June 11, 2022

June 11, 2022

Cloud computing security: Where it is, where it's going

Most businesses use multiple cloud services and cloud providers, a hybrid approach that can support granular security options where vital data is kept close (perhaps in a private cloud) while less sensitive applications run in a public cloud to take advantage of big tech's economies of scale. But the hybrid model also introduces new complications, as every provider will have a slightly different set of security models that cloud customers will need to understand and manage. That takes time and (often elusive) expertise. But misconfigured services are high on the list of the causes for security incidents, along with even more basic failures like poor passwords and identity controls. Little surprise that companies are evaluating tools to automate much of this. That's leading to interest in new technologies such as Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools, which can help security teams spot and fix potential security issues around misconfiguration and compliance in the cloud, so they know the same rules are being enforced across their cloud services.


Jump Into the DevOps Pool: The Water Is Fine

If you’re thinking that becoming a member of a DevOps team sounds interesting, what are the things you need to consider? Having experience in just about any aspect of IT gives you the technical foundation to make yourself a viable candidate. Do some research. What does it take to hone your existing skills to become a successful member of a DevOps team? You’ll likely find that it takes you in a direction well within your reach. Your technical skills are just the beginning though. Your skills will contribute to the broader objective of the DevOps team. Valuable DevOps team members understand how their role fits into the bigger picture. It’s not necessary to know the details of another team member’s discipline. It is, however, important to understand how each of your roles contributes to the DevOps process. This implies that you take some time to learn about each role’s function. Becoming an invaluable DevOps team member goes one step further. DevOps engineers who possess or develop the interpersonal skills to work beyond their team in guiding others, become key players within an organization.?


How to prioritize cloud spending: 5 strategies for architects

The price of spot instances changes over days and weeks, so you can't predict the cost at the time of purchase. The amount of money saved varies depending on the type of resource: Low-priority instances are the least expensive, but they may be unavailable or turn off abruptly depending on capacity demand in the region. But such cases are rare. For example, AWS states that the average interruption frequency across all regions and instance types doesn't exceed 10%. Spot instances are best for stateless workloads, batch operations, and other fault-tolerant or time-flexible tasks. ... Begin by examining your cloud provider's transfer fees. Then, find ways to limit the number of data transfers in your cloud architecture. For example, you may need to change your application behavior and architecture to use computing resources in the closest data location. Transfer on-premises apps that often access cloud-hosted data to the cloud. In contrast to the cloud, specific resources (such as network bandwidth) are considered free in traditional datacenters. So if you move applications from on-premises datacenters, modify your application architecture to limit the amount of data transferred.


Defensive Cyber Attacks Declared Legal by UK AG

The move highlights a general lack of international agreement about when defensive cyber attacks should be considered appropriate. There has long been a murky world of online espionage in which countries have tacitly agreed to not respond with military force, due in no small part to degrees of plausible deniability and a great difficulty in displaying concrete evidence to the public that another nation’s covert hacking teams were behind a virtual break-in. This unofficial understanding has survived in the internet age, even as allies have been caught spying on each other, so long as everyone refrained from using cyber attacks to cause physical damage. Some developments in recent years have strained that arrangement, including Russia’s repeated cyber attacks on services in Ukraine and the recent willingness of cyber criminals to hit foreign critical infrastructure and government agencies with ransomware attacks. The UK AG has expressed that there is a pressing need to establish formal rules regarding defensive cyber attacks given the demonstrated possibility of devastating incidents that could cause actual damage to civilians, and that existing non-intervention agreements could serve as a launch point.


How AI can give companies a DEI boost

Although many companies are experimenting with AI as a tool to assess DEI in these areas, Greenstein noted, they aren’t fully delegating those processes to AI, but rather are augmenting them with AI. Part of the reason for their caution is that in the past, AI often did more harm than good in terms of DEI in the workplace, as biased algorithms discriminated against women and non-white job candidates. “There has been a lot of news about the impact of bias in the algorithms looking to identify talent,” Greenstein said. For example, in 2018, Amazon was forced to scrap its secret AI recruiting tool after the tech giant realized it was biased against women. And a 2019 study conducted by Harvard Business Review concluded that AI-enabled recruiting algorithms introduced anti-Black bias into the process. AI bias is caused, often unconsciously, by the people who design AI models and interpret the results. If an AI is trained on biased data, it will, in turn, make biased decisions. For instance, if a company has hired mostly white, male software engineers with degrees from certain universities in the past, a recruiting algorithm might favor job candidates with similar profiles for open engineering positions.


A CFO’s perspective on sustainable, inclusive growth

We’ve faced an ongoing health crisis that turned into a social crisis that went to an economic crisis and, unfortunately, we’re facing humanitarian crises, such as the war in Ukraine. But the fact of the matter is, people are making decisions, different decisions than where we were three to five years ago. And I believe they’re challenging the purpose of organizations, businesses, and leadership. As we talk about sustainability and inclusivity with that combination of the foundation for growth, that’s what the priorities of people are today. You asked about today’s CFOs and sustainability, inclusivity, growth. I truly believe that history will be written about these times that we’ve been operating in. As CFOs, we’re always—Eric, as you know quite well—focused on the what: productivity, efficiency, operational stability, liquidity. But I think these times will be less about pure financials and more about a culture. And when I think about culture, IBM—let me give a little shout out to my company—has a framework. We’ve been in existence for 111 years. We have a framework around culture that’s really grounded in purpose, united in values, and demonstrated through growth behaviors.?

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