NHCP Taps Global Cleaning Firm Kärcher Anew, Restores EDSA People Power Monument

Wazzup Pilipinas!

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​Kärcher expert cleaning parts of the People Power Monument using their high-pressure equipment.​

Following a successful clean-up of the Rizal Monument last December, Kärcher, in partnership with the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP), is conducting another restorative cleaning project, this time with the beneficiary being the EDSA People Power Monument.

Cleaning of the said monument started on Monday, February 12 and will last until Thursday, February 15. This project is part of the company’s ongoing cleaning initiative to restore national historical landmarks all around the world.

Located at the corner of EDSA and White Plains Avenue in Quezon City, the People Power Monument is a sculpture designed by Eduardo Castrillo to commemorate the 1986 People Power Revolution. It became open to the public in 1993.

The cleaning and restoration of the sculpture is just in time for the 32^ndanniversary of the People Power Revolution, which will be held on February 25. Similar to Rizal Monument restoration, the cleaning professionals of Kärcher are using its steam cleaning machines to remove the dirt and pollution that the memorial has incurred throughout the years.

Zurich Fernandez, Country General Manager of Kärcher Philippines, says that being tapped by the NHCP twice to undertake such a project is such a deep honor and privilege, especially because of the People Power Monument’s place in Filipino history and for what is stands for.

“We at Kärcher are deeply honored once again to work together with the NHCP in this project. Standing as a symbol of hope and beacon of freedom, the People Power Monument is one of the most enduring legacies of the Filipino spirit, showing how in the midst of turbulence and conflict, a whole nation can become one. We assure everyone that we will help NHCP in any way to provide the utmost of care to the monument,” said Fernandez.

Based in Winnenden, Germany, Kärcher is the world’s leading provider of efficient, resource-conserving cleaning systems that cover home and professional cleaning. It currently has more than 12,000 employees in 67 markets under 110 subsidiary companies, and provides global service and support through its estimated 50,000 service and sale points.

For more information about Kärcher’s ongoing cleaning initiative to restore national historical landmarks all around the world, visithttps://www.kaercher.com/int/inside-kaercher/sustainability/cultural-sponsorship.html.

Duterte to Close Down Boracay if Not Cleaned Within 6 Months

Wazzup Pilipinas!

“Boracay is a cesspool!"

"You go into the water, it's smelly. Smell of what? S***"

President Rodrigo Roa Duterte orders Secretary Roy Cimatu of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to clean up Boracay in 6 months. Otherwise, he threathens to close it down.

"It’s destroying the environment or the Republic of the Philippines and creating a disaster coming."

The President threatens to also file a case vs. Boracay officials for the neglect.

Perhaps beleaguered Boracay can learn from what Pattaya, Thailand is doing (link: http://www.pattayamail.com/news/pattaya-locals-via joint, periodic clean-ups among establishments, businesses and residents based there.

Beyond the need for periodic cleanups, I think Boracay must consider an outright building moratorium. In the 20 years that I've visited Boracay several times since 1998, the buildup everywhere has been crazy. It has gradually created a concrete jungle in many parts of the island.

Boracay residents welcome the cleanup but lament the ‘cesspool’ tag. Many of us love Boracay. We’ve been there a lot of times and we can say that the island has changed over time. We agree that it needs to breathe. The island needs rehabilitation.

But that’s not enough reason to call it shit. You know where the real shit is?

“To close the island would be an easy way out and too much to bear for the residents who depend on the island’s tourism for their livelihood,” Boracay Foundation Inc. (BFI) said.

BFI President Nanette Graf says that theres a need to increase fees as tourists are causing environmental problems.

The best solution is to strictly implement existing environmental laws and close all erring establishments. To close the island would be an easy way out and too much to bear for residents who depend on tourism for livelihood. 

"We started the development of Boracay Island 30 years ago in the late 1980s under Secretary Jose Antonio  Gonzalez. I was the Chairman of the Task. Force Boracay, an inter-agency office composed of the three tourism agencies of DoT, PTA (now TIEZA) an the PCVC. During our time, Boracay was being handled at the highest levels of the national government.

"The problem of Boracay started when the functions of the national government like tourism, health and education were devolved to the LGUs per the Local Government Code of 1991 authored by then Senator Aquilino "Nene" Pimentel Jr. From the highest levels of national government. the administration of Boracay Island went to the 5th class municipality of Malay in the early 1990s that neither had the capability nor the political will to do what was needed.

We prepared the plan for a sewerage system to collect the sewage and a Sewage Treatment Plant (STP). However, it would take around 20 years before the sewerage system and the STP were installed. In spite of these basic environmental infrastructure in place, what happened was connection from business establishments to the sewerage system was NOT made mandatory. I am not up to date on the current situation if it has been rectified already.

The other problem of Boracay is Flooding which happened some months ago late last year 2017. There is apparently some design flaw withe the drainage system that caused the flooding. Other than the design flaw, the other problem is that the natural waterways of the island has been blocked already with backfill of earth. This has to be rectified. The flooding problem is similar to what to Magallanes Village in Makati. Th estero (creek) outside the perimeter wall in Pasay has filled with garbage and/or earth." says Rick Ramos, Chairman of the Task Force Boracay, an inter-agency office composed of the three tourism agencies of DoT, PTA (now TIEZA) an the PCVC, during the 80s. During his time, Boracay was being handled at the highest levels of the national government.

The last time I was in Boracay, I had to go to the other side of the island to get a decent clean swim in water that didn't have algae. And I did see sewage pipes from hotels that directly dumped waste into the beaches water. It would be a great waste if Boracay's stewards of tourism -- the businesses and city government -- don't clean up their act literally.

Fortinet Introduces Industry’s Fastest 100 Gbps+ Next-Generation Firewall Appliance

Wazzup Pilipinas!

New FortiGate 6000F series delivers the performance and interface options to scale the enterprise edge

Fortinet, the global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today introduced its FortiGate 6000F Series of Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW). The first in the series, the FortiGate 6000F incorporates a new hardware processing architecture that delivers the validated performance of a Fortinet chassis in a compact appliance form-factor to deliver advanced security for exponentially increasing

enterprise traffic.

  

·         The FortiGate 6000F series NGFWs are ideally suited for enterprise edge networks that prioritize threat protection and encryption inspection throughput in a form-factor that enables high density, energy efficiency, and deployment simplicity.

·         The FortiGate 6000F is built around Fortinet’s next-generation hardware architecture that combines discrete, multi-cpu processing cards that enable chassis-class performance, resilience, and capacity in a compact apppliance form factor.

·         Delivers unparalleled processing power and speed to meet the security needs of enterprise edge traffic with industry-leading encrypted traffic inspection, threat protection and NGFW performance.

Increase in Multi-Cloud Networks and Encrypted Traffic Requires Security Speed & Scale

Multi-cloud environments and the increasing use of IoT and mobile devices to access mission-critical applications are drastically increasing the volume of encrypted data on enterprise edge networks. The adoption of these technologies is also increasing bandwidth, throughput, and session capacity requirements that are driving enterprises to modernize their edge networks.

Additionally, the expanded digital attack surface and complex threat landscape is escalating the need for advanced security protections that can be applied with speed and scale across all connected devices. Security appliances need to be able to deliver the high performance required to protect encrypted traffic at the enterprise edge with a compact, modern interface that can seamlessly grow capacity in a smaller, efficient physical footprint.

The Next-Generation of FortiGate 

Fortinet’s new F-series includes the FortiGate 6300F and FortiGate 6500F, which are high-performance, compact and easy to manage NGFW appliances that are integrated within the Fortinet Security Fabric.

·         Advanced Security Capabilities and Performance: The 6000F series are the industry’s fastest NGFW appliances, delivering advanced threat protection and SSL inspection performance to handle massive volumes of traffic at the network edge.

	FortiGate 6300F	FortiGate 6500F
Threat Protection	60 Gbps	100 Gbps
SSL Inspection	70 Gbps	130 Gbps
NGFW Throughput	80 Gbps	140 Gbps
Session Capacity	100M	170M

·         High Speed and Flexible Interfaces:High density zSFP+ and QSFP28 interfaces support 10G, 40G, 100Gbps and new 25G data rates to provide high speed connectivity and increased flexibility as enterprises migrate to higher density designs.

·         Security Fabric Integration: FortiGate firewalls serve as the foundation of the Fortinet Security Fabric and run FortiOS, the world’s most deployed network security operating system. The Fortinet Security Fabric provides broad, integrated, and automated security that is required to protect the vast digital attack surface created by digital transformation. 

“Enterprise adoption of the cloud is massively increasing the volume of traffic that needs to be inspected at the enterprise edge. Add to this the ever-increasing percentage of encrypted traffic and today’s NGFW’s need to perform at levels unheard of five years ago. The FortiGate 6000F high-end firewall series is built upon a new architecture that delivers the industry’s highest threat protection and encryption inspection performance to ensure enterprises can scale their defenses and meet the evolving needs of their business.”, John Maddison, senior vice president of products and solutions, Fortinet.

Next-Generation Hardware Architecture

An industry first for a security appliance, Fortinet’s next-generation hardware architecture leverages compact internal processing cards that are miniaturized versions of the blades typically used in cutting-edge modular security chassis. Each processing card combines multiple 12-core CPUs, Security Processing Units (SPUs), and Content (CP9) and Network Processors (NP6) into a discrete unit. The FortiGate 6000F series can support up to ten discrete processing cards in a 3U appliance.

The innovative design enables traditionally chassis-only benefits like high resilience and session scale while also delivering advanced security capabilities at breakthrough speeds never before seen in a compact appliance form-factor. The architecture provides additional benefits like hardware load balancing using new custom Distribution Processors (DP3) that intelligently assign tasks between the discrete processing cards.

Supporting Quote

Stuart Berman, global security architect at Steelcase

“Our use of the cloud continues to expand to meet the evolving business needs of our users and customers. This growth has increased the amount of traffic crossing our networks and created an imperative to continue to maintain security standards across our entire infrastructure without impacting business productivity. Our extended IT infrastructure is absolutely critical to everything we do, so it’s invaluable to have the security performance and seamless protection that Fortinet provides across our physical and cloud-based domains.”

Pascal Perot, VP strategic alliances, security at ePlus

“Cloud computing is becoming increasingly popular, but gaps in protection can occur if security solutions can’t keep pace with agile public, private, and hybrid cloud environments.  The growth of IoT and Mobility also puts large demands on performance and security architectures as data traverses these end points.  ePlus recognizes these advances and has invested significantly in providing our customers with comprehensive security solutions to meet these growing demands.  We are proud to partner with Fortinet and leverage their robust platform to both scale and secure these transformative environments.”