The magazine for network and data centre professionals September/October 2023 EUROPE NETWORKS HPC IN THE CLOUD UNCOVERING ENCRYPTED THREATS The digitalisation of manufacturing – a security nightmare? What to look for when replacing an uninterruptible power supply Network security for hybrid work IN THIS ISSUE:06 EXA live in Namex Bari, boosting connectivity in southern Italy 06 Proximity Data Centres acquired by nLighten 07 Nearly two in three UK companies have lost data due to failed backups 07 MLL’s strategic alliance with SENSEi Networks 08 Boosting innovation in experimental technologies 08 Stone awarded a leading position on Crown Commercial Service’s Network Services 3 framework 09 A new ‘building block’ for fibre cabling to speed up UK roll-out 09 Lunar Digital partners with Zayo Group to accelerate enterprise digital transformation 10 Versa Networks and Infinigate partner to bring unified SASE to EMEA enterprises 10 PRPL Summit 2023 11 Savox Communications launches IMPW, wireless intercom system for critical missions 11 Boosting innovation in experimental technologies Surrey Technology Centre Surrey Research Park 40 Occam Road Guildford, GU2 7YG www.networkseuropemagazine.com Published by: Abacus Communications Limited Publisher: Greg Ward Editor: Hazel Davis The views expressed in the articles and technical papers are those of the authors and are not endorsed by the publishers. 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Please submit to editor@networkseuropemagazine.com including high resolution (300dpi+ CMYK) images. 071309 NEWS IN BRIEF Procimity Data Centres acquired by nLighten EUROPE NETWORKS CONTENTS 0213 Data loss prevention – the vanguard in the data security battle Time to adopt a DLP approach? 16 Enabling organisations to enter new markets with confidence Addressing the connectivity challenges of global growth 21 HPC in the Cloud Bitter pill or soothing remedy? 24 Embracing the cloud Why it remains a business priority 28 Five pillars of data centre sustainability Committing to long-term measures 31 The digitalisation of manufacturing – a security nightmare? Dealing with increased cyber-risks 34 Redefining network security for hybrid work The merger of Zero Trust and Software-Defined LAN 38 What to look for when replacing an uninterruptible power supply How to best ensure business continuity 40 Choosing the right solutions for the last mile and harsh environments Choosing the right fibre optic cables is crucial 42 Uncovering the encrypted threats flowing through your data centre Gaining oversight into suspicious traffic 46 Minimising disruptions in the digital ecosystem Threats are interconnected 50 The symbiotic relationship between VoIP telephones and network performance The network conditions affecting VoIP traffic 205028 FEATURES CONTENTS 03Masterclasses | Insights | Case studies Networking | Tools | Solutions The UK’s leading show for project, programme, portfolio, PMO and change management Register free today > Etihad Stadium, Manchester 12 October 2023Welcome to the latest issue of Networks Europe. Our focus here is on cybersecurity and, to that end, we’re hearing from experts on how data loss prevention is crucial in the data security battle, whether HPC should be in the Cloud and how to uncover the encrypted threats flowing through your data centre. Encryption has long been used for security purposes but it can also pose a threat, Gigamon’s Mark Jow explains. Despite network visibility being a known security priority, Gigamon research has found that less than half of organisations have insight into data moving laterally across their networks. Elsewhere, we speak to Experero about the shift in focus of CIOs. Research uncovers a shift from CIOs being predominantly technology stewards to becoming strategic enablers of business growth. Global expansion is no longer about opening new offices, it’s also about addressing connectivity issues and upskilling accordingly. As ever, we welcome your contributions as well as feedback on what we should be covering more (or less!) of. Please email me on editor@ networkseuropemagazine.com Hazel Davis Editor The magazine for network and data centre professionals September/October 2023 EUROPE NETWORKS HPC IN THE CLOUD UNCOVERING ENCRYPTED THREATS The digitalisation of manufacturing – a security nightmare? What to look for when replacing an uninterruptible power supply Network security for hybrid work IN THIS ISSUE: 05 FOREWORDProximity Data Centres has been acquired by nLighten. RBC Capital Markets acted as financial adviser to nLighten on the transaction. Proximity was advised by Houlihan Lokey. “Through organic growth and strategic acquisitions this year, nLighten has grown into a leading pan-European edge data centre platform with 26 data centres, 53MW of potential capacity and 130 employees,” said Mohamed El Gazzar, senior partner of I Squared Capital in London. “We are excited that nLighten has grown so quickly and established itself in the three largest data centre markets in Europe: Germany, France and the UK.” As a mature market with large economic regions that can benefit from more locally distributed data centres, the UK is a logical choice for nLighten’s expansion. Proximity’s network of high-performance data centres, strong reputation, agility and impressive track record of entering local markets, position the company well for capturing the increasing shift to the edge across the country. The regional distribution of Proximity’s data centres fits well within nLighten's strategy of integrating data centres into regional markets, and its high standards of sustainability align with nLighten, which aims to continuously reduce the environmental footprint of data centres. Proximity's ten data centres currently source 100% of their electricity from renewables, and the company intends to maintain that sourcing, even at full capacity. Given the evolving standards for data sovereignty in Europe, nLighten plans to keep the operational management of its data centres in the country and places great emphasis on their identification with the UK market. “The acquisition of Proximity brings us a big step closer to our goal of creating the leading pan-European edge data centre platform”, says Harro Beusker, co-founder and CEO of nLighten. “Proximity's edge data centres are a great fit for our portfolio, and the existing management team, staff and assets lay a solid foundation for our ambitions in the UK.” “Being part of the nLighten group of data centres will accelerate the expansion of our portfolio of new products and services tailored for the edge computing market,” commented John Hall, co-founder, and MD of Proximity. “We will also be able to provide a highly comprehensive solution to customers looking for a broad network of data centres across multiple European locations.” Proximity’s network of data centres, strong reputation, agility and track record of entering local markets, position them well for capturing the increasing shift to the edge across the country. NEWS IN BRIEF 06 EXA go live in Namex Bari, boosting connectivity in southern Italy EXA Infrastructure has announced it has been successfully connected to Namex Bari in the Puglia region of Southern Italy. Namex Bari will host EXA and its core business of submarine cables, enabling all active companies hosted in Namex Bari to have access to EXA’s network including the Trans Adriatic Express (TAE) - EXA’s new low-latency route between Italy, Albania, Greece and Turkey. Namex continues to strengthen the Italian internet ecosystem, benefiting local operators and content providers, further reinforcing the strategic position of Bari and the Puglia Region in the Italy as a new hub for digital infrastructure. “This strategic partnership with EXA Infrastructure brings invaluable benefits to our ISP communities, offering unprecedented access to a vast digital infrastructure network that will foster economic growth and open new horizons for businesses in the region and across the whole country,” Namex chief executive, Maurizio Goretti, said. “This activation affirms the new strategic role of Italy, demonstrating the importance of having a new low-latency route between Italy and the Balkans, particularly in areas close to the landing station of intercontinental connections, such as Bari. With TAE cable, both Namex Bari and Namex Rome are now closer to eastern Europe with new opportunities to develop as hubs in the centre of Mediterranean region.” “Digital infrastructure is the fuel for economic growth, innovation and connectivity across all sectors from gaming, streaming and financial services to governments, tech firms and more," EXA Infrastructure CCO, Nicholas Collins, said. "We are committed to unlocking opportunities for our customers and delighted to announce our partnership with Namex in Bari,” he added. Namex Bari facilitates the perfect exchange for a new era of connectivity into Italy from across Europe and beyond. The first Namex edge IXP was opened in 2021 and consisted of a consortium of internet operators based in Rome with more than 170 organisations in the ecosystem including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Netflix, as well as the main Italian operators and the regional ISPs. Proximity Data Centres acquired by nLightenNearly one third of security leaders admit to insufficiently robust backup processes according to research of security leaders. While the majority of UK companies have needed to recover data from a backup in the last year, the number who lost data in the process has increased. This is according to annual research of security leaders in large enterprises carried out by Apricorn, manufacturer of software-free, 256-bit AES XTS hardware- encrypted USB drives. Of the 90% of companies that had been forced to turn to their backup system, only 27% were able to recover all of their information and documents – a drop from 45% in 2022. Almost a third (32%) of the security decision makers surveyed attributed the unsuccessful recovery to a lack of robust backup processes, up from 2% in 2022. Meanwhile, 22% admitted “we don’t have sufficiently robust backups in place to allow rapid recovery from any attack” – a rise from 15% in 2022. The ability to quickly restore information following an incident is a critical factor in cyber resilience and the capacity to resume business activities following disruption. With a quarter (24%) of respondents stating that ransomware has been the main cause of a data breach at their organisation – an increase from 15% last year – this indicates a significant point of weakness. Backups play a vital role in maintaining business continuity in the wake of a ransomware attack that involves the theft or compromise of key data, enabling the business to restore quickly from a clean data set. Jon Fielding, Apricorn’s MD EMEA, said: “Fewer companies today are successfully restoring all of their backed up data than in 2022. This fall is paralleled by a rise in recognition that backup processes are inadequate. Having processes in place is probably less than half the battle. For a business to respond effectively to an incident that has disrupted critical data – whether that’s a cyber attack, employee error, or technical failure – processes must be rigorously tested and rehearsed, and continuously refined and updated.” Apricorn’s research also uncovered a shift in companies’ backup strategies, from an automated approach to a manual approach. Backups were automated at half (50%) of the surveyed companies, a drop from 93% in 2022. Manual backups are now carried out at 48% of companies, a significant increase from 6% last year – with a rise from 1% to 16% backing up to personal storage repositories such as removable hard drives. The percentage of companies backing up to both central and personal repositories is still fairly low, standing at 38% across both automated and manual approaches. “Too many companies are still at risk from having a ‘single point of failure’,” Fielding said, “They must embrace the 3-2-1 rule: have at least three copies of data, stored on at least two different media, at least one of which is offsite." Nearly two in three UK companies have lost data due to failed backups MLL Telecom has announced a strategic partnership with SENSEI Networks. This will extend the company’s capabilities to include real-time asset tracking and automated response applications. The alliance will see MLL integrate SENSEi’s next generation sensory networks and CONTX end-to-end, proprietary enterprise IoT platform, enabling Public Sector and Emergency/Blue Light response customers to track, monitor, analyse and respond to a multitude of remote assets and their associated contextual data in real time, without the need for human interaction. CONTX directly impacts on the safety and welfare of people and things, improves efficiency, reduces costs and unlocks otherwise unrealistic business opportunities through the better utilisation of existing assets. Comprising intuitive user interfaces, state of the art cloud services and hardware, it is highly customisable and supports a full suite of API’s for seamless integration to an organisation’s existing technological ecosystem. “MLL are very excited by the immediate benefits as well as future possibilities resulting from our partnership with SENSEi,” said Andrew Shilton, head of pre-sales, MLL Telecom. “As part of MLL’s growing portfolio of value-added services this ideally complements our current portfolio of full fibre network, WAN, SDWAN, UC, Wifi, cloud infrastructure and security solutions. We are very confident our established Public Sector and growing base of emergency services customers will quickly engage with our new IoT-based asset tracking, remote condition monitoring and automated response solutions, helping to increase their operational efficiency and safety while also reducing operating costs.” Damon Thomas, co-founder and CEO of SENSEi Networks added: “MLL already has a strong reputation in delivering innovative managed networks services. We look forward to working with them to solve real world business challenges." MLL’s strategic alliance with SENSEi Networks Share your news! Send your press releases or announcements to: editor@networkseuropemagazine.com EUROPE NETWORKS NEWS IN BRIEF 07Boosting innovation in experimental technologies NordVPN has launched NordLabs – a platform for experimental projects and cutting-edge innovations. It will explore emerging technologies, such as AI, to create new tools and services. Signed up users can expect the first products to test in September. "New emerging technologies raise challenges for cybersecurity, privacy and internet freedom, but at the same time, they bring new opportunities. NordLabs will allow us to have additional flexibility when it comes to the development of experimental tools and services. We do not expect all projects appearing in NordLabs will later become fully maintained standalone products, but we are thrilled about the opportunity to curb cutting-edge technologies for better internet," said Vykintas Maknickas, head of product strategy at Nord Security. NordLabs will work in two main directions. Firstly, it will provide a broader space for NordVPN's team of engineers and developers to experiment with new ideas and emerging technologies and encourage creative thinking to explore novel approaches to online privacy and security. Secondly, the platform will allow early adopters and tech enthusiasts to gain exclusive access to innovative projects before they become mainstream. To access upcoming NordLabs experimental projects, users must register on the waiting list. Once new experimental projects are released, registered users can test and provide feedback on features and services developed by NordVPN. The first experimental NordLabs products are planned to be released in September. They will include a machine learning-based tool that will help internet users better identify phishing emails, and a tool to distinguish AI-generated images from those created through traditional means. With this announcement, Nord Security, developer of NordVPN, again confirms its commitment to innovation. Recently the company has been granted its 100th patent by The United States Patent and Trademark Office. All of these patents have been registered in just three years. Stone has been awarded a leading position on Crown Commercial Service’s (CSS) ‘Network Services 3’ RM6116 framework, which replaces the existing Network Services 2 RM3808 agreement. This follows a lengthy procurement period involving hundreds of leading competitors and sees Stone maintain its established position on CCS’s networking frameworks. The ‘Network Services 3’ framework allows public sector organisations to access network infrastructure, unified communications and telephony services, cloud services apps, audio and visual conferencing systems, security and surveillance solutions, as well as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, Smart Cities technology and other emerging technologies. The appointment of Stone, a Converge company, within the framework will allow organisations to select the circular ICT firm as a supplier on the following frameworks: > Lot 2a: Intra-site Connectivity (Local Area Network) and Local Connectivity Services > Lot 3a: IoT and Smart Cities (Smart Shared and Connected Spaces) > Lot 4b: Digital Communication Services (Unified Communications) > Lot 4c: Contact Centre Solutions > Lot 4e: Paging and Alerting Antony Mellor, director of public sector and tertiary education sales at Stone said: “The CCS ‘Network Services 3’ framework is highly respected among public sector organisations, supporting them in their goal of advancing digital transformation through a range of innovative network solutions and trusted technology providers.” “At Stone, we pride ourselves on delivering fantastic value-for-money and great innovation and quality when it comes to our services and solutions, particularly for local and central government organisations, healthcare institutions and the emergency services, where we know budgets and investments need to make the most impact. Earning our position on this framework will allow us to further support the public sector’s digital transformation and make a big difference to people’s lives through enhanced infrastructure and public services.” Stone awarded a leading position on CSS framework New emerging technologies raise challenges for cybersecurity, privacy and internet freedom NEWS IN BRIEF 08Lunar Digital has annou nced its strategic partnership with Zayo Group. Through this partnership, Lunar Digital will leverage Zayo's extensive network infrastructure and high-performance connectivity solutions in all three of Lunar Digital’s Manchester Data Centres, Lunar 1, 2 & 3, to enhance the delivery of its services to customers. Zayo's robust network will provide Lunar Digital with reliable, secure and scalable connectivity, ensuring optimal performance and seamless integration across various platforms. The partnership marks a significant milestone as the two companies join forces to revolutionise the digital landscape and accelerate the deployment of cutting-edge technologies to customers around the globe. Together, the companies will explore innovative initiatives and collaborate on joint offerings to address the evolving needs of their customers. Lunar Digital has established itself aws a key player in the digital solutions space, offering a robust service stack including data centres, cloud computing, connectivity and cybersecurity. The company's commitment to delivering exceptional value and driving digital transformation aligns perfectly with Zayo's mission to connect businesses and communities across the globe. "We are thrilled to partner with Zayo," said Rob Garbutt, CEO of Lunar Digital. "Zayo’s expertise in network infrastructure and connectivity solutions will enable us to deliver even greater value to our customers. By leveraging Zayo's powerful network, we can expand the reach and capabilities of our digital solutions, empowering businesses to thrive in the digital era." Lunar Digital partners with Zayo Group to accelerate cutting-edge digital solutions for enterprises A new ‘building block’ for fibre cabling to speed up UK roll-out thanks to ACOME's nanomodule Deployments of full fibre broadband networks in urban and rural areas across the UK will be made quicker and easier thanks to a new ultra lightweight (ULW) fibre cable, constructed with ACOME Group’s patented nanomodule technology. The cable, designed specifically for urban and rural aerial use in the UK market, can fit 96 fibres in each module, while maintaining modules of 12 fibres. This means that network builders can deploy more fibre in the same diameter of cable. ACOME’s nanomodule technology removes the restraints of aerial cables’ 7mm size, which typically limits them to a maximum of 48 fibres. The new 96-fibre cable also addresses key pain points that installers face, helping to reduce installation times by an average of three hours and countless hours off maintenance times for every kilometre of cable deployed. This is because the cable is grease and gel free, making it easy to handle and install and eliminating the need for fibre cleansing. The cable is also kink free. The elimination of sealing gel or grease, typically used on cables for an additional layer of protection, negates fibre cleansing, reducing the fibre preparation times. This includes reduced splicing times compared to conventional cable designs which results in significant cost savings and ultimately mitigates the cost of the cable itself. It also reduces the risk of damage to the fibre and racks where they are placed. “The nanomodule is a new building block for making optical fibre products, opening the gateway for new products that were not previously possible,” said ACOME key account manager, Lee Spicer. “Our focus at ACOME is to make it as easy for the installer as possible and we are delighted to be announcing it to the market at a time when network builders are trying to make their rollouts as efficient, quick and cost-effective as possible.” The product was developed following the success of the 72-fibre version of ACOME’s nanomodule cable, used by network builders including FullFibre. FullFibre was able to quickly and cost effectively deploy a 26km long fibre network spine for the region of Hertfordshire. “The density and 12-module structure of the cable allowed us to use existing network infrastructure,” said technical delivery director at FullFibre, Dan Jones. “Without which, we would have had to dig extensively, and the cost and disruption would have been huge.” Unlike many other products on the market the 96-fibre new cable is constructed with modules of 12-fibres – mirroring the architecture of existing fibre infrastructure. 09 NEWS IN BRIEFNext >