Choosing The Right Drink To Pair With Your Meal

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The perfect meal is a mixture of more than just the food. It is the seasonings you use, the way you cook it, and the quality of the ingredients you choose. But it also includes an often overlooked component – the beverage that you serve with it.

Choosing the right drink to pair with your meal can complement the flavors of your food in ways you may never have expected. For instance, you can’t just cook a perfect rack of lamb and serve a soda with it. The harshness of the drink will conflict with the soft flavors of the lamb and detract from the taste.

A prime example of this is when you barbecue your food. While beer and wine are a much better choice to serve with a grilled menu, even these beverages require technique to determine the right flavor or brew.

The drink you choose depends on the way you barbecue your food and the sauce and seasoning you use. There are a few general rules that you should use when you pair a wine with your barbecued meal.

Always match a dominant aspect of the sauce to your wine. If your sauce is tangy or tart, find a wine that corresponds. These types of wine are often white and citrus-flavored. However, if you use a gas smoker for your meal, you need to find a rich, red smoky wine.

Beer is always another option to serve with your barbecue, but again, you need to ensure that you match the flavor components. Many barbecue sauces have a vinegar base to them. Sauces like these need to be paired with a strong beer. Others that are more mustard-based should be paired with a sweet flavor to balance the mustard taste with something more in the citrus area.

However, if you are not a wine or beer connoisseur, it can be difficult to wander the aisles of the liquor store and decide which whites and reds are sweet enough or tangy enough to complement the choice of sauce and style of barbecue you are going to use. Short of testing every drink before you serve it with your meal, you may not have an easy way to determine which beverage will be the complement to your perfect finished creation.

You are not the only one in that situation, though. Because of this, there are places for you to turn to so that you do not have to spend hundreds of dollars to sample all of the wine and beer to choose your match (although it may be fun to do so!).

Instead, guides like this one can show you exactly which beverages to pair with which foods to ensure your dinner is a raving success.

Fortinet Introduces New Network Access Control Solution for IoT Security

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FortiNAC Provides Visibility and Control of IoT Devices and Automated Response to Threats, Controls Access at Scale in Multi-Vendor Environments

“Digital transformation brings a proliferation of unsecure IoT devices accessing the network, and with it, the increased risk of a security breach. FortiNAC allows organizations to identify every single device on the network and enables segmentation, giving each device access only to approved items. This functionality is delivered all within a solution that works with multi-vendor environments and an unlimited number of devices. FortiNAC stengthens the Fortinet Security Fabric for IoT deployments, delivering broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions across the entire attack surface.

In the world of IoT, FortiNAC answers the question ‘what’s on your network’ and then enables you to protect it.” - John Maddison, SVP of products and solutions at Fortinet

News Summary
Fortinet, a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today announcedFortiNAC, a new network access control product line that delivers network segmentation and automated responses for IoT security.

• The massive rise of unsecure, headless IoT devices, including industrial and medical IoT, requires new tools for securing networks.
• Fortinet’s new FortiNAC product line delivers network access control to secure IoT environments and provides enhanced visibility, control and automated response capabilities.
• FortiNAC provides detailed profiling of each device on the network and enables granular network segmentation and automated responses for changes in device status or behavior. This ensures each device only has access to approved items on the network.

Unsecure IoT Devices are Leaving Organizations Vulnerable

The use of IoT devices is growing at a tremendous rate as organizations embrace digital transformation to enable better operational efficiency. According to Gartner, “Internet of Things endpoints will grow at a 32% CAGR from 2016 through 2021, reaching an installed base of 25.1 billion units.”¹ The sheer volume of devices—including IoT, corporate, and BYOD—seeking wired and wireless network access are exponentially enlarging the attack surface and raising internal provisioning, management and compliance costs. The responsibility of connecting and securing access has shifted from a network-led issue to a security-led issue and poses a challenge for organizations: security managers need to secure every single device every single time, while cybercriminals only need one open port, one compromised or unknown device or one uncontained threat to circumvent all of the effort going into securing the network.

FortiNAC Secures Networks Accessed by Unsecure Devices

Fortinet’s new network access controller, FortiNAC, diminishes the security risks associated with unsecured devices accessing the network by giving organizations total visibility of endpoints, users, trusted and untrusted devices and applications. Once visibility has been achieved, FortiNAC establishes dynamic controls that ensure that all devices, whether wired or wirelessly connected, are authenticated or authorized, and are subject to a context-driven policy that defines who, what, when and where connectivity is permitted. This ensures that only the appropriate people and devices can connect to and access appropriate applications, infrastructure and assets. Additionally, FortiNAC can enforce company policies on device patching and firmware version. FortiNAC also contains powerful network orchestration capabilities for delivering automated responses to identified threats and can perform threat containment in seconds, where a manual process could take days or weeks.

Networks are in constant flux, with new devices connecting and disconnecting; controlling the network by controlling access to any device seeking access is a key part for ensuring the integrity of a network. Such an approach—where no unknown devices ever gain access to the corporate infrastructure, permitted devices are automatically segmented based on policies and roles and connected devices that begin to violate profiles are immediately quarantined from the network—becomes the foundation for a comprehensive security posture. Furthermore, the FortiNAC network access control solution is cost-effective and highly scalable, extending visibility and protection to an unlimited number of devices and eliminating the need for deployment at every location of a multi-site installation.

NAC and IoT Security Solutions Bolster the Fortinet Security Fabric

With today’s news, Fortinet strengthens its Security Fabric by extending its ability to engage network devices beyond theFabric-Ready Partner Program to a wider multi-vendor environment, including third-party firewalls, switches, wireless access points and endpoints. FortiNAC is also integrated with the FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall, FortiSwitch,FortiWLC Wireless Controllers, FortiSIEM and FortiAP to minimize the risk and impact of cyber threats and providebroader visibility and security for complex networks.

Supporting Quotes

“If you do not know about a device, there is no way to monitor and protect it. FortiNAC gives us a clear picture of the network and enables us to quickly find assets and shut down individual network ports. Adding this layer of visibility has helped us protect against data loss and ensure HIPAA compliance. I equate FortiNAC to having a lock on the doors and windows of your house. Without it, you are leaving your house wide open. We also no longer have to worry about lateral malware infections as we can just kill the port. Now, only authorized devices can connect to the network, and every port can be located and controlled.”

—Rob Fountaine, manager of information security at Atrius Health

“The network access control (NAC) market is seeing double digit growth in revenue, which is being driven by the need for device visibility in the network and concerns over IoT security. FortiNAC is a great enhancement to the Fortinet Security Fabric because it delivers an effective solution to IoT security risks and provides a compelling combination of multi-vendor support for enhanced detection and enforcement, as well as efficient and effective scalability for cost-effective deployment.”

—Zeus Kerravala, ZK Research

Cusi Lauds Pilipinas Shell for Additional PUV Fuel Discount

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Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi’s efforts to work with oil industry players in coming up with measures to help curb inflation are paying off.

Public utility jeepneys (PUJs) may now enjoy an additional discount of 25 centavos (P0.25) per liter of diesel fuel at strategically located Shell retail stations. This development is an outcome of the 20 August meeting called by the Energy Secretary with oil companies to discuss ways to help unburden consumers amidst rising prices.

Said discount extended by Shell is over and above the Php 1 to 2 discount being availed by public utility vehicles under the Memorandum of Understanding of the DOE with Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation, Petron Corporation and Phoenix Petroleum Philippines, Inc., which was signed on 1 March 2018.

“We thank Pilipinas Shell for continuously supporting our efforts to fight inflation. As commodity prices continue to rise, finding immediate remedial measures to help our consumers is of utmost importance,” Sec. Cusi said.

The additional discount can be availed of in 446 Shell stations in areas with a high PUJ density. These stations are strategically located in Metro Manila, North Luzon, South Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. 

Sec. Cusi added that the DOE is hopeful that other oil companies will follow suit. “We will work together to find win-win solutions,” he said.

The DOE continues to assure the public that it will not waver in upholding consumer welfare, as well as in determining equitable solutions to address social challenges.