August 13, 2025 • 24 mins
Cloud security and infrastructure providers are making strategic moves to maintain competitive advantage through acquisitions and service enhancements while combating emerging threats. We explore the latest developments including Palo Alto's massive acquisition, new cloud services, and enhanced security features that are reshaping the industry.
• Palo Alto Networks announces $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk to strengthen identity security capabilities, particularly for machine identities and agentic AI
• AWS launches Elastic VMware Service, allowing customers to bring their own licenses without application replatforming as organizations seek alternatives amid Broadcom changes
• Network World article questions why enterprises aren't fully replacing infrastructure with SD-WAN, highlighting the ongoing gradual adoption approach
• Wiz discovers "zombie hosts" on Google Sites pages with SoCo 404 exploit that installs cryptocurrency mining malware
• Megaport Cloud Router now supports IPsec tunnels, enabling direct encrypted connections through their fabric without additional hardware
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tim (00:14):
Hey everybody and welcome to our new monthly news on the
Cable's Clouds podcast.
We're now doing this once amonth, and so we'll look back
over the whole of the past30-ish days.
When we do this, I'll be your,you know I'm Tim, obviously you
know me, and with me is theother guy who hopefully, by this
(00:35):
point, you know as well, chris,and we're just going to roll
right into the news.
Okay, so one of our top stories, so Palo Alto, and this
happened.
Actually, this happened about10 days ago, 11 days ago now,
palo Alto announced an agreementto buy CyberArk.
So CyberArk I'll be honest withyou, I didn't know CyberArk
(00:56):
very well, but CyberArk is aidentity services cybersecurity
vendor.
So CyberArk does machine.
It's just focused on identity,whether it be machine identity,
workload, or rather people,whatnot.
It's a technology that Palorealizes is valuable and also
(01:18):
that has kind of a gap in itsportfolio for, and, of course,
identity is kind of becomingking here, especially in cloud
and whatnot.
So Powell's making a good move.
They're buying CyberArk andthey're going to yeah, so
they're going to roll it intotheir product here.
Let me take a look at the actual.
So I'm trying to find the pieceI was looking for in the actual
(01:41):
press release.
So specifically it saysdelivering identity security for
agentic AI.
That's one of the biggestreasons they picked it up.
So this is interesting.
I think this is going to be ahuge thing identity for agents
moving forward, not just forPalo, obviously, but like any
cybersecurity company is goingto have to deal with how do we
(02:03):
identify agents?
And it says let's see.
Try to find the actual numberhere yeah, an equity value of 25
billion for cyber arc andshareholders will receive 45 in
cash and 2000 2.2005 shares ofpalo alto network's common stock
(02:23):
for each cyberArk share.
So actually it's not a cheapacquisition either.
So, according to Palo, thisaccelerates the platform
strategy which we just talkedabout, making it easier, just
filling a gap in Palo'sdisrupting the legacy, what
they're calling the legacy IAMmarket, so identity access
management market.
(02:44):
Again, this cyber arc is verymuch focused on workload and
machine identities as well asuser identity, and I think we
can all agree that you know,kind of the zero trust model of
ages past was very focused onuser identity.
So this is basically justfilling in a gap that I think
everybody can agree exists.
(03:05):
And then it specifically callsout that it secures agentic AI,
providing some type of identityfor agents that are out there
working on behalf oforganizations.
Yeah, how much else to addthere?
It's a pretty interestingacquisition.
I am very interested to see howPalo pulls it in.
I think that's always been thestruggle with anybody, any
(03:26):
vendor that buys another product.
What does the integration looklike?
So I think that's going toreally decide whether or not
this is successful.
Anything to add there?
Chris (03:35):
No, I mean kind of, like you said, my experience in the
past with CyberArk has beenrelatively good.
They do have a strong solution,specifically within privileged
access management.
You know kind of the followingthat kind of zero trust model
where you know you are onlygiven elevated privileges if
certain criteria is met.
(03:56):
So I think they've done a greatjob there.
It is odd well, not odd, but itis, you know, kind of unique or
interesting to hear thatthey're doing this acquisition
of you know this isn't nothing.
This is 20 plus billion dollarsfor the purpose of integrating
identity for agentic AI.
(04:17):
So they're kind of hedgingtheir bets on that.
So there's this whole conceptof bringing an identity kind of
vertical under Palo's portfolio,but also the addition of
potentially a new product that'sgoing to come out of this as
well, mainly focused on agenticAI.
I don't think CyberRock has aspecific product for that just
(04:38):
now.
I could be incorrect.
I haven't studied theirportfolio as of late, but you
know, I know Palo kind of hasknow Palo has all their
solutions divided into these keyareas.
So they have Strata, which isover their network security
portfolio, which is theirfirewalls, and more
hardware-based stuff, and then Ibelieve there's Cortex, which
(05:00):
is focused on SOC-type stufflike the XDR and SOAR-type
platforms, and then there'sPrisma, which is kind of used
for their remote access SASEtype solution as well.
So I don't know if this is goingto be a complete new kind of
vertical that gets put intotheir solution portfolio.
I imagine it would and you knowthere's, like you said, like
(05:23):
integration is going to be keybecause, when it comes to
identity, integration has prettymuch been the dominant path
forward, right, like typicallywhen you you know a lot of
cybersecurity vendors out therejust integrate with an identity
provider, whether it be Okta oryou know, adopted by the masses
in that way, or what's going tochange in that paradigm, right?
(06:02):
So I don't know.
It'll be interesting.
I'm very interested to seewhere this goes, yeah.
Tim (06:08):
I think identity yeah, I know CyberArk basically right
now CyberArk by itself is aidentity provider, vendor,
whatever you call it Like that'stheir thing.
But I think, if Palo is goingto make this successful,
identity is ubiquitous, right.
Identity is going to cross alltheir different domains or
however they're organizing itright, Like identity is king and
(06:30):
it's going to cross all of it.
So if they don't, if they tryto spin it and just kind of make
a new domain or, like you know,kind of shelve it on its own
little silo, I think it's a hugeloss and I think they know that
.
So I think they're probablygoing to try to roll that into
the rest of their product.
So, yeah, excellent.
Chris (06:49):
All right.
Next up we have an announcementfrom AWS that they've launched
a new service.
So this came out, I believe,from the time of recording, just
maybe like five or six days ago.
So they've launched somethingcalled the Amazon Elastic VMware
Service.
So you know, there's a lot ofexisting VMware customers out
there.
We've talked about on the showquite a bit that they're feeling
(07:11):
the squeeze from Broadcom, etc.
Quite a bit that they'refeeling the squeeze from
Broadcom, etc.
In the midst of that there'sbeen some kind of back and forth
around what the VMware supportis on AWS.
Right, there's been kind ofthese more concrete solutions
stood up in, like Google andAzure, and there has been some
back and forth with AWS aboutthat.
(07:33):
So it looks like they'velaunched a new service to kind
of fold into that with thisElastic VMware service.
So it allows you to bring yourown VMware Cloud Foundation
license and run it on AWSwithout having to replatform or
refactor any of the existingapplications that you want to do
there.
So you know you kind of.
(07:55):
So if you look at the idea hereis that there's essentially
bare metal instances runningunder the hood on AWS that
you're able to run your VMwarestack on top of which is pretty
common across the other cloudproviders as well, although it's
really funny to see all theseproducts come out and their
(08:17):
whole idea is like oh, you don'thave to refactor, you don't
have to replatform any of yourapplications, when they're
talking about shifting out ofthe data center.
Hasn't the move to cloud alwaysbeen about replatforming and
refactoring for optimizations?
This doesn't feel like a longterm solution to me, for for any
(08:37):
of those customers, unlessyou're trying to just figure out
an interim solution to get awayfrom Broadcom or you know,
you're you, maybe, maybe you'reyou know an IC and you're just,
you know, satisfying your CEO'sdesire to move to cloud when you
know it's going to come rightback eventually.
But it's like I don't know, um,satisfying your CEO's desire to
move to cloud when you knowit's going to come right back
eventually.
Um, but it's like I don't knowit's.
(08:58):
It's weird to have everythingelse have this messaging.
And then, when it comes to theVMware stack, it's like, oh,
that's exactly the same, youdon't have to change anything.
Um, it'll run exactly how it iswhen, uh, and then when you
look at the pricing, maybe thatexplains why it runs exactly as
it is.
But yeah, I don't know,interesting announcement, but,
like I said, kind of brings themup to par with what's in the
(09:22):
existing Azure and GCPenvironments as well.
So not surprising, I believeright now it's only running in
certain regions, so US East One,a couple regions in Europe and
Asia Pacific and Tokyo as well.
So I imagine we'll see moreannouncement coming in from that
.
But what about you, tim,anything to add?
Tim (09:42):
Yeah, there's not much to say here.
I mean, I think VMware, cloudFoundations, pretty much, is the
same.
It's really just like here'sAmazon owning the service
instead of VMware owning theservice, basically, but you can
even use your VCF licensing forthis.
It's definitely a stop gap forpeople that want to move away
(10:02):
from Broadcom but can't, forwhatever reason, or won't move
away from VMware.
So that's that's.
Yeah, I think this this is atemporary.
I mean, there's a lot of money,there's a lot of money to be
made in a temporary measure.
Still, like, they know, theyknow their customers right.
They know that the customersdon't want to replatform that,
or they can't or they won't orwhatever.
That is Right.
(10:22):
There's money to be made inlegacy and there will be
probably forever money to bemade in legacy, if we're being
honest.
And so AWS is just like yeah,okay, you want to keep running
like this, I mean, we'll takeyour money.
That's fine, please, by allmeans.
So, yeah, not much else to saythere.
It's literally just a moneygrab and that's fine.
(10:43):
And people that want to keeprunning VMware or just find that
it costs less money to pay tonsof money to keep running VMware
over replatforming Becausereplatforming and refactoring is
extremely expensive Likeextremely expensive Millions and
millions of dollars overreplatforming Because
replatforming and refactoring isextremely expensive.
Like extremely expensiveMillions and millions of dollars
.
To replatform and refactor, noquestion, right?
Also, just the time, the timeand opportunity costs is often
(11:06):
what really hurts people, right?
They'd rather just start fromscratch than try to replatform
or refactor.
So, yeah, I mean, it'sliterally just kicking can down
the road and paying money to doso.
So, yeah, all right.
So next we have one from Network.
We have an article from NetworkWorld which is kind of an
opinion piece.
There's a little bit of a nokidding aspect to it.
(11:29):
But SD-WAN reality check whyenterprise rip and replace isn't
happening.
So the article basically pointsout that you know, hey, uh,
sd-wan is ubiquitous now, likeeverybody's got pretty much most
enterprises you know, haveadopted some kind of SD-WAN
whatever, whatever vendor thatlooks like, whatever uh
deployment that looks likethey're using it.
Um, but there's still lots ofuh enterprises out there that
(11:53):
that won't rip the whole thingout and replace it with SD-WAN.
I'll be honest with you.
I read this article and Iscratched my head a little bit
because it was like you know thenumber of enterprises that will
do a full rip and replace isstill very low.
And I'm thinking, well, yeah,like anybody who knows network
infrastructure should be able tounderstand that right, like
(12:15):
I've never met an enterprisethat was like.
You know, what would make thiswhole thing even better is if we
just changed it all all at once.
You know, it's never happened.
So it's kind of a weird article.
It goes over some other stuff.
It talks about how they'rebuilding, you know, putting AI,
more AI features into SD-WANAlthough the list of features
(12:36):
that they mentioned as becomingAI enabled also has me
scratching my head a little bitThings like self-healing and
path optimization and, you know,failover, automatic failover.
Then I'm like scratching myhead because I'm thinking these
you know, when I worked at Ciscoalmost three and a half four
years ago, this already happened, like we didn't.
(12:58):
That was already baked intoViptela, for example.
When we've acquired Viptela,there was no AI involved at that
point.
So, yeah, I don't know, I dothink AI can make these things
better, like kind of like theassurance angle, if you will,
from Cisco has wireless andwired assurance.
It's that kind of angle.
I think that definitely, it canonly be good to use data to
(13:22):
predict future data.
But yeah, that still remains tobe seen.
Kind of a little bit of an oddarticle, actually.
I think that's why I wanted tobring it up.
Chris (13:34):
Yeah, I think this kind of speaks to kind of the generic
term that AI really is right.
Like you said, this idea ofself-healing, this idea of
classifying traffic and doingdynamic path selection and
optimization has always beenkind of baked into SD-WAN Well,
(13:58):
not always, but it definitelyhas in the last, you know,
probably four or five years, butit was never kind of marketed
to the general public as AI, asan AI-based feature, when, at
the end of the day I mean whenyou break it down there probably
is some type of AI or ML that'sbeing put into place to kind of
classify what applications arewhat and force that on the box.
(14:22):
I don't know if any of this isreally happening on box per se,
the AI capabilities of it, or ifthat's done from some central
point and then basically pusheddown to be enforced at that
level, um, which makes sense.
So I don't, I don't know if,like this article, like you said
, it's interesting because itkind of totes it as like oh, it
(14:42):
actually fell short of beingable to do this and I was like I
don't, I don't know if this wasever marketed as an ai type
thing.
Like I think ai has come intothe purview and kind of changed
our, our idea of what some ofthese things should be.
You know like path selectionand and and um, self-healing I
guess, so to say, but like ifanyone knows network protocols
(15:04):
and how you can monitor thisstuff, like it's all standards
based stuff down once you getdown to it.
Right, there's only, there'sonly ways, there's only so many
ways to skin this cat.
And, like you said, you knowabout calling out it being
surprising that not everythingis getting ripped and replaced.
I think we can all on, like youknow, within 30 seconds we can
sit and think of probably two tothree scenarios where SD-WAN
(15:26):
isn't going to solve a specificproblem at a specific site.
Right, it's not the end-all,be-all solution that fixes
everything.
Tim (15:34):
So it really it's a bit of a head scratcher.
Yeah or panacea.
Is it panacea or panacea?
Chris (15:40):
Panacea, panacea, right yeah.
Tim (15:42):
Yeah, okay.
Chris (15:44):
Okay, next up, we have an article here, I believe from
STX Central, about Wizz exposeszombie hosts on its own host,
which is Google.
So, as we all know, I thoughtthis one was quite interesting.
So, as we all know, you know,google is in the process of
acquiring Wizz for severalbillion dollars and there
(16:08):
apparently has been somethingdiscovered by Wizz on several
pages that were deployed usingGoogle Sites where, basically,
these zombie hosts were set up,which is basically a an exploit
called SoCo 404.
(16:29):
Obviously, the websites have akind of default 404 error page
that needs to be storedsomewhere, and if someone goes
to the wrong page on a website,the 404 not found will be
displayed to them.
But apparently this exploitinvolves those HTML pages
including malicious code for thepurpose of mining
(16:51):
cryptocurrency and churning CPUcapacity for the purpose of that
as well.
So it was funny that Wizactually was being brought in
and discovered all of this stuff, and Google has since taken it
down.
But, you know, I just want tocall this out because it's nice
to see Google making use of itsnew product, I guess, but I just
(17:14):
thought this one was kind offunny.
Tim (17:16):
Yeah, it's um, I mean, at least you know whiz is doing its
job.
This is, this is interesting,right, because it's like they're
.
They're sites that are madewith google sites, and so I
think the 404 site was probablyintended to be like automatic or
like not just kind of aplaceholder, right, and so yeah
somehow they were able toexploit this in a way where they
(17:38):
could replace the code on these404 pages with.
You know, hey, when your browserrenders this, this 404 page, it
triggers some kind of malware,download or injection or
something.
I don't know.
It's not, it's not clear fromthe, from the article, but uh,
my guess is that it would haveto.
You know, essentially try toautomatically download something
and then and then run it onyour computer.
Chris (18:00):
It's weird because I think, like if I imagine I've
never used Google sites, but Iimagine that you use some type
of kind of builder, um, that youcan use to to to write like a
website.
Exactly so.
I imagine that the 404 is justsomething you can automatically
like, like I click a box and belike oh, here's my 404 page, or
something like.
It seems like this would havebeen injected by google like,
(18:21):
not by the user, like almostlike a uh almost like a supply
chain type attack you know whatI mean, like it would have been
in by the vendor, that's that'sdoing that for you, unless
there's like a marketplace wheremaybe someone could just say
like, oh, give me the, uh, giveme this, this layout, and it
includes this 404 page or whathave you.
So it's kind of like I don'tthink they really touch on
(18:41):
exactly how this got in there,but it is, um, it is quite
strange and it makes me wonderhow that happened yeah, yeah, an
exploit using misconfiguredcloud services to plant crypto
mining malware.
Tim (18:54):
Pages 404 html pages hosted on websites built using google
sites act as zombie hosts to themalware yeah, secretly
containing encoded files thatinstall the crypto miner.
Chris (19:05):
So like, yeah, like, how did that?
Maybe, maybe google sitesdoesn't offer that.
Maybe it's not something thatis as seamless as that, but yeah
, it's really.
Tim (19:16):
Or maybe these sites were exploited and then had this
malware put after the site wasexploited.
Chris (19:22):
They could just do whatever they want, right.
Tim (19:23):
Maybe they could just put it in there.
Maybe it's not yeah, thearticle is not 100% clear on
this, but it's an interestinguse of Wiz to find this, so at
least you know it works right.
Chris (19:35):
Yeah.
Tim (19:38):
Okay, and let's go ahead and finish off with something
that actually just dropped todayand will be old news by the
time this posts.
In two days Megaport hasannounced that the Megaport
Cloud Router now supports IPsectunnels.
So this is a big one, becausefor the longest time, megaport
Cloud Router and of course,megaport Cloud Router is their
own self-hosted, like you know,marketplace uh item that, um, it
(20:02):
uses uh sorry, I just got anotification that just bounced
me out so it uses theirmarketplace, but it's, it's
their kind of own hosted, uh,white label routing uh software,
and so for the longest timethey didn't support ipsec on
this because it was kind of a,you know know, a minimal
offering, if you will like, a,just a basic router that does
(20:24):
BGP and GRE tunnels and stuff.
It didn't, it just couldn'tsupport IPsec, you know the
crypto stuff.
So apparently now it does, andso what this means, of course,
is that now, anything you couldhave done with a cloud router in
Megaport, you can now do withthe Megaport cloud router so you
can have, you know, end-to-endencryption through the Megaport
fabric, connect your edgedirectly from you know, using
(20:47):
IPSec.
You wouldn't have to, youwouldn't have to connect to, you
wouldn't have to host your ownCisco router or any other kind
of router in Megaport and thenconnect your on-prem devices,
whatever those might be, to thatright.
You could just directly connectto a Megaport cloud router.
So I mean it's a huge, hugeupgrade for Megaport and I know
(21:08):
a lot of customers were lookingfor this kind of functionality
and, yeah, just a huge win.
The press release, the blog,rather goes on to point out
other things like here's all theother things that MCR can do.
For example, it says you knowwe can get up to 100 gigabytes,
gigs gbps if you will ofbandwidth on our MCR.
Of course my expectation isthat that is not encrypted at
(21:34):
100 gig, but you know, but yeah,just the ability that now they
have they support IPsec and youcan do it straight on the cloud
router Just brings a huge amountof benefit to Megaport hosting.
Chris (21:45):
Yeah, agreed, I think you know, like you said, mcr or
Megaport cloud router is.
We commonly just see it deployedin capacity where you know,
like you said, it's essentiallya white labeled service that
Megap Report offers to give youa routing construct within their
fabric and you can use that formulti-cloud connectivity,
(22:06):
hybrid connectivity, what haveyou?
And now, with this addition ofit running IPsec, you know, and
also, I believe, every MCR thatyou deploy, it automatically
gets or is able to have verycompetitively priced internet
connectivity as well, right,compared to the cloud providers.
So, if we're talking aboutremote headquarters or remote
(22:28):
branch to cloud connectivity,now you can do this over the
internet with IPsec, which isprobably quite a beneficial
thing for, like you said, somecustomers that are paying heaps
of internet egress costs in thecloud for those exact same
services.
So I could see this being apretty substantial thing for
(22:50):
Megaport.
Now, like you said, megaport isvery open about this and you
know, oftentimes when theylaunch a service, like when they
launched the Megaport,basically when they launched MCR
I remember it was commonlyreferred to as my first router.
Like they very much talk aboutit.
How, like, hey, this isn'tgoing to have every bell and
(23:14):
whistle, this doesn't have everynerd knob, it has very basic
functionality and our focus ispurely on simplicity.
We want it to be so simple andso easy to deploy and I imagine
this is going to fall right intothat.
And you know like, hey, if I'mgoing to build a connection,
this is going to be an IPsectunnel to remote site.
It's probably going to, youknow, support, the bare bones
(23:35):
stuff, to make sure that this issimple and secure and for a lot
of customers, that might bewhat they need.
For customers that need more,they have another offering right
.
They have the Megaport, virtualEdge, where you can host your
own platform as well.
So I think it does add quite abit to their portfolio.
So I think this is a great move.
Tim (23:54):
Yeah, for sure, and I mean honestly, the way Megaport works
is it's all point to point, soit fits perfectly with IPsec.
The way you connect Megaportdevices together, the fabric
together, the endpoints,wherever you're hosted, it's all
point to point connectivitythrough there.
So it works perfectly with theidea of just encrypting it with
(24:15):
IPsec.
Basically, so, yeah, great moveby Megaport, okay, and that, I
think, wraps us up for thismonth.
We'll be back next month witheven more exciting news.
Hopefully, nothing too excitinghappens between now and then.
But thanks for sticking with usand hanging out and enjoying
the news and we'll see you nexttime.
(24:37):
See you next time.
See you guys.
Hey everybody and welcome to our new monthly news on the
Cable's Clouds podcast.
We're now doing this once amonth, and so we'll look back
over the whole of the past30-ish days.
When we do this, I'll be your,you know I'm Tim, obviously you
know me, and with me is theother guy who hopefully, by this
(00:35):
point, you know as well, chris,and we're just going to roll
right into the news.
Okay, so one of our top stories, so Palo Alto, and this
happened.
Actually, this happened about10 days ago, 11 days ago now,
palo Alto announced an agreementto buy CyberArk.
So CyberArk I'll be honest withyou, I didn't know CyberArk
(00:56):
very well, but CyberArk is aidentity services cybersecurity
vendor.
So CyberArk does machine.
It's just focused on identity,whether it be machine identity,
workload, or rather people,whatnot.
It's a technology that Palorealizes is valuable and also
(01:18):
that has kind of a gap in itsportfolio for, and, of course,
identity is kind of becomingking here, especially in cloud
and whatnot.
So Powell's making a good move.
They're buying CyberArk andthey're going to yeah, so
they're going to roll it intotheir product here.
Let me take a look at the actual.
So I'm trying to find the pieceI was looking for in the actual
(01:41):
press release.
So specifically it saysdelivering identity security for
agentic AI.
That's one of the biggestreasons they picked it up.
So this is interesting.
I think this is going to be ahuge thing identity for agents
moving forward, not just forPalo, obviously, but like any
cybersecurity company is goingto have to deal with how do we
(02:03):
identify agents?
And it says let's see.
Try to find the actual numberhere yeah, an equity value of 25
billion for cyber arc andshareholders will receive 45 in
cash and 2000 2.2005 shares ofpalo alto network's common stock
(02:23):
for each cyberArk share.
So actually it's not a cheapacquisition either.
So, according to Palo, thisaccelerates the platform
strategy which we just talkedabout, making it easier, just
filling a gap in Palo'sdisrupting the legacy, what
they're calling the legacy IAMmarket, so identity access
management market.
(02:44):
Again, this cyber arc is verymuch focused on workload and
machine identities as well asuser identity, and I think we
can all agree that you know,kind of the zero trust model of
ages past was very focused onuser identity.
So this is basically justfilling in a gap that I think
everybody can agree exists.
(03:05):
And then it specifically callsout that it secures agentic AI,
providing some type of identityfor agents that are out there
working on behalf oforganizations.
Yeah, how much else to addthere?
It's a pretty interestingacquisition.
I am very interested to see howPalo pulls it in.
I think that's always been thestruggle with anybody, any
(03:26):
vendor that buys another product.
What does the integration looklike?
So I think that's going toreally decide whether or not
this is successful.
Anything to add there?
Chris (03:35):
No, I mean kind of, like you said, my experience in the
past with CyberArk has beenrelatively good.
They do have a strong solution,specifically within privileged
access management.
You know kind of the followingthat kind of zero trust model
where you know you are onlygiven elevated privileges if
certain criteria is met.
(03:56):
So I think they've done a greatjob there.
It is odd well, not odd, but itis, you know, kind of unique or
interesting to hear thatthey're doing this acquisition
of you know this isn't nothing.
This is 20 plus billion dollarsfor the purpose of integrating
identity for agentic AI.
(04:17):
So they're kind of hedgingtheir bets on that.
So there's this whole conceptof bringing an identity kind of
vertical under Palo's portfolio,but also the addition of
potentially a new product that'sgoing to come out of this as
well, mainly focused on agenticAI.
I don't think CyberRock has aspecific product for that just
(04:38):
now.
I could be incorrect.
I haven't studied theirportfolio as of late, but you
know, I know Palo kind of hasknow Palo has all their
solutions divided into these keyareas.
So they have Strata, which isover their network security
portfolio, which is theirfirewalls, and more
hardware-based stuff, and then Ibelieve there's Cortex, which
(05:00):
is focused on SOC-type stufflike the XDR and SOAR-type
platforms, and then there'sPrisma, which is kind of used
for their remote access SASEtype solution as well.
So I don't know if this is goingto be a complete new kind of
vertical that gets put intotheir solution portfolio.
I imagine it would and you knowthere's, like you said, like
(05:23):
integration is going to be keybecause, when it comes to
identity, integration has prettymuch been the dominant path
forward, right, like typicallywhen you you know a lot of
cybersecurity vendors out therejust integrate with an identity
provider, whether it be Okta oryou know, adopted by the masses
in that way, or what's going tochange in that paradigm, right?
(06:02):
So I don't know.
It'll be interesting.
I'm very interested to seewhere this goes, yeah.
Tim (06:08):
I think identity yeah, I know CyberArk basically right
now CyberArk by itself is aidentity provider, vendor,
whatever you call it Like that'stheir thing.
But I think, if Palo is goingto make this successful,
identity is ubiquitous, right.
Identity is going to cross alltheir different domains or
however they're organizing itright, Like identity is king and
(06:30):
it's going to cross all of it.
So if they don't, if they tryto spin it and just kind of make
a new domain or, like you know,kind of shelve it on its own
little silo, I think it's a hugeloss and I think they know that
.
So I think they're probablygoing to try to roll that into
the rest of their product.
So, yeah, excellent.
Chris (06:49):
All right.
Next up we have an announcementfrom AWS that they've launched
a new service.
So this came out, I believe,from the time of recording, just
maybe like five or six days ago.
So they've launched somethingcalled the Amazon Elastic VMware
Service.
So you know, there's a lot ofexisting VMware customers out
there.
We've talked about on the showquite a bit that they're feeling
(07:11):
the squeeze from Broadcom, etc.
Quite a bit that they'refeeling the squeeze from
Broadcom, etc.
In the midst of that there'sbeen some kind of back and forth
around what the VMware supportis on AWS.
Right, there's been kind ofthese more concrete solutions
stood up in, like Google andAzure, and there has been some
back and forth with AWS aboutthat.
(07:33):
So it looks like they'velaunched a new service to kind
of fold into that with thisElastic VMware service.
So it allows you to bring yourown VMware Cloud Foundation
license and run it on AWSwithout having to replatform or
refactor any of the existingapplications that you want to do
there.
So you know you kind of.
(07:55):
So if you look at the idea hereis that there's essentially
bare metal instances runningunder the hood on AWS that
you're able to run your VMwarestack on top of which is pretty
common across the other cloudproviders as well, although it's
really funny to see all theseproducts come out and their
(08:17):
whole idea is like oh, you don'thave to refactor, you don't
have to replatform any of yourapplications, when they're
talking about shifting out ofthe data center.
Hasn't the move to cloud alwaysbeen about replatforming and
refactoring for optimizations?
This doesn't feel like a longterm solution to me, for for any
(08:37):
of those customers, unlessyou're trying to just figure out
an interim solution to get awayfrom Broadcom or you know,
you're you, maybe, maybe you'reyou know an IC and you're just,
you know, satisfying your CEO'sdesire to move to cloud when you
know it's going to come rightback eventually.
But it's like I don't know, um,satisfying your CEO's desire to
move to cloud when you knowit's going to come right back
eventually.
Um, but it's like I don't knowit's.
(08:58):
It's weird to have everythingelse have this messaging.
And then, when it comes to theVMware stack, it's like, oh,
that's exactly the same, youdon't have to change anything.
Um, it'll run exactly how it iswhen, uh, and then when you
look at the pricing, maybe thatexplains why it runs exactly as
it is.
But yeah, I don't know,interesting announcement, but,
like I said, kind of brings themup to par with what's in the
(09:22):
existing Azure and GCPenvironments as well.
So not surprising, I believeright now it's only running in
certain regions, so US East One,a couple regions in Europe and
Asia Pacific and Tokyo as well.
So I imagine we'll see moreannouncement coming in from that
.
But what about you, tim,anything to add?
Tim (09:42):
Yeah, there's not much to say here.
I mean, I think VMware, cloudFoundations, pretty much, is the
same.
It's really just like here'sAmazon owning the service
instead of VMware owning theservice, basically, but you can
even use your VCF licensing forthis.
It's definitely a stop gap forpeople that want to move away
(10:02):
from Broadcom but can't, forwhatever reason, or won't move
away from VMware.
So that's that's.
Yeah, I think this this is atemporary.
I mean, there's a lot of money,there's a lot of money to be
made in a temporary measure.
Still, like, they know, theyknow their customers right.
They know that the customersdon't want to replatform that,
or they can't or they won't orwhatever.
That is Right.
(10:22):
There's money to be made inlegacy and there will be
probably forever money to bemade in legacy, if we're being
honest.
And so AWS is just like yeah,okay, you want to keep running
like this, I mean, we'll takeyour money.
That's fine, please, by allmeans.
So, yeah, not much else to saythere.
It's literally just a moneygrab and that's fine.
(10:43):
And people that want to keeprunning VMware or just find that
it costs less money to pay tonsof money to keep running VMware
over replatforming Becausereplatforming and refactoring is
extremely expensive Likeextremely expensive Millions and
millions of dollars overreplatforming Because
replatforming and refactoring isextremely expensive.
Like extremely expensiveMillions and millions of dollars
.
To replatform and refactor, noquestion, right?
Also, just the time, the timeand opportunity costs is often
(11:06):
what really hurts people, right?
They'd rather just start fromscratch than try to replatform
or refactor.
So, yeah, I mean, it'sliterally just kicking can down
the road and paying money to doso.
So, yeah, all right.
So next we have one from Network.
We have an article from NetworkWorld which is kind of an
opinion piece.
There's a little bit of a nokidding aspect to it.
(11:29):
But SD-WAN reality check whyenterprise rip and replace isn't
happening.
So the article basically pointsout that you know, hey, uh,
sd-wan is ubiquitous now, likeeverybody's got pretty much most
enterprises you know, haveadopted some kind of SD-WAN
whatever, whatever vendor thatlooks like, whatever uh
deployment that looks likethey're using it.
Um, but there's still lots ofuh enterprises out there that
(11:53):
that won't rip the whole thingout and replace it with SD-WAN.
I'll be honest with you.
I read this article and Iscratched my head a little bit
because it was like you know thenumber of enterprises that will
do a full rip and replace isstill very low.
And I'm thinking, well, yeah,like anybody who knows network
infrastructure should be able tounderstand that right, like
(12:15):
I've never met an enterprisethat was like.
You know, what would make thiswhole thing even better is if we
just changed it all all at once.
You know, it's never happened.
So it's kind of a weird article.
It goes over some other stuff.
It talks about how they'rebuilding, you know, putting AI,
more AI features into SD-WANAlthough the list of features
(12:36):
that they mentioned as becomingAI enabled also has me
scratching my head a little bitThings like self-healing and
path optimization and, you know,failover, automatic failover.
Then I'm like scratching myhead because I'm thinking these
you know, when I worked at Ciscoalmost three and a half four
years ago, this already happened, like we didn't.
(12:58):
That was already baked intoViptela, for example.
When we've acquired Viptela,there was no AI involved at that
point.
So, yeah, I don't know, I dothink AI can make these things
better, like kind of like theassurance angle, if you will,
from Cisco has wireless andwired assurance.
It's that kind of angle.
I think that definitely, it canonly be good to use data to
(13:22):
predict future data.
But yeah, that still remains tobe seen.
Kind of a little bit of an oddarticle, actually.
I think that's why I wanted tobring it up.
Chris (13:34):
Yeah, I think this kind of speaks to kind of the generic
term that AI really is right.
Like you said, this idea ofself-healing, this idea of
classifying traffic and doingdynamic path selection and
optimization has always beenkind of baked into SD-WAN Well,
(13:58):
not always, but it definitelyhas in the last, you know,
probably four or five years, butit was never kind of marketed
to the general public as AI, asan AI-based feature, when, at
the end of the day I mean whenyou break it down there probably
is some type of AI or ML that'sbeing put into place to kind of
classify what applications arewhat and force that on the box.
(14:22):
I don't know if any of this isreally happening on box per se,
the AI capabilities of it, or ifthat's done from some central
point and then basically pusheddown to be enforced at that
level, um, which makes sense.
So I don't, I don't know if,like this article, like you said
, it's interesting because itkind of totes it as like oh, it
(14:42):
actually fell short of beingable to do this and I was like I
don't, I don't know if this wasever marketed as an ai type
thing.
Like I think ai has come intothe purview and kind of changed
our, our idea of what some ofthese things should be.
You know like path selectionand and and um, self-healing I
guess, so to say, but like ifanyone knows network protocols
(15:04):
and how you can monitor thisstuff, like it's all standards
based stuff down once you getdown to it.
Right, there's only, there'sonly ways, there's only so many
ways to skin this cat.
And, like you said, you knowabout calling out it being
surprising that not everythingis getting ripped and replaced.
I think we can all on, like youknow, within 30 seconds we can
sit and think of probably two tothree scenarios where SD-WAN
(15:26):
isn't going to solve a specificproblem at a specific site.
Right, it's not the end-all,be-all solution that fixes
everything.
Tim (15:34):
So it really it's a bit of a head scratcher.
Yeah or panacea.
Is it panacea or panacea?
Chris (15:40):
Panacea, panacea, right yeah.
Tim (15:42):
Yeah, okay.
Chris (15:44):
Okay, next up, we have an article here, I believe from
STX Central, about Wizz exposeszombie hosts on its own host,
which is Google.
So, as we all know, I thoughtthis one was quite interesting.
So, as we all know, you know,google is in the process of
acquiring Wizz for severalbillion dollars and there
(16:08):
apparently has been somethingdiscovered by Wizz on several
pages that were deployed usingGoogle Sites where, basically,
these zombie hosts were set up,which is basically a an exploit
called SoCo 404.
(16:29):
Obviously, the websites have akind of default 404 error page
that needs to be storedsomewhere, and if someone goes
to the wrong page on a website,the 404 not found will be
displayed to them.
But apparently this exploitinvolves those HTML pages
including malicious code for thepurpose of mining
(16:51):
cryptocurrency and churning CPUcapacity for the purpose of that
as well.
So it was funny that Wizactually was being brought in
and discovered all of this stuff, and Google has since taken it
down.
But, you know, I just want tocall this out because it's nice
to see Google making use of itsnew product, I guess, but I just
(17:14):
thought this one was kind offunny.
Tim (17:16):
Yeah, it's um, I mean, at least you know whiz is doing its
job.
This is, this is interesting,right, because it's like they're
.
They're sites that are madewith google sites, and so I
think the 404 site was probablyintended to be like automatic or
like not just kind of aplaceholder, right, and so yeah
somehow they were able toexploit this in a way where they
(17:38):
could replace the code on these404 pages with.
You know, hey, when your browserrenders this, this 404 page, it
triggers some kind of malware,download or injection or
something.
I don't know.
It's not, it's not clear fromthe, from the article, but uh,
my guess is that it would haveto.
You know, essentially try toautomatically download something
and then and then run it onyour computer.
Chris (18:00):
It's weird because I think, like if I imagine I've
never used Google sites, but Iimagine that you use some type
of kind of builder, um, that youcan use to to to write like a
website.
Exactly so.
I imagine that the 404 is justsomething you can automatically
like, like I click a box and belike oh, here's my 404 page, or
something like.
It seems like this would havebeen injected by google like,
(18:21):
not by the user, like almostlike a uh almost like a supply
chain type attack you know whatI mean, like it would have been
in by the vendor, that's that'sdoing that for you, unless
there's like a marketplace wheremaybe someone could just say
like, oh, give me the, uh, giveme this, this layout, and it
includes this 404 page or whathave you.
So it's kind of like I don'tthink they really touch on
(18:41):
exactly how this got in there,but it is, um, it is quite
strange and it makes me wonderhow that happened yeah, yeah, an
exploit using misconfiguredcloud services to plant crypto
mining malware.
Tim (18:54):
Pages 404 html pages hosted on websites built using google
sites act as zombie hosts to themalware yeah, secretly
containing encoded files thatinstall the crypto miner.
Chris (19:05):
So like, yeah, like, how did that?
Maybe, maybe google sitesdoesn't offer that.
Maybe it's not something thatis as seamless as that, but yeah
, it's really.
Tim (19:16):
Or maybe these sites were exploited and then had this
malware put after the site wasexploited.
Chris (19:22):
They could just do whatever they want, right.
Tim (19:23):
Maybe they could just put it in there.
Maybe it's not yeah, thearticle is not 100% clear on
this, but it's an interestinguse of Wiz to find this, so at
least you know it works right.
Chris (19:35):
Yeah.
Tim (19:38):
Okay, and let's go ahead and finish off with something
that actually just dropped todayand will be old news by the
time this posts.
In two days Megaport hasannounced that the Megaport
Cloud Router now supports IPsectunnels.
So this is a big one, becausefor the longest time, megaport
Cloud Router and of course,megaport Cloud Router is their
own self-hosted, like you know,marketplace uh item that, um, it
(20:02):
uses uh sorry, I just got anotification that just bounced
me out so it uses theirmarketplace, but it's, it's
their kind of own hosted, uh,white label routing uh software,
and so for the longest timethey didn't support ipsec on
this because it was kind of a,you know know, a minimal
offering, if you will like, a,just a basic router that does
(20:24):
BGP and GRE tunnels and stuff.
It didn't, it just couldn'tsupport IPsec, you know the
crypto stuff.
So apparently now it does, andso what this means, of course,
is that now, anything you couldhave done with a cloud router in
Megaport, you can now do withthe Megaport cloud router so you
can have, you know, end-to-endencryption through the Megaport
fabric, connect your edgedirectly from you know, using
(20:47):
IPSec.
You wouldn't have to, youwouldn't have to connect to, you
wouldn't have to host your ownCisco router or any other kind
of router in Megaport and thenconnect your on-prem devices,
whatever those might be, to thatright.
You could just directly connectto a Megaport cloud router.
So I mean it's a huge, hugeupgrade for Megaport and I know
(21:08):
a lot of customers were lookingfor this kind of functionality
and, yeah, just a huge win.
The press release, the blog,rather goes on to point out
other things like here's all theother things that MCR can do.
For example, it says you knowwe can get up to 100 gigabytes,
gigs gbps if you will ofbandwidth on our MCR.
Of course my expectation isthat that is not encrypted at
(21:34):
100 gig, but you know, but yeah,just the ability that now they
have they support IPsec and youcan do it straight on the cloud
router Just brings a huge amountof benefit to Megaport hosting.
Chris (21:45):
Yeah, agreed, I think you know, like you said, mcr or
Megaport cloud router is.
We commonly just see it deployedin capacity where you know,
like you said, it's essentiallya white labeled service that
Megap Report offers to give youa routing construct within their
fabric and you can use that formulti-cloud connectivity,
(22:06):
hybrid connectivity, what haveyou?
And now, with this addition ofit running IPsec, you know, and
also, I believe, every MCR thatyou deploy, it automatically
gets or is able to have verycompetitively priced internet
connectivity as well, right,compared to the cloud providers.
So, if we're talking aboutremote headquarters or remote
(22:28):
branch to cloud connectivity,now you can do this over the
internet with IPsec, which isprobably quite a beneficial
thing for, like you said, somecustomers that are paying heaps
of internet egress costs in thecloud for those exact same
services.
So I could see this being apretty substantial thing for
(22:50):
Megaport.
Now, like you said, megaport isvery open about this and you
know, oftentimes when theylaunch a service, like when they
launched the Megaport,basically when they launched MCR
I remember it was commonlyreferred to as my first router.
Like they very much talk aboutit.
How, like, hey, this isn'tgoing to have every bell and
(23:14):
whistle, this doesn't have everynerd knob, it has very basic
functionality and our focus ispurely on simplicity.
We want it to be so simple andso easy to deploy and I imagine
this is going to fall right intothat.
And you know like, hey, if I'mgoing to build a connection,
this is going to be an IPsectunnel to remote site.
It's probably going to, youknow, support, the bare bones
(23:35):
stuff, to make sure that this issimple and secure and for a lot
of customers, that might bewhat they need.
For customers that need more,they have another offering right
.
They have the Megaport, virtualEdge, where you can host your
own platform as well.
So I think it does add quite abit to their portfolio.
So I think this is a great move.
Tim (23:54):
Yeah, for sure, and I mean honestly, the way Megaport works
is it's all point to point, soit fits perfectly with IPsec.
The way you connect Megaportdevices together, the fabric
together, the endpoints,wherever you're hosted, it's all
point to point connectivitythrough there.
So it works perfectly with theidea of just encrypting it with
(24:15):
IPsec.
Basically, so, yeah, great moveby Megaport, okay, and that, I
think, wraps us up for thismonth.
We'll be back next month witheven more exciting news.
Hopefully, nothing too excitinghappens between now and then.
But thanks for sticking with usand hanging out and enjoying
the news and we'll see you nexttime.
(24:37):
See you next time.
See you guys.
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