APRIL 1, 2022 VOLUME 8 ISSUE 1 (past issues)

Tempered Unveils AirThings IoT Platform to Unite IoT Platforms

Tempered announced its new AirThings Internet-of-Things ecosystem, providing infrastructure to securely unite disparate data sources. “This really empowers folks to accelerate their time to market, using identity-based networking to securely communicate anywhere,” wrote Tempered Marketing Director Tim Barea in the AirThings press release. Components of the AirThings IoT ecosystem include:

AirThing Edge compute module can run on Airwalls to collect and analyze data locally.
AirThing Cloud uses HIP secure tunnels for data publishing via cloud-based Airwalls to data puddles, ponds, and lakes.
AirThing Insights module runs within Conductor to analyze data and report key insights to users.
AirThing AirSpan can bridge together multiple disparate IoT platforms, to leverage existing and legacy infrastructure.
AirThing AirCommand can command things to perform specific actions based on insights, without human intervention.

“AirThings lets you scale with your business needs,” Barea adds, “with experience gained from the textile industry and using the HarnHash-256 algorithm for secure MFA, we have some exciting launch deployments.”

View the AirThings IoT product line-up

New Assguard Chest Harness Gains Popularity Among Dog Owners

The Assguard underwear company, which purchased the rights to the former Asguard company name in 2015, announced a new Assguard Chest Harness™ system for dogs. The Assguard Petworks division quickly made a name for itself with its plush line of canine diapers. Petworks markets the chest harness as a luxury restraint system, extremely comfortable for canine friends. “My 2-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier can’t wait to put on the chest harness when going out for a walk – he brings it right to me,” tweeted one enthusiastic customer. The new Chest Harness claims to provide 75% more support for leashed dogs compared with average pet store dog harnesses.
Assguard Chest Harness Product Gallery Chest Harness Order Page

Lynnwood Robot Controlled by #df-remote-hands Slack Requests

A Tempered QA engineer surprised fellow testers during a recent Demo Friday when she demonstrated a new robotics deployment in the Lynnwood Hardware Lab that can be remote-controlled from the #df-remote-hands Slack channel. “Today I will show remote SIM swap testing,” the engineer announced, “using a command ‘sim-swap aw110g verizon to att’” which triggers an articulating hand to remotely swap the SIM cards in an Airwall 110g. Another command triggered the hand to extend and power cycle the adjacent Windows build laptop, which needs resetting from time to time. The Lynnwood Hardware Lab robot opens new doors to remote testing and is expected to reduce the number of one-off trips to the facility by 75%.
#df-remote-hands Wiki instructions

Conductor 100v Limits You to 5 AWs

Tempered announced a new ultra-low-cost Conductor offering ideal for home and small-business users: the Conductor-100v. The 100v is a virtual Conductor that facilitates up to 5 Airwalls and up to 50 total devices. The 100v also performs the HIP Relay function and will not manage normal Airwall Relays. “We looked at the market demand in this space and it just made sense to offer another model, especially in light of the virtuals shortage,” remarked Customer Success lead Henry Rukai, “a lower price point makes cloaking much more accessible.” Future plans include an option to upgrade the 100v to a Conductor having full capabilities.
Conductor 100v datasheet See Conductor 100v live demo

Slack Replacement Pivots to Slack Integration

Tempered has pivoted their replacement of Slack effort with a new Conductor Slack integration available in the 3.1.0 firmware. For the first time, users may designate Conductor alerts to trigger Slack messages to a #conductor-alerts channel. Network admins can interact with policy using a #conductor-policy channel, with commands such as “/allow device1 subnet2” and “/block device3 device4”. A #conductor-airwall channel services commands like “/status myrelay1”, “/upgrade airwall250-1 3.1.0”, and “/reboot airwall-110g-east”. Market-wide, bot-based DevOps have increased 340% in the past year, in part due to the increased reliance on online collaboration tools such as Slack and Teams.
View Conductor Slack Integration demo See example command reference

Tempered Wellness Sponsors Tattoos

The Tempered Wellness Committee is boosting team spirit by sponsoring Tempered shield logo tattoos for employees. A new Tempered logo face tattoo is just what employees needed to get ready for the summer. “I think my tatt is really gonna raise brand awareness,” opined marketing consultant Brad Riley.
Book your tattoo appointment now View employee tattoo gallery

Halmart Superstore to Fuel Rural Lopez Growth

The Lopez Training Facility, which is colocated with a sustainable organic agriculture venture, welcomes a new big box retail neighbor – Halmart purchased adjacent acreage and announced plans to construct a 175,000 square foot Superstore. The vast shopping center plans to use Tempered technology for secure segmentation of the HVAC system, which gives LTF trainees hands-on opportunities next door.

Press release View artist’s rendition of new site

Supply Chain Shortage Hits Virtuals

Following two-years of upheaval in the electronics supply industry, the pandemic-induced chip shortage has finally extended its reach to virtual machines. The global supply chain shortage for physical hardware has driven customers to snap up the 300v virtual Airwalls to near extinction levels. “We have this huge opportunity with a construction firm, but the virtuals we need now have an 8-week lead time,” lamented one Tempered sales engineer, “We’re to the point where we’re asking existing customers if they have any extra virtuals lying around, so we can RMA them and bring them in for other opportunities.”
Virtuals Shortage Product Bulletin

Tempered Experiments with -1 Trust Scheme

IT security leaders have embraced Zero Trust architectures employed by Tempered and other vendors, but Tempered is staying ahead of the game with a new “-1 Trust” patent-pending technology. -1 Trust takes security one step farther and could also be called Predictive ZeroTrust. While ZeroTrust requires all users to be authenticated, authorized, and continuously validated, -1 Trust doesn’t even trust users to do the right thing. It leverages AI machine learning models to characterize and authorize packet-by-packet behavior. “Really in some cases we’re saving users from themselves,” explained a research engineer during a recent Demo Friday, in which an attempted “rm -rf” execution over SSH session was halted by the -1 Trust bot. “We establish behavioral models of what is okay network behavior and predict ahead of time when deviation from those behaviors would cause problems.”

Schedule -1Trust Training Session View Tempered’s -1Trust White Paper

4G Sunset Sends Engineers, Procurement Scrambling for 5Gs

The major cellular carriers announced a sunset date for their 4G LTE cellular networks, in an effort to promote more widespread 5G adoption and free up much-needed spectrum. “We finally got international Verizon certification for our Airwall 150 modem,” laments one Platforms Engineer, “it took seven years, and now we need to abandon that to find a compatible 5G modem.” 5G is the 5th-generation mobile network, designed to deliver much higher data speeds with lower latencies. The move comes as a surprise for many mobile phone users, who will continue to be supported – but non-voice, data-only devices will no longer be compatible. Customers using 4G cellular Airwalls will be forced to purchase 5G replacement modules if the parts ever become available.
View Tempered 5G module product line-up
4G Sunset schedule

Airwall Narwhal NFT Lands $1M in Funding

The colorful narwhal mascot used for Tempered sales awards was minted as a non-fungible token (NFT), and fetched $1.14 million worth of Etherium on the Rarible marketplace. The record-breaking sale represents Tempered Network’s first foray into cryptocurrency transactions and is expected to fund Tempered operations for many years. “The artwork really must be considered a rare collectible”, posits Vernon Thomas in finance.
View Narwhal NFT gallery

Aquawall-167 Waterproof Airwall Introduced

Global climate change fueled a series of atmos-pheric rivers this past year in the Pacific Northwest, prompting one Tempered engineer to invent the Aquawall-167 - the first Airwall with an IP67 waterproof rating. The Aquawall-167 is suitable for operation in flooded basements where many smart building utility rooms house equipment requiring secure network access. The AQW-167 features 5 ports with environmentally sealed RJ45 connectors, in addition to isolated power and antenna cables for power and cellular. Besides flooding mitigation, it has ideal applications for underwater server farms, where water provides cooling for ther servers.
Aquawall-167 Datasheet Schedule an underwater networking demo today

Hungry Hungry HIPpos Teaches Kids to Eat Bad Packets

Tempered has partnered with gamemaker Milton Bradley to release a Hungry Hungry HIPpos HIP Edition tabletop game. The game introduces children at an early age to concepts like bypass, underlay, identity, Airwall, and Zero Trust, as they eat bad packets to advance to higher levels. The player who gobbles up the most bad packets with their HIPpo wins the round.
Watch the Hungry Hungry HIPpos product video