Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions (SFHA) 5.0 has reached End of Support Life (EOSL) for Solaris, AIX & Linux

September 17, 2014, 6:39 am

≫ Next: Are Networks Driving DAS Resurgence?

≪ Previous: Snifula banking Trojan battles local Japanese security product

This is a reminder that on 31st August 2014, Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions 5.0 reached End of Support Life (EOSL) on the following platforms:

Solaris SPARC

Solaris x86-64

Linux

AIX

This includes:

Storage Foundation (Veritas Volume Manager & Veritas File System)

Veritas Cluster Server (VCS)

Storage Foundation Cluster File System

Storage Foundation for DB2

Storage Foundation for Oracle

Storage Foundation for Oracle real Application Clusters

Storage Foundation for Sybase

After the End of Support Life date for a product, normal support services are no longer provided by Symantec. This makes it a good time to upgrade to a later release and take advantage of numerous enhancements to optimize your storage and ensure availability.

Options available for SFHA 5.0 customers:

Upgrade to a Supported version – if you have a maintenance contract you may upgrade to a supported version of SFHA

https://sort.symantec.com/productmatrix

Obtain a Support Extension via a BCS Premier contract. Support Extensions are designed to meet the changing support needs of customers on older versions of our software. As such, it enables customers to extend their current support lifecycle beyond the EOSL date.

http://www.symantec.com/products-solutions/services/services.jsp?pcid=support_services

Purchase a Support Extension. Support Extensions are designed to meet the changing support needs of customers on older versions of our software. As such, it enables customers to extend their current support lifecycle beyond the EOSL date.

http://www.symantec.com/support/bcs/supportextensions.html

Symantec Enterprise product End of Support Life (EOSL) information, including a FAQ can be found at:

https://sort.symantec.com/eosl

Please contact your account manager, contact Technical Support, or submit a case via MySupportfor more information and assistance.

Resources to assist you in the Upgrade:

Symantec Operations Readiness Tools (SORT) is a set of Web-based tools that supports Symantec enterprise products. SORT includes tools to assist with the installation and upgrade process, including pre-installation reports with server-specific checklists and recommendations. Product documentation is available on SORT as well:

SORT Installation & Upgrade Checklist and Report tools

Product documentation (including Installation Guides)

Downloading SFHA products

Support SFHA products can be obtained via FileConnect, an electronic software distribution portal. FileConnect requires a Serial number, if you need help locating your serial number, please contact Support.

Downloading SFHA patches

Patches for SFHA products can be downloaded from SORT

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Are Networks Driving DAS Resurgence?

September 17, 2014, 1:31 pm

≫ Next: The Future of SSL Encryption

≪ Previous: Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions (SFHA) 5.0 has reached End of Support Life (EOSL) for Solaris, AIX & Linux

I recently ran across an article by Robin Harris of StorageMojo that took an interesting take on the long term futures of DAS and SAN.

I would recommend that you read the article, but in summation, Mr. Harris looked at the advancement of network interconnects as a key factor in the increasing adoption of DAS. More specifically, that the price and specs of 10gbE have remained stagnant, making the extreme OPEX and CAPEX investments for network upgrades a tough proposition. This becomes even more evident when you look at the CPU and back-plane improvements (PCIe for instance) over the past few years and couple those improvements with the relative ease in upgrading compute and internal bus against replacing an entire Edge/Core network.

This was an interesting angle that I hadn’t considered as we developed and released our DAS focused capabilities in Storage Foundation 6.1.

DAS, as any one that has seen any of my blogs, presentations, or videos over the past few months, is re-emerging in the enterprise data center as an accepted architecture for high performance, highly available, mission critical workloads. When enterprises consider PCIe SSD for caching, a server SAN architecture for increased flexibility for improved CAPEX and OPEX, or a hyper-converged appliance for plug-and-play applications, they are looking at DAS. Whether they know (or want to admit that they know) it or not.

With our Storage Foundation 6.1 release we are using software to help new and existing customers achieve these benefits within a single solution to define the storage management, data protection, and application availability architectures to meet SLAs. Software Defined Storage and Availability in a single package.

For those that are looking to unlock the increased power of the back-plane and performance of PCIe attached SSD, Flexible Shared Storage enables the server SAN architecture with the ability to put faster interconnects, like InfiniBand and RDMA, into the environment for those applications that need increased bandwidth.

Or, if your network is taxed and the cost/performance benefit is not there, as Mr. Harris points out, SmartIO is available for those customers that want to get more life and performance out of the existing network configuration. SmartIO utilizes internal SSD as a cache for “hot” data to serve a majority of read requests from inside the server, keeping those I/O’s from traversing the network.

As the DAS adoption curve continues to climb, more critical applications will look to utilize the performance improvements that come along with it. Maximizing the flexibility, availability, and performance of these architectures will require an intelligent software stack that can work with any hardware, network, and application.

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The Future of SSL Encryption

September 17, 2014, 2:04 pm

≫ Next: オンラインバンキングを狙うトロイの木馬 Snifula が日本製セキュリティ製品に対抗

≪ Previous: Are Networks Driving DAS Resurgence?

Most of you reading this will immediately connect the acronym “RSA” with the encryption algorithm invented in 1977 by Rivest, Shamir and Adleman and which is still today the most-adopted in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) systems, such as SSL. Through a mathematical process that remains ingenious even by modern standards its merits are strong, but the world changes very quickly in technology and the paint on the RSA algorithm is starting to crack. Some RSA key lengths have been successfully broken over the years, and RSA-1024 was deprecated by the industry for Public CA use before any hack could be proven, but it would only have been a matter of time.

Today’s regulations mandate a minimum of 2048 bits for keys in public SSL certificates, but since there is no randomization in the RSA process, the availability of greater computing power will eventually make attacks on longer key lengths feasible. This will not happen for the foreseeable future to 2048 bit keys, but takes us to the next concern.

Our modern lives rely more and more on smaller devices, down to “smartwatches”, but we still expect our data to be kept secure by them as it would be on our traditional computers. Smaller devices pose two problems though. First, they have comparably low computing power, and second they are used in mobility, meaning they rely on batteries to work, making every minute of battery life truly important.

With the increasing key lengths required for the decryption of even common services secured by an SSL certificate, there comes an issue about the amount of time and power a small device will need to calculate its share of a certificate key. But help is at hand through Symantec, and has been available for several months now, in a publicly-available production environment. Meet Elliptic Curve Cryptography, a.k.a. ECC, a part of Symantec’s public SSL certificate offering.

ECC is a newer mathematical algorithm that came into widespread use in 2005, and which solves the two issues above by providing a better level of security through shorter key lengths: an ECC key of only 256 bits will provide a security level comparable to RSA with 3072 bit keys. ECC can further be coupled to other smart encryption technologies such as Diffie-Hellmann, and raise the security offered by ECC SSL certificates through a technique called Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS), where the session keys are “exchanged” periodically and implicitly and therefore even a captured encrypted data stream will at best only be decipherable in part. Thus, the eavesdropper stands a minimal chance of guessing a quantity of key pairs that would make any sense out of the data in his possession.

Are you unsure about leaving your users on legacy systems in the dark at this point? ECC certificates can be configured to serve both ECC and RSA intermediates, guaranteeing that the certificate chain will still function correctly to anyone on Windows XP. Symantec is already using ECC roots so we are well-equipped for the future. And using ECC SSL will decrease your power bill, because the math needed in the process is calculated easily by modern processors since the functions are built in.

So, with Symantec’s SSL certificates you have access to the future of encryption today, allowing you to save on your server resources, providing higher security to your users, and a better (and faster) user experience especially when in mobility. At Symantec our prime mission is to keep ahead of the next big thing in digital security, so you can do what you do best: your business. Do get in touch; we’d love to hear from you.

↧

オンラインバンキングを狙うトロイの木馬 Snifula が日本製セキュリティ製品に対抗

September 17, 2014, 11:48 pm

≫ Next: Latest Symantec Endpoint Protection Released - SEP 12.1RU5

≪ Previous: The Future of SSL Encryption

Snifula の亜種は、セキュリティ製品 PhishWall のインストールを推奨する画像が銀行の Web サイト上に表示されないよう妨害します。

↧

Latest Symantec Endpoint Protection Released - SEP 12.1RU5

September 18, 2014, 1:09 pm

≫ Next: [PowerShell] Monitor Event Logs

≪ Previous: オンラインバンキングを狙うトロイの木馬 Snifula が日本製セキュリティ製品に対抗

Latest Symantec Endpoint Protection Released

Latest Symantec Endpoint Protection Released - SEP 12.1RU5 and ready for download.

↧

[PowerShell] Monitor Event Logs

September 18, 2014, 7:37 pm

≫ Next: Symantec has released new version of Symantec Endpoint Protection.

≪ Previous: Latest Symantec Endpoint Protection Released - SEP 12.1RU5

I have always wondered if there is a good way to tail the Windows event log. (like $tail -f /var/log/messages)

I can get the contents of the Event Log by "Get-EventLog" command but I have to run the command each time.
Of course I can loop like this but it is not easy to follow.

While ( 1 ) {
	    Clear-Host
	    Get-EventLog 'Symantec Enterprise Vault' -Newest 10
	    Sleep 1
	}

The solution for me was to register against the EntryWritten Event in EventLog Class.

Everytime a new Event is raised, it shows up in your PowerShell window.

First, we get the event log that we are interested.

$EVLOG = Get-EventLog -List | Where-Object {$_.Log -eq 'Symantec Enterprise Vault'}

Then register the event EntryWritten with the Action of writing the contents of the event to the console with Write-Host command.

Register-ObjectEvent -InputObject $EVLOG -EventName EntryWritten -SourceIdentifier EVEventLogEntry -Action{

	Write-Host $event.SourceEventArgs.Entry.TimeWritten.ToString("MM/d HH:mm:ss")  `
	           $event.SourceEventArgs.Entry.EventID  `
	           $event.SourceEventArgs.Entry.Category  `
	           $event.SourceEventArgs.Entry.Message.SubString(0,35) `
	-Separator " : " `
	-ForegroundColor white `
	-BackgroundColor black
	}

If you are not interested anymore, you can unregister this way or just simply close the PowerShell window and restart a new window.

Unregister-Event EVEventLogEntry

↧

Symantec has released new version of Symantec Endpoint Protection.

September 19, 2014, 2:40 am

≫ Next: T-SQL UDFs and Performance

≪ Previous: [PowerShell] Monitor Event Logs

English versions of Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.5337.5000 (RU5) is now available

Hello Everyone,

Symantec has released new version of Symantec Endpoint Protection.

English versions of Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.5337.5000 (RU5) is now available on FileConnect. to download. Other languages versions will be available soon. We shall update you on its availability.

The primary download is distributed into two installation files: Part1_Installation and Part 2_Tools. Please download and extract both files before continuing with the software setup.　

As part of the upgrade to Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager (SEPM) 12.1 RU5, all content converts from full definitions to delta definitions. This process is resource intensive and upgrades may take longer than expected. For more details: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH224055

Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.5xxx (RU5) can upgrade seamlessly over the following:

Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.4100.4126 (RU4 MP1), 12.1.4104.4130 (RU4 MP1a), and 12.1.4112.4156 (RU4 MP1b)
Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.4013.4013 (RU4) and 12.1.4023.4080 (RU4a)
Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.3001.165 (RU3)
Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.2100.2093 (RU2 MP1)
Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.2015.2015 (RU2)
Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.1101.401 (RU1 MP1)
Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.1000.157 (RU1)
Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.671.4971 (RTM)
Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 (can be upgraded to enterprise version only)
Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition 12.0
Note: A Small Business Edition product can be upgraded to the enterprise version, but the reverse is considered a downgrade and is not supported.

Migration from Symantec AntiVirus 10.x or Symantec Client Security 3.x is not supported. You must uninstall these legacy products before you install Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.5

Enterprise Edition:

Small Business Edition:

SEP 12.1 RU5 Articles:

Title: Upgrading or migrating to Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.5 (RU5)

Article URL: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH224034

Title: New fixes and features in Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.5 (RU5)

Article URL: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH224706

Title: Symantec Endpoint Protection, Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition, and Symantec Network Access Control 12.1.5 Release Notes/What’s New

Article URL: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC7696

Title: The LiveUpdate content optimization and content storage space optimization steps take a long time to complete when upgrading to Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager 12.1 RU5

Article URL: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH224055

Title: Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager 12.1 RU5 and higher installs its services with reduced privileges and permissions

Article URL: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH224312

Title: Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.5 Getting Started Guide

Article URL: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC4322

Title: Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.5 Installation and Administration Guide

Article URL: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC7698

Title: Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition 12.1.5 Installation and Administration Guide

Article URL: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC7577

Title: Symantec Network Access Control 12.1.5 Getting Started Guide

Article URL: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC7578

Title: Symantec Network Access Control 12.1.5 Installation and Administration Guide

Article URL: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC7579

Title: Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.5 Database Schema Reference Guide

Article URL: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC7660

Title: Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.5 for Linux Client Guide

Article URL: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC7697

↧

T-SQL UDFs and Performance

September 19, 2014, 3:43 am

≫ Next: Global Variables in DS6.9 (Possible Feature Request?)

≪ Previous: Symantec has released new version of Symantec Endpoint Protection.

Seems we should be thinking twice before writing our T-SQL UDFs...

↧

Global Variables in DS6.9 (Possible Feature Request?)

September 19, 2014, 3:57 am

≫ Next: Life on Mars: How attackers took advantage of hope for alien existance in new Darkmoon campaign

≪ Previous: T-SQL UDFs and Performance

I've been fiddling over the last wee while with an idea for DS6.9 (see my previous blog entry). I've been thinking about how to introduce a working method for implementing global variables.

You see, my complex jobs often have user-editable parameters scattered throughout them. Scattering variables throughout a jobs task is really messy (and makes them harder to maintain). So, I thought about how we could just have one place where these variables in a job.

A special task in DS6.9 would have been nice. Something like this,

But this doesn't exist... so I've implemented something less elegant, and a full article on that will be posted shortly. If you think this would be advantage you you (in both DS6.9 and DS7) please comment.

If you know people who *would* like that, please direct them to comment too as my blog following likely rather an eclectic mix! I think it would be a good feature request!

Ian./

↧

Life on Mars: How attackers took advantage of hope for alien existance in new Darkmoon campaign

September 19, 2014, 4:37 am

≫ Next: Tres simple pasos para proteger tu nuevo iPhone

≪ Previous: Global Variables in DS6.9 (Possible Feature Request?)

Attackers sent fake NASA emails containing “proof” of alien life on Mars to spread Backdoor.Darkmoon.

↧

Tres simple pasos para proteger tu nuevo iPhone

September 19, 2014, 6:57 am

≫ Next: How to secure your new iPhone in three simple steps

≪ Previous: Life on Mars: How attackers took advantage of hope for alien existance in new Darkmoon campaign

Recomendaciones y mejores prácticas de Symantec para proteger tu iPhone y tu cuenta de Apple.

↧

How to secure your new iPhone in three simple steps

September 19, 2014, 6:57 am

≫ Next: Como proteger seu novo iPhone em três passos simples

≪ Previous: Tres simple pasos para proteger tu nuevo iPhone

Symantec recommends best practices to keep your Apple ID account and iPhone safe.

↧

Como proteger seu novo iPhone em três passos simples

September 19, 2014, 6:57 am

≫ Next: NetBackup Accelerator questions the value of storage-based snapshot integration from Competitor ‘C’

≪ Previous: How to secure your new iPhone in three simple steps

Com a chegada do Iphone 6 e do Iphone 6 Plus, a Symantec compartilha um blog post que apresenta três passos simples para garantir a segurança dos dispositivos e contas da Apple.

↧

NetBackup Accelerator questions the value of storage-based snapshot integration from Competitor ‘C’

September 19, 2014, 11:56 am

≫ Next: Symantec will be at SpiceWorld Austin!

≪ Previous: Como proteger seu novo iPhone em três passos simples

News from The King of Scale Benchmark Headquarters

A third party benchmark reveals that NetBackup Accelerator provides superior performance and meets recovery point objectives for which competitors would require expensive, operationally challenging and storage dependent array snapshots!

↧

Symantec will be at SpiceWorld Austin!

September 21, 2014, 10:41 pm

≫ Next: Symantec will be at SpiceWorld Austin this Week!

≪ Previous: NetBackup Accelerator questions the value of storage-based snapshot integration from Competitor ‘C’

Symantec Logo.jpg

Let us know if you are going to SpiceWorld Austin this year by signing in with your LinkedIn profile here: http://bit.ly/1oXEVjE and stop by Symantec's booth #3 and find out how you can WIN a LittleBits Electronics Deluxe Kit and GoPro HERO3+ Black Edition!

We will have Product and Tech Support specialists there to answer your questions and share some of the latest white papers from Symantec.

↧

Symantec will be at SpiceWorld Austin this Week!

September 21, 2014, 10:44 pm

≫ Next: Data Center Security 6.5 Beta

≪ Previous: Symantec will be at SpiceWorld Austin!

If you are headed to SpiceWorld Austin this week, you have got to check this out: https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/symantec-will-be-spiceworld-austin

Hope to see you there!

↧

Data Center Security 6.5 Beta

September 22, 2014, 2:40 am

≫ Next: Backup Exec 2014 SP1 Now Available

≪ Previous: Symantec will be at SpiceWorld Austin this Week!

Signup to trial DCS 6.5

Data Center Security: Server, VMware NSX 6.1, Data Center Security: Server Advanced

↧

Backup Exec 2014 SP1 Now Available

September 22, 2014, 11:16 am

≫ Next: Bring Your Own Training for Effective BYOD

≪ Previous: Data Center Security 6.5 Beta

We’re excited to announce that Backup Exec 2014 Service Pack (SP) 1 is now globally available and includes the following enhancements:

Simplified Disaster Recovery (SDR) for Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1
Oracle 11.2.0.4 support
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.10 (RHEL) with AOFO (Advanced Open File Option) support
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11 (RHEL) without AOFO
Microsoft SQL 2014 (Repository)

Customers with existing Backup Exec 2014 deployments can download the Service Pack today at http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH216178. Availability via Live Update is expected to follow within the next 3 weeks.

Backup Exec 2014 installation media with SP1 embedded will be available 5-7 days after the initial release of the service pack from either the trialware link on backupexec.com as well as FileConnect by visiting http://fileconnect.symantec.com.

Additional information regarding this Service Pack can be found in the following documents:

Backup Exec 2014 SP1 Knowledge Base Article

Backup Exec 2014 SP1 Read Me

Backup Exec 2014 SP1 Release Notes

↧

Bring Your Own Training for Effective BYOD

September 22, 2014, 4:43 pm

≫ Next: Code injection in http

≪ Previous: Backup Exec 2014 SP1 Now Available

The future of BYO is already in sight, and, as workforces become more mobile and more productive, it's important to have an effective training program in place for employees to secure their freedom and company data.

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