Today we are releasing a new support version of Icinga 2.8, a small one to pass the time until 2.9. This release includes fixes for the InfluxDB and Elasticsearch features. Please note that Elasticsearch 6 support is coming with 2.9. In addition to the fixes we’ve added support for multiple check parameters for the check_nscp_api plugin and working sysconfig/defaults variables support, you’ll also find many documentation updates.

The news is filled with stories about horrible attacks against corporate and government networks. It’s almost enough to make administrators for small and mid-sized networks give up. But it’s important to note not all of these attacks are the same. There’s a vast difference, for example, between the incredibly sophisticated long-term attacks against high-profile companies and government agencies, and the mere smash-and-grab attacks.

We are happy to announce a new bugfix release for Icinga Web 2. Official packages are available on packages.icinga.com. Community repositories might need a while to catch up.

Business owners are constantly searching for the next great technology that will help streamline solutions, improve workflow efficiency, and boost their ROI. Cloud computing has quickly become one of the most effective technologies in helping companies increase work output and cut costs.

Containers are portable assets that let you design and deploy with little overhead from your development team. They take your monolithic code base and turn it into several lightweight modules that you can more easily manage and interconnect without worry of one small module taking out your entire application. This gives you more granular control of your code, but it also means that you have several moving parts as part of your platform.

Security information and event management (SIEM) helps with managing and analyzing the vast amount of log information generated by networks. Of all the capabilities of SIEM, event correlation is the most powerful. This technique analyzes log data from your servers, applications, routers, firewalls, and other network devices, and identifies patterns of activity that indicate potential attacks.

Imagine you’re the manager for the IT Operations for a multimillion-dollar retail chain. The chain not only has numerous stores throughout the U.S. but also a robust online presence. Now imagine that you need to conduct security and software updates on the company’s servers. The update will end up disrupting store services for 30 minutes after the work day.

AppEnsure delivers Dynamic Demand Profiling to continuously optimize the Digital Experience. It is a common but unfortunate challenge for IT Ops and App Delivery teams; complaints of long delays and lack of availability of mission critical apps are reported (if you are lucky), but it is very tough in a virtualized, distributed IT deployment to discover the root cause and resolution.

On that October day, a nuclear physicist, Dr. William 'Willy' Higinbotham, had prepared something special for Brookhaven's guests. In the past, he had noticed that visitors didn't connect well with the static displays shown at the fair. Willy wanted to create something more compelling for the lab's visitors to interact with. Along with his colleague, Dave Potter, Willy devised an idea to create an interactive experience for their visitors.

For most people, crashing means either an application has frozen or entirely disappeared. Sometimes, this is followed by a dialog box asking “Would you like to send a crash report?” Users hit “Send” and move on with their lives, and, most of the time, never think about that moment again. But there is an entire world behind that interaction which is key to driving technology forward.