My first Cisco Spark project - The idea: Integration of OpenVuln API into Cisco Spark

Cisco Spark and its new released set of APIs was one of the main topics during the Cisco Collaboration Summit 2015. The easiness of usage was a highlighted point during the presentations and piqued my natural curiosity. I'm a Cisco Spark fan since more than one year and I really like the idea to merge innovative Cloud based apps and on-prem equipment to provide new services.

Besides the different Cisco Spark APIs, Cisco released also the OpenVuln API, which provides API based access to Cisco Security advisories. One my responsibitilies at work is the evaluation of impact of new security advisories for Telepresence solutions, working with security advisories is part of my regular work. So I was very interested in evaluating how the OpenVuln API could make my daily life easier.

During the days before Christmas I got the time to meet old friends and we talked about the good old time during school with IRC chat rooms, bots and other tools we used in the past. After some beers I get the idea to try the combination of the Cisco Spark APIs and the the OpenVuln API to create something like a bot which could help to make checking security adivsories.

My personal goal I want to achieve with the combination of both APIs:
  • Web-based Python script which uses the APIs of OpenVuln and Cisco Spark
  • Automatic push of new security advisories or updated information in a Spark room
  • Posibility to define different filters for different rooms, e.g. in Room UC only security advisories for UC apps, in room Telepresence only security adivsories for Telepresence apps etc.
  • Searching for CVE-IDs or security advisories in a Spark room
To be realistic, I know that it will be a long way based on my programing skills, but only with challenges you can grow. It's clear to me that creating this application will be a journey with lots of ups and downs, it's also clear to me that basic coding skills and understanding theof possibilities of an API becoming more and more important to design a Collaboration solution.

I will post in the next weeks my different steps of my journey to create my first Spark app including all the challenges and frustrations. If you have any ideas what additional features would be interesting, please post them in the comments.




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