Tuesday, April 21, 2015

8 SonicWall webinars that are great training resources

These webinars are great resources for new customers and partners.  Upon viewing their first BrightTalk webinar, the customer  will need to register an account – after that, they can view all the webinars anytime from anywhere.   Here are the titles and links to the 8 webinars, as well as the links to the KB articles that answer the questions.  The Security Services Webinar was a special webinar for Sales and does not include a Q&A KB.  A visual list of, as well as links to, all webinars is also seen by simply navigating to https://www.brighttalk.com/channel/5052

1.)   Best Practices:  Site to site VPN on SonicOS

Q&A KB:


2.)  Best Practices:  NAT Policies on SonicOS

Q&A KB:


3.)  Best Practices: How firewalls and security services work together
**Special Webinar:  No Q&A KB

4.)  Best Practices: Optimal Firmware Management

Q&A KB:


5.)  Best Practices: High Availability on Dell SonicWALL
https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/5052/123057 *This is an encore presentation of 120983*

Q&A KB:


6.)  Best Practices: Content Filter Part 1 - User/Group Policies

Q&A KB:


7.)  Best Practices: Content Filtering Part 2 - Application Rules

Q&A KB:


8.)  Best Practices: GMS and Analyzer - Getting the most out of Reports

Q&A KB:


Monday, April 20, 2015

Gartner Vendor rating: Dell - Positive

http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-2C6IMXJ&ct=150324&st=sb

http://onedellway.us.dell.com/blogs/odw/archive/2015/04/17/and-gartner-s-rating-on-dell-is-in.aspx

Networking: Positive

Dell has emerged as a top four player in the data center networking space when measured by port shipments. It has also been the most-innovative and most-disruptive mainstream data center networking vendor in the market over the past 12 months. In January 2014, Dell announced support for a disaggregated new switching paradigm allowing organizations to run third-party networking OS software on select Dell hardware. Combined with continued advances in the data center portfolio (high-performance, fixed form factor switches and integrated blade switches), Dell now offers a compelling alternative for many data center use cases. On the campus front, Dell has enhanced its switch offerings, and continues to offer an OEM wireless offering to complete the portfolio.

Network Security: Positive
Dell entered the network security market with the acquisition of SonicWALL in May 2012. SonicWALL is well-known in the unified threat management market, and is a current market leader in our most-recent iteration of "Magic Quadrant for Unified Threat Management." Dell has continued to invest in its research and development of the SonicWALL technology, with emphasis on intrusion prevention signature development. The company has shifted its emphasis to add enterprise sales to the traditional SonicWALL small or midsize business (SMB) customer base during the last two years, and this has created some challenges with execution. Recent product announcements have been viewed as positive for its network security product lines, and demonstrated that the company is getting back on track after the disruptions caused by the SonicWALL acquisition and business integration process.                        

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Three Key Takeaways from Dell’s 2015 Threat Report

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2015/04/13/three-key-takeaways-from-dell-s-2015-threat-report

As organizations are contending with unprecedented challenges in combating cyber criminals, we notice that the sophistication and volume of attacks on enterprises are growing. The threat report identifies multiple findings, including three of particular note:
  1. A surge in point-of-sale (POS) malware
  2. A dramatic increase in encrypted traffic
  3. Growing attacks on SCADA systems.

Monday, April 6, 2015

CRN article: Dell Aims To Take A Bite Out Of Cisco With New Enterprise Talent


http://www.crn.com/news/data-center/300076393/dell-aims-to-take-a-bite-out-of-cisco-with-new-enterprise-talent.htm/pgno/0/1?itc=hp_ots

In a prepared statement after his appointment on March 23, Perez said he sees Dell's "best days" ahead. "It’s very clear the industry is moving towards software-defined data centers running on industry standard x86 servers, and Dell, with its strength in compute and storage, and growing networking portfolio, is poised to lead this transition," he said. "I am thrilled to be at the center of architecting and designing the solutions that enable customers to achieve this vision and to do so powered by Dell."

My bet is on history repeating itself for virtualization technology and software defined architecture, built on industry standard hardware.