Cisco is leading the way for Wi-SUN interoperability

Utilities have been slow to adopt IoT networking due to long upgrade cycles and interoperability complexities across multiple applications with differing network needs. Yet, more and more, we hear our utility customers emphasize the need to simplify and support large-scale outdoor networks that handle an array of solutions from smart metering and distribution automation, to demand response and renewable energy integration. At DistribuTECH, we shared how Cisco’s continuing innovation is meeting this challenge. We showcased our full portfolio of utility industry solutions that include Cisco Resilient Mesh and our FAN routers, purpose-built to improve interoperability.

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Aithent

Aithent also develops and enhances applications for software operations, device makers and service providers. In addition, Aithent designs and manages technology transition and transformation projects for companies and organizations of all sizes.

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Application Development Platform

Empowering Industry 4.0 with Artificial Intelligence

Article | March 1, 2024

The next step in industrial technology is about robotics, computers and equipment becoming connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) and enhanced by machine learning algorithms. Industry 4.0 has the potential to be a powerful driver of economic growth, predicted to add between $500 billion- $1.5 trillion in value to the global economy between 2018 and 2022, according to a report by Capgemini.

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Application Development Platform

How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Businesses

Article | March 14, 2024

Whilst there are many people that associate AI with sci-fi novels and films, its reputation as an antagonist to fictional dystopic worlds is now becoming a thing of the past, as the technology becomes more and more integrated into our everyday lives. AI technologies have become increasingly more present in our daily lives, not just with Alexa’s in the home, but also throughout businesses everywhere, disrupting a variety of different industries with often tremendous results. The technology has helped to streamline even the most mundane of tasks whilst having a breath-taking impact on a company’s efficiency and productivity

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Application Development Platform

The advances of AI in healthcare

Article | March 15, 2024

With the Government investing £250 million into the project, the Lab will consider how to use AI for the benefit of patients – whether this be the deployment of existing AI methods, the development of new technologies or the testing of their safety. Amongst other things, the initiative will aim to deliver earlier diagnoses of cancer. It is estimated that in excess of 50,000 extra patients could see their cancer being detected at an early stage, thus boosting survival rates. More specifically, a study has shown that AI is quicker in identifying brain tumour tissue than a pathologist.This would have a positive knock-on effect in other areas, such as enabling money to be saved (that otherwise would have been spent on further treatment) and reducing the workload of staff (at a time when there is a crisis in NHS workforce numbers).

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Three Keys to Successful AI Adoption

Article | February 10, 2020

Over the past several years, we have begun to see the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) in businesses. According to a study for the AI Index 2019 Annual Report, more than half of respondents report their companies are using AI in at least one function or business unit. Thirty percent report they have AI embedded across multiple areas of their business. As businesses continue to develop their understanding of what is possible with AI, we can expect to see a continued increase in AI adoption.

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Aithent

Aithent also develops and enhances applications for software operations, device makers and service providers. In addition, Aithent designs and manages technology transition and transformation projects for companies and organizations of all sizes.

Related News

Cisco WiFi Routers Attacked After Code Hack Posted

SDxCentral | March 05, 2019

Hackers this week took advantage of online instructions to target some Cisco WiFi routers. The attacks come on the heels of the vendor issuing a software patch for the critical security vulnerabilities. The attacks occurred after security research firm Pen Test Partners posted a blog containing demonstration code on how to exploit the routers. The firm was involved in initially finding the vulnerability. Cisco noted that the vulnerability occurs in the web-based management interface of three routers: RV110W, RV130W and RV215W. It reportedly impacts about 12,000 devices in the U.S., Canada, India, Argentina, Poland, and Romania. The vulnerability, known as a Remote Command Execution (RCE) vulnerability, was ranked as “critical” by Cisco, with a 9.8 score (out of a possible 10) on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System. The high rating reflects the ease in attacking the devices remotely over the internet by hackers who also don’t need advanced coding skills. An unauthenticated remote attacker could use the vulnerability to execute arbitrary code, Cisco explained. It isn’t clear from Cisco’s report how attackers might take advantage of such access, but they presumably would be able to monitor secure personal data including passwords. Known Vulnerability: Three security researchers, including one from Pen Test Partners, announced the vulnerability at the GeekPwn Shanghai conference in late October. They didn’t provide technical details or mention the impacted products at the time, although Cisco thanked them for their work. In its blog post, Pen Test Partners criticized Cisco coders for using an insecure function in the C programminglanguage known as strcpy (shorthand for “string copy”) when the routers were first designed. Using strcpy left the authentication process in the routers open to a buffer overflow, allowing attackers to flood the password field and attach malicious commands. “It is well known – notorious even – that strcpy is a dangerous function to use,” the blog said. That blog entry, which was posted on Feb. 28, included code describing how an attack could happen.

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Cisco Says Mobile Internet Traffic Will Reach Nearly a Zettabyte by 2022

SDxCentral | February 21, 2019

As usual, the Cisco Mobile Visual Networking Index points to huge increases in the amount of data being trafficked through networks. And, as usual, it’s a master class in exotic numbers. The report, which covers the 2017-2022 time frame, says that the annual run rate of mobile internet traffic will reach almost a zettabyte by the end of that period. Also by 2022, mobile will make up almost 20 percent of local IP traffic. That’s almost 113 times the amount that mobile traffic generated in 2012. “This Mobile VNI clearly shows that the growing demand for wireless networking is not just a preference (not wanting to be tethered to a landline), but for many it’s an expectation that some form of wireless access (cellular or Wi-Fi) needs to be available and of a suitable performance quality to meet their needs,” Thomas Barnett, director of thought leadership for Cisco’s Service Provider business, told SDxCentral in an email. “Consumers and businesses rely on mobile connectivity not only for their personal devices, but also for a growing number of IoTapplications that will expand and evolve as the 5G ecosystem takes shape (more apps, content, analytics, security, et al.)” Cisco has amassed the massive amount of data that comprises the VNI for more than a decade. This is the ninth mobile edition, which relies in part on data from a number of consultancies, regulators and other organizations. The latest wired VNI was released last November. The report says the number of mobile users will increase from 5 billion to 5.7 billion users, mobile connections from 8.6 billion to 12.3 billion, and average network speed from 8.7 Mbps to 28.5 Mbps, between 2017 and 2022. Video, which was 59 percent of traffic in 2017, will be 79 percent in 2022.

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Cisco Patches High Severity Flaws in HyperFlex, Prime Infrastructure

SecurityWeek | February 21, 2019

Cisco this week released patches for more than a dozen vulnerabilities across its product portfolio, including high severity flaws in HyperFlex, Prime Infrastructure, and Prime Collaboration Assurance. Two High risk security bugs were addressed in HyperFlex software, namely a command injection issue in the cluster service manager of the application, and an unauthenticated root access flaw in the hxterm service of the software. Created by insufficient input validation and insufficient authentication controls, respectively, the vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to run commands as the root user or gain root access to all member nodes of the HyperFlex cluster. Tracked as CVE-2018-15380 and CVE-2019-1664, both vulnerabilities were found to impact HyperFlex software releases prior to 3.5(2a). Another High severity bug that Cisco addressed this week is a certificate validation bug in the Identity Services Engine (ISE) integration feature of Prime Infrastructure (PI). An unauthenticated, remote attacker could exploit the flaw to perform a man-in-the-middle attack against the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) tunnel established between ISE and PI. Tracked as CVE-2019-1659, the issue is created by improper validation of the server SSL certificate when establishing the SSL tunnel with ISE. The flaw impacts Prime Infrastructure Software releases 2.2 through 3.4.0 when the PI server is integrated with ISE, which is disabled by default. Another High risk bug was found in the Quality of Voice Reporting (QOVR) service of Prime Collaboration Assurance (PCA) Software releases prior to 12.1 SP2. Tracked as CVE-2019-1662 and created due to insufficient authentication controls, the issue could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to access the system as a valid user.

Read More

Cisco WiFi Routers Attacked After Code Hack Posted

SDxCentral | March 05, 2019

Hackers this week took advantage of online instructions to target some Cisco WiFi routers. The attacks come on the heels of the vendor issuing a software patch for the critical security vulnerabilities. The attacks occurred after security research firm Pen Test Partners posted a blog containing demonstration code on how to exploit the routers. The firm was involved in initially finding the vulnerability. Cisco noted that the vulnerability occurs in the web-based management interface of three routers: RV110W, RV130W and RV215W. It reportedly impacts about 12,000 devices in the U.S., Canada, India, Argentina, Poland, and Romania. The vulnerability, known as a Remote Command Execution (RCE) vulnerability, was ranked as “critical” by Cisco, with a 9.8 score (out of a possible 10) on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System. The high rating reflects the ease in attacking the devices remotely over the internet by hackers who also don’t need advanced coding skills. An unauthenticated remote attacker could use the vulnerability to execute arbitrary code, Cisco explained. It isn’t clear from Cisco’s report how attackers might take advantage of such access, but they presumably would be able to monitor secure personal data including passwords. Known Vulnerability: Three security researchers, including one from Pen Test Partners, announced the vulnerability at the GeekPwn Shanghai conference in late October. They didn’t provide technical details or mention the impacted products at the time, although Cisco thanked them for their work. In its blog post, Pen Test Partners criticized Cisco coders for using an insecure function in the C programminglanguage known as strcpy (shorthand for “string copy”) when the routers were first designed. Using strcpy left the authentication process in the routers open to a buffer overflow, allowing attackers to flood the password field and attach malicious commands. “It is well known – notorious even – that strcpy is a dangerous function to use,” the blog said. That blog entry, which was posted on Feb. 28, included code describing how an attack could happen.

Read More

Cisco Says Mobile Internet Traffic Will Reach Nearly a Zettabyte by 2022

SDxCentral | February 21, 2019

As usual, the Cisco Mobile Visual Networking Index points to huge increases in the amount of data being trafficked through networks. And, as usual, it’s a master class in exotic numbers. The report, which covers the 2017-2022 time frame, says that the annual run rate of mobile internet traffic will reach almost a zettabyte by the end of that period. Also by 2022, mobile will make up almost 20 percent of local IP traffic. That’s almost 113 times the amount that mobile traffic generated in 2012. “This Mobile VNI clearly shows that the growing demand for wireless networking is not just a preference (not wanting to be tethered to a landline), but for many it’s an expectation that some form of wireless access (cellular or Wi-Fi) needs to be available and of a suitable performance quality to meet their needs,” Thomas Barnett, director of thought leadership for Cisco’s Service Provider business, told SDxCentral in an email. “Consumers and businesses rely on mobile connectivity not only for their personal devices, but also for a growing number of IoTapplications that will expand and evolve as the 5G ecosystem takes shape (more apps, content, analytics, security, et al.)” Cisco has amassed the massive amount of data that comprises the VNI for more than a decade. This is the ninth mobile edition, which relies in part on data from a number of consultancies, regulators and other organizations. The latest wired VNI was released last November. The report says the number of mobile users will increase from 5 billion to 5.7 billion users, mobile connections from 8.6 billion to 12.3 billion, and average network speed from 8.7 Mbps to 28.5 Mbps, between 2017 and 2022. Video, which was 59 percent of traffic in 2017, will be 79 percent in 2022.

Read More

Cisco Patches High Severity Flaws in HyperFlex, Prime Infrastructure

SecurityWeek | February 21, 2019

Cisco this week released patches for more than a dozen vulnerabilities across its product portfolio, including high severity flaws in HyperFlex, Prime Infrastructure, and Prime Collaboration Assurance. Two High risk security bugs were addressed in HyperFlex software, namely a command injection issue in the cluster service manager of the application, and an unauthenticated root access flaw in the hxterm service of the software. Created by insufficient input validation and insufficient authentication controls, respectively, the vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to run commands as the root user or gain root access to all member nodes of the HyperFlex cluster. Tracked as CVE-2018-15380 and CVE-2019-1664, both vulnerabilities were found to impact HyperFlex software releases prior to 3.5(2a). Another High severity bug that Cisco addressed this week is a certificate validation bug in the Identity Services Engine (ISE) integration feature of Prime Infrastructure (PI). An unauthenticated, remote attacker could exploit the flaw to perform a man-in-the-middle attack against the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) tunnel established between ISE and PI. Tracked as CVE-2019-1659, the issue is created by improper validation of the server SSL certificate when establishing the SSL tunnel with ISE. The flaw impacts Prime Infrastructure Software releases 2.2 through 3.4.0 when the PI server is integrated with ISE, which is disabled by default. Another High risk bug was found in the Quality of Voice Reporting (QOVR) service of Prime Collaboration Assurance (PCA) Software releases prior to 12.1 SP2. Tracked as CVE-2019-1662 and created due to insufficient authentication controls, the issue could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to access the system as a valid user.

Read More

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