Understanding Security Challenges in 2019

In 2018, the Internet Security Threat Report highlighted the challenges enterprises face with cyberattacks and hackers. The report showed that approximately 4,800 websites were compromised per month, the use of PowerShell scripts increased by a thousand percent, and the cloud was not left out. Cloud-based services, applications or solutions were alarmingly compromised that approximately 70 million records were stolen from poorly configured S3 buckets. 

Simplifying AWS Global Connectivity with Transit Gateways

Automation tools are key for delivering on the philosophy of DevOps: better application and service delivery at high velocity without sacrificing performance. DevOps practices that leverage the latest automation tools and technologies also ensure that their engineering platforms and processes are in place to facilitate continuous delivery, integration, and improvement without sacrificing quality throughout the development process. 

What is DevSecOps?

DevSecOps is the philosophy of integrating security practices within the DevOps process. Similar to DevOps, DevSecOps seeks to achieve greater efficiency and productivity through team collaboration, but the DevSecOps approach incorporates security principles. 

On July 17 Virginia-based bank Capital One received an email tip that their data had been leaked on code-hosting site Github.  An initial investigation found that the data originated from a Capital One server hosted in the cloud that was accessed via a misconfigured firewall.

Capital One contacted the FBI who found online social media postings of the hack by former Seattle software engineer Patricia Thompson who was then arrested and charged on July 29th for computer intrusion and theft of the Capital One data.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), a forerunner of cloud networks, beats the competition with a mature, developed platform.Their current offering ranks high in reliability, with a competitive track record relative to cloud-market peers, Azure and Google Cloud. AWS is not only the oldest of the three, but also the largest in terms of scale. The platform currently offers over 140 services. This article compares AWS to other cloud computing solutions looking at the following factors: compute, storage and network, billing and pricing, support and uptime & security.

The basic lego unit is the 1x1. It’s the smallest block, connects to any other piece and hurts a lot when you step on it with bare feet.

In AWS, the equivalent of the 1x1 is a Virtual Machine (VM). And yes, a lot of the “managed” services like RDS, ELB, and EMR are abstracted to provide the convenience of the service without managing the underlying infrastructure but behind the scenes, they all use virtual machines.

Springtime brings April showers, May flowers...and the California-based AWS Summits! These are designed as free-to-attend events that bring the cloud computing community together to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS. Stratus10 was proud to host a booth as an onsite sponsor at the AWS Summit in Santa Clara, California, and Anaheim, California. Couldn't make it to the events?

Here are our team's top 3 takeaways:

Really? Again?

When will companies learn how to properly protect their data?  Starting with Target and Yahoo in 2013, Sony and OPM in 2014, Ashley Madison in 2015, the Democratic National Committee in 2016, Equifax in 2017 and now Marriott and Quora back-to-back to cap off 2018, data breaches are becoming a mainstay in the news. It begs the question: what are so many of these organizations missing?  

And if it can happen to companies with big budgets like these, then how can a mid-market or small business be expected to keep up?

According to a recent survey by LA CTO Forum, the challenges CTOs face in 2019 are complex and rooted in a wide range of areas.  From human resources to time management, security to tech debt, it's clear is that the modern-day CTO needs to have a broad skill set in order to achieve success.