Chris Miles: 0:14

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Cables to Clouds fortnightly news podcast, where we go over some of the recent news articles that we've seen over the last two weeks. Give our opinions our hot takes over. You know good substance material for you, the listener, and we also provide you some links to have a look at them as well. So my name is Chris Miles. I'll be your host for this week at BGP Main on Blue Sky. Joining me, as always is I'm running out of adjectives to describe Tim, but he's just a beautiful, lovely person.

Tim McConnaughy: 0:46

Yeah, there's a lot, did you get?

Chris Miles: 0:49

your thesaurus? Yeah, exactly, tim McConaughey at Carpe-DMVPN on Blue Sky as well. So with that let's hop right into the news this week. So first up, we have a couple of articles specifically about training and certification, which is good for us we never really hear a lot about this topic and specifically within cloud networking and things like that. But so first up we have an article here from STX Central which is kind of just an overview of an announcement that CompTIA made about a new certification called CloudNetX, specifically focusing on IT professionals within cloud network architecture and security. So this is apparently a new addition that is part of CompTIA's EXPERT, that is expert without an E at the beginning, just a capital X PERT program, which looks to be kind of a series of expert level certifications that theyifications. Sorry that they offer.

Chris Miles: 1:45

I'll be honest, I've been out of the comptia game for for a little bit and I didn't know they even offered this um, but they seem to have ones over this cloud net x, uh, vertical, as well as security x as well as data x um, so this is kind of rounding out that portfolio there, um. So yeah, it's like I said. It's specifically focusing on hybrid cloud, it looks like with the listing here. Says validates the advanced skills needed to design, engineer and integrate secure, scalable networking solutions and hybrid environments, and you know, there's a wealth of stuff covered on here. Apparently they even get into the details on things like container networking and ai for automation and things like that, which is I don't know man.

Chris Miles: 2:27

Like I did not see this coming specifically from comptia like if we think of it like we've always been kind of talking about like I mean, as far as certification goes, training in, in, you know, infrastructure technologies. Like the two most successful things out there are the ccna and the+. Like CompTIA has always been in this game, for sure, but I feel like the NetPlus has always been kind of like the little brother to the CCNA. That's always like yeah, it's like you know people will get it and it's like it's definitely a worthwhile achievement. I'm not you know kind of pooping on it or anything, but it's always been like you know it teaches you some fundamentals but it's not.

Chris Miles: 3:04

I would never say NetPlus has probably proven enough to land like a solid job as a network engineer right, I feel like you had to kind of go above that, but this sounds, like you know, like a major leap beyond what the NetPlus is, and even on the landing page for this certification, they actually have a little kind of compare comparison matrix to how this stacks up compared to the CCIE, the CCDE and the AWS advanced networking specialty exam. Um, which is funny because it's kind of pointing at, like, you know, ours is only one exam with, you know, 165 questions and the prerequisites are, um, let's see, 10 years, with five of those being in network architecture. I don't know how they validate that.

Tim McConnaughy: 3:46

I have to assume yeah, that can't be a true prerequisite, right, that's got to be like a suggestion.

Chris Miles: 3:53

Right, I mean, but it does call out the CCIE and the CCDE as having no formal prerequisites which. I guess is true, it's not formal. I mean, it's heavily implied that you should have been working in this or else it's going to be very difficult for you. But if there's, are they listing that there is a formal prerequisite, like it has to be met in some capacity before they'll even admit you into the exam? I don't, I don't, I don't know how to do that.

Tim McConnaughy: 4:18

Yeah, how would you like send a resume Like I don't even know how you would?

Chris Miles: 4:28

validate that one. That's a weird one. We're venturing into like CCAR territory with this one. But yeah, like I said, this is like I'm definitely interested in looking at this because like the content sounds pretty good. I don't think there's any kind of official training out for it just yet, as we're just looking at the announcement of the exam itself. Yeah that's right. Yeah, man, I thought this sounds pretty cool. I'd like to see it in action and hopefully it lives up to the hype. But what about you, tim? What do you think?

Tim McConnaughy: 4:51

Yeah, so I'm kind of with you, right, like I didn't even know that they had this expert level with an X. Maybe they're on the Elon train or something, I'm not sure, but we should just rename everything X, it's the everything certification.

Tim McConnaughy: 5:07

Exactly, but no, no, no. Seriously though, I mean, comptia is a good company. They know what they're doing. I mean I took my Security Plus forever ago. I never did take my Network Plus. I got it. So when I took my degree at Western Governors for cloud computing, of course I had my CCIE, so they scratched off pretty much all of the networking prerequisites for that thing, including the Network Plus. I did have to take the Cloud Plus, which was interesting. Comptia had a weird way of doing the Cloud Plus because it was heavily. It was actually like I don't know 65-35 or something for public cloud versus private cloud. So there was actually a ton of private cloud stuff on that exam.

Tim McConnaughy: 5:45

I'm curious, given the, I wouldn't even call it a blueprint, but what they're saying is going to be in this cloud net X one, just how heavily they're going to lean into Kubernetes or the AI stuff on top of the other cloud stuff. Are they going to talk about each public cloud or is it just going to cover it as a general? You know what I mean. Like it's because comt has always been kind of the the switzerland of uh certifications. Right, it doesn't lean very heavily at all in uh direction of a particular vendor. Um, yeah, man, not much. Not I, I do. I do think it's hilarious, though, that they have this. Here's our exam, and we're comparing it to a ccie or a CCDE, which involve an eight-hour lab exam.

Chris Miles: 6:27

Right, right, yeah. Just to your previous point about whether or not what CSPs will be covered, if at all, I will say there is a listing on the landing page that says organizations that contributed to the development of this exam. Aws and Google are on there, as well as some other names like Fidelity John Hopkins University, but Microsoft not on there.

Tim McConnaughy: 6:48

Not to say they wouldn't be involved.

Chris Miles: 6:50

But they or maybe I would imagine, if they're being covered, they would be on there in some capacity. So that was interesting.

Tim McConnaughy: 6:58

Yeah, I missed that. But yeah, these are organizations that quote unquote contributed to the development, so does that mean they had SMEs? Basically that helped build the exam from these organizations. But yeah, interesting that Microsoft's not on there.

Chris Miles: 7:10

So I'm wondering what that means. I guess we'll find out when the interview actually comes out.

Tim McConnaughy: 7:15

Cool, all right. And then on the back of that one, we actually have one from our employer, aviatrix, that is just announcing the Aviatrix from our ACE program. The Aviatrix is just announcing the Aviatrix from our ACE program, the Aviatrix Certified Engineer Program a new hybrid cloud, ace, hybrid cloud certification. So fairly close to the same idea, where it's going to be focused on hybrid cloud connectivity. It's going to be focused on connecting on-prem to the cloud using the Aviatrix framework, also including middle mile providers like Equinix and Megaport, so people who take this certification will also learn how to do it through spinning up Megaport and Equinix virtual environment edges and, of course, like I said, on-prem to the cloud.

Tim McConnaughy: 8:00

So it's interesting to see that these two just happen to come out around the same time, because we've been saying for a while that hybrid cloud is the future. For so long We've been saying, for hybrid cloud is the future and I think we're finally starting to see. You know, of course, to be fair, I mean, aviatrix has been on the hybrid cloud train forever. It's just been. It's just taken us a while to develop an actual curriculum for that specifically. But yeah, it's good to see more vendors leaning into hybrid cloud as the future.

Chris Miles: 8:26

Totally agree. Yeah, I think probably a bit of the AI shift has probably pushed this into the foreground a little bit more than it was previously, which is a good thing for us.

Chris Miles: 8:36

Right, we get to say that we were right, although I think we were probably. I mean, to be honest, we were probably predicting something that everyone knew it was going to be right. But hey, you know, we get to stand on that right. But no, yeah, this is great. Yeah, I've obviously had a hand in configuring this solution many times with our hybrid solution integrations with Equinix and Megaport, and you know we have close relationships with them. So glad to see everyone else is going to get access to that and yeah really excited for this.

Chris Miles: 9:07

It'll be cool.

Tim McConnaughy: 9:08

Definitely one of our better certifications that we've rolled out recently.

Chris Miles: 9:13

Agreed, agreed, All right next up, we have an announcement from CloudFlare that they are entering the multi-cloud networking market with their new product, which is called Magic Cloud Networking. So, if you are familiar, I think we covered this back when it announced I think it was like.

Tim McConnaughy: 9:29

What was it? It was a year ago.

Chris Miles: 9:31

Yeah, it was about, I thought, maybe a little bit less than a year ago. Basically, cloudflare had acquired a company called Nefeli, which is or Nefeli Networks, which was a multi-cloud networking solution MCN solution really focused on the orchestration of building multi-cloud networks. So it was kind of weird because I had never heard of Nefeli. But by the time they got acquired, if you went to their website it was already redirecting to Cloudflare like day one. So it was kind of hard to kind of go back into the past and see what it was. But it seemed like it was an orchestration engine that probably leveraged a lot of the public cloud APIs and things like that to build networks and correlated building tunnels between them as well. So pretty cool interface. I remember seeing that. But now they've finally kind of rebranded this as their own product, which is the magic cloud networking. So pretty much everything that Cloudflare has done has had the magic moniker on it. So it fits in with that. It seems like they are leaning in that this is going to be a direct integration with their connectivity cloud platform, which is kind of a it seems like an all-inclusive type platform that they offer that seems to give, like some of the you know SASE type connectivity options, wan as a service, sse is also integrated in this thing as well, so cool to see this come to fruition.

Chris Miles: 10:58

One thing that I definitely had a question about when I was looking at the Nefeli solution back in the day and I still kind of have that impression now is I don't know where the visibility piece comes in. There is a point here that they let you know that it's for a lot of customers that want to increase visibility as well. As you know, obviously orchestration is a valuable thing, but I don't know where you get the insights into the traffic going between clouds or into clouds, et cetera, from Cloudflare's perspective. So I'd like to Um, yeah, I think it's. You know it took them a while, but they finally got it out there. There's not there's not a ton on the docs page just yet, so I'm looking to see that get populated out. But, um, yeah, pretty cool. What do you think, tim?

Tim McConnaughy: 11:40

Yeah, I, I want to see the actual integration because I mean, cloudflare's got the whole magic uh, I don't know, magic stick, magic mic, I don't know, whatever the hell you call it, their magic quadrant maybe.

Tim McConnaughy: 11:53

I think maybe they're waiting for that one, for Gartner, to give it to them. But you know, yeah, I mean, it's the same thing. Like these, you have a single vendor who, honestly, is pretty well positioned I mean Cloudflare being the pretty much the almost the de facto CDN these days Very well positioned to do this kind of orchestration. I'm with you, man. I'd not heard of Nefeli until they got acquired, and by that point it was impossible to figure out how the hell it worked, what it was. It's been almost like stealth since then.

Tim McConnaughy: 12:24

So I am very curious to see where the rubber meets the road on this Magic Cloud networking thing. What does it actually do? And I've got the same question If all it does is orchestration, you're going to get the visibility that the CSPs give you, which is not a great amount of visibility, right? You're going to get metadata, or maybe they'll set up a VPC traffic mirroring. Maybe VPC traffic mirroring will be part of it. All that stuff is super expensive, but maybe that's just part of the hey, maybe it's an on-demand or turn it on and turn it off type of of setup. I don't know, man. Yeah, I'm just throwing darts at a board here. I really want to see how this actually works and, more importantly, how it works as part of their total package, like all their magic.

Chris Miles: 13:07

Yeah, that's the thing is that, like I understand how the orchestration piece and potentially, you, that's the thing is that, like I understand how the orchestration piece and potentially, you know, incorporating the existing cloud visibility into this, would you know, all operate well within one single interface. I totally get that. But the thing is, orchestrating all of that comes at a cost, right? All those solutions come at a cost. The visibility comes at a very high cost as well, for you know, like you said, VPC flow logs and mirroring things like that. So, like I'm, I'm, like you said, VPC flow logs and mirroring things like that. So, like I'm, I'm questioning, like where, where does that value kind of meet its tipping point, Right? Um, because it's it's. I mean, if you're orchestrating, you know building a Fabergé egg, you know you still have to pay for it to build a Fabergé egg, Right?

Tim McConnaughy: 13:44

So it's like like yeah, but yeah, it's super interesting, glad we would.

Chris Miles: 13:49

We've been wondering when this was going to come out, so I'm glad to see it finally hitting the market. Yeah it also took like a year, right, yeah, so I'm kind of surprised it took that long. To be honest with you, it seemed like with the offering that they at least are kind of presenting to us now, it seems like a pretty simple integration, right. So I was kind of surprised it took this long. But there, you know, maybe I mean there's probably competing priorities at Cloudflare, yeah, I imagine so.

Tim McConnaughy: 14:17

Yeah, all right, let's just launch right into this next one because it's fucking confusing. So Microsoft has unveiled a new quantum chip which sounds really awesome. I can't even. Which sounds really awesome, I can't even.

Tim McConnaughy: 14:34

Quantum computing is something I was not unaware of but had no real skin in the game on. And then a few years ago, when I was a few years ago, I was at where was I? Duarte. I was at Duarte's speaking. Cisco would pay if you're going to speak at Cisco Live. Cisco would pay for you to go to train at Duarte, the speaking engagement company, to learn how to present.

Tim McConnaughy: 14:57

And I was there with someone from one of the BU's and she was talking about quantum computing and basically how quantum computing was going to make encryption worthless. Basically it was just like with quantum computing you can break encryption in a negligible amount of time. So then I was like holy crap, like why aren't we? Why isn't the sky falling on this stuff? Right, like finding this stuff out? And it turns out because we were like really far away from any making of that happen, but apparently we've made huge leaps and bounds, or rather than Microsoft has recently. And yeah, I mean, I don't even, I can't even refer to the article very well, was it qubits, right? Qubits are like the computing computing, um, uh units that uh quantum computing uses. I understand the, I understand the idea like of it, but I I don't know what this means ultimately yeah, it's.

Chris Miles: 15:44

I mean, I think I think we'll be the first to tell you this is not, this is way beyond the realm of intelligence that Tim or I possess, to really kind of give you a good take on this. But I mean, yeah, when you, when I look at quantum computing, whenever I look it up, it's all like kind of gets into this element of qubits and things like that, which is, I mean, basically it sounds like, you know, in terms of bits it can be zero or a one and a qubit.

Chris Miles: 16:07

At the same time, yeah, yeah it can be both, so you can kind of do these like very complicated calculations in a fraction of a second, because you're operating within that, that entire realm of you.

Chris Miles: 16:16

Know one and zero. The thing that I've had to look at some other kind of articles and reviews on this to understand it a little bit better. And it seems like this, because I'm kind of with you like when it, when it, when it, when people talk about quantum computing, like I remember when I was applying for my visa to come to Australia, like quantum computing was like at one of the top of the list things, and I'm like I was like damn, if they're looking for quantum computing, you know engineers and things like that like there's no way I'm going to get a visa. That's so far out of my realm, um, but it's, it's kind of taken a backseat. I don't hear a lot about it until as of recent, and it sounds like this with Microsoft, like it's been a completely different kind of top-down architectural approach to quantum computing that differs from what has been going on for the last, you know, 2015 years.

Chris Miles: 17:03

And you know, they kind of introduced this new. What are the chips called? Majorana?

Chris Miles: 17:09

I think is what it's called Majorana, yeah, majorana is the name which is apparently based on a specific subatomic particle that is also its own antiparticle at the same time. So, like it kind of negates some of the stuff that qubits have with decoherence, where they kind of like, I guess they like interfere with each other in some capacity to like, and the more decoherence, the less accurate your results can be. So there's a lot of like error corrections and things like that that uh, come into play. This is, this is all from my very stupid brain. What do I've looked up in the last you know a couple of hours? But yeah, so like, um, my, my thing is, like, from a security perspective.

Chris Miles: 17:48

You know I've we've heard of, like from what you just said, like the you know there was this kind of thing about you know whether or not you know encryption and security protocols. Are, you know, kind of prepared for quantum based encryption, right, and you know there's been things that have been put out that are, like you know, kind of quantum safe algorithms and things like that. But I question whether or not, like if Microsoft has taken a completely different approach to this, does that kind of change this in any capacity? I haven't. Obviously the news on this is, you know, days old at this point, so I don't know if there's been enough kind of investment or you know kind of research into this. But like I wonder if that just changed the quantum safe algorithm conversation altogether. But I would hope it doesn't. Well, yeah.

Tim McConnaughy: 18:38

the question is then also how do you because quantum safe algorithms have we actually, I don't know they say quantum safe algorithms and mathematically are they safe, or do we actually test them somehow with the quantum computing that we can do right now to make sure that they're?

Chris Miles: 18:53

safe. Yeah, that's true.

Tim McConnaughy: 18:55

Or is this already just idea? Like we, it should be safe mathematically, like, but you know in which case? Yeah, we probably. There probably needs to be a lot of vetting or re-vetting depending on how this changes the game, but it, I mean, the main thing it says is that it's basically it. It shaves the amount of time that we're going to need to actually make this a thing like a household name.

Chris Miles: 19:13

Yeah, they, they're talking about quantum computers within years instead of decades.

Tim McConnaughy: 19:16

Right, it was kind of a piece from Nadella. Right. So I mean, what does that really mean, right? So I guess that's the real question, but yeah, no, very good question. If it does change the conversation about it, then what does that mean, and how are we sure that it changes the conversation, or where do you go from here then, if things are different now?

Chris Miles: 19:40

Like, oh man, yeah, because I think this actually comes on the heels of Google just announced a similar chip. Not a similar chip, but also a kind of a new quantum computing chip that they offered. That is still kind of keeping the same classic architecture that they've been working on, but it severely reduced the amount of error correction that needed to take place. But this one's like everyone's like I've heard comparisons that this is going to be as big of a game changer as, like, the transistor, which is, yeah.

Chris Miles: 20:13

That's a very bold claim, but like I don't know, like if it is something that would be, that'd be cool. But, like, like you said, I don't think you and I are smart enough to really understand what this means at this point.

Tim McConnaughy: 20:24

Yeah, you got to get somebody to tell us what this means.

Chris Miles: 20:26

Yeah, I need an explain to me, like I'm five scenario Please. Oh shit, that was your article, wasn't it? Sorry, yeah.

Tim McConnaughy: 20:32

Yeah, yeah, all right.

Chris Miles: 20:34

Let me find it.

Tim McConnaughy: 20:35

We can make this quick.

Chris Miles: 20:36

Okay, yeah, it's the DDoS one. Okay, all right. And to round out the news for this week, we have one more article here from SDX Central, which is about the, you know, the Zayo group has apparently published a report, a DDoS insights report, saying that from 2023 to 2024, there has been an increase in distributed denial of service attacks, up 82% from 2023 to or sorry, 2023 to 2024. And kind of talking about the widespread of cyber criminals now leveraging things like AI and the growing number of IoT devices across the board. This one, I feel like we're just throwing this in here as a pat on the back for us. As we also said, this is probably going to happen.

Chris Miles: 21:20

You know, kind of the proliferation of AI just really was going to, you know, kind of, assist those, the bad actors to take, you know, kind of take the guardrails off these things and do bad things with them, and I think this is probably the first instance of that. Obviously, I haven't operated in the mind of a cyber criminal much in my life, so I don't know if this is true, but to me, on the surface, it seems like a DDoS is probably one of the easier things to do, because you don't have to be in someone's network to DDoS them, right, you need to kind of have control points outside of their control and then you can, you know, perform a DDoS in that capacity. So this seems like this is probably the lowest rung in the ladder type thing, the easiest thing to mimic and, and you know, use AI to do so. Um, sad to say, it's probably going to get worse from here, um, but yeah, this is uh interesting to see.

Tim McConnaughy: 22:13

Yeah, yeah, I know it mentions that, so the IoT thing makes sense, that's. I mean, iot is basically a botnet waiting to happen.

Chris Miles: 22:21

Yeah, that's been a conversation for 10 years.

Tim McConnaughy: 22:23

at this point, Exactly Like IoT security is so bad. Right, like, because most IoT developers and IoT manufacturers use like the lowest common denominator parts and code and protocols that are supported and security is like laughably bad. Right, like everybody knows that iot security is the worst. Um, so this idea of of iot botnets is it's legit, right like it's. It's definitely a thing. It mentions utilizing ai, and I know we talked about, but I'm curious if these things are related or like how they're. It doesn't say how they're actually utilizing the you know, ai in the attack. Like are they using AI to help them develop an attack? Are they using AI to create a code like malicious code? I mean, you're not the AI wouldn't know any better, necessarily, right, the guardrails just aren't there.

Tim McConnaughy: 23:15

Ai security is going to be well, it's already becoming a thing, right. Security against prompt injection security, just scrubbing the inputs so you're not having data exfiltration from the LLMs and stuff like this. This just seems like another thing right, this, this, this seems like another thing, right, like where it's not going to be good enough to create a prompt that says don't give away malicious, don't help. You know cyber criminals create malicious code. You know it's not going to be good enough, right? So I, I think this is a portent of a, like we said, right, it's gonna it's be a portent of of more cyber crime and more sophisticated. I don't know if it'll be more sophisticated actually now. I say that I think more like, in the same way that script kitties were enabled by, yeah, you know, the cali linux and like, just you know, be having things kind of packaged up and put a bow on for them. Uh, I think ai is going to do the same thing and make it more widely accessible and louder.

Chris Miles: 24:11

Yeah, essentially, uh 100. I totally agree, like I don't. I don't think this is going to increase the quality, I guess you'd say, of a cyber attack. It's just going to be a quantifiable measurement of more, because probably one thing that is hindering the precious cyber criminals that we have out there is time that they have to invest in this stuff, and if AI can come in and do more with less time, then it you know it's going to be.

Chris Miles: 24:39

The thing is, there's a lot of people that are exposed from that perspective on the Internet that just haven't been compromised yet, right? But it's going to end up being a numbers game, and the more that they have to go out and attack, the more that's going to get compromised, right? So the gist of the thing is like we need to take this shit seriously is kind of what I gather, and you know, I think people are kind of skating towards the puck on that one, but you know it's only going to get worse.

Tim McConnaughy: 25:04

Yeah, so those people that are into I mean. So, cybersecurity has been growing for a while and I think that AI, cybersecurity, ai plus cybersecurity, is definitely going to be a very quickly growing thing, because it'll have to be. I think it will look different than regular cybersecurity, because we're not. It's not quite the same as, like application security or like it's like some weird new thing that I can't figure out, I think hasn't quite been figured out yet, right? But yeah, definitely going to need it and yeah, it's going to be, otherwise we're going to be all attacked by. It's going to be the school of fish thing. Up until now, there's been a lot of school of fish problem, where you have a million people out there vulnerable on the internet, but cyber criminals are spear phishing, right. So once this becomes commoditized with AI, like yeah, for sure it's going to be a numbers game.

Chris Miles: 25:52

Yeah, it's going to be a numbers game. All right With that if you've made it to the end. Thank you for sticking with us. We are going to put all these articles into the show notes. So there's a doc that we publish on just a Google sheet with all the articles that we cover, plus a few articles that we don't always get around to covering that we think might be interesting. So please take a click on that link. I've never said that before. Take a click on that link. I've never said that before.

Chris Miles: 26:15

Take a click on that link I don't know if that's a phrase Take a click on that link. Yeah, I was going to say take a look at it. But take a click on that link, bro. I think that'll make you feel happy.

Tim McConnaughy: 26:25

It's going to catch on.

Chris Miles: 26:26

Yeah, it's going to work. It's going to be like a fetch. It's going to be a fetch, but yeah, thanks for joining us this week. My name is Chris Miles. Join me as Tim McConaughey and we will see you next week. Bye-bye.

Tim McConnaughy: 26:41

Hi everyone. It's Tim and this has been the Cables to Clouds podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. If you enjoyed our show, please subscribe to us in your favorite podcast catcher, as well as subscribe and turn on notifications for our YouTube channel to be notified of all our new episodes. Follow us on socials at Cables2Clouds. You can also visit our website for all the show notes at Cables2Cloudscom. Thanks again for listening and see you next time.