Peter Silva

According to a ComputerWorld article citing a recent Gartner survey, about half the world’s companies will stop providing computing devices to employees and embrace some form of BYOD by 2017.  They also noted that about 40% will offer a choice between employee owned or company issued while 15% say they will never support BYOD.  While most surveyed felt there were benefits to BYOD, only about a quarter (22%) felt they have made a strong business case for it.  This might have to do with the fact that many organizations are still in the exploratory process for BYOD and are looking for a mobile strategy.  In addition, many are still trying to figure out a reimbursement plan.  Employees often expense business travel and mileage, and personal smartphone use for work also falls into that category.  About half the companies provide some reimbursement with only 2% covering a... (more)

Conversation with One of CloudNOW’s Top 10 Women: Lori MacVittie

F5 Sr. Technical Marketing Manager Lori MacVittie received CloudNOW’s prestigious Top 10 Women in Cloud award for her exceptional contributions to the cloud community. CloudNOW, an executive consortium of the leading women in cloud computing, presented the award during UBM Tech’s Cloud Connect—the premier technology event for cloud computing. I’ve had the good fortune to have known and worked with Lori for almost 7 years and sat down with her to talk about cloud, convergence and application delivery. Peter: First, Congratulations Lori on yet another award. If I remember correct... (more)

Every Day Is a 0-Day Nowadays

It sure seems like 0-Days are now an every day occurrence.  Headlines containing, ‘breach,’  ‘attack,’ ‘hack,’ ‘vulnerability,’ ‘passwords,’ ‘compromised,’ and ‘you’ are commonplace in the media these days.  Typically a 0-day is described as a threat or an attack on a (previously) unknown vulnerability – this is day zero of enlightenment.  Often, the developer themselves are not even aware of the vulnerability.  0-days can command multiple zeros after the dollar sign since malicious folks can exploit it immediately.  From plug-ins to extensions to browsers to web apps to SCADA ... (more)

Mobile Threats Rise 261% in Perspective

A new report from ABI Research indicates that the number of unique mobile threats grew 261% in just two quarters.  As mobile functionality grows so does the vulnerability threat vector as mobile malware is starting to target certain systems.  This is certainly a concern for those organizations rolling out BYOD initiates.  You’ve heard athletes and coaches talk about giving 110%, which is obviously impossible, but some of the recent mobile malware growth numbers are huge, like on the order of 1700%. To gain some perspective, I wanted to know what else in the world is growing at 2... (more)

Interop2013: That’s a Wrap

I wrap it up from Interop 2013. Special thanks to F5ers Ken Bocchino, Ken Salchow, Dan Kim, Sam Richman along with Christine, Courtney and Jeff for camera work. Also thanks to Brian Monkman of ICSA and Aaron Edwards of Big Switch Networks. Reporting from Vegas – thanks for watching.   ps Related: Interop2013: Find F5 Interop2013: DDoS’ing the Interop Network Interop2013: F5 Certification Program Interop2013: BIG-IQ Cloud Interop2013: Partner Spotlight – Big Switch Networks Interop2013: Partner Spotlight – ICSA Labs Interop2013: DDoS’ing Interop Follow Up F5′s YouTube Channel I... (more)