Cisco invites people residing in Australia and New Zealand to submit entries to the Cisco “Christmas Connections” Contest for a chance to connect with family and friends from around the world this Christmas via Cisco TelePresenceTM.

Cisco will award two first-place prizes of Christmas dinners over TelePresence, 10 second-place prizes of a TelePresence meeting and 20 third-place prizes of Flip MinoTM cameras to the person with the entry that best illustrates the importance of connections with family and friends at Christmas.

Three days ago, Cisco announced the availability of Cisco SIO To Go, an Apple iPhone application that puts the power of the Cisco Security Intelligence Operations (SIO) in users’ hands, giving them real-time access to a wealth of actionable global security information no matter where they are. The Cisco SIO iPhone application enables users to personalize alerts to show only those security threats that could impact their network and provides added assurance that they are being protected by their Cisco security solution.

Marie Hattar, vice president, Network Systems Solutions Marketing, Cisco says: “enabling borderless networks is critical for today’s business success.  A key component of enabling individuals to connect to their business networks from anywhere is working to ensure that the network is protected regardless of the device used. Our new Cisco SIO To Go iPhone application is another important step in making this vision a reality. It improves the means by which IT departments are alerted to threats, and it provides added confidence and device flexibility as Cisco customers are shielded from these breaches.”

Do you remember simcity, the city-building simulation game first released in 1989 and designed by Will Wright? myPlanNet is a Sim City type RTS (real-time strategy) simulation game that puts you into the shoes of a service provider CEO.

You manage your business as it evolves from the stone age of dial-up, through the broadband and mobile connected eras, and into the dawning of the medianet age. Learn how to transform your community and explore the products and solutions that will help you provide a migration path from dial up, broadband and mobile services into the medianet age.

MyPlanNet was released on Oct. 5 at an International Telecommunication Union in Geneva, Switzerland, and is the product of an internal innovation contest at Cisco.

Security researchers Marsh Ray and Steve Dispensa unveiled the TLS (Transport Layer Security) flaw on Wednesday, following the disclosure of separate, but similar, security findings. TLS and its predecessor, SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), are typically used by online retailers and banks to provide security for web transactions. Ray explained in a blog post on Thursday that he had initially discovered the flaw in August, and demonstrated a working exploit to Dispensa at the beginning of September.

This vulnerability could impact any Cisco product that uses any version of TLS and SSL.

Recently, I have upgraded my Cisco 2650XM from 12.3 to 12.4 version; I use it to connect my PC to Internet, but something goes wrong.

After the upgrading, I have tried to downlad an ISO image but the speed was very low (about 300KB/s and not 700KB/s). Mhhh this is strange! I have begun the troubleshooting but no error, no warning message. So I have reset my current configuration, but nothing… no real improvement.

On 13 October 2009, Cisco and Starent Networks announced a definitive agreement for Cisco to acquire Starent Networks. Starent Networks is a leading supplier of IP-based mobile infrastructure solutions targeting mobile and converged carriers. The Mobile Internet is at an inflection point as IP-enabled Smartphones and other connected mobile devices gain rapid acceptance. Service Providers have been actively investing in this market as global mobile data traffic is expected to more than double every year through 2013, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay $35 per share in cash in exchange for each share of Starent Networks and assume outstanding equity awards for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $2.9 billion. The acquisition has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies.

On Octobert 14, 2009, the The Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) has published one important vulnerability advisories: Cisco Unified Presence Denial of Service Vulnerabilities.

Cisco Unified Presence contains two denial of service (DoS) vulnerabilities that may cause an interruption to presence services. These vulnerabilities were discovered internally by Cisco, and there are no workarounds.

Vulnerable Products
The following products are affected:

• Cisco Unified Presence 1.x versions
• Cisco Unified Presence 6.x versions prior to 6.0(6)
• Cisco Unified Presence 7.x versions prior to 7.0(4)

On 1st October 2009, Cisco announced a definitive agreement for Cisco to launch a recommended voluntary cash offer to acquire TANDBERG (OSLO: TAA.OL).  TANDBERG, based in Oslo, Norway, and New York, is a global leader in video communications, including a broad range of world-class video endpoint and network infrastructure solutions with intercompany and multi-vendor interoperability. With this proposed acquisition, Cisco will expand its collaboration portfolio to offer more solutions to a greater number of customers, further accelerating market adoption globally.

On September 23, 2009, the The Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) has published 11 important vulnerability advisories.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express Vulnerability
Cisco IOS® devices that are configured for Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express (CME) and the Extension Mobility feature are vulnerable to a buffer overflow vulnerability. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may result in the execution of arbitrary code or a Denial of Service (DoS) condition on an affected device.

On September 8, 2009, the The Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) has published one important vulnerability advisories: TCP State Manipulation Denial of Service Vulnerabilities in Multiple Cisco Products.

Multiple Cisco products are affected by denial of service (DoS) vulnerabilities that manipulate the state of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connections. By manipulating the state of a TCP connection, an attacker could force the TCP connection to remain in a long-lived state, possibly indefinitely. If enough TCP connections are forced into a long-lived or indefinite state, resources on a system under attack may be consumed, preventing new TCP connections from being accepted. In some cases, a system reboot may be necessary to recover normal system operation. To exploit these vulnerabilities, an attacker must be able to complete a TCP three-way handshake with a vulnerable system.