Cisco VSS Dual-Active Detection – In my last blog, I explained how to configure VSS. In this article I’ll explain how to configure Dual-Active Detection. This is an important function [...]

You know sometimes I like to write lists.  Not shopping lists or "to-do" lists but lists that help me decide on or better define something in particular.  For example, before I got married I sat down with pen and paper and wrote down everything I liked and didn't like about…

MARS and Cisco IPS are synchronized for the official IPS signatures created by Cisco.  This is done through the automatic updates that occur on the IPS side and on the MARS side.  On the IPS side, this done by configuring “Configuration > Sensor Management > Auto/Cisco.com Update” within IPS Manager…

Cisco VSS Configuration – Looking to install VSS ? Well, recently I had the opportunity to install VSS in a customer’s Data Center as part of a complete network migration [...]

Cisco NAC appliance 4.7.1 was just recently released.  The main new features are support for Windows 7 and Apple Macintosh OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Mahesh Naidu, Cisco PMBU Product Manager, also made another interesting announcement on the Miami University NAC Mailing list.  He stated that a separate "NAC sustaining engineering…

Email security is an important facet of data protection, both for enterprises and individuals.  Email security can be implemented to perform email authentication and/or email encryption.  Both authentication and encryption are provided using Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) with public key cryptography (PKI).  The basic requirements for PKI are a…

The Cisco Security team had started a podcast series through iTunes in 2008.  They had 7 podcasts and then it died out.  The podcasts are still available, on iTunes.  Just search on Cisco and you'll see the Cisco security podcasts as well as other Cisco podcasts. It looks like they…

SNMP is one of the key technologies used in out-of-band Cisco NAC Appliance deployments.  The NAC Manager sends SNMP GET commands to the access switches to learn about the switch port configuration.  The NAC Manager also sends SNMP SET commands to the access switches to change individual switch ports from…

With most network management systems and network security systems, SNMP is a critical component. One great tool for checking SNMP functionality is net-snmp. This tool works with Windows and Linux. From a security perspective, this net-snmp can be used as another troubleshooting tool to ensure that Cisco MARS and Cisco…

Do you have security policy requirements that need to be enforced on your routers and switches?  One option to accomplish this task is to periodically check the configurations of all routers and switches. This approach is painful and time consuming.  Another option is to use an application to automate this…

SANS has just published The 2009 Top Cyber Risks Report.  It's pretty interesting reading if you are at all concerned with protecting computer networks (I guess that's pretty much all of us!).   The gist of the report is that most organizations are spending their time and money of protecting against…

Performance routing (PfR) is a newer Cisco technology that is beginning to make its way into many enterprise networks. It has become mainstream enough that Cisco is now including it on the new CCIE exams. So I thought an overview and explanation is in order. Let me start out by…