NFF announces partnership with CoreSite
May 2018
NFF is pleased to announce a new partnership with CoreSite Realty Corporation (CoreSite) that will enhance our services to our customers.
Coresite is a leader in carrier-neutral data center colocation and peering services. They currently operate one data center facility in Washington, DC and will be opening a second facility in DC available for tenants in the Fall of 2018. Nationwide, Coresite owns 20 operating data center facilities in 8 markets comprising over 3.5+ million square feet. They have over 1,000 customers including enterprises, network operators, cloud providers, and supporting service providers, and are one of the two companies in North America that offer direct access to all four primary public cloud providers and the flexibility to scale from a single cabinet to an entire data center.
This new partnership leverages the strengths of both companies. Collaborating with a premier data center colocation provider like Coresite, NFF can now offer our clients “close to the cloud” alternatives with direct access to public cloud services utilizing CoreSite’s four directly connected cloud providers.
NFF’s application assurance portfolio of services complement Coresite’s offerings by combining data center and public cloud clients, cloud migration assessments, and performance baseline services. These services capture application metrics and performance data before, during, and after a migration or transition, which provides full insight, control, and reporting of any digital transformation initiative.
“It’s an important partnership, as we want to provide our customers a top-tier data center option for their critical business infrastructure with direct access to network providers and cloud on-ramps,” said Steve Hancock, VP of Sales at NFF. “Our solutions and partnerships enable our customers to optimize operations and attain their IT modernization objectives.”
NFF among the fastest-growing inner city businesses in America for the 6th time
October 2017
The Inner City (ICIC) and FORTUNE announced that Networking For Future, Inc. (NFF) is ranked 58 on the 2017 Inner City 100 list. Inner City 100 winners—a list of 100 fastest-growing inner-city businesses in the U.S. —are ranked according to revenue growth against their industry peers, as well as overall growth. 2017 marks NFF’s 6th award, and for the second time in a row, NFF was inducted into the Inner City “Hall of Fame”.
ICIC’s Inner City 100 list celebrates and enables urban entrepreneurship. Over the course of nearly 20 years, ICIC has awarded 928 companies whose success illuminates the innovation and business growth happening in our inner cities. Inner City 100 companies are forces of economic opportunity, optimism, and transformation in their communities. The Inner City 100 program provides a platform for recognition, networking, learning, and stimulates inner-city business development and job creation.
“We are extraordinarily proud of these pioneering entrepreneurs who lead the way in innovation, job creation and the economic revitalization of America’s inner cities,” said Steve Grossman, CEO of ICIC. “In addition to excellence in business, they have also demonstrated a deep commitment to and passion for their communities, which plays a huge role in the wellbeing of their local economies,” he said.
The NFF ranking can be found here: Fortune.com
Cyber Threat Response Clinic 2.0
July 2017
There is not a silver bullet for providing 100% protection against cyber crime. You can, however, learn to reduce the risk of being compromised! During a recent event that NFF hosted at the Cisco office in Washington DC, the attendees got to launch a real-time ransomware attack and see it unfolding.
This clinic was developed by Joseph (Joey) Muniz, a security researcher, and architect at Cisco Systems. Joey has been involved in the design and implementation of multiple projects ranging from Fortune 500 corporations to large federal networks. He is the author and contributor of several books including a book about Security Operations Centers and the CCNA Cyber Ops book, and he has spoken at popular security conferences such as Cisco Live, ISC2, and DEF CON.
During this exclusive live training in a virtual lab environment, people played as both attacker and defender in a real Cyber security attack situation. Joey showed how environments get compromised and how breaches get discovered and demonstrated how to respond effectively. The feedback was very positive; several people suggested to make it a multiple-day event!
It’s not if, but when
Not long ago we received an urgent call from one of our long-time customers, a large association representing more than 35,000 members nationwide. Several of their senior staff members had locked computers with ransomware notifications stating that all their files were encrypted and that they had to pay a ransom to regain access to their files. Since their computers had been connected to the organization's network, the ransomware had also encrypted all their shared drives, making them unavailable to all users in the company. Their systems were only protected with a basic firewall and antivirus software. Apparently, someone got linked to an infected web page, either directly or via a malicious email.
Luckily this customer has a service contract with us so that NFF engineers could start working on the issue immediately, and their first step was to isolate all their computers on a quarantined network to determine the extent of the infection. The second measure they took was configuring the customer’s network to use OpenDNS (now part of Cisco, under the “Umbrella Security” brand), adding a DNS-based security to prevent others from getting infected (NFF ultimately found a few more infected computers lying in wait that had not encrypted yet). Once the infected machines were identified and isolated, engineers assisted the client to restore the file server with their last backup.
The final task was wiping the infected computers. Within four to five hours everything was back to normal, without paying the ransom. Thanks to an established service agreement, the organization lost less than a day of productivity as the NFF engineers were able to take action immediately and mitigate the attack with a good backup and quick implementation of Umbrella Security.
We will be hosting this clinic again in the early Fall, let us know if you would like to receive an invite. In the meantime, we can help you review your vulnerabilities with a network threat assessment.
NFF awarded $1.1M contract with Air Force Services Activity Agency
July 2017
Recently NFF was awarded a $1.1M product and services contract with the Air Force Services Activity Agency (AFSVA) based out of Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. This is NFF’s first large US Public Sector win with its partner Riverbed Technology. The contract included 7 Riverbed products, including Riverbed's latest release of SDWAN ready Steelheads, enabling AFSVA to stay on the forefront of network and application delivery and assurance for years to come.
About AFSVA
The Air Force Services Activity, or AFSVA, delivers services programs and activities to build and sustain ready and resilient Airmen and families. AFSVA supports the bases, major commands, and air staff by providing technical assistance, new initiatives, developing programs and procedures and managing central support functions. AFSVA ensures successful operation of essential food, fitness, child care, lodging and recreation opportunities for military members and their families.
Disaster Recovery for DC’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer
June 2017
NFF is in the final stages of an 8-month project with DC Government’s, Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) Agency for Design and Implementation of a Disaster Recovery (DR) Solution. In October of 2016, OCFO contracted NFF to design, implement, and test a DR Solution that would provide OCFO the ability to fail over their critical applications to the DC Government’s Data Center in Virginia.
The project consisted of extensive discovery and design efforts to collect, catalog and provide a workable solution for recovery and continued operations of OCFO’s applications should their primary data center become unavailable. In addition to the design, NFF’s services included a white-glove packing/shipping service for all DR equipment previously located at OCIO’s Waterfront office location. The NFF team provided rack, cabling, and configuration services (to the approved design) for the equipment either relocated or newly purchased as part of the project.
Once the physical implementation was completed, the team then performed several DR failover tests of selected applications, ensuring OCFO’s RPO/RTO SLAs were met and with no impact to any OCIO-managed production system. The NFF team used network virtualization techniques to ensure all systems included in the DR test were restored into an isolated network environment.
The NFF team is currently providing the final stage of the project by performing a DR failback test which will be simulated by replicating backups/data from restored DR systems back to the OCFO Waterfront data center.