Waves with Wireless Nerd
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Waves with Wireless Nerd
Exploring NetAlly's Cyberscope Air: A New Era in Wireless Security and Monitoring with the Wireless Nerd
Unlock the future of wireless security and monitoring with me, Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, as I engage with NetAlly's dynamic duo, Dan and Julio, about their groundbreaking Cyberscope Air. Get ready to be captivated as we unveil the unique features of this wireless-centric tool, including an exclusive peek at its cybersecurity prowess with integrated tools like Nmap for vulnerability scanning. Step into the world of real-time network insights as we discuss the power of Link Live for continuous scanning and the pivotal role of community feedback in shaping such a revolutionary product.
Feel the pulse of innovation as I share my foray into establishing a private LTE network and the potential for Cyberscope Air to revolutionize not just Wi-Fi, but also burgeoning technologies like 4G, 5G, and IoT platforms, including LoRaWAN. With industry giants and lab teams on the edge of their seats, we explore how upcoming features could redefine connectivity across various sectors. This episode not only showcases NetAlly's ingenuity but also emphasizes the significance of Wi-Fi as an indispensable service, setting the stage for an era where AI simplifies the complexities of wireless tech for pros and novices alike.
Hey everybody, it's Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, and today I am joined with two amazing people, Dan and Julio from NetAlly, supporters of the Waves podcast since day one, and I wanted to just jump in and have a great conversation about the new Cyberscope Air, about what we learned at WLPC and about what's going on with NetAlly. So I will let you all introduce yourselves and say hi to everyone out here in beautiful wireless nerd land.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right. Well, I'll go first. I'm Dan Klimke. I'm the Director of Product Marketing at NetAlly and, yeah, wlpc was an amazing event. We had a lot of fun and great to catch up with a lot of folks and it was a particularly touching event to see Keith on the big party night with his family and all that. That was just awesome.
Speaker 3:And my name is Julio Petrovic, product manager at NetAlly. As Dan said, and as you said, drew, wlpc was great. It was the first time this year that we hosted a deep dive for one of our products. We hosted a deep dive for one of our products, we got some pretty good feedback and a lot of people got a nice gift.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no kidding man. You guys went all out. It wasn't just the deep dive that you hosted. I saw a bunch of people walking away with these little black boxes and genuinely, genuinely jealous. Tell me about that. Okay, so what inspired that? I know the deep dive was great and I saw everyone walking around doing wayfinding.
Speaker 2:What inspired you all to just do this and what did you learn from the class itself? Yeah, sure, I mean the impetus really came just because of the coincidence of the timing of the WLPC event and our public announcement for Cyberscope Air. Add in the deep dive and to create a little extra buzz and fun and get some power to the hands of these top-end users of Wi-Fi analysis gear, we made the decision hey, let's just go all out, let's just make this deep dive a blast and make sure everybody gets a great experience with the product and take it home.
Speaker 1:You know, that's the one thing. A couple of years ago, you know, two years ago now, in Prague, we put out a new Wi-Fi technology and we tested on the crowd. And I think you all were there and I said you know, y'all are the. This is the best crowd literally to test anything in front of, because you are not going to be nice, but you're going to be nice, you're going to, you're going to tell us exactly what needs to happen and you're going to back that up with a skillset. So so tell me a little bit about the Cyberscope Air. What makes it different? Cause I've got. You know, you guys have have always kept me up to date with your tools. I have every tool that I can possibly imagine from NetAlly and I love all of them. But you know, I've got the Cyberscope. It's in my truck, that's why it's not in my hand. I was using it this afternoon. But what makes the Cyberscope Air different than the Cyberscope that's already out there on the market?
Speaker 3:Julio, you want to take that? I sure can. So you can think of the Cyberscope Air as a wireless only version of the Cybersop that was released last year. Okay, it's like a superset of the very popular and very well-known AirShake G3. Love it, great tool. A lot of people watching this podcast, or the LOPC, knows it's been around for a few years, between the first generation, second and now third, between the first generation second and now third, and it improves upon the functionality of the AirTag G3 by adding all the new cybersecurity part to it, so it has everything the AirTag can do plus more Like what?
Speaker 1:I mean, give me some examples, because I didn't get to play with it. Man, I was doing the Flipper deep dive. It's one of those where it's like, had I just known? Actually, we knew, but I wanted to play with the flipper thing before it got out, you know, banned by everybody other than just Canada. So, like why? I mean, give me some examples. You got to remember. Some of the people that are listening to the podcast are people that you know and love and were probably sitting in your class, and a lot of them were at WLPC. But there's also a lot of people out there that are coming across this for the first time. What is it about a Cyberscope Air, and what specific tools from a security perspective make this something that everyone needs to get their hands on?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there's two big ones. Scope is the integration of the Nmap app into all our tools, or multiple tools, like a discovery tool or the auto test, and this basically allows you to configure automated vulnerability scans through the network. So, for example, you could configure it to check for open ports on every device in the network while you're doing a discovery, or you could just manually run, let's say, a brute force attack against a specific device in the network to see if there's any vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1:Okay, and that's from a wireless perspective now, not just the wired side, also running these across the wireless perspective. Okay, what else that's?
Speaker 3:correct. And then the second thing and then we added this a little more recently is now what we call discovery monitoring. So basically you can leave, let's say, a cyberscope or a cyberscope error on a specific area scanning and you can configure it to basically do a discovery test every so often and upload that to Link Live.
Speaker 3:Oh nice it's basically like on a monitoring mode. So instead of you going there and running a test, it will automatically run it and then using the new dashboard on Link Live, which was released like a week or two ago now, I think about it. This came out after the deep dive at WLPC. Now you have this dashboard that will show you different types of trends on the wireless side, but also on the discovery or security side.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:And how's this? One of the things that we found just sorry to jump in is kind of one of the reasons why NetAlly got into this world of cybersecurity in the first place. For years, you know, even back in our past instantiations under Netscout and Fluke Networks, you know, people have been using our tools not only for network analysis, network troubleshooting or validation, but really around that discovery technology that we pioneered, boy, almost 30 years ago. A lot of our customers were utilizing that in order to understand who's on my network and where they connected.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because knowing that having an inventory of what's on my network and where the interconnection paths is actually a very critical thing to know for cybersecurity, absolutely, and a lot of the frameworks talk about how critical it is to have up-to-the-minute, accurate topology maps.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not only that, and this is what I wanted to get into a little bit on that as well. There's been all these interesting new attacks that are coming out, different vulnerabilities here and there, and the one that is a special interest to me, just because I find it so fascinating, is identifying devices that are on your network that you traditionally wouldn't look at where it's. You know it says it's a printer, but it's not really a printer, it's an Iranian hacker. You know what I mean. Like you know how understanding not just what's on your network and the topology of your network, but identifying the signatures of those, does it work towards any of that. Is that something that you can see using the Cyberscope Air? Sure?
Speaker 2:To the extent that there's a series of NMAP switches that would give you that information about that device. It's in Cyberscope. We've loaded over 600 of the standard NMAP scans into the product so it's out of the gate ready to go. So most of those NMAP scans are available to just be used out of the box, but you can also customize them. In fact, when a new vulnerability comes out, very often you know within minutes. You know someone has already gone through and figured out what the NMAP configuration is for the switches to be able to identify a vulnerability, like not long ago that Terrapin was a SQL vulnerability. Well, you just look up online Terrapin Nmap and oh, there's the string. I'll just load that into the product and now I've got a day zero scan for the most recent vulnerability. So it's quite easy to do and easy to execute.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So then, as far as the device itself, wi-fi 6, wi-fi 7, what are you looking at from a technology and ability to scan? I know that on the AirCheck and then on the Cyberscope there is that USB port that's on there as well, so talk about that a little bit. I mean, is that from a from an extensibility perspective or growth perspective? You know, I know it probably has an on-board wi-fi chipset, but what else? What are some of the features there there that are gonna allow this to be a tool in my tool bag for the next not just the next, you know, three weeks, but also for the next two years? You, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure. So basically, as you mentioned, one of the cool things about not only the Cyberscope Air, also Cyberscope, etherscope, aircheck, is that you can expand this functionality by using USB ports. So you may remember the olden days where it was more like a module that you put in and out of some of those bigger tools. Oh, I remember. No, it's all basically USB-based and you can install anything from a USB camera you could install or use a USB to Ethernet adapter. So, for example, on the Cyberscope Air, if you wanted an Ethernet port, you just plug one in port.
Speaker 3:Hey, just plug one in. Uh, you could also install uh. Or, using the bluetooth radio in the unit, you could connect a bluetooth keyboard. Or you could connect a printer uh, mostly if you're to say labeling cables uh, with a normal cyberscope or ether scope or linker and gig, you could also plug in a USB to serial cable if you wanted to connect to, let's say, a switch or something like that. Why not? And then use all the third-party apps that are available that you can download, and basically there's a lot of stuff that you can do there.
Speaker 1:That's awesome and you guys have always been strong supporters of the industry and of everything that people are doing and you're at every show and you're out there, you know, making the latest and greatest tools. How's the adoption of this been? I mean, I know it was everyone was going bananas over it. Uh, you know it's great. You know, not just bananas, it was fantastic, it was a, really it was. It was so much fun to see you all there and join it. Now what's next on the menu for you all? I mean, if you look at, you know we've got.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to think of the shows that are coming up Cisco Live obviously coming up in June. That's a big deal for everyone, but there's lots of little shows. Have you seen any interest in growth in wireless security? I mean, especially now, when you look at Cyberscope Air versus the traditional tools, when you look at Cyberscope Air versus the traditional tools. Traditional tools were great at understanding what's going on on the network and they were great for nerds like me and nerds like you all who are out there doing the day-to-day stuff. But now, as we enter into more people using more wireless networks, have you seen any interest from other groups that this is a tool that they go. This is awesome. I don't have to learn all of the stuff that all the old people use to learn all of the stuff that all the old people use. Now I can come in. I've got a handheld tool that allows me to quickly and easily check my network for vulnerabilities and things like that. I'm always curious have you seen anything that's coming new on the horizon? New people, new users?
Speaker 2:Well, I guess the best answer to that is that we do see a bit of a segmentation between people who are more network-focused or network operations-focused versus security operations, and the response that I'm hearing is if we're in security operations or I'm a security practitioner, my area of concern spans the entire network. I need to have both wired and Wi-Fi visibility Absolutely Right. Because I need to have both wired and Wi-Fi visibility Absolutely Right, because I need to go anywhere and everywhere and test every kind of connection, whereas people who are responsible for the performance, connectivity and security of the Wi-Fi network, the subset product of the Cyberscope Air is a perfect fit, because if you're responsible for a Wi-Fi network, of course you're concerned about edge network security. So we're seeing, I think, a broader adoption of Cyberscope Air versus the Cyberscope, because anybody and everybody who cares about Wi-Fi cares about security, and why wouldn't you want the tool that has that added functionality?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And so then I spent the morning on a rooftop setting up a private LTE network. So this is great when it comes to the Wi-Fi side of it, but what about using that dongle or using the ability for it to grow into other things, working with more IoT? I mean, we heard some great talks this year about LoRaWAN, about Halo, about all these different devices, uwb and everything else that's out there 4G and 5G, moving into that what about using this tool with that communications medium, just changing from Wi-Fi to 4G or 5G? Have you seen any of that, or is that something you're looking forward to?
Speaker 2:You know we have been looking into that. We've actually been working with some of the lab teams and some of the oh sorry about that. No you're good. We have been working with some of the lab teams and some of the large US carriers who are looking for that capability. It's not something that we've got right now, but it's definitely something that we're looking for for our roadmap.
Speaker 1:Awesome, awesome. Well, what else you know this is, and I appreciate you guys taking the time just to chat. This is exactly what I wanted and I think anyone who listens to the podcast knows it's just like laid back man and just give me, you know, give me some basic fun details yeah, man, one thing I guess I can add um, you ask, hey, what events will be at.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, what you got coming up, so coming up soon.
Speaker 1:We got the rsa oh well, yeah, especially now with the cyberscope, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, so we'll be there then a little uh, farther out in the june time frame. Time frame sorry, you mentioned cisco live yep and so and uh, besides that, regretfully same week, uh, we'll also or it depends on the time, I guess who you, who you ask, will also be at WLPC in Valencia.
Speaker 1:Spain. Oh listen, that's the one that I told my wife last night. I said vamos a España. I was like, let's go, man, I want to. Just the fact that it's in Spain alone, so that's fantastic to hear. You know what about? There's another show. There's a show called Infocom that I'm looking at going to right now in Vegas.
Speaker 1:It's all about AV and stuff and as the world of wireless grows right and everything that we do day to day, it just becomes more used by everyone and people just have that expectation that it's going to work and they don't know how and they don't care how, they just need it to work. I look at different adjacent marketplaces and technology. That's why I go to CES every year just to go find out what are other people thinking. I really see what you all have done is a great thing in the industry, not just because you're my pals and I like the tools, but because you're putting something in the hands of people that traditionally wouldn't. They wouldn't think, oh, I need to go out and buy a NetAlly tester, but you know their mind immediately goes to, oh, that's checking cables and checking connections and whatever.
Speaker 1:I think that this is a really cool bridge device that allows you to go to some of these groups, some of these adjacent technology areas and say, hey, this is how this can help you and that's going to open up opportunity to say, oh, I didn't understand the wireless network as much as I could have, and that's where these vulnerabilities are. So kudos to you all for doing this. I think it's a great product and I love the black. I think it's so starkly different than the green. You know, it's like cool, it's not just black.
Speaker 2:It's cyber black, Ah.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, that is fantastic.
Speaker 2:Well.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:As far as the shows and events, I I think one of the thing is that it's a uh kind of an embarrassment of riches. It's like the hard part is choosing where we're gonna go. Yeah, there's lots and lots of opportunities out there because, as you said, wi-fi is so ubiquitous for everything, everywhere, connectivity right, right, so it's, it's a utility, and that is in every, every area.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this and that's the thing.
Speaker 1:It's like you have a utility checker, you know, I mean it's it's so interesting to look at, to look at it from that perspective and to think, you know, in my mind, to think about it, because it's like we're going to get.
Speaker 1:I feel like we're getting to the point where it is being accepted as a utility, and so that means that people that are working on it have to have those same type of tools that a utility person would have. You know, you've got a voltmeter for the electricians and you've got, you know, the water testing and you know, pipe testing and pressure testing equipment for those guys and for us. We've always had all these highly intricate tools to measure and monitor every tiny little thing. But I think that as the technology grows more complex oh my God, I don't want to talk about MLO, right, my mind can't get around troubleshooting MLO, I'm stuck there. But when you start talking about having this, is that introduction of AI doing a lot of the troubleshooting for you? Then you need to look at the big picture and you need to have the analysis that's done. Something as simple as a device that fits in your hand could be super helpful.
Speaker 2:So and the basics. I mean yes, yes, let's get down to the basics. Like you know, like one of our old technologists used to say, always suspect the physical layer first, that's right Always.
Speaker 1:You know that's. It's so funny because I think about. I remember when the G2 was out and you know, and all of us were like, oh, this is great, how cool is this? And one of the most used features on the air check is the ethernet port. It's like, see, I told you this is what's wrong. You know, it's the. It's one most simple features, but I love it, man, I love it well, great. Well, what, what else? Any sneak, any sneak previews, anything, I mean this is this is pretty brand spanking new. Tell me real quick, but before we go, tell me about. You know, you mentioned the new portal, julio. What, what's going on? You know, is link live changed? What's going on with that? Is it just a different aesthetic? Or I mean what? What's happening behind the scenes on Link Live that you guys went through this refresh with?
Speaker 3:Yeah, great question. So, as I mentioned, two weeks ago we released version 8.0 of Link Live. Basically, it's a major revamp of the analysis section.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:So in the past it was more like tables. You could also ask the topology map, but you have to do the analysis a little more manually. You have to control the numbers, look at the tables, add the information in there. And now what we did is that we made it more graphical. We added a dashboard that basically shows you graphically what's going on, what's out there, are there new devices? Are there devices that are not there anymore? Any issues? So basically, it makes it a lot easier. So you, at a glance, instead of having to go through a lot of numbers or filtering and so on, you can just look at the graphs or charts and, hey, identify any problems. And it was a major endeavor for our team because it was a big revamp of the user interface to make it more graphical when compared to what it used to be. That being said, we also have a, if you wanted, like a hint of what's coming up next.
Speaker 1:Oh, there we go.
Speaker 3:Version 8.1, which includes more updates also to the analysis section in a couple of weeks. So, yes, something for you in the crowd.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it.
Speaker 3:You know what's coming up soon.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, that's fantastic. So for more information. I mean people can buy NetAlly tools just about everywhere. You can buy any fine quality tools. You know shameless plug for Wi-FiStandcom, of course you can buy them there. Is there any demo available, like when you get online to see what's behind the scenes on link live? You know, if someone visits the net ally website, is there information that they can get there? And or what is the best way to get in touch with you all? Give me, give me your contacts real quick for anyone that's listening. Once again, touch with Julio or Dan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean really just going to the website filling out the contact form. You know we'll get in touch with folks. We can do live demos, uh over the web remotely. That works great. Uh, we have some some kind of canned demos on the website that people kind of walk through some of the basics of the tools. Uh but yeah, if anybody wants to, we're happy to hop on a call and and show them what's what.
Speaker 1:Awesome, yeah, and if not, then we'll see you at the shows, well, anyway. Well, guys, this has been fantastic. Just like I said, quick 20 minutes for anyone who listens to Waves. You know I like to keep it short and sweet. And, julio and Dan, y'all, I really appreciate y'all jumping on. I've got your little logo up on here and I love talking to you guys and I appreciate your time and everyone that's listening. Hope you have a wonderful, wonderful week. Enjoy your time and don't forget, if you need some of these tools, visit WIFISTANDcom or visit NetAllycom. You can find all this fantastic information out there. Get those demos, get those walkthroughs. Thanks for listening to Waves. We.
