I’ve been promoted! Instead of just blogging about NAC here on my Got The NAC blog, I have been asked to join a team of Juniper bloggers on the new Networking Now blog .

The new blog will have a much wider scope than my Got The NAC blog. We’ll cover anything in networking and security. I’m glad that we’re breaking down these artificial walls. Forget the alphabet soup of IDS, NAC, DLP, etc. It’s all about providing a secure, reliable IT infrastructure for our customers and businesses.
The important issues go beyond any one technology.

Don’t worry. I’m still technical and deeply involved in all the new technologies being developed at Juniper and around the industry. I’m just expanding my scope a little bit.

So please click over to the Networking Now blog and check out our new content over there. You can subscribe to just my posts but I hope that you’ll enjoy posts from all the Juniper bloggers. Open your mind to some new perspectives. You’ll be amazed at the insights the new perspectives bring.

If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Which one is it for you? In this video, I explain how Juniper is growing the next generation of engineering leaders. Tune in and get some ideas for your organization. Or comment and share your ideas and best practices.

I recently returned from ISSE 2008 in Madrid, Spain. The conference highlighted some key differences between U.S. and European information security. Tune into this podcast and you’ll get some food for thought: lessons that you may be able to apply in your own work.

Click here to listen.

This week, I’m blogging from RSA Europe in London. The conference is dedicated to Alan Turing, the great British cryptographer and early computer scientist. The folks at Bletchley Park teamed with a local hobbyist to bring an Enigma machine and other cryptographic machines to the conference. I had a great time playing with the Enigma.

Attendance at the show was down a bit from last year, probably due to the poor economy. Still, there was a good crowd for my talk on “NAC 2.0″ this morning. I explained how NAC systems are starting to integrate with other network security systems like IDS and DLP. This trend is really starting to accelerate now that IF-MAP has been released, providing a standard way for these integrations to happen.

One more note. The Bletchley Park folks are appealing for donations to help save their historic site, an important part of cryptography and information security. If you’d like to donate, visit their site at http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk or stop by and see the machines for yourself. If you can’t make it to England, go to the U.S. National Cryptologic Museum in Maryland. They have a similarly amazing collection of spy gear albeit in a less historic setting.

In Madrid for the ISSE 2008 conference, I found myself losing sleep over the state of our global economy. What a mess! With two free hours, I decided to visit the art museums. A quick cab ride brought me to the Reina Sofia Museum, which houses Guernica. No words or JPEG can do justice to Picasso’s masterpiece. Although the work was inspired by the brutality of war, to me today it spoke to the tragedy and beauty of life.

Our current financial crisis will bring years of pain on a small and large scale. We must do what we can to avoid such tragedies but they will inevitably happen. Still, a small flower grows at the center of the painting. New life and creativity will spring from this tragedy as it always does.

Please treat each other with kindness and patience for the next few months. Be an island of calm. Spread hope not fear. Nothing physical has changed in recent weeks, only a psychological change. Let’s keep it that way and support each other. We will come out of this crisis stronger and wiser than before.

I recently returned from the IETF standards meeting in Dublin, Ireland. Watch this video to hear about the highlights of this meeting. Then come back here and leave a question or comment so we can discuss it more.

In July, I flew to India for my first visit. I visited Juniper’s India Engineering Center in Bangalore, met with Juniper engineers there, and gave a talk. In this podcast, I share my observations on this fascinating country.

Click here to listen.

What have you been up to this summer? Relaxing at the beach? Hosting a BBQ for friends?

I have been traveling around the globe, talking to people about Network Access Control and network security in general. My next few posts will be a bit of a travelogue, a set of notes and observations and photos from my travels. Enjoy!

Last week, I spoke about the TNC standards at Interop Tokyo. Then I went back to the TCG booth and talked with Japanese government and enterprise customers, researchers, manufacturers, and reporters about TCG technology. There’s an amazing amount of support for TCG technologies in Japan! On the flight home, I reflected on how far we’ve come in the last few years and what lessons we can draw from this growing wave of support for TCG standards.

A few years ago, TCG technologies like TPM and TNC were only concepts being discussed by a few people. How could we have trustworthy devices and networks? Now these technologies are globally accepted and widely used. Millions of people have a TPM in their laptop and a TNC client in their operating system. Organizations such as the U.S. Department of Defense require a TPM in every PC. How did this come about? Open standards unleashed the awesome power of human innovation and communities.

Open standards are not enough. There are many thousands of standards, most of which are unsuccessful. Successful standards solve a specific set of problems but allow extensions to encourage innovation and meet special needs. That’s what the TPM and TNC standards have done. And that’s why these standards have flourished. Vendors and customers see value in implementing the basic standards and opportunity in the many ways they can extend these standards. Eventually, communities of interest grow up. The TCG just announced the Japan Regional Forum, a place for Japanese discussion and promotion of TCG standards. This demonstrates the power of open standards.

Think about TCP/IP or WiFi. Having a single set of common standards has enabled a huge amount of innovation with products like the iPhone or iKan. That’s what TPM and TNC do: create an open platform for innovation and adaptation. Once that platform is established, then it’s just a matter of getting everyone on board and letting the innovation begin. The value of a standard is proportional to the square of the number of implementers. That exponential power is really starting to take off for TPM and TNC and other TCG technologies!

Tawnee Kendall and I sat down and recorded this video on the future of network security. Check it out!