14th International @CloudExpo New York 2014 Photo Album

14th International Cloud Expo, held on June 10–12, 2014 at the Javits Center in New York City, featured three content-packed days with a rich array of sessions about the business and technical value of cloud computing, Internet of Things, Big Data, and DevOps led by exceptional speakers from every sector of the IT ecosystem. The Cloud Expo series is the fastest-growing Enterprise IT event in the past 10 years, devoted to every aspect of delivering massively scalable enterprise IT as a service.

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Cloud Computing: A Quick Primer

“The cloud will transform everything about technology.” This statement is better suited for 20 years ago when the cloud was in its infancy. In 2014 the statement should be that “The cloud has taken over technology.” Cloud computing has been around since the sixties believe it or not, but over the past few years the industry has recognized the concept better as more organizations are embracing cloud technology and more vendors are creating amazing cloud-based business solutions.

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Community health systems, HIPAA, and cloud hosting: The facts

On the heels of the recent Community Health Systems (CHS)  data breach, in which 4.5 million Personal Health Records (PHI) were compromised, the industry is abuzz about data security in the HIPAA Compliant cloud businesses.  Data breaches like the one at CHS are not the exception – they’re the norm.  The FBI warned that the healthcare industry is extremely vulnerable to hackers in a recent Internet Crimes Bulletin.

The massive security breach at CHS shows just how important it is to be proactive with all aspects of data security. PHI can no longer be secured with traditional security technologies and methodology- even up to date antivirus and firewall technologies are not enough to protect sensitive data from professional hacking teams. As the healthcare industry rapidly adopts new technology to meet the Meaningful Use: Stage I & II mandates of the Affordable Care Act, patient data is digitized and exchanged more than ever.  Securing this data has become increasingly difficult, requiring sophisticated tools and armies of engineers.

Keeping PHI secure is a difficult job, but there are resources available to guide you through the process.  Having an expert who can walk you through keeping your environment secure, available to your end-users, and profitable is the key to success.  Work with your Managed Services Providers to create a “Security Matrix of Responsibility”, and use this as a basis to develop a proactive security policy.  Service providers like Logicworks and AlertLogic can help identify which areas of the matrix fall under your purview.  By narrowing the focus to those areas of your security policy are your responsibility, it becomes easier to identify areas of focus for your business.

While CHS did have security technology in place, others often have little to no additional security beyond a traditional firewall to protect their infrastructure.  Even in the case of the CHS breach, there was the possibility to do more; they have publicly stated that they have recently increased security and implemented new technologies to reduce the likelihood of this kind of attack in the future.  Consult an expert in securing businesses in your industry, and consider implementing solutions such as:

  • Web Application Firewall
  • Log Shipping and analysis (with Alert Logic)
  • Monitoring service to alert you of any anomalies in your infrastructure.
  • Intrusion Detection (with Alert Logic)

HIPAA Compliance, and the security of PHI is not possible without an ongoing commitment to policies, standards and procedure.  Here at Logicworks, to ensure that we’re always at the top of our security game, we constantly audit ourselves. Aside from identifying area of improvemnts, internal audits help identify where you are failing to gather data effectively.  Maintaining proper access-control logs is essential to protecting against cyber-attackers.

The post Community Health Systems, HIPAA, and Cloud Hosting appeared first on Cloud Computing News.

@CloudExpo | #Cloud Is Disrupting Everything [@Emulex]

Is it just me, or has there been an explosion of buzz words lately? Don’t get me wrong, the IT industry innovates at a crazy pace normally, but it seems that things have been evolving faster than ever and that a fundamental change in the way things are done is underway. We can attribute this change to one thing: the cloud. Cloud computing is by no means new, but in 2014 it has come into its own.
Cloud computing is accelerating disruption by changing how data centers deploy, develop and consume everything from software and hardware, to how they offer products and services to their customers.
Let’s take a look at a few of these hot technologies and why you’ll be adopting some of them, whether you realize it now or not.

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@Cloudian Named “Bronze Sponsor” of @CloudExpo Silicon Valley

Cloudian is a Foster City, Calif.-based software company specializing in cloud storage. Cloudian HyperStore® is an S3-compatible cloud object storage platform that enables service providers and enterprises to build reliable, affordable and scalable hybrid cloud storage solutions. Cloudian actively partners with leading cloud computing environments including Amazon Web Services, Citrix Cloud Platform, Apache CloudStack, OpenStack and the vast ecosystem of S3 compatible tools and applications. Cloudian’s customers include Vodafone, Nextel, NTT, Nifty, and LunaCloud. The company has additional offices in China and Japan.

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Don’t Miss @TechnicallySeth at @CloudExpo Silicon Valley [@NuoDB]

As more applications and services move «to the cloud» (public or on-premise) cloud environments are increasingly adopting and building out traditional enterprise features. This in turn is enabling and encouraging cloud adoption from enterprise users. In many ways the definition is blurring as features like continuous operation, geo-distribution or on-demand capacity become the norm. NuoDB is involved in both building enterprise software and using enterprise cloud capabilities.
In his session at 15th Cloud Expo, Seth Proctor, CTO at NuoDB, Inc., will discuss the experiences from building, deploying and using enterprise services and suggest some ways to approach moving enterprise applications into a cloud model.

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Microsoft @Azure «Best #Cloud Education» At @CloudExpo NY [@MSCloud]

Big Data, the cloud, and mobile are converging technology trends that represent real opportunities for developers and IT pros to deliver more efficiencies and new value. On June 11, 2014, at the 14th International Cloud Expo Microsoft Cloud delivered a complete education track as part of Microsoft’s strategy on how to deliver an integrated and yet open platform centered in cloud that also enables to extend existing investments. For developers and architects, this meant using familiar tools with enhanced capabilities never seen before. In the past 12 months Microsoft has offered tremendous innovation including: infrastructure as a service, cloud storage, cloud based device management across heterogeneous devices and Big Data solutions. Cloud Expo delegates learned how they can move their businesses and careers forward by taking Microsoft’s innovation to their business.

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@ThingsExpo | WebRTC As The «Backbone of Internet of Things»

Internet of @ThingsExpo anticipates 90% of WebRTC companies & developers will monetize their products & services through IoT by 2016. This year, @ThingsExpo Silicon Valley introduced a new «WebRTC – Backbone of Internet of Things» track. The first three WebRTC sessions at @ThingsExpo Silicon Valley will be presented by top three experts of WebRTC, Keith McFarlene, Ivan Ivanov, and Peter Dunkley.

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IBM’s Kloeckner: «Cloud Needs DevOps»

In a world of ever-accelerating business cycles and fast-changing client expectations, the cloud increasingly serves as a growth engine and a path to new business models. Dynamic clouds enable businesses to continuously reinvent themselves, adapting their business processes, their service and software delivery and their operations to achieve speed-to-market and quick response to customer feedback.In his Lunch Keynote at 14th Cloud Expo, Dr Kristof Kloeckner, General Manager at Rational Software, IBM, discussed the capabilities of BlueMix, IBM’s cloud platform, with integrated DevOps services. With BlueMix, developers can compose applications in a tight feedback loop, using a wealth of IBM, third-party and open source services and APIs, deploy and scale with infrastructure services from SoftLayer and code with the confidence based on a foundation of open standards.

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