Peter Silva

I remember back-in-the-day when Virtual meant ‘almost,’ ‘simulated’ or ‘in essence’ as in, ‘I’m virtually there.’  Today, as it has made it’s way into computer terminology, it can mean actual or real things that are done over computers.  Virtualization has been the main enabler of Cloud Computing and has become an important tool for IT. I recently attended the 2009 Cloud Computing and Virtualization Conference & Expo in Silicon Valley and wanted to share some of my observations.  The show has certainly grown from last year but still a nice small(er) conference with a lot of opportunity for good conversations.  Cloud ‘solutions’ seemed to dominate the talks even though there is still a lot of confusion about the Cloud with a good portion of participants appearing to be in ... (more)

IPv6 and the End of the World

There’s always been a certain amount of conspiracy theories when security type events happen or instances where there is secrecy. There are those who don’t buy the ‘reported’ reason a security event (like a breach) occurred, those who claim to have inside information or just those who see a story and draw their own conclusions. The following is my take (Satire Alert) on Transmission Cont... (more)

F5’s BIG-IP system with Oracle Access Manager

Honestly, this was not timed and I actually had a different topic to discuss for #15 of 26 Short Topics but this cool news today.  F5 and Oracle have announced plans to unify access management for web applications.  Press release can be found here.  The solution will combine F5’s BIG-IP system with Oracle Access Manager to enhance single sign-on (SSO) capabilities and simplify access con... (more)

Will You Comply or Just Check the Box?

Some of both, apparently.  A recent Ponemon Institute PCI-DSS Compliance survey revealed that 71% of companies actually admitted that data security is not a top priority and 55% say they are only protecting credit card data and not other sensitive information like bank account info, social security numbers and drivers license data. Additional statistics show that a miniscule 28% of smaller... (more)

The Threat Behind the Firewall

I had a different name for this blog entry but just ‘Jump Drive’ is an awful blog title.  They go by many names; jump drive, USB drive, flash drive, memory stick and a few others, but removable media is a serious threat to IT organizations.  Graduating from floppy disks, as early as 2003 articles were warning against the possible threats introduced with these devices – 256Mb for $160 bac... (more)