Netflash

Zero trust is 15 years old, and like many teenagers, it can feel misunderstood and underappreciated. The concept of zero trust was first defined by John Kindervag , a Forrester analyst at the time, as a strategy to replace the outmoded perimeter security model with a “never trust, always verify” approach. But going from principle to practice isn’t easy. Accenture reports that 88% of organizations…

South Korean semiconductor giant SK Hynix has announced a new type of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI datacenters that improves heat dissipation by integrating a cooling layer within the memory package itself. The change could allow AI processors incorporating the new memory to run faster, or reduce cooling costs. Traditional chip cooling architectures are largely external; heat dissipation ha…

Enterprises deploying closed AI models have generally relied on published safety benchmarks to assess risk before procurement and deployment decisions. New research from Cisco’s AI Threat Intelligence and Security Research team finds those benchmarks may systematically understate the threat. Standard safety tests submit a single adversarial prompt and record the model’s response. Multi-turn attac…

Cisco is revamping its flagship Cisco Certified Network Associate ( CCNA ) certification for the first time in seven years, adding a new AI literacy pillar, more hands-on lab requirements, and a security-first mindset to a credential held by more than 1.8 million professionals worldwide. It’s also adding a new AI-focused module to the expert-level Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert ( CCIE ) prac…

The US government has awarded IBM $1 billion to help establish the first purpose-built quantum chip fabrication unit in the US. The Trump administration’s investment is being matched by IBM itself and will result in the establishment of a new company called Anderon. The new business will build its factory in Albany, New York. IBM has pioneered quantum computing for decades. “Our work in silicon w…

AI agents generate up to 450% more network traffic than humans can, and they’re beginning to reshape network traffic patterns in measurable ways. Enterprise network traffic without agentic AI is expected to grow 2.5x in the next decade — agentic AI adoption will push that growth to 9x compared to current traffic levels, driven by autonomous task execution and inference-heavy workflows, according …

New SpaceX IPO filings suggest frontier AI firms are beginning to treat compute infrastructure as a standalone commercial business, with Elon Musk’s xAI agreeing to provide large-scale AI capacity to competitor Anthropic. The filing disclosed that Anthropic agreed to purchase compute services delivered through xAI’s Colossus and Colossus II AI infrastructure clusters through May 2029 under an agr…

A critical vulnerability in the on-premises version of the Cisco Secure Workload security platform could allow a threat actor to obtain the privileges of a site admin, enabling them to compromise endpoints and read or modify configuration data. “CSOs need to drop what they are doing and patch this immediately,” warned consultant Robert Enderle , who heads the Enderle Group. “Cisco Secure Workload…

Cisco is reshaping its certification portfolio to reflect an AI-first world, with major updates to CCNA and CCIE that explicitly bake AI, automation, and “human skills” into the learning path. These changes matter not only as exam tweaks but also as a signal of how the role of the network, and the people who run it, is changing in the AI era. What Cisco is changing Cisco is rolling out AI-driven …

Microsoft is about to make a significant upgrade to its Secure Boot system and if enterprise customers have not gotten started on the upgrade already, they are already behind. Secure Boot is a Windows subsystem that verifies that each driver is signed by a trusted certificate on startup. If something doesn’t match, it gets blocked . For enterprise networking customers Microsoft Secure Boot enhanc…

Forward (formerly Forward Networks) has been building out technology for a decade to help enterprises better understand their network traffic. In January, the company launched an agentic AI system built on its network digital twin, giving operators a mathematically grounded way to query, verify, and automate workflows across multi-vendor environments. The company is now extending that foundation …

Network and infrastructure roles continue to shift as enterprises adopt technologies such as AI-driven network operations , multicloud networking, zero trust network access ( ZTNA ), and SD-WAN . Here’s a recap of some of the latest industry research, hiring statistics, and certification trends that impact today’s network professionals, infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders, and data center…

More processor coverage on Network World: Intel news and insights | AMD news and insights With its legacy of innovation in GPU technology , Nvidia has become a dominant force in the AI market. Nvidia’s list of partners reads like a technology who’s who list – including AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Dell, HPE – and it spans key vertical industries such as healthcare, finance, automotive, and…

Riverbed this week introduced a broad set of AI-driven enhancements to its Aternity digital employee experience (DEX) platform aimed at helping enterprise IT teams move beyond reactive troubleshooting to automating more IT operations workflows. The Aternity Experience Platform now includes autonomous operations, observability , and AI governance capabilities aimed at helping IT teams identify and…

Cisco ( Nasdaq:CSCO ) is the dominant vendor in enterprise networking , and under CEO Chuck Robbins, it continues to shake things up. Cisco is focusing on strategic AI initiatives and partnerships across various regions to build and power AI data centers and ecosystems. The networking giant continues to focus on integrating AI into its security offerings, with announcements around Cisco Secure AI…