Resource Library

Whether you are operating a home system, overseeing a small startup, or performing security governance for an enterprise, everyone can benefit from paying attention to security. This white paper provides a list of 10 security tools and tests that will help you check out suspicious issues and keep ahead of new risks and threats.

The flexibility, reduced cost, and mobility of cloud computing have made the concept a hot topic. Before implementing this method of computing, however, it is important to consider the security of the "cloud." In this white paper, you will learn some of the risks and benefits of cloud computing to be sure it is the right solution for you.

Security is complicated, which has led to the many misconceptions and misunderstandings about security. By paying attention to these 10 concerns that security experts want you to know, you can gain knowledge and understanding about security and be securer both at work and in your personal life.

The cloud revolution is truly a revolution - the way we work, learn and even play is very different now than it was just 10 or 15 years and will probably be a lot more different in 10 or 15 years. With this in mind, let's look at 10 ways the cloud will (and to a large degree already has) changed the world.

Many security breaches over the last year have taught us new lessons (or clarified ones we should have already learned). This paper reviews these key issues and focuses attention on 10 responses that we all need to adopt in our approach to security in 2015.

Private networks are under constant threat of attack, even when steps have been taken to "secure" them. The large volume of malicious codes, and their ability to evolve and adapt, requires security professionals and common computer/internet users alike to be mindful of their actions and constantly play defense. This white paper focuses on 10 common ways that malicious code can penetrate a network. Knowledge of these methods and the ability to recognize them are the first steps in preventing them from succeeding in harming your network.

Organizations can find significant value in adopting Agile methodologies and techniques. Agile practices can help ensure meet customer expectations, deliver products on time, and create a motivated environment that is able to quickly adapt to change. This white paper explores 12 benefits of Agile development and management, explaining why you should consider incorporating Agile methodologies into your current standards and processes.

IT departments have multiple opportunities and challenges as a result of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) invasion. The most common opportunity is to reinforce enterprise network security from both the inside and the outside. Supporting BYOD also offers more monitoring and tracking of activities that provide a more detailed view of network traffic flow. Alternatively, it will be a challenge for some IT departments to give up control over which devices may access their enterprise network. Another challenge will be to have the users doing configurations for network access, which adds human error to a crucial part of the process. The opportunities and challenges BYOD represents are real. Enterprises must make their network infrastructure BYOD ready to meet the onslaught.

This guide provides an overview of the Security+ certification, including who the certification is for, how to earn and maintain it, the positive impact that it will have on your career, and options for advancement following your Security+ certification.

This Certification Prep Guide provides an overview of the current Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification and offers helpful tips that you can use when preparing for your PMP certification exam.

This Certification Prep Guide provides an overview of the current Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect certification and offers helpful tips that you can use when preparing for your GCP certification exam.

This Certification Prep Guide provides an overview of the current Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect certification and offers helpful tips that you can use when preparing for your GCP certification exam.

This Certification Prep Guide provides an overview of the current Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Certified Data Engineer certification and offers helpful tips that you can use when preparing for your GCP certification exam.

This Certification Prep Guide provides an overview of the current MCSE: Cloud Platform and Infrastructure certification and offers helpful tips that you can use when preparing for your MCSE certification exam.

This Certification Prep Guide provides an overview of the current AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certification and offers helpful tips that you can use when preparing for your AWS Architect certification exam.

This Certification Prep Guide provides an overview of the current CompTIA Cloud+ certification and offers helpful tips that you can use when preparing for your CompTIA Cloud+ certification exam.

When a decision matters, there are certain steps you will want to follow. In this white paper, we provide guidelines for approaching decisions. The steps in this white paper are a series of interconnected techniques used in problem analysis and decision making.

Nearly every WebSphere administrator has desired a deeper understanding of how passwords are created, used, stored, and encrypted. Learn about the different types of passwords used inside of the WebSphere Application Server and the recovery plans to help restore your server when passwords go awry.

Managing the change of DataStage components can often become a test of wills. Picture fitting a square peg in a round hole, and you might start to get the idea. The complexity of what is required to promote components from one environment to another during the development, testing, and eventual implementation in the production environments, should be and is often a controlled activity.

The process of subnetting is both a mathematical process and a network design process. Mathematics drives how subnets are calculated, identified, and assigned. The network design and requirements of the organization drive how many subnets are needed and how many hosts an individual subnet needs to support. Binary basics and IPv4 address structure were covered in part one of this two-part paper.

How can organizations in diverse industries continue to use familiar waterfall practices and at the same time be more agile? The answer is to use program management that is designed to be agile.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) created a cloud definition that has been well-accepted across the IT industry. NIST was mandated to assist government agencies to adopt cloud computing for their IT operations. As part of their mandate, NIST created multiple working groups to define cloud computing, its architecture, and requirements. In this paper we explore the center core of NIST's cloud definition.

The amount of data being produced does not seem to show any sign of slowing; if anything, it may in fact be exceeding projected growth rates. As these absolute limitations on raw hardware capacity begin to be felt, the importance of looking at all of the aspects of a computing infrastructure in order to tackle the future's truly large-scale computing demands, is imperative. This white paper examines how IBM's initiatives like Linux, Cloud Manager with OpenStack and the OpenPower Foundation IBM are meeting this challenge.

Resource management is always an issue in any project, especially when the stakeholders from whom we need time have operational duties to perform.  If our requirements team was at our disposal 100 percent, always completed activities on target, and worked a full eight hour day without distraction or a loss of productivity, then estimating time would be simple. In this paper, we explore standard approaches to time estimation, the dangers of multi-tasking, and estimation alternatives, which consider work habits and productivity norms.

This paper proposes a unifying model for project plans. A distinction will be made between the outputs of project planning and the project plan itself. The significance of this distinction is to allow projects of all types to be described at a high level, in a common language, regardless of the type of analysis used to develop the plan.

Learn the ITIL® concepts of accountability, boundaries, and consistency (the ABCs) and discover how ITIL helps establish, manage, and maintain the ABCs.

Getting a clear understanding of what Amazon Web Services (AWS) is and how it can help your business can be a daunting task. The depth and breadth of AWS is significant, comprising over 100 services in dozens of data centers located in 16 Regions throughout the globe (with five more in the works). They offer computing, storage, networking, deployment, management, and a host of "supporting" services like queues, serverless functions, and e-mail. There's a great chance that AWS has more than a few products to help you work faster, smarter, and more cost effectively. So, where should you start?

Amazon Redshift opens up enterprise data warehouse (EDW) capabilities to even the smallest of businesses, yet its costs, security, and flexibility also make it appealing to the largest of enterprises. It allows companies to easily and conveniently scale their EDW needs both up and down, and as a managed service, it allows your team to offload all of the "undifferentiated heavy lifting" of building and maintaining an EDW. Its raw storage costs are about one-fifth to one-tenth of traditional in-house EDW, and AWS has taken great care to ensure its performance is still competitive with those in-house solutions. Before deciding to use Amazon Redshift, however, it's important to understand what it is and is not.

AWS is an incredibly rich ecosystem of services and tools, some of which have security aspects baked in (like S3 SSE), and others that provide overarching security capabilities (like IAM and VPC) that apply to many services. With regard to data storage, operating system, and applications, security functions largely the same in the cloud or on-premises software. Customers can and should continue to follow best practices that have served them well in their own data centers.

The Global Knowledge IT Skills and Salary Report is a window into the inner workings of IT departments, revealing insights and opinions held by professionals around the world. For 10 years, we have surveyed over 120,000 men and women in IT about the state of the industry. With a decade of data at our fingertips, we analyzed 10 years’ worth of reports and noticed four major trending areas: certifications, salaries, cloud computing and cybersecurity. 

The tools described in this white paper are essential PM tools. Tools that will best be used, regardless of the project, are the WBS, communication model, and the precedence diagram. The other tools will be needed depending on the project.

With Microsoft SQL Server 2016, you can distribute your data to the cloud using the Stretch Database feature to improve local access while allowing cloud access to large amounts of historical data. You can also provide transparent end-to-end security using Always Encrypted technology and track changes automatically through temporal data. Download this white paper to learn why these features and more make SQL Server 2016 Microsoft's most important release to date.

This white paper explores the native AWS storage solutions, enabling you to deliver applications in the cloud in the most efficient, cost-effective, and secure manner. In terms of storage, it's important to understand the characteristics of each AWS storage option so that you can implement one or more AWS storage services to meet your needs. Often, you'll find that utilizing multiple storage options together will give you the best outcomes.

The process of learning how to subnet IP addresses begins with understanding binary numbers and decimal conversions along with the basic structure of IPv4 addresses. This paper focuses on the mathematics of binary numbering and IP address structure.

IT organizations are increasingly being held accountable to bring digital value to the business and participate as a strategic partner. To this end, IT organizations must ensure they have the right skills at the right time to support the strategic direction of the business and contribute overall ROI. Deploying an IT skills framework provides an opportunity for IT organizations to determine their level of readiness by identifying where skill gaps exist.

The benefits of a RADIUS server are many. In addition to speed, you receive heightened security with user access monitoring, reporting and tracking functions and personalized restrictions. Setting it up costs less than $60 and this white paper walks you through each of the steps, settings, configurations and the equipment you will need.

What path you decide to take to earn your Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) Routing and Switching certification will depend on a number of factors including your availability, willingness to work long hours and your ability to absorb a lot of information in a short period of time. This white paper includes self-assessments and training recommendations to help you figure out if taking the CCNAX Routing and Switching Boot Camp or taking two separate ICND1 and ICND2 courses is the best fit for you.

On February 17, 2015, Cisco announced changes to the existing voice and video certifications and detailed the new collaboration certification portfolio. This white paper provides an overview of the changes to Cisco certifications with respect to voice and video, outlining dates, and deadlines that may affect your certification process.

Your clients, vendors and workforce don't always operate in the same building, state or country. Cisco Collaboration Endpoint products make communicating with your counterparts across town or on the other side of the world easy. This white paper provides you with product specifications and capabilities for Cisco's phone, desktop, and large screen immersive videoconferencing options.

Security attacks have become more advanced; therefore, security solutions have needed to evolve to deal with those threats. Cisco's acquisition of Sourcefire brings a new paradigm to the security landscape. No longer is security a one-time, instantaneous event. Security now is threat based, network cognizant, and continuous. All organizations, public and private, need to be aware not only of the constantly changing threat environment, but must be prepared to respond in kind.

Learn how Cisco FabricPath combines the benefits of Layer 2 Switching and Layer 3 Routing, allowing for the scalability and flexibility of Layer 2 while supporting traditional Layer 3 components such as optimal paths, equal cost multipath routing and a Time to Live (TTL) field.

Need to control the digits contained in the telephone number that enter or leave a gateway? Digit manipulation involves adding, subtracting, and changing telephone numbers. You can manipulate calling numbers, called numbers, and redirecting numbers, as well as the numbering plan and ISDN number type. Learn about the techniques that are applied to incoming or outgoing calls, or globally to all calls. You can also manipulate telephone numbers before or after a dial peer is matched.

This paper explains uplink strategies for traffic coming in and out of a Cisco Unified Computing Solution (UCS) chassis. An uplink can be Ethernet, Fibre Channel, or FCoE and is a physical connection on the FI that leaves the UCS domain directed away from the B Chassis.

The Cisco Unified Collaboration solutions offer anytime, anywhere access for organizations who need instant access to clients, vendors and remote employees. Cisco products enable authorized external users to connect to corporate resources, create different user groups and manage large scale deployments. Learn how Cisco Unified Collaboration infrastructure products can help you provide everything from call control which provides signaling and dial plan support to the expressway series providing firewall traversal for external access.

The traditional network engineering model of configuring one device at a time simply doesn’t scale to the growing needs of today’s network. Cisco's intent-based networks and software-defined networking solutions will enable your organization to meet the demands of network programmability and automation. The result will be greater network agility to support new applications while complying with increasing security needs.

The updated version of the CISSP exam was released on May 1, 2021. The new version now includes a significant number of new topics.

The definition of cloud computing depends largely on whether you are a consumer or producer. The public cloud is geared more for the individual consumer or small company, while the private cloud is geared more for a medium-to-large company. In addition, the private cloud is branching out to incorporate the ability to have some data and applications serviced from the public cloud. This white paper examines the different types of cloud computing and shows what cloud computing can offer you.

Cisco Collaboration Systems Release (CSR) 10.6, along with CUCM 10.5(2), enhances the user and administrator experiences and interactions. In many cases, a change to one product may necessitate changes to other products. For example, where the deployment options for video conference control changed to place all control behind the Telepresence Conductor, Cisco Prime Collaboration management tools had to be updated to reflect this new deployment approach. As new endpoints are added, CUCM and Prime Collaboration both needed to be updated to reflect the new endpoints.

What quality did the most influential leaders throughout history, such as Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher, all have in common? They were some of the greatest orators the world has ever known. Their communication skills were the tools with which they built up nations with strong foundations. They taught us that the most fundamental factor of success is without a doubt communication, and that strong communication is the pathway to strong leadership. Here you will find a breakdown of what makes an effective communicator and how you too can develop your leadership skills through communication.

Structuring techniques are the foundation of decision making. They are to decision making what blueprints are to construction. There are a number of techniques that will quickly and easily improve the analysis of virtually any problem. This paper introduces some of the simplest and most effective structuring techniques including sorting, sequencing, placement, decision trees, and ranking.  

If you have been working with vSphere 5.1 or 5.5 lately, you have undoubtedly noticed that the latest features such as XvMotion and vSphere Replication are only available on the Web Client. This cheat sheet for the new Web Client includes instructions for configuring VMs, networking, storage, resource settings, cluster settings, permissions, and many other settings.

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) can become a fairly complex environment and deployment, as it involves multiple components that all need to work together smoothly. Understanding the theory of how it all works will help in building a solid foundation for this complex technology in your organization. Although there is always something new to learn in PKI, this white paper gives you a great overview of the core configuration of your Microsoft CAs.

This paper covers the configuration of IP Multicast with Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) including the basics of Multicast with the Group Encrypted Transport VPN (GETVPN).

In the spring of 2013, Cisco announced major updates to their Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) curricula, including a new version of the CCNA Routing and Switching exam (200-120 CCNA). This paper provides a review of the CCNA Routing and Switching exam's critical concepts, as an aid to students preparing to pass the latest version of the CCNA Routing and Switching exam.

Discover the ways in which cybercrime occurs in three realms: individual, business, and governmental. Learn what you can do to protect yourself and your organization.

This cybersecurity white paper explores the origins and motivations of cyberwarfare, and provides actions you can take in response.

Experts agree that as long as there is data, there will be people trying to steal it. For every defense mechanism put in place, there is someone who will find a way to get around it. Constant vigilance, education of the workforce, and management support are all necessary to implement effective security policies. While a well-trained IT staff is key to protecting data, all employees must understand the importance of protecting company assets, including data.

IBM WebSphere Business Modeler (WBM) can be used in conjunction with an adoption of ITIL best practices. It is a full-featured process modeling and simulation tool that fits well with other IBM products that are used to define various service management processes and activities. In this white paper learn more about how WBM provides both the ability to visually define process activities and the ability to define detailed information about processes, including inputs, outputs, cost, revenue, roles and resources.

In numerous Cisco classes, students learn about IPv4 and IPv6 address subnetting, complex subnetting, variable length subnet masking (VLSM), summarization, prefix routing, and address aggregation. These are valuable skills. In order to apply these skills efficiently, a network designer should possess one additional skill. Planning the IP address space for a Class A or B IPv4 address is necessary to apply the complex skills listed above properly. Complex subnetting, VLSM, and IP address summarization can be implemented simply and efficiently with proper planning.

Building upon the IT best practices of Lean, Agile Scrum and IT Service Management, DevOps adds that “missing” layer to tie together the service lifecycle workflow across Development and Operations, while leveraging the latest in automation technology. Demand for skilled, open-minded, and collaborative professionals with DevOps knowledge is rapidly increasing. Are you ready for change?    

A Dynamic Multipoint Virtual Private Network (DMVPN) can be used with other networks like Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), but streaming multicast is accomplished quite well using "Default" and "Data" Multicast Distribution Trees (MDTs) with MPLS.

This white paper addresses four different components of the Tivoli monitoring infrastructure for creating a high availability environment while providing redundancy and failover capacity. Although the principles are the same for each of these systems, the methods for adhering to these principles are different for each of them.

By using and implementing a many-to-many relationship in a cube, existing tables with user account information can be used directly to secure cube contents, rather than converting to role based security in the cube. You can also secure your analysis services more easily and access sensitive information contained within it.

Advancing your knowledge of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud can be life-changing.

Discover the ways in which VMware's new vSphere 6.0 is more powerful, more manageable, more secure, and more flexible than any previous release of vSphere.

Virtual storage area network (VSAN) and VMware View can offer cost savings and performance benefits compared to traditional SAN implementations for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). If you are starting a new desktop virtualization project, it would be wise for you to take the time to explore your options and compare VSAN to other options.

Here are some secrets, tips, and tricks for virtualizing your datacenter. We want to introduce some best practices for virtualization, while not being too biased towards one virtualization vendor or another. We'll use some common examples of products and tools that work with VMware's vSphere and Microsoft's Hyper-V, but with an eye toward virtualization in general, and not the specifics of any of the capable platforms that could be used). We will assume, however, that bare metal hypervisors, in other words virtualization platforms where the hyper visor is the OS, will be used as opposed to running a hypervisor on top of an existing general-purpose operating system (which is great in a lab, but terrible for data center projects).

These five "secrets" to virtualizing desktops will greatly increase the chance of a successfully VDI implementation. It is very important to plan for this; to balance the hardware environment to handle not just average but peak load; to properly size storage, not just for capacity, but for performance as well; to minimize the number of base images so that the costs of maintaining each can also be minimized; and to accept and embrace the fact that people will connect with a wide variety of devices, and to create a plan to accommodate as many of these devices as is feasible at the lowest cost.

Mobile payment systems have solid promise to become the dominant means of financial transactions, but there are some hurdles to overcome. Apple Pay might be the dominant force today, but Google Wallet and others are not far behind. The year 2014 was when digital and mobile payment systems became known to a wide range of the general population, while only techno-enthusiasts were aware of the options in the four to five years prior. Thus, mobile payment systems are not new, but customers and merchants are quickly adopting them now that they have become popular. It still remains your responsibility to thoroughly research any mobile payment option before implementing it. It is your money and you have the burden of ensuring that it has the best protection possible.

Unless you know the meanings of the five symbols regularly used in PowerShell, they can obscure the purpose and actions of a PowerShell script. There will always be new cmdlets to decipher. Each new operating system release and application version will include new and useful cmdlets along with new parameters for existing cmdlets. You can't memorize them all, but with the basic knowledge of these particular symbols, you should be well equipped to follow the logic of many scripts.

Discover how Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) will revolutionize IT and change the way you think about network connectivity and perhaps even application development. This white paper is written for networking professionals but it may offer valuable insight for those in cross-functional roles such as DevOps, server virtualization, and data center management.

A local area network (LAN) provides a path of communication, allowing the delivery of packets of data, voice, or video originating from the sender (logical source address) to the receiver (logical destination address). Ethernet is the most common LAN used. As you start to learn about networking, remember that communication and the movement of large numbers, whether it is people, cars, mail, or network traffic, have a commonality. Everything you know and use in your daily life can be compared to the way traffic moves.

The OSI model is a conceptual tool used to discuss and describe network functions. The use of a standard reference model is essential to communicate ideas as well as create new technologies. It is a good idea to be familiar with the OSI model, the features assigned to each layer, and examples of common protocols or technologies associated with the OSI layers.

Securing corporate information can be a challenge, considering the numerous technologies and platforms that need to be protected. One technology that definitely helps achieve secure data is public key infrastructure (PKI), which enhances the security of data by using advanced access methods and making sure the authenticity of the data flow is preserved.

5,700+ of your peers completed the survey. Gain access to Skillsoft’s IT Skills and Salary Report to see the results.

PowerShell is the perfect tool for capturing the best practices that your IT staff already implements manually, and transforms that with scripting. It provides the ability to cross-reference information from a variety of different sources, and apply custom solutions that marshal your unique resources to solve the problems you face. The tool is easy to learn, included for free with all your Windows OSs, and provides enormously rich possibilities to grow skills over time.

IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager (ITEM) is a product designed to let enterprises automatically manage computers, allowing thousands of them to be managed by just a few support staff. With ITEM, tasks such as patch application, software distribution, and security policy enforcement can be performed on all of an organization's computers with minimal supervision.

This certification and exam guide discusses the various ITIL® certifications and what they might mean to you, your organization, and your career, as well as provide important test-taking tips for the ITIL certification exams. ITIL certifications help individuals validate their ability to demonstrate skills from a foundational to a mastery level of IT service management. ITIL certification can often be a key differentiator in the marketplace as well.

Cisco Unified Computing Solution (UCS) is a very popular and powerful solution. Cisco continues to provide updated UCS management options for the full range of data center installations.

Creativity is the “due diligence” of effective problem analysis. It is through creativity that the best possible solution for a problem is discovered. Without creativity, decisions are often one-dimensional, superficial, and near-sighted.