Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Healthcare SysAdmins haven’t just taken the concept of digital transformation to heart—they’re one of its largest proponents. Quality care improves patient outcomes, so healthcare organizations have embraced the idea of highly connected and digitally enhanced environments to help deliver that care. But while healthcare might often be at the forefront of the digital transformation and tech adoption wave, that doesn’t mean the process isn’t fraught with challenges.

A commonly used tool at the Cisco command line is the access control list (ACL). At their simplest, access control lists are collections of IP addresses that are used by a router, switch, or a firewall to identify network traffic that must be handled in a special way. Cisco and other network vendors use ACLs for many different purposes. This article focuses on IOS access control lists as used on Cisco routers, although much of this discussion applies to Cisco switches as well.

Continuous security (or control) validation helps me explain network security with one of my favorite analogies. Network security is like jiu-jitsu. You have no idea how strong your defenses are if you’re not rolling (sparring) regularly. Let’s take a closer look at continuous security validation, and explain why, just like jiu-jitsu, you need to keep your system in practice to keep it sharp.

Sometimes we associate “big” with power and success, but being small doesn’t mean you can’t compete—you just need to be smarter at creating a sustainable competitive advantage. Here are 10 things you can do as a small managed service provider (MSP) to punch above your weight.

Administrators are tasked with configuring interfaces on network devices more than any other single thing. This makes sense—interfaces are the main points of connectivity, sending and receiving traffic throughout an organization. Configuring interfaces can be deceptively easy. Switchports might require a VLAN assignment, and often function with no other configuration at all. Router interfaces can be up and running with only an IP address.

Automation. It’s a common term. Some may call it a buzzword, even. When it comes to building a network, it’s usually not your first consideration. After all, what’s most important is getting users and devices online—and keeping them there. Isn’t automating the network an advanced step? Are we even capable of making network monitoring and management automatic?

At the end of November 2021, Auvik released our annual Network Vendor Diversity Report, and the data we collected had some interesting findings. Over 520,000 devices across 40,000 networks contributed, showing which vendors are taking a leading share of the market. In this roundup, we’ll show you some of the most interesting learnings we saw in 2021.

Connectivity is more important than ever to support our education system. BYOD, remote classes, Wi-Fi, and a variety of digital learning solutions are now just part of the equation. Education IT teams have a big task: making sure educational service delivery remains uninterrupted while balancing the constraints of limited budgets, staff, and time to support digital transformation that can keep up with modern demands.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a popular quote for a simple reason: Changes can lead to unexpected results. Many network engineers have learned this lesson the hard way. Stories of admins who update firmware or configurations only to have network problems begin are common. Even big names in networking have been hit by change-induced network failures.

State and local governments (SLG), the frontline for delivery of services much of the population rely on, face some difficult challenges when it comes to modernization of their IT networks. Among them, the tools and services being used are built on some seriously old legacy infrastructure.