Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Incident response is a structured approach to addressing and managing the aftermath of a security breach or cyberattack, also referred to as an IT incident, computer incident, or security incident. The goal is to handle the situation in a way that limits damage and reduces recovery time and costs. Additionally, it aims to improve strategies and solutions to prevent future security incidents.

Today, network operations teams encounter significant hurdles due to shortages of skilled personnel and fragmented toolsets. Despite consolidation efforts, it's common for teams to manage up to 15 different monitoring products. Research suggests that network professionals believe they could potentially resolve 53% of network issues by implementing improved network management tools.

In May I mostly took the time to plan out the rest of the year, as well as one big feature to make OnlineOrNot's incident management more realistic.

The TCP/IP protocol sometimes shows its age. It was invented in an era when networks were very slow and packet loss was high. So one of the main considerations in early protocol design was reliability. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) has built-in mechanisms for reliability that include validating a checksum on every packet, as well as detection and retransmission of dropped or out-of-order packets.

Is that a bird’s nest or is it spaghetti? Have you ever asked that question when looking into a IT wiring closet? At some point in your tenure as a network manager, you’ve likely been asked to inventory a network and create a network topology diagram.

For new networkers, Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) can be an intimidating topic. Many old-timers speak of spanning-tree in ominous tones, recounting the time when a “spanning-tree loop” brought down the network. Some managers strictly forbid anyone from changing anything related to the spanning tree, fearing a resulting service interruption. Some of the fear surrounding spanning trees is likely based on bad experiences, but some are based on ignorance—at least partly.