Cisco targets AI features for collaboration and security

Cisco previewed generative AI features for its Collaboration and Security portfolios that are expected later this year.

A top AI feature is a generative AI-powered summarization capabilities in Webex. The AI will extract the key points, and capture action items with owners. Cisco said the capabilities will ask users to opt in.

In the Vidcast video messaging tool, the AI will produce highlights and chapters. For contact centers, conversation summaries will provide agents with a fast, automated way to consume long-form text from digital chats with customers as well as facilitating post-call wrap-up and resolution with customers. For example, if a customer is escalated to a call with a human agent, they expect that agent to be informed and not have to repeat their frustrations. 

New generative AI capabilities are aimed at policy management and improved threat response. The Cisco Security Cloud will leverage a generative AI Policy Assistant to address this problem by enabling security and IT administrators to describe granular security policies and evaluate how to best implement them across different aspects of their security infrastructure. 

Cisco’s security operations center (SOC) Assistant will augment security analysts with context, correlating intel across the Cisco Security Cloud platform solutions, relaying potential impacts, and providing recommended actions.

The Cisco Policy Assistant can reason with the existing firewall policy set to implement and simplify rules within the Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center. 

“Generative AI will quickly become pervasive as we see businesses and workers embrace the technology to become materially more productive,” said Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Security and Collaboration, Cisco. “At Cisco, we’ve been using AI for years. Now we’re unveiling how we’re incorporating generative AI into our existing products, helping customers drive real value to unlock the most secure, unrivaled work experiences possible.”

https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2023/m06/cisco-unveils-next-gen-solutions-that-empower-security-and-productivity-with-generative-ai.html

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AT&T and Cisco expand SD-WAN capabilities / reach

AT&T and Cisco are expanding their existing partnership to enhance SD-WAN connectivity with add-on services such as 5G and broadband.

The partnership will also natively integrate Cisco’s Webex Calling with the AT&T mobile network to provide a mobile-first and unified collaboration experience via a single business mobile number.

For small and medium businesses, AT&T is launching a new self-service option to simplify and accelerate SD-WAN deployment.

For larger enterprises, AT&T SD-WAN with Cisco is a fully managed connectivity solution with embedded security and analytics. 

Cisco will also provide the ability to embed AT&T wireless connectivity into Cisco devices enabling zero touch provisioning for Cisco and AT&T customers, through AT&T Control Center powered by Cisco.

"The network is at the core of the modern workforce. The ability to get things done is no longer reliant on where you are, but how you are connected," said Jonathan Davidson, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Cisco Networking. "Hybrid work only works when there is a seamless, consistent, and secure experience for workers, regardless of location.”

https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2023/m06/cisco-and-att-join-forces-to-help-businesses-expand-connectivity-for-a-growing-mobile-first-workforce.html

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Emirates’ du builds 5G fixed wireless with Nokia

du, which is part of Emirates Integrated Telecommunication Company, is deploying a Multi-Access Gateway (MAG) to deliver both residential and business broadband services over 4G/5G fixed-wireless access, in addition to mobile services.

The installation will leverage Nokia 7750 Service Routers, FastMile 5G gateways, MAG, and Nokia professional services.

The companies said fixed-wireless broadband is emerging as one of the most significant use cases of 5G.

Saleem AlBlooshi, Chief Technology Officer, du, said: “Fixed-wireless access is a vital and highly effective initiative, enabling us to provide cutting-edge use cases such as smart home and IoT solutions to our valued subscribers. As a trailblazer in this domain, du takes immense pride in being the first in the MEA region to implement this ground-breaking solution.”

Rima Manna, Vice President, Middle East Market Unit at Nokia MEA, said: “Fixed-wireless access is becoming a game-changer for bringing innovative broadband services to residential and business users. Nokia is committed to helping mobile and converged operators develop new applications and revenue streams with FWA. “

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IBM to open Quantum Data Center in Germany

IBM will open its first Europe-based quantum data center in 2024 in Ehningen, Germany, and will serve as IBM Quantum's European cloud region. 

IBM said the data center is being designed to help clients continue to manage their European data regulation requirements, including processing all job data within EU borders. The facility will be IBM's second quantum data center and quantum cloud region, after Poughkeepsie, New York.

"Europe has some of the world's most advanced users of quantum computers, and interest is only accelerating with the era of utility scale quantum processors," said Jay Gambetta, IBM Fellow and Vice President of IBM Quantum. "The planned quantum data center and associated cloud region will give European users a new option as they seek to tap the power of quantum computing in an effort to solve some of the world's most challenging problems."

"At T-Systems, we are collaborating with IBM to combine quantum and classical computing in a seamless and scalable experience for our customers to explore applications of quantum computing," said Adel Al-Saleh, Deutsche Telekom board member and Chief Executive of T-Systems. "Having access to a quantum data center dedicated to Europe will help lower the access barrier for our customers as they decide on how to take their first, decisive steps in exploring and using quantum."

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Dell’Oro: Hyperscale drives strong SP router demand in Q1

The worldwide Service Provider (SP) Router and Switch market saw extraordinarily strong growth in the 1Q 2023 fueled by hyperscalers and an unleashed component supply that allowed equipment vendors to fulfill orders and catch up on backlogs, according to a newly released report from Dell’Oro Group. 

 “We were caught by surprise as revenues blew through the roof, growing 15 percent year-over-year. Only three times in the past twelve years has the SP Router market increased at this rate. For over two years, component supplies have constrained vendors’ ability to fulfill orders, and orders were piling to record levels,” said Ivaylo Peev, Senior Analyst at Dell’Oro Group. “For the short-term outlook, we may see another quarter of strong growth, but do not expect it to be sustainable as customers need time to digest inventory, and the bulk of the market deployments come from Telecom SPs which refresh their networks at a steady pace.

“We have seen particular strength recently from Hyperscalers in North America which deploy routers to interconnect geographically dispersed facilities, to connect to Telecom SP wide area networks, and to connect inside the data centers. Within the data center, we are seeing a significant increase towards high-speed network connectivity such as 200 Gbps and 400 Gbps Ethernet switch deployments, which in turn have a cascading effect on the network core. Top router manufacturers benefited from this trend, of notable mention Cisco gained two-share points during the quarter, climbing to its highest level since 1Q 2019,” continued Peev.

 Additional highlights from the 1Q 2023 Service Provider Router and Switch Report:

• In 1Q 2023, we saw double-digit market growth across all regions except EMEA, which declined. North America led the market with sizable growth, followed by the CALA (Caribbean and Latin America) and APAC.
• Starting 1Q 2023, we separately report 400 Gbps port shipments. The demand for routers supporting 400 Gbps connectivity continued to grow among both Cloud and Telco SPs, and Hyperscale’s demand was particularly strong in this quarter. We estimate 400 Gbps ports compose approximately 5 percent of total port shipments in 2023.
• Within the Edge Router segment, Juniper, Ciena, and ZTE gained share.

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NEC selected for East Micronesia Cable System

NEC signed a contract  for construction, supply and installation of an optical fibre submarine cable system to be called East Micronesia Cable System (EMCS).

EMCS, with a total length of approximately 2,250km, will connect four islands amongst FSM (Pohnpei and Kosrae), Kiribati (Tarawa) and Nauru with a large-capacity optical fibre submarine cable. This is the first submarine cable connection for the islands of Tarawa (Kiribati), Nauru and the state of Kosrae (FSM).

The contract was awarded by FSM Telecommunications Cable Corporation, based in the Federated States of Micronesia, BwebwerikiNet of the Republic of Kiribati, and Nauru Fibre Cable Corporation. The project is supported by the governments of Australia, Japan and the United States, and will be implemented with grant funding from the three countries. 

Gordon Segal, Chief Executive Officer of FSMTCC and Chairman of the EMCS Management Committee, said “Kosrae is the only state in FSM that remains without a submarine cable connection. This project will support equal access to digital connectivity across all four states of FSM and greatly enhance our ability to access information and essential services. We thank all our project partners for their support and collaboration.“ 

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Fortinet names 11 SD-WAN partners

Fortinet announced that 11 new managed security service providers (MSSPs) have adopted Fortinet Secure SD-WAN: Kyndryl; 11:11 Systems; Claro Empresas; Globe Business; InfiniVAN; KT Corporation; Neurosoft; Sify Technologies; SPTel; solutions by stc; and Tata Teleservices.

Fortinet said its Secure SD-WAN serves as the foundation for organizations to seamlessly adopt advanced networking technologies including Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), SD-Branch, and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA).

Fortinet secure networking solutions converge networking and security capabilities and are built to be easily expanded across. Fortinet integrates and manages SD-WAN, SASE, SD-Branch, and ZTNA with a single operating system.

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AWS releases a Snowblade for U.S. Department of Defense

Amazon Web Services announces the availability of AWS Snowblade, a 5RU compute/storage rack, for U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract customers. 

AWS Snowblade is designed to provide AWS compute, storage, and other hybrid services in remote locations, including Denied, Disrupted, Intermittent, and Limited (DDIL) environments for the DoD. 

AWS Snowblade is the first AWS Snow Family device designed to meet U.S. Military Ruggedization Standards (MIL-STD-810H). With support for 208 vCPUs, the package is the densest compute device of the AWS Snow Family allowing JWCC customers to run demanding workloads in space, weight, and power (SWaP) constrained edge locations.

AWS Snowblade adds to the AWS hybrid cloud and edge computing services that extend AWS infrastructure and services to the tactical edge, helping run low-latency applications close to where data originates, is processed, and acted upon. AWS Snowblade supports a select set of AWS services that include Amazon EC2, AWS IAM, AWS CloudTrail, AWS IoT Greengrass, AWS Deep Learning AMIs, Amazon Sagemaker Neo, and AWS DataSync.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/

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Nokia: Surge in malicious IoT botnet activity

Malicious IoT botnet traffic surged fivefold over the past year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and stemming from the growing increase in profit-driven hacking collectives operated by cybercriminal, according Nokia’s newly released Threat Intelligence Report.

The report is based on data aggregated from monitoring network traffic on more than 200 million devices globally where Nokia NetGuard Endpoint Security product is deployed.

Some highlights

• The number of IoT devices (bots) engaged in botnet-driven DDoS attacks rose from around 200,000 a year ago to approximately 1 million devices, generating more than 40% of all DDoS traffic today..
The number of trojans targeting personal banking information in mobile devices has doubled to 9%, 
• Malware infections in home networks declined from a Covid-high of 3% to 1.5%, close to the pre-pandemic level of 1%, as malware campaigns targeting the wave of at-home workers tapered off, and more people returned to office work environments. 

 https://www.Nokia.com

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Cisco Networking cloud brings the Meraki stack to Catalyst

Cisco outlined its vision a single platform experience for seamlessly managing all networking domains. The Cisco Networking cloud will be the powerful and intelligent platform to proactively manage the network, eliminate silos, assure performance, and reduce human workload.

The idea is to deliver a common set of cloud management components based on the Meraki dashboard and stack for the entire Cisco networking products portfolio.

“Today we are sharing our vision and first steps to eliminate networking complexity and securely connect the world,” said Jonathan Davidson, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Networking. “Only Cisco has the portfolio, experience, and partner ecosystem to bring together campus and branch, data center, compute, IoT, and SD-WAN to optimize outcomes using one networking management platform to deliver unified experiences.”

As a first step, Cisco is delivering the following components across its existing networking products portfolio:

• Single sign-on (SSO) simplifying access across Cisco networking platforms.
• API key exchange/repository, when linked with SSO, making it easier for Cisco networking platforms to connect and exchange data through automation to reduce friction and opportunities for error.
• Cross-platform navigation, delivering more seamless navigation between Cisco networking platforms.
• Common user interface across Cisco networking platforms, bringing greater consistency and ease of use across a customer’s operational functions.
• Cisco ThousandEyes for end-to-end network assurance over any network
• Enhancements to the Meraki dashboard will now support new capabilities for Cisco Catalyst switches including a CLI view, image management, and advanced troubleshooting. 

https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2023/m06/cisco-showcases-vision-to-simplify-networking-and-securely-connect-the-world.html

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NTT selects Fujitsu's 1FINITY Ultra Optical for national core network

NTT has adopted Fujitsu's 1FINITY Ultra optical transport platform as a verification system for use in trials ahead of the construction of the next optical core network covering Japan. 

Fujitsu received the system order in June 2023 and will deliver it in the first half of fiscal 2023.

The 1FINITY Ultra Optical platform leverages an open architecture system that enables flexible network construction. It is anticipated that the system, which will operate nationwide, will deliver transmission speeds of 1.2 Tbps for metropolitan areas such as Tokyo, and transmission speeds at 800 Gbps connecting remote locations, etc., optimized according to the use and the needs of the region.

NTT has proposed its IOWN concept for information and communications infrastructure. To support this concept, Fujitsu is building an All-Photonics Network (APN) that uses photonics in all areas of the communications network. APN features large capacity transmission, diminished delay, and low power consumption which greatly exceeds conventional communication technologies and will be used for the next optical core network which NTT Group will start to construct nationwide.

Fujitsu’s “1FINITY Ultra Optical System” meets the specifications required by the IOWN Global Forum for Open APN and can provide optimum solutions such as world-class high-capacity transmission of 1.2 Tbps per optical wave and long-distance transmission at 800 Gbps. In a world-first, the optical transmission equipment also uses liquid cooling to reduce CO2 emissions from the entire system by 60% compared to conventional products. Fujitsu is offering the "1FINITY Ultra Optical System" globally.

https://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-releases/2023/0606-01.html

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OIF launches four new projects

 OIF has commenced work on four new projects.

• Management of Smart Optical Modules Project: Current system management paradigms require tight coupling between hosts and pluggable optical modules. As module capabilities advance, host software must be updated. This additional development cycle delays the deployment of these advanced capabilities. In multi-vendor environments, it is becoming challenging for the various equipment developers to implement and track all the advanced features implemented by the various module vendors. There is also the requirement by end users for disaggregation of IPoDWDM solutions. This new OIF project will result in a white paper describing a new paradigm that decouples the cont
  
  
  roller from host software development, enabling faster realization of advanced module capabilities.
• Energy Efficient Interfaces Framework Project: This umbrella framework project will study energy-efficient electrical and optical interfaces (sometimes referred to as “Linear” or “Direct Drive”) necessary to support the energy-efficient application requirements prioritized by OIF’s Physical Layer User Group Working Group.
• 800G/1.6T FlexE Project: This project will define interoperable next-generation FlexE specifications for 800G/1.6T PHY rates for mobile backhaul and data center interconnect applications. It will result in the revision of the OIF-FLEXE-02.2 implementation agreement by adding support for 800Gb/s and 1.6Tb/s FlexE PHYs.
• Digital Twin Optical Network as an Enhanced Network Operation Project: Digital twins can enhance and accelerate network transformations, systems and operational process integrations. Verifying the accuracy of configuration or optimization orders provided by Digital Twin Network (DTN) systems is a challenge. This project will result in a white paper that identifies the challenges and technical requirements for digital twin modeling as an enhanced optical network operation. It will specify the relationship between the DTN and network management and control, interface operation, input/output data requirements and data collection – essential steps to broaden the adoption of digital twin use in optical networks.

At last month's hybrid Q2 2023 Technical and MA&E Committees meeting held in Budapest, Jia He, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., was re-elected as Chair of the Networking & Operations Working Group and Tom Huber, Nokia, was appointed as Physical & Link Layer Working Group Protocol Vice Chair.

http://www.oiforum.com

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Ciena's quarterly sales rise 19% yoy to $1.13 billion

Ciena reported revenue of $1.13 billion or its fiscal second quarter ended April 29, 2023, up 19% as compared to $949.2 million for the fiscal second quarter 2022.

Ciena's GAAP net income for the fiscal second quarter 2023 was $57.7 million, or $0.38 per diluted common share, which compares to a GAAP net income of $38.9 million, or $0.25 per diluted common share, for the fiscal second quarter 2022.

Ciena's adjusted (non-GAAP) net income for the fiscal second quarter 2023 was $110.4 million, or $0.74 per diluted common share, which compares to an adjusted (non-GAAP) net income of $76.4 million, or $0.50 per diluted common share, for the fiscal second quarter 2022.

"We delivered outstanding results for the fiscal second quarter as we were able to ship more to customers with continued improvements in supply chain dynamics," said Gary Smith, president and CEO of Ciena. "We are confident in our ability to take market share given our backlog and strategic industry position with market-leading technologies and an expanding addressable market."

Some highlights

• One customer represented 10%-plus of revenue for a total of 10.9% of revenue
• Cash and investments totaled $1.34 billion
• Cash flow from operations totaled $229.8 million
• Headcount totaled 8,385
• Non-telco represented 42% of total revenue in fiscal Q2 2023
•  Direct Cloud Provider revenue increased 20% YoY
• Service Provider revenue increased 22% YoY
• Routing and Switching revenue increased 19% YoY in fiscal Q2 2023, reflecting strong contribution across the routing portfolio
• APAC revenue increased 60% YoY and 19% QoQ driven by strength in India

https://investor.ciena.com/financials/quarterly-results#section=quarterly

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Digital Realty raises $1.1 billion, sells Texas data center

Digital Realty raised approximately $1.1 billion of gross proceeds from the sale of approximately 11 million shares issued under the company's at-the-market program, including 3.5 million shares to be issued pursuant to forward sales agreements. 

In addition, Digital Realty sold a data center in Texas for approximately $150 million. The data center was originally acquired in 2012 and leased as a powered shell facility. The property was sold at a 4.4% cap rate, based on projected 2023 net operating income and generated a capital gain of approximately $88 million. 

Digital Realty expects to use the combined proceeds from the asset sale and ATM issuance to pay down debt and ultimately to fund ongoing and future investment activity. 

"Consistent with our goals for this year, this transaction enables us to recycle capital from a non-core asset at an attractive valuation," said Digital Realty Chief Investment Officer Greg Wright. "We are consistently enhancing our portfolio by redeploying proceeds into strategic investments with premium growth prospects. Institutional demand for data centers remains robust and we look forward to continued execution on our capital plan." 

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Apple's new M2 Ultra leverages its UltraFusion silicon interposer

Apple introduced its flagship M2 Ultra system on a chip (SoC) built using a second-generation 5-nanometer process and boasting 134 billion transistors — 20 billion more than M1 Ultra.

The M2 Ultra chip leverages Apple’s UltraFusion® silicon interposer technology to connect the die of two M2 Max chips. The design connects the dies with more than 10,000 signals, providing over 2.5TB/s of low-latency interprocessor bandwidth. 

The M2 Ultra supports up to 192GB of unified memory capacity with 800GB/s of memory bandwidth — twice that of M2 Max. The GPU can be configured with 60 or 76 next-generation cores. The Neural Engine features 32 cores delivering 31.6 trillion operations per second.

Apple says the M2 Ultra CPU is 20 percent faster than M1 Ultra, the GPU is up to 30 percent faster, and the Neural Engine is up to 40 percent faster.

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Intel shows PowerVia chip backside power delivery

Intel announced the first implementation of its PowerVia backside power delivery technology in a product-like test chip.

PowerVia solves the growing issue of interconnect bottlenecks in area scaling by moving power routing to the backside of a wafer.

Intel said PowerVia was tested on its own internal test node to debug and ensure good functionality of the technology before its integration with RibbonFET in Intel 20A. After fabrication and testing on a silicon test chip, PowerVia was confirmed to bring a remarkably efficient use of chip resources with greater than 90% cell utilization and major transistor scaling, enabling chip designers to achieve performance and efficiency gains in their products.

Intel plans to introduce PowerVia on the Intel 20A process node in the first half of 2024.

“PowerVia is a major milestone in our aggressive ‘five nodes in four years’ strategy and on our path to achieving a trillion transistors in a package in 2030. Using a trial process node and subsequent test chip enabled us to de-risk backside power for our leading process nodes, placing Intel a node ahead of competitors in bringing backside power delivery to market,”  states Ben Sell, Intel vice president of Technology Development.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/powervia-intel-achieves-chipmaking-breakthrough.html#gs.zm1e02

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Charter to deploy Nokia CBRS RAN to offload from leased network

Charter Communications will deploy Nokia’s AirScale equipment portfolio, including 5G RAN, to increase network capacity to Spectrum Mobile customers in its trial markets in the United States. The deployment will offload traffic from its leased mobile network.

This is the first win for Nokia in the Multiple System Operator (MSO) space. Charter will deploy Nokia’s 5G RAN products, including strand mounted radios for CBRS, baseband units, and a newly developed 5G CBRS Strand Mount Small Cells All-in-One portfolio on the company’s assets, which will help Charter continue to deliver mobile traffic in strategic locations across its 41-state footprint while providing customers with the best possible 5G service experience.

 

Charter’s Spectrum Mobile, which currently has 6 million customer lines as of Q12023, claims to be the fastest growing mobile provider in the United States.

Shaun McCarthy, President of North America Sales at Nokia, said: “This news builds on our more than 20-year relationship working with Charter to enhance its network. We are excited to expand its current trial to additional select metropolitan markets in the US, enabling an enhanced user experience for Spectrum Mobile subscribers. This win strengthens Nokia’s leadership position in the MSO space for 5G wireless deployments.”

https://ir.charter.com/static-files/3943ccd3-dd07-4dfa-9946-a9afd1bef557

• Charter Communications, the second largest U.S. cable operator, launched its Spectrum Mobile service in July 2018 as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) using Verizon’s nationwide network.

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Adva Network Security and Quantum Optics demo QKD

Adva Network Security and Quantum Optics Jena demonstrated entanglement-based quantum key distribution (QKD) technology to establish a secure optical communication channel between data centers owned and operated by the Thüringer Landesrechenzentrum (TLRZ), the IT service provider for the state’s administration in Thuringia. 

Adva Network Security said that by delivering quantum-secured keys to the encryptor of the high-bitrate optical channel, the team was able to show how data traffic could resist quantum attacks on the link between the data centers. The demo represents a significant leap forward for quantum-safe communications made in Germany and is a crucial step toward bolstering critical infrastructure security to protect against the real and impending threat quantum computers pose to private data.

The field trial leveraged Quantum Optics Jena’s entanglement-based QKD technology and Adva Network Security’s ConnectGuard Layer 1 technology to demonstrate a consistent quantum-secure connection between TLRZ data centers. Using the unique properties of quantum entanglement, the system generates a secure method for key exchange impervious to data interception. During one day of operation, the system sends over 20 billion entangled photons and creates 11.84 million secure bits to generate more than 46,000 256-bit keys for encryption services like Adva Network Security’s Layer 1 encryption. The keys generated by the QKD system will always remain secure, even if a potential attacker attempts to interfere with or eavesdrop on the entangled quantum states during transmission. Adva Network Security’s Layer 1 encryption technology ensures comprehensive protection for all network layers and operates with line speeds of 10Gbit/s or 100Gbit/s.

“Quantum computers may soon render traditional encryption methods obsolete, making safeguarding sensitive data an urgent priority for governments the world over,” said Kevin Füchsel, CEO at Quantum Optics Jena. “With our field trial, we’re demonstrating just how effective our innovative entanglement-based QKD system, ELVIS, is at securing data in transit. What’s more, Adva Network Security’s ConnectGuard™ encryption technology enables our solution to function effectively over DCI links, significantly enhancing data integrity for sectors including government, defense, healthcare and financial services. Our combined product offering made in Germany is the world’s most mature and robust solution for securing optical communications.”

“As quantum computer technology evolves, vast amounts of currently unbreakable encrypted information will become vulnerable to hackers,” noted Michael Roth, GM of Adva Network Security. “That’s why this trial is so crucial. Working together with Quantum Optics Jena, we’ve demonstrated how our technology can be embedded within communications networks to secure the most highly-sensitive data of financial institutions, defense organizations, healthcare and many other sectors. Our standardized key exchange protocol assured seamless integration with the QKD technology from Quantum Optics Jena, showing how easy it is to upgrade our security solution to QKD and highlighting the future-proof nature of our products.”

https://www.advasecurity.com

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GTT boosts its security offerings

GTT Communications is rolling out the following enhancements to its fully managed cloud-and premise-based cybersecurity service offerings for enterprises: 

• 
  GTT MDR: New heightened service-level agreement (SLA) for GTT’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR), assuring enterprises with 24/7 threat monitoring and ongoing assurance that investigations will take place within 15 minutes. The service combines Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) technology with human intelligence to provide enterprises with 24/7 threat monitoring and ongoing assurance that investigations will take place within 15 minutes. 
• GTT DDoS Mitigation: New standard service option for enterprises with dedicated DDoS Mitigation infrastructure to augment and uplift their network security to help protect against the effects of large-scale/complex attacks. The service detects DDoS attacks targeting customers’ networks and directs internet traffic to the closest of GTT’s 10 global DDoS scrubbing centers, where any malicious traffic is dropped while legitimate traffic is allowed to flow unimpeded to its destination with little to no added latency.

“As cyberthreats continue to grow in scale and complexity, managed and professional services can help enterprises both overcome the cyber skills gap and strike the right balance between risk management, cost and performance,” said Todd Kiehn, senior vice president of Strategy & Product, GTT. “We recognize that flexibility and speed are key to how enterprises can build out successful and adaptable network security strategies. Our new heightened SLA for MDR ensures customers that any security issues triggering an alert are investigated within 15 minutes to rapidly identify potential threats.”

https://www.gtt.net

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Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson test Network Slicing

Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson conducted a network slicing proof-of-Concept (PoC) that enables enterprise accounts to automatically connect to private cloud services. The proof-of-concept was implemented on a 5G Standalone (SA) testbed in a Deutsche Telekom lab with the enterprise smart phones connecting to a predefined set of private cloud applications.  Ericsson provided the 5G Core network, Radio Access Network (RAN) and end-to-end orchestration including URSP.

Deutsche Telekom said the demo provides for automated configuration, provisioning and end-to-end orchestration of the enterprise slicing service order. 

Within this integrated solution, a slice design tool enables an enterprise’s IT administrators to flexibly manage, monitor and analyze slice performance. Via a single management interface, the administrator can customize, order, configure and manage an end-to-end network consisting of enterprise smart phone devices, a 5G network slice and private cloud services. Enterprise employees can then access private cloud-based applications on their enterprise smartphone device via a secure network slice over the public network. The enterprise administrator can also make use of a variety of analytics services in the integrated solution to monitor and analyze the use of the customized network slice.

The features and capabilities of the integrated solution include an app-level configuration of the device using Mobile Device Management (MDM) and User Equipment Route Selection Policy (URSP). In addition, the Business Support System (BSS) exposes TM Forum APIs for integration into third party management interfaces. That way, external management systems can incorporate slice ordering and management. 

“This successful demonstration highlights the potential of advanced 5G network slicing capabilities to enable unique and flexible services for enterprises, customized to specific needs,” states Kaniz Mahdi, SVP Technology Architecture & Innovation at Deutsche Telekom. “Working with our partners, we are committed to transferring this innovation into compelling solutions for our enterprise customers’ digitalization journeys.”  

Daniel Leimbach, Head of Customer Unit Western Europe at Ericsson, says: “As communication service providers and enterprises globally seek to make full use of 5G’s advanced features, network slicing holds the key to creating sustainable business cases. This Proof of Concept shows that the ability for enterprises to create and tailor network slices easily to fit their applications and user needs is no longer something for the future, but something for today. We’re looking forward to continuing this great partnership with Deutsche Telekom to deliver on the real promise of 5G.” 

https://www.telekom.com/en/media/media-information/archive/network-slicing-solution-1040466

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