Network Break 271: Global Espionage Agita Kicks Up A Notch; Forescout Gets Bought For $1.9 Billion

Take a Network Break! Guest analysts Keith Townsend and Ned Bellavance stop by to give Greg a chance to sun himself on a tropical island and re-charge the snark batteries. We discuss a trio of international espionage/security stories including charges by the US government that hackers working for China’s People’s Liberation Army were responsible for the Equifax breach, accusations of back doors in Huawei equipment, and reports that the United States bought and ran a Swiss cryptography company to spy on allies and adversaries. VMware adjusts licensing to a per-CPU pricing, Tufin launches a cloud security policy service, and Arista officially announces its Big Switch acquisition. A private equity firm drops nearly $2 billion for NAC vendor Forescout, Microsoft backpedals on forced Bing adoption, and the FTC takes a hard look at big tech. Get links to all these stories below. Sponsor: Illumio Illumio is a leader in security segmentation. Prevent the spread of breaches and meet regulatory compliance requirements  inside your data center and in your cloud environments. Find out more at www.illumio.com. Sponsor: ThousandEyes ThousandEyes gives you performance visibility from every user to every app over any network, both internal and external, so you can migrate to the cloud, troubleshoot faster and deliver exceptional user experiences. Sign up for a free account at thousandeyes.com/packetpushers and choose a free ThousandEyes t-shirt. Tech Bytes: Silver Peak Today’s Tech Bytes podcast explores how J-U-B Engineers, Inc., built a better end user experience using SD-WAN from Silver Peak. We look at benefits and outcomes, including improved storage and file share and a stronger security posture. Show Links: The CTO Advisor – Keith Townsend’s Website Keith Townsend on Twitter Ned In The Cloud – Ned Bellavance’s Website Ned Bellavance on Twitter Day Two Cloud Podcast – Packet Pushers US charges 4 members of Chinese military with Equifax hack – CNN Criminal Indictment (PDF) U.S. Officials Say Huawei Can Covertly Access Telecom Networks – Wall Street Journal US finds Huawei has backdoor access to mobile networks globally, report says – CNET Media Statement Regarding WSJ “Backdoor” Story – Huawei U.S.