Uber-less Austin virtually full of common themes at Light Reading’s BCE
In the “Silicon Hills” capital of the deep South, the world of technology movers and shakers descended upon Austin’s Convention Center for Light Reading’s Big Communication Event to discuss the latest disruptive technologies ripe to revolutionize the way we communicate.
Meanwhile, in the streets of Austin, a prickly regulation battle forced ultra-hip transportation companies Uber and Lyft to move their businesses out of the metro area. As a result, community engineers rallied around the clock to create a new app, called Ride-Austin, to fill the void – and reportedly in only 2 weeks’ time! This is only fitting in a startup town like Austin, as modern businesses everywhere are confronted with the reality of offering services to consumers in a nimble, automated, intelligent, dynamic, and virtual manner.
I found the ride-share issue to be a microcosm of the all the themes woven throughout keynote speeches, panel discussions, and hallway conversations at BCE. Among the hubbub, the topic of Information Security in the new era of NFV and SDN came to the forefront.
Radware is in the business of application delivery and network security, and has heavily invested in software-based, virtualized solutions over the last few years. So for me, it was a great opportunity to discuss with my peers the challenges and benefits for Service Providers in implementing virtualized security solutions across their networks.
Playing the role of industry skeptic, Heavy Reading’s Patrick Donegan asked the panel about how security automation and virtualization can co-exist without the nuisance of security attack false-positives. For Radware, the answer is simple: with the ability to see attacks that others do not see at multiple layers in the network, and with distributed detection and network level mitigation and policy control, Radware offers Service Providers an always-on, cost-effective defense system that can thwart multiple attack vectors in the lowest time-to-mitigate (TTM) in the industry. Couple that with flexible architectural choices, including a cloud-based option for hybrid architectures, the integration of anti-DDOS technology integrated into Security Appliances (such as Cisco’s Firepower 3300), the ability to defend against encrypted attacks and virtual detect engines that can be distributed at multiple points throughout the network – and the result is a formidable security framework than carriers cannot afford to do without.
I was also able to spend some time discussing NFV and SDN with Carol Wilson, Light Reading editor-at-large and expert interviewer. Stay tuned for our video interview to come to a virtual magazine near you!
