Kaspersky Web Traffic Security now available in two deployment options to meet customer demands

Kaspersky released next version of Kaspersky Web Traffic Security, which now offers enhanced protection capabilities though integration with Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack to improve early detection of sophisticated web threats. The product is now available in two deployment options, as a standalone application and a software appliance, to meet broader customer needs.

According to Kaspersky researchers, 717 million web attacks were revealed in the second quarter of this year. The attacks contain various kinds of malware including generic adware to ransomware and advanced threats that reach corporate networks through phishing, social engineering or unreliable web resource surfing.

Web gateway protection allows companies to block massive amounts of web threats before they reach endpoints. This decreases the number of alerts on endpoints that interrupt users and administrators, as well as ensures protection of devices which don’t have endpoint security product installed or updated.

To make the deployment and use of the product effective for companies with different needs, Kaspersky now offers two options: as a software appliance or a standalone application.

The software appliance is a ready-to-use solution for companies that need to quickly deploy and start using secure web gateway with a proxy server pre-configured. The appliance interface allows users to manage the incorporated proxy server, avoiding configuration hassle.

The Kaspersky Web Traffic Security standalone application allows resource economy and a more agile configuration for companies that need a more customized solution and careful integration of different cybersecurity products. The application does not necessarily demand a separate server, as the system requirements necessary to protect a particular bandwidth are met. It can be installed alongside other applications but configured separately from other gateway components.

The protection capabilities of Kaspersky Web Traffic Security are now empowered by two-way API-based integration with Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack, which allows customers of both solutions to achieve earlier attack detection and automated responses to advanced web threats. 

Suspicious files are automatically sent to Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack for analysis. The system reveals the nature and malicious activity that the advanced threat generates, including files, transmission of commands, payloads and stolen data, and blocks them at the early attack stage.

“Different deployment scenarios allow companies to choose the best way to secure corporate web traffic, depending on available resources or IT network architecture,” said Sergey Martsynkyan, head of B2B product marketing at Kaspersky. “It also brings new usage scenarios to our partners. For example, the new format of the all-in-one appliance can be used by managed service providers to add web traffic security to their portfolio. Thanks to the application’s ease of deployment, scalability and multi-tenancy, they can provide web traffic security as a service for additional protection to ever growing number of customers, without the hassle.”

Kaspersky Web Traffic Security is available in both deployment options as part of Kaspersky Security for Internet Gateway and Kaspersky Total Security for Business.

Ericsson and MediaTek embark upon 5G voice landmark, using a 3.5 GHz TDD band

Conducted at the Ericsson Lab in Kista in early December, the interoperability test involved the use of an end-to-end solution from Ericsson and Dimensity 1000 commercial chipset from MediaTek deployed on a 3.5GHz TDD band. 

The first commercial 5G smartphones on the market use dual-mode connectivity to make voice calls over 4G but uses 5G for data boost. The next step in the network evolution is to tap 5G to accommodate data traffic while using 4G for voice calls with EPS Fallback. The final step, however, will involve avoiding dependence on 4G altogether, with the exclusive use of 5G (NR standalone) for both voice and data services.

Ericsson enables every step of this network evolution through its 5G portfolio, which includes 5G radio access, IMS, and 5G Core with the dual-mode 5G cloud core capability.

With Standalone New Radio (SA NR), a 5G-enabled device does not need to rely on 4G technology to make 5G voice (VoNR) calls. SA NR networks will enable a range of new services and simplify network architecture.

With the arrival of standalone NR access, voice and other communication services will need to be provided, requiring the 5G network to support native voice calling services for 5G smartphones. Using VoNR on SA architecture, service providers will be able to offer voice services on 5G-voice-capable devices as well as enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) services to consumers and business users.

Commercial 5G networks are going live around the world - and Ericsson technology is leading the way. First movers can reshape the market and increase market share and revenue streams. Combining improved capacity with increased cost-efficiency 5G represents an opportunity for telecom operators to improve their consumer business. 5G also allows operators to explore new use cases and business models and capture new revenue streams through addressing industry digitalization. 

“Although 5G is closely associated with superior data-transfer capabilities, voice services remain essential for mobile users. So 5G phones are expected to provide all the capabilities of 4G phones in addition to new 5G features and services,” said Hannes Ekström, head of product line 5G RAN, Ericsson. “Ensuring continued voice services on 5G devices must therefore be addressed properly.

“With multivendor interoperability, we can help our customers provide voice support for 5G SA. This shows our readiness with a complete 5G network solution tested with 5G chipsets, paving the way for native voice services on commercial 5G devices.”

Ericsson has collaborated with MediaTek on performing interoperability tests spanning SA NR, 5G Core and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) to ensure that voice support is enabled as service providers evolve their 4G networks to 5G. The two partners have also successfully tested Evolved Packet System (EPS) Fallback for situations where SA is not available.

“As a 5G leader, MediaTek is committed to bringing unrivaled 5G experiences to consumers around the world,” said JS Pan, General Manager of Wireless System Design and Partnership, MediaTek. “This technology milestone will let device makers support native voice calling services on 5G networks, providing users with a seamless connectivity experience as SA 5G networks are rolled out in the coming year.”

Wind River announces RISC-V support for VxWorks RTOS

Wind River announced this week RISC-V open architecture support for its VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS), which is a widely deployed commercial RTOS to have support for the RISC-V open hardware instruction set architecture (ISA). 

The company has also joined the RISC-V Foundation, a non-profit consortium chartered to standardize, protect, and promote RISC-V ISA together with its hardware and software ecosystem for use in all computing devices.

VxWorks is a deterministic, high-performance RTOS that sets the standard for a scalable, future-proof, secure, safe, and reliable operating environment for mission-critical devices and systems that must meet the highest standards.

VxWorks is ideal for hard real-time embedded applications because it is a deterministic, priority-based, preemptive RTOS with low latency and minimal jitter. In addition to standard preemption, VxWorks can ensure that safety- and time-critical applications get a predetermined number of CPU cycles through various forms of scheduling as well as time and space partitioning. It also provides flexible features needed for various industries. 

As new features and functionality are added to VxWorks, compatibility is always top of mind because Wind River strives to protect and future proof its customers’ software and tool investments. Compatibility allows developers to take advantage of the latest VxWorks innovation, enabling them to add new features and upgrades with minimal retesting of the entire system, thereby saving both project time and expense.

VxWorks has IPv4 and IPv6 stacks that are also time-sensitive networking (TSN) capable, guaranteeing real-time communications and packet delivery within a bounded time or latency on a switched Ethernet network. VxWorks supports industrial applications, including but not limited to OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA); SocketCAN used in automotive applications; and host, target, and on-the-go (OTG) USB.

VxWorks supports 32- and 64-bit, as well as multi-core processors including Intel, Arm and Power Architecture. Its comprehensive multi-core processor support allows OS configurations for asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP) and for symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) with CPU affinity for bound multiprocessing (BMP). 

Adding RISC-V support for VxWorks comes on the heels of the recent wave of innovations made to the RTOS, making it the first to include support for C++17, Boost, Python, and the Rust collection of technologies.

“We are pleased to welcome Wind River into the RISC-V Foundation and our global ecosystem," said Calista Redmond, CEO of the RISC-V Foundation. “VxWorks significantly extends the reach of RISC-V in the embedded developer space. We look forward to continued software developments by Wind River and the RISC-V community.”

“It’s exciting to see RISC-V gain significant industry traction as it brings the dynamism of open architecture development to hardware,” said Michel Genard, vice president of product at Wind River. “Wind River is very pleased to continue innovating VxWorks while contributing to the success of RISC-V with collaborations like the ones we have with SiFive and MicroChip providing support for their Unleashed and PolarFire SoC FPGA boards.”

“Having VxWorks support for our RISC-V-based PolarFire SoC FPGA family brings an extremely compelling offering to embedded systems designers who increasingly need real-time, and Linux capable solutions that are low power, thermally efficient, and secure,” said Shakeel Peera, associate vice president, marketing, FPGA business unit at Microchip. “Our partnership with Wind River is an important one as we work together to advance the collaborative RISC-V ecosystem and community.”

“The adoption of RISC-V by Wind River in VxWorks is a great step in the ongoing enablement of the RISC-V ecosystem,” said Dr. Naveed Sherwani, president and CEO of SiFive. “The ability to run VxWorks on SiFive Core IP and devices will enable new application markets across the world.”

Richweb boosts rural broadband with hyperscale carrier-grade network address translation from A10 Networks

A10 Networks announced that Richweb, a Virginia-based managed service provider, has adopted the company’s bare metal carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT) solution. Richweb is helping to bring digital equity to rural communities across Virginia. 

As part of its infrastructure services portfolio expansion, Richweb aspired to provide CGNAT services to help its electric co-op customers bring high-speed broadband to more Virginia residents. It chose A10 Thunder Carrier-grade Networking (CGN) Bare Metal to extend its customers’ IPv4 address pools and ensure that critical network services are always available and reliable.

A10 Networks’ Thunder CGN solution provides high-performance, highly transparent network address and protocol translation, allowing service providers and enterprises to extend IPv4 network connectivity while simultaneously transitioning to the IPv6 protocol. In addition to hyperscale and rich application-level address translation features, the Thunder CGN solution also provides increased security to protect the services and infrastructure.

A10 Thunder CGN Bare Metal leverages the same high-performance architecture and features of the A10 Thunder CGN appliances. Bare-metal software deployments benefit from greater performance by not using a hypervisor, since they have direct access to the underlying hardware. A single instance of A10 Thunder CGN Bare Metal offers up to 40 Gbps of throughput.

“The performance of A10 Thunder CGN Bare Metal doesn’t waver,” says Jon Larsen, CIO and co-founder of Richweb, noting that open-source NAT products can experience unpredictable performance, impacting the subscriber experience.

Richweb deployed A10 Thunder CGN Bare Metal on its preferred server platform, which lowered capital costs and simplified operations. Servers running the bare-metal software can be upgraded independently from the hardware, giving the engineering team greater flexibility as business expands. 

“I like the bare metal because we can throw more cores at it and we can scale on-demand,” says Larsen.

Richweb’s engineering and operations team was new to A10 Thunder CGN, but deployment was smooth. “I expected it to be more of a challenge to configure Thunder CGN Bare Metal,” says Larsen. “It was simple. Thunder CGN just worked.”

“A10 Thunder CGN allows Richweb to be at the center of rural broadband services. Richweb provides the infrastructure services, such as routing, network address translation and peering, that electric co-ops need to deliver broadband to rural communities,” said Mark Lea, CEO and co-founder, Richweb.

High-performance, scalable CGNAT is part of a sustainable growth strategy for any service provider or enterprise. With CGNAT services, Richweb can make the most of their IPv4 address allocations, enabling them to serve more subscribers and more connected devices, while being ready for IPv6.

Check Point brings to market its serverless security technology for cloud workload protection

Check Point announces on Monday a new serverless security technology for cloud workload protection (CWPP) and security posture management (CSPM), delivering continuous serverless security with improved run time protection and application hardening.

Protego, an Israeli startup, provides a serverless security technology that prevents malicious attacks on serverless functions in run time, and prevents vulnerable code from being deployed into production.

Check Point will be integrating serverless security technology into the Infinity architecture, its consolidated security solution to support networks, mobile, endpoint, IoT and cloud environments.

The rapid adoption of serverless computing technologies such as AWS Lambda, is challenging existing cloud and application security paradigms. The move to cloud native applications, bears many inherent vulnerabilities and potential misconfigurations that require extending security solution to protect functions and code.

The Check Point CloudGuard platform provides consistent and comprehensive cloud security for all assets in public, private, hybrid or multi-cloud environments. The solution is now extended with serverless security providing the CISO with full visibility, control and complete security coverage of all serverless estate with a click of a button. 

Protego’s technology integrates out-of-the-box with the broadest set of CI/CD frameworks so DevOps teams ensure that only compliant functions are deployed to production. In addition, customers rave the new technology for its innovative IAM hardening capabilities and minimal performance impact in protecting serverless run time environments.

 “On their journey to cloud transformation, organizations require a new security paradigm to protect against 5th and 6th generation of cyber attacks” said Dr. Dorit Dor, Check Point’s VP Products. “By incorporating serverless security into our market leading CloudGuard portfolio, and leveraging our comprehensive platform for cloud security and compliance, we deliver unprecedented protection across multi-cloud and hybrid environments”

The transaction is expected to close by this year, and the technology will be integrated into the Infinity architecture in the first quarter of next year.

Intel debuts GPU architecture with HPC and AI acceleration, and oneAPI software stack for heterogeneous architectures

Intel unveiled its vision for extending its leadership in the convergence of high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) with additions to its data-centric silicon portfolio and an ambitious new software initiative that represents a paradigm shift from single-architecture, single-vendor programming models.

Addressing the increasing use of heterogeneous architectures in high-performance computing, Intel expanded on its existing technology portfolio to move, store and process data more effectively by announcing a new category of discrete general-purpose GPUs optimized for AI and HPC convergence. 

Intel also launched the oneAPI industry initiative to deliver a unified and simplified programming model for application development across heterogenous processing architectures, including CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs and other accelerators. The launch of oneAPI represents millions of Intel engineering hours in software development and marks a game-changing evolution from limiting, proprietary programming approaches to an open standards-based model for cross-architecture developer engagement and innovation.

The oneAPI initiative Intel launched will define programming for an increasingly AI-infused, multi-architecture world. oneAPI delivers a unified and open programming experience to developers on the architecture of their choice without compromising performance and eliminating the complexity of separate code bases, multiple-programming languages, and different tools and workflows. oneAPI preserves existing software investments with support for existing languages, while delivering flexibility for developers to create versatile applications.

oneAPI includes both an industry initiative based on open specifications and an Intel beta product. The oneAPI specification includes a direct programming language, APIs and a low-level hardware interface. Intel’s oneAPI beta software provides developers a comprehensive portfolio of developer tools that include compilers, libraries and analyzers, packaged into domain-focused toolkits. 

The initial oneAPI beta release targets Intel Xeon scalable processors, Intel Core processors with integrated graphics, and Intel FPGAs, with additional hardware support to follow in future releases.

Samsung delivers multi-vendor interoperability of cloud-native 5G standalone core with HPE and Openet

Samsung Electronics, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Openet announced integration of a cloud-native 5G standalone (SA) Core with multivendor interoperability. This represents an important milestone and demonstrates significant progress in the journey toward 5G SA, driven by the 5G SA Core collaboration among Samsung, HPE and Openet, announced in February 2019.

Samsung’s 5G SA Core brings together cloud-native 5G network functions from the three companies to deliver end-to-end 5G SA services. For this multi-vendor interoperability test, Samsung has integrated its control, user plane network function & orchestrator with HPE’s shared data environment and Network Functions (NF), and Openet’s policy and charging solutions. 

The 5G Core also provides multiple simultaneous network slices for a variety of services, such as enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) that validate the principles of cloud-native design, virtual network scaling and edge-to-core networks.

“By offering a complete 5G Core that is designed around an open service-based architecture, operators can break out of the single vendor lock-in of previous generation networks,” said Domenico Convertino, Vice President Product Management, Communications & Media Solutions, HPE. “The open architecture also allows operators to have a smooth evolution to 5G with proven co-existence with 4G network technologies.”

“Openness and interoperability are foundations for 5G systems. This demonstration shows the power of taking a multi-vendor partnership approach to providing 5G SA Core and how it can enable network slicing with dynamic policy and charging rules,” said Joe Hogan, CTO and Founder of Openet. “Being able to manage the quality of service for 5G network slicing will allow operators to enter into many new markets with innovative offers and open up new revenue streams.”

With this multi-vendor solution, Samsung’s 5G SA Core enables operators to select innovative network functions offered by numerous IT vendors. Through this approach, combined with the ability to offer advanced telecommunication technologies such as networks slicing and URLLC, the three companies are continuing their efforts in 5G collaboration to bring new opportunities and options to mobile operators.

Earlier this year, mobile operators in Korea and the United States have helped to successfully usher in the 5G era with the launch of commercial service using Samsung Network’s end-to-end 5G solutions, accelerating 5G deployments around the world. 

The 5G SA Core will help operators offer innovative 5G SA services, such as network slicing, mobile edge computing, AI analytics and ultra-low latency (URLLC) networks. The solution will play a significant role in driving new business opportunities for mobile operators as the industry is focusing on the next generation services spanning autonomous driving, smart factory, smart farm, and AR/VR.

“5G SA Core built on open architecture is a key driver of the innovative services that 5G promises, and it will help mobile operators create new revenue streams and business opportunities,” said Wonil Roh, vice president and head of product strategy, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung is excited to continue building out a robust and open 5G ecosystem with global partners like HPE and Openet.  We look forward to extending our 5G technical leadership around the globe by widening our end-to-end 5G solution portfolio.”

The 5G SA Core solution from Samsung can be demonstrated either remotely, or on-site at Samsung’s 5G Core Open Lab located in Korea. The lab offers interoperability tests among multiple vendors and shows the robust features of 5G core solutions, while integrating cloud platforms from partners into Samsung’s functions.