D-day has finally arrived for Huawei in Britain: UK.gov will outlaw the purchase of Huawei gear to build 5G networks by the end of this year, and from 2027 the country's mobile networks must eradicate the Chinese vendor's kit from their 5G infrastructure.

This decision was a long time in the making, and comes off the back of sustained pressure from the US government to ban the integration of Huawei equipment from next generation mobile networks.

Had the government opted for the previously mooted deadline of 2023 , UK networks would have faced significant short-term costs, and according to the

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is to wolf down Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) outfit Silver Peak for $925m.

The deal will see the California-based company merged with HPE's Aruba business unit, which the enterprise and services giant picked up for $3bn back in 2015 .

Silver Peak lays claim to 1,500 production SD-WAN customers around the world, and its tech is built to muster the performance and security of a dedicated WAN over a mix of connections, including broadband access.

With the sudden lurch toward remote workforces the SD-WAN approach has a certain appeal. The 650 Group has, according to

The US government announced on Wednesday it will "restrict" the US visas of foreigners working for Huawei and certain other Chinese technology companies.

And by restrict, it means it may not let some of them in at the border, it appears.

“Today, the State Department is imposing visa restrictions on certain employees of Chinese technology companies that provide material support to regimes engaging in human rights abuses globally,” Secretary of State Mikel Pompeo, said .

“Under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, an alien is inadmissible to the United States if the Secretary of State has reason to

Two types of fake Cisco switches – discovered after a software upgrade hobbled counterfeit gear at an unidentified IT firm – appear to have been designed for profit rather than espionage.

F-Secure Consulting's hardware security team disassembled the unauthorized Cisco Catalyst 2960-X series switches at the IT company's request, to understand how they worked and determine whether the organization's network had been compromised.

As described in a report [PDF] published on Wednesday, no backdoor functionality was found. However, the lookalike devices employed sophisticated techniques to bypass Cisco's security protection mechanisms.

Although the equipment's electronics are counterfeit, it still needs to

Reader survey With network security increasingly positioned as an enabler of future business success, making the right purchasing decision in this area is more important than ever.

So when we surveyed Reg readers on their network security experiences, we took the opportunity to query their supplier selection processes and criteria: what makes a vendor – or a channel partner – appear attractive or unattractive? And what can new suppliers in particular do to change that perception?

It was also interesting to read your preferences for a single supplier or multiple best-of-breed suppliers. What was clear was that for many respondents