigger instant mass migrations, even as budgets and CSP support shifted. Then we chart the most surprising turn—AWS and Google offering a cross‑cloud link that's not a one‑off database play, but a general connective fabric. If pricing trends toward pipe capacity rather than per‑GB egress, multi‑cloud networking stops being a niche product pitch and becomes an operator reality. We even explore the idea of a Cloud Exchange Point, where automation snaps providers together at scale.AI was everywhere and still uneven. We call out real wins—friendlier automation workflows and eBPF‑powered visibility via Cisco's Isovalent acquisition—while laying out the unsolved work: agentic AI with least privilege, auditable actions, and enforceable data boundaries. Until those controls are standard, enterprises will limit autonomy and keep AI close to expert hands. Against the constant layoff drumbeat, we offer direct advice: build skills across cloud interconnects, Kubernetes networking, and eBPF telemetry; document outcomes in the language of cost and risk; and lean into community for opportunities and perspective.If you want a no‑nonsense guide to what changed, what actually matters, and how to prepare for a faster 2026, this one's for you. Subscribe, share with a teammate who needs signal over noise, and drop your take: which shift will shape your architecture next year?Purchase Chris and Tim's book on AWS Cloud Networking: https://www.amazon.com/Certified-Advanced-Networking-Certification-certification/dp/1835080839/ Check out the Monthly Cloud Networking Newshttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/Visit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cables2clouds.comFollow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2cloudsMerch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatj

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S12 |E14 AI-Driven Networks: Efficiency, Security, and the Road Ahead

Cisco Champion Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 9, 2025 37:11

AI is reshaping the world of networking and security—and Cisco Champions are diving in. In this episode, our experts explore how artificial intelligence is transforming network management, efficiency, and security operations. From SD-WAN optimization and bandwidth considerations to digital twins and secure routers, the conversation unpacks the real-world opportunities and challenges of integrating AI into modern networks. Plus, we tackle the balance between automation and the ongoing need to develop engineering skills in the AI era. Resources Visit our webpage to learn more about our SD-WAN and Security solutions: https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/solutions/networking/sdwan/index.html Cisco guest VP of Product Management, Cisco SD-WAN Champion guests Gert-Jan de Boer, Networking Archeologist, aaZoo Network Solutions Donald Robb, Principal Network Architect, Walt Disney Company Marco Krauss, IT Senior Consultant Network Automation, Computacenta Dan Kelcher, Sr. Network Engineer, Hollstadt Consulting

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Collaboration and Connectivity: TELCLOUD and Smartel Redefine Telecom Partnerships, POTS and Shots Podcast Series

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 24, 2025

“Nobody can be an expert in everything — so you surround yourself with the right partners,” says Chris Young, CEO of Smartel. “That's how you deliver real value, reduce costs, and earn long-term trust.” In this latest episode of the TELCLOUD POTS and Shots Podcast Series, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, is joined by Jake Jacoby, CEO of TELCLOUD, and special guest Chris Young, CEO of Smartel, for a compelling look at how collaboration, data-driven decision-making, and unified connectivity strategies are transforming the POTS replacement landscape. Young introduces Smartel as a 23-year veteran in mobile solutions and wireless expense management, known for simplifying large, complex wireless ecosystems. Their approach centers on centralized management, data ingestion tools, standardized policies, and a responsive customer service model, all aimed at lowering costs and streamlining operations for enterprises nationwide. Jacoby explains why Smartel is an ideal partner for TELCLOUD's POTS replacement vision. As organizations confront escalating copper costs, service shutdowns, and outdated infrastructure, Smartel's audits often reveal both unused POTS lines and mission-critical lines at risk. By pairing Smartel's visibility with TELCLOUD's life-safety-grade replacement platform, the two companies deliver cost savings, continuity, and a long-term service model built to last decades. The discussion widens to the larger industry transformation. With the copper sunset accelerating and AI reshaping telecom workflows, both executives describe POTS replacement as a gateway opportunity — the immediate need that opens the door to broader conversations about edge connectivity, SD-WAN, IoT, backup strategy, and comprehensive modernization. As Young notes, “POTS is our biggest door-opener right now — everyone needs it, and it leads to deeper relationships almost every time.” Jacoby adds that while POTS is hot today, the service is required for the next 20 years, creating dependable recurring revenue for partners who can guide customers through the transition. Both stress that customers ultimately want simplicity, reliability, and cost control — and partnerships like TELCLOUD + Smartel are built to deliver exactly that. And true to the Shots tradition, the episode closes with a tasting of Don Julio Ceniza, an exceptionally rare Extra Añejo aged in charred oak barrels. Smooth, smoky, and difficult to find, Jacoby describes it as one of his personal favorites — and surprises both Doug and Chris by sending each of them a bottle to enjoy off-camera. The perfect pairing for a discussion about premium craftsmanship and long-term value. The POTS and Shots series continues to blend industry insight with cultural storytelling, helping MSPs and partners navigate the telecom transition while taking a tour of the world's greatest tequilas. For more information, visit telcloud.com or call 844-900-2270. Learn more about Smartel at www.smartelinc.com.

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What is NaaS (Network as a Service)?

Cables2Clouds

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 19, 2025 55:41 Transcription Available

Send us a textNetworks can sometimes feel like a maze of licenses, tunnels, and 2 a.m. pager alerts. We sit down with Graphiant CEO Ali Shaikh to unpack how Network as a Service makes connectivity on-demand, consumption-based, and finally as flexible as the cloud it serves. From the SD-WAN wave to the pandemic reset, Ali explains why the old build-and-forget model couldn't keep pace with multi-cloud, remote work, and fast-moving partnerships—and how a stateless, metadata-driven fabric changes the game.We explore two clear buyer paths. Pragmatic teams want turnkey connectivity that lowers cloud egress costs, reduces NAT and transit complexity, and keeps operations calm. Futuristic teams need dynamic, auditable data exchanges for AI workloads, research projects, and payments ecosystems—publisher-subscriber connectivity that negotiates policy and stands up in days, not quarters. In both cases, the network becomes evergreen, with new capabilities landing in the service rather than hidden behind feature licenses. Pay for what you move, not for buttons you can't press.Security shifts from signatures to assurance. In an AI-fueled threat landscape, we focus on what should move, where it may travel, and who can subscribe—then we detect anomalies and lock down exfiltration. Ali digs into continuous audit trails, sovereignty-aware routing, and why pushing complexity to the edges keeps the core lean and reliable. Expect candid talk on cloud cost traps, how to cut NAT sprawl, and the reason a hollow core with metadata labels beats hop-by-hop state.If you're ready to trade SKU spreadsheets for clear outcomes—and want a network that can spin up for a week and tear down without drama—this conversation will reset how you think about connectivity. Subscribe, share with a teammate who owns the cloud bill, and drop a review to tell us where ephemeral networking would save you the most.Connect with our guest:https://www.linkedin.com/in/alifshaikh/https://www.graphiant.comPurchase Chris and Tim's book on AWS Cloud Networking: https://www.amazon.com/Certified-Advanced-Networking-Certification-certification/dp/1835080839/ Check out the Monthly Cloud Networking Newshttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/Visit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cables2clouds.comFollow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2cloudsMerch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatj

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Rethinking Telecom Procurement with Zenture Partners, Podcast

Packet Pushers - Heavy Networking

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 18, 2025

In this episode of Technology Reseller News, Publisher Doug Green speaks with Rob Bye, President & Founder of Zenture Partners, about why the traditional telecom procurement and management model is breaking down—and how AI-driven lifecycle management can restore clarity and control for large enterprises. Zenture Partners is a strategic consultancy and AI-powered lifecycle management provider focused on giving enterprises full visibility into, and control over, their global telecom ecosystem, from contracts and circuits to invoices and risk. Bye explains that most large enterprises now live in a state of telecom chaos: hundreds of vendors, hundreds of invoices, and little understanding of contract terms, renewal dates, dependencies, or actual business impact. The old world of a single global MPLS provider has given way to an “internet everywhere” model, with 16,000+ ISPs worldwide, SD-WAN, and cloud-first architectures. At the same time, IT priorities have shifted—cloud infrastructure, security, AI-infused SaaS and CX platforms now consume leadership attention and budget, while telecom is largely ignored “as long as nothing is on fire.” When things break, teams react, extinguish the fire, and then move straight back to higher-visibility projects. Traditional telecom brokers and “no value” agents, Bye argues, have often added complexity rather than removed it. Unlike familiar IT resellers and VARs, telecom agents rarely bring a unified, data-driven platform to the enterprise. Zenture's model is different: it acts as an extension of both IT sourcing and network teams, combining consulting plus a global AI-enabled platform. Enterprises still contract directly with service providers, while the carriers fund Zenture through residual commissions. For customers, the Zenture platform is delivered at no cost, with no contract, ingesting data from TEM systems, carrier portals, invoices, and spreadsheets into a single pane of glass and highlighting where attention is truly needed. AI is at the center of this transformation. Zenture uses AI to continuously evaluate inventory, identify high-risk sites (such as shared last-mile paths or POP exposure), benchmark pricing, and generate recommendations on whether to renew, replace, or upgrade services as contracts approach term. Agentic AI is also used to integrate with carrier marketplaces and portals, automating quoting, ordering, status checks, inventory updates, and billing validation across hundreds of providers. Instead of humans manually combing through dense, ever-changing telecom invoices, AI flags changes, ties new charges to past orders, and confirms that disconnects and adds have been billed correctly, allowing IT and sourcing teams to focus on decisions, not data entry. Looking ahead, Bye sees AI-driven procurement reshaping RFIs, RFPs, benchmarking, and contract review. Enterprise “house” agents will query external platforms like Zenture's marketplace, shrink long vendor lists to a short set of best fits, and then assist stakeholders with risk analysis and legal review. But this doesn't eliminate the human partner; it elevates them. As Bye puts it, “AI isn't going to replace anyone—it's like the moving walkway at an airport. It just helps you get where you're going faster.” Zenture's client success managers increasingly act as digital workforce managers, overseeing and training AI agents while still providing strategic guidance on vendor consolidation and cost optimization. Ultimately, Zenture Partners aims to help enterprises move from a reactive, invoice-driven view of telecom to a strategic, outcome-focused model—consolidating vendors, simplifying billing, optimizing costs, and freeing IT teams to concentrate on cloud, security, and customer-facing innovation. To learn more about Zenture Partners and its AI-powered lifecycle management platform, listeners are invited to visit https://www.zenturepartners.com/. Software Mind Telco Days 2025: On-demand online conference Engaging Customers, Harnessing Data

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FatPipe Networks (FATN): Redefining SD-WAN and Cybersecurity with a Unified Edge Platform

The Water Tower Hour

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2025 15:00

Send us a textIn this episode of the WTR Small-Cap Spotlight Podcast, Bhaskar Ragula, CEO and Co-Founder of FatPipe Networks (NASDAQ: FATN), joins hosts Tim Gerdeman and Dr. John Roy to discuss how FatPipe—the inventor of SD-WAN technology—is driving the next evolution of secure networking through innovation, efficiency, and sales expansion.

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HN802: Unifying Networking and Security with Fortinet SASE: Architecture, Reality, and Lessons Learned (Sponsored)

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2025 58:39

The architecture and tech stack of a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution will influence how the service performs, the robustness of its security controls, and the complexity of its operations. Sponsor Fortinet joins Heavy Networking to make the case that a unified offering, which integrates SD-WAN and SSE from a single vendor, provides a... Read more »

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HN802: Unifying Networking and Security with Fortinet SASE: Architecture, Reality, and Lessons Learned (Sponsored)

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2025 58:39

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HN802: Unifying Networking and Security with Fortinet SASE: Architecture, Reality, and Lessons Learned (Sponsored)

Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2025 58:39

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#743 MSP Summit 2025-Xan Stevenson:

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2025 34:19

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S07E16: Riders on the BRICKSTORM

Check Point CheckMates Cyber Security Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 25, 2025 11:20

We have an excerpt from our recent Future of SD-WAN session and how Check Point products protect against BRICKSTORM.

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Zero Trust Alone Isn't Enough: Opengear's Mitch Densley on Building Resilience into Security Strategies, Podcast

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Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2025

“Segmentation is powerful, but complexity is the enemy of reliability. That's why resilience has to be part of the zero-trust conversation.” — Mitch Densley, Principal Solutions Architect, Opengear Mitch Densley, Principal Solutions Architect at Opengear, joined Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, to explore why Zero Trust cannot stand alone—and how organizations can achieve true resilience with Smart Out-of-Band™ management. With deep expertise in cybersecurity and network architecture, Densley is known for turning complex security concepts into practical strategies. He frequently speaks on securing AI and GenAI environments, highlighting the unique demands of today's computing landscape. Defining Zero Trust Densley framed Zero Trust as the “evolution of defense in depth”—breaking flat networks into smaller, segmented zones to limit the blast radius of breaches or misconfigurations. “It's like shrinking a room full of tinder into smaller compartments with fireproof doors,” he explained. But he emphasized that segmentation alone increases complexity, which can compromise reliability and availability. Why Zero Trust is Only Half the Solution “When critical segments fail, access to shared services like authentication may be lost, effectively bringing everything down,” Densley said. Zero Trust reduces exposure, but without resilience, organizations remain vulnerable to outages caused by malware, insider threats, or human error. Opengear's Smart Out-of-Band Approach Opengear closes this gap with Smart Out-of-Band™ (Smart OOB), a secure management plane independent of the production network. Combined with cellular failover, Smart OOB ensures: Continuous access during outages or breaches Remote investigation, forensics, and remediation without waiting for on-site staff Logging and visibility even when the production network is unavailable “Instead of putting people in cars or planes, you remote in through Opengear and put hands on the keyboard instantly,” Densley said. Real-World Impact Densley recounted a global cybersecurity incident where Opengear customers were able to isolate compromised systems, collect forensic data, and redeploy devices remotely. For those without out-of-band access, outages stretched into days or weeks. “Getting breached happens. Rarely will you be blamed for that alone,” he noted. “It's how quickly and effectively you respond that separates the prepared from the unprepared.” Enabling SD-WAN Rollouts Opengear also simplifies SD-WAN deployments. Without out-of-band visibility, teams are left “crossing their fingers” during cutovers. With Smart OOB, engineers can make small configuration changes remotely, turning multi-day rollout challenges into minutes-long adjustments. The Bottom Line Zero Trust remains a vital pillar of security, but on its own it does not guarantee resilience. By pairing segmentation with Smart Out-of-Band management, organizations can contain threats while ensuring they can respond quickly and effectively to any outage or breach. Learn more about Opengear's approach at opengear.com.

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Cisco Tech Stories - ep 26 - Kendra's SD-WAN war stories

CiscoChat Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 1, 2025 50:06

In this episode, Kendra Dodson, a SD-WAN technical Leader in RTP Cisco TAC center tells us her stories about SD-WAN : from counter overflow, to packet overfragmentation or sudden config loss, she gives her tips and her thoughts on the future of WAN connections.

Where's Palo Sailing this CyberArk? - NC2C041

Cables2Clouds

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 13, 2025 24:49 Transcription Available

Send us a textCloud security and infrastructure providers are making strategic moves to maintain competitive advantage through acquisitions and service enhancements while combating emerging threats. We explore the latest developments including Palo Alto's massive acquisition, new cloud services, and enhanced security features that are reshaping the industry.• Palo Alto Networks announces $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk to strengthen identity security capabilities, particularly for machine identities and agentic AI• AWS launches Elastic VMware Service, allowing customers to bring their own licenses without application replatforming as organizations seek alternatives amid Broadcom changes• Network World article questions why enterprises aren't fully replacing infrastructure with SD-WAN, highlighting the ongoing gradual adoption approach• Wiz discovers "zombie hosts" on Google Sites pages with SoCo 404 exploit that installs cryptocurrency mining malware• Megaport Cloud Router now supports IPsec tunnels, enabling direct encrypted connections through their fabric without additional hardwareJoin us next month for more cloud and infrastructure news updates.Purchase Chris and Tim's new book on AWS Cloud Networking: https://www.amazon.com/Certified-Advanced-Networking-Certification-certification/dp/1835080839/ Check out the Fortnightly Cloud Networking Newshttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/Visit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cables2clouds.comFollow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2cloudsMerch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatj

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Tech Bytes: How Is SD-WAN Driving SASE Success (Sponsored)

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 21, 2025 20:46

Today on the Tech Bytes podcast, sponsored by Palo Alto Networks, we examine how SASE is being adopted and deployed by enterprise customers. What does this integration of networking and security mean for the teams that need to operate this solution? We talk with Palo Alto Networks about SASE as a transformative technology for networking... Read more »

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NB534: Arista Late to SD-WAN Party but Ready to Dance; CoreWeave Acquires GPUs, Gigawatts for $9 Billion

Packet Pushers - Network Break

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2025 50:31

Take a Network Break! We start with listener follow-up on Arista market share in the enterprise, and then sound the alarm about a remote code execution vulnerability in Adobe Experience Manager. On the news front, Arista buys VeloCloud to charge into the SD-WAN market, CoreWeave acquires a cryptominer to get access to GPUs and electricity... Read more »

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NB534: Arista Late to SD-WAN Party but Ready to Dance; CoreWeave Acquires GPUs, Gigawatts for $9 Billion

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2025 50:31

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NB534: Arista Late to SD-WAN Party but Ready to Dance; CoreWeave Acquires GPUs, Gigawatts for $9 Billion

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2025 50:31

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N4N028: The Wide World of WANs