Parallels Desktop 12 Update 1 adds even greater support for Microsoft Ink. (You can read an overview of Ink on the Mac here.) In this blog post, I will specifically discuss the uses of Microsoft Ink in Word for Windows 2016 running on a Mac with the use of Parallels Desktop 12. As outlined in […]
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Almost every major cloud provider is coming up with innovative products and add-ons that’ll add value to their customers. In this line, Google has released a new cloud encryption key management service to make it easy for organizations to create and use encryption keys to protect their data. This service is currently available in the beta version in 50 countries including the US, Canada, Australia and Denmark.
This service, in many ways, is a necessity considering the number of hacking incidents that have taken place over the last year, including the widely spoken rigging of the US election. It can add an extra layer of protection for confidential data stored on the cloud. A salient feature of this KMS system is that you can not only manage keys for encrypting user credentials, but also take API tokens associated with applications and store them outside Google Cloud.
At the same time, managing encryption keys is also easy with this service. Enterprises can create, use, recycle, and destroy millions of AES-256 standard symmetric keys in any cloud-hosted solution or environment, with a set of simple user-interface driven clicks. These keys can also be automated to rotate at certain intervals, so the password keeps changing all the time, and only authorized users can access the application.
In addition, Google KMS integrates well with existing services from Google such as the Cloud Identity Access Management system and the Cloud Audit Logging services, to help customers have greater control over their encryption keys. Also, this service falls between the default encryption options that’s considered to be fairly lenient and the customer supplier encryption keys (CSEK) that are the most stringent. So, its stringent enough to be easy to use and at the same time, to protect your data strongly. Such a feature can be particularly useful for companies that operate in regulated sectors such as healthcare and finance, as they can meet the regulatory requirements laid down by different statutory bodies.
These unique features are sure to bring in greater adoption through this year. The pricing is also fairly reasonable, and depends on the level of usage. Currently, Google plans to charge $0.06 for every active key per month, and the rate for using the key is $0.03 for every 10,000 operations. This means, an organization that stores and uses 500 encryption keys over 100,000 operations can expect to pay around $30 a month. While this is not cheap, it’s fair considering that encryption by itself is an expensive process.
In short, Google’s KMS is sure to address gaps that exist in cloud security by giving it an additional layer of protection. It’s no surprise that Google is the first company to release such a product, as it’s always been a strong advocate of end-to-end encryption of data on the Internet. For enterprise customers, this service is expected to address many fears and concerns regarding hacking, which unfortunately, have been more prevalent than we’d like. This service will hopefully put an end to some of the security loopholes on the Internet.
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(c)iStock.com/maxkabakov
An overwhelming 94% of cloud apps in enterprises across EMEA are not enterprise-ready, while two thirds of overall cloud services are not up to scratch, according to the latest research from Netskope.
The findings, which appear in the company’s latest quarterly cloud report, found that 82.4% of services do not encrypt data at rest, 66.4% of cloud services do not specify that the customers owns the data in their terms of services, while 42% do not allow admins to enforce password controls.
The report arrives amidst the backdrop of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into effect in May of next year. Netskope warns that businesses are potentially falling behind in their efforts to become au fait with the legislation; 40% of services analysed back up to a secondary location, the company says, not all of which are GDPR-compliant.
“Until very recently, organisations had to take an all-or-nothing approach to allowing cloud services,” said Sanjay Beri, Netskope founder and CEO. “If they sanctioned a cloud storage service for corporate use, they also needed to accept any additional personal instances of that cloud storage service or block the service entirely.
“As our customers make cloud services a strategic advantage for their businesses, when it comes to governing and securing those services, they are realising granular policies can ensure that sensitive data does not leak from the sanctioned instance of a corporate cloud service to an unsanctioned one,” Beri added.
The report also examined wider cloud trends. More than 90% of Netskope customers use IaaS services, predominantly AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, with enterprises using on average four IaaS services, while Office 365 remains the number one app with Slack continuing to rise up the top 20.
In February last year, Netskope reported that more than 4% of enterprises have sanctioned cloud apps laced with malware.
(c)iStock.com/maxkabakov
An overwhelming 94% of cloud apps in enterprises across EMEA are not enterprise-ready, while two thirds of overall cloud services are not up to scratch, according to the latest research from Netskope.
The findings, which appear in the company’s latest quarterly cloud report, found that 82.4% of services do not encrypt data at rest, 66.4% of cloud services do not specify that the customers owns the data in their terms of services, while 42% do not allow admins to enforce password controls.
The report arrives amidst the backdrop of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into effect in May of next year. Netskope warns that businesses are potentially falling behind in their efforts to become au fait with the legislation; 40% of services analysed back up to a secondary location, the company says, not all of which are GDPR-compliant.
“Until very recently, organisations had to take an all-or-nothing approach to allowing cloud services,” said Sanjay Beri, Netskope founder and CEO. “If they sanctioned a cloud storage service for corporate use, they also needed to accept any additional personal instances of that cloud storage service or block the service entirely.
“As our customers make cloud services a strategic advantage for their businesses, when it comes to governing and securing those services, they are realising granular policies can ensure that sensitive data does not leak from the sanctioned instance of a corporate cloud service to an unsanctioned one,” Beri added.
The report also examined wider cloud trends. More than 90% of Netskope customers use IaaS services, predominantly AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, with enterprises using on average four IaaS services, while Office 365 remains the number one app with Slack continuing to rise up the top 20.
In February last year, Netskope reported that more than 4% of enterprises have sanctioned cloud apps laced with malware.
We’re all aware that dev/test != production environments. While the software stacks upon which applications are deployed may be (and hopefully are) the same, there still remains a whole lot of “infrastructure” (that’s everything else) that isn’t the same. Routers, switches, security devices, load balancers, caches, and other devices dedicated to ensuring the secure delivery of applications to hungry consumer and corporate users simply don’t exist in the dev/test environment. That’s particularly true as organizations continue to view “the cloud” as its ideal dev/test environment while continuing to insist that production remain firmly rooted on-premises.
(c)iStock.com/Sjoerd van der Wal
Opinion It’d be fantastic if developers could write one piece of code on their machine and have full confidence it could run on any server without a glitch.
This is far from the norm as the technical headaches of pushing code on to different servers and environments can have profound consequences for any organisation. This can undermine confidence and slow down the roll-out of new apps and amendments to them.
Things are changing though, as the technology supporting cloud infrastructures matures. We’ve seen this with the largely universal acceptance of open source container solution Docker, which is helping standardise code for cloud environments.
This has now been enhanced by the arrival of Kubernetes, a platform used for automating deployment and scaling, as well as the operations of application containers across clusters of hosts.
The layer of abstraction that Kubernetes provides means we now only need to talk to one technology to gain a higher level of control over everything at a lower level. It also means we can take a cloud infrastructure built in one cloud environment, such as AWS, and move it into another environment, including Azure or Google Cloud.
This really is the next generation of cloud, with lots of big name organisations already jumping on the bandwagon and embracing Kubernetes. However, this move will not be as simple for everyone. Many companies will need to undergo a major cultural shift before this is possible.
To appreciate the benefits of Kubernetes, of which there are many, organisations first need to embrace the DevOps philosophy that places a clear focus on small scale continuous change to an organisation’s infrastructure. This approach is one that concentrates on deploying a microservice architecture and away from a huge code base that will become brittle as its scales.
When developers focus on one component of an app at a time, the risk of things being broken elsewhere is reduced. Developers can concentrate on making enhancements to one area of a cloud infrastructure without having to worry about the implications their actions are having elsewhere.
An eCommerce site, for example, will have a separate app for every component – be that user sign-up and login management or for processing orders. Kubernetes allows microservices performing different tasks to be deployed and scaled individually. Along with this, it ensures these separate services can still talk to each other.
This approach is allowing organisations to scale their cloud infrastructure in a more sustainable way – allowing features to be added quicker and with greater reliability. There is little doubt that the benefits, particularly when considering the current lack of alternatives, means Kubernetes will become the de facto tool for scaling up infrastructures as cloud computing matures.
It’s important to recognise, however, that this not about writing code in a new way, it’s about working in a new way and facilitating continuous change.
Read more: App container market to hit $2.7bn by 2020 – with consolidation signs already afoot
(c)iStock.com/Sjoerd van der Wal
Opinion It’d be fantastic if developers could write one piece of code on their machine and have full confidence it could run on any server without a glitch.
This is far from the norm as the technical headaches of pushing code on to different servers and environments can have profound consequences for any organisation. This can undermine confidence and slow down the roll-out of new apps and amendments to them.
Things are changing though, as the technology supporting cloud infrastructures matures. We’ve seen this with the largely universal acceptance of open source container solution Docker, which is helping standardise code for cloud environments.
This has now been enhanced by the arrival of Kubernetes, a platform used for automating deployment and scaling, as well as the operations of application containers across clusters of hosts.
The layer of abstraction that Kubernetes provides means we now only need to talk to one technology to gain a higher level of control over everything at a lower level. It also means we can take a cloud infrastructure built in one cloud environment, such as AWS, and move it into another environment, including Azure or Google Cloud.
This really is the next generation of cloud, with lots of big name organisations already jumping on the bandwagon and embracing Kubernetes. However, this move will not be as simple for everyone. Many companies will need to undergo a major cultural shift before this is possible.
To appreciate the benefits of Kubernetes, of which there are many, organisations first need to embrace the DevOps philosophy that places a clear focus on small scale continuous change to an organisation’s infrastructure. This approach is one that concentrates on deploying a microservice architecture and away from a huge code base that will become brittle as its scales.
When developers focus on one component of an app at a time, the risk of things being broken elsewhere is reduced. Developers can concentrate on making enhancements to one area of a cloud infrastructure without having to worry about the implications their actions are having elsewhere.
An eCommerce site, for example, will have a separate app for every component – be that user sign-up and login management or for processing orders. Kubernetes allows microservices performing different tasks to be deployed and scaled individually. Along with this, it ensures these separate services can still talk to each other.
This approach is allowing organisations to scale their cloud infrastructure in a more sustainable way – allowing features to be added quicker and with greater reliability. There is little doubt that the benefits, particularly when considering the current lack of alternatives, means Kubernetes will become the de facto tool for scaling up infrastructures as cloud computing matures.
It’s important to recognise, however, that this not about writing code in a new way, it’s about working in a new way and facilitating continuous change.
Read more: App container market to hit $2.7bn by 2020 – with consolidation signs already afoot
As good Venn diagrams always show it’s the intersection areas that offer the sweet spot for trends and markets, and an especially potent one is the intersection of Cloud computing, with the blockchain and also digital identity, particularly when considered within contexts such as Digital Democracy.
Given the diversity of each field alone there are multiple perspectives to this, more the start of a conversation rather than a definitive design.
WSM International will provide migration services for organizations interested in easily, safely and quickly moving their IT infrastructure to LeaseWeb’s range of hosted and cloud services.
WSM is the leading provider of cloud migrations services, with a 14-year history of and experience with migrating workloads from onsite to hosted cloud services. In working with the world’s leading hosting and cloud services company, WSM has successfully completed tens of thousands of migrations, from the simplest web sites to complex enterprise IT workloads.
LeaseWeb provides global Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and on-demand hosting solutions including dedicated servers, cloud-based servers, colocation services and hybrid cloud offerings.
Citrix hosted its annual summit at Anaheim in California from 9th to 11th of January, 2017, and in this summit, it revealed a roadmap for the company. It offered a glimpse into what customers and investors can expect from the company in 2017, and the steps it is taking to increase its market share in the global cloud market.
One of the defining aspects is a plan to reinvigorate relationship with Microsoft. This is an interesting plan considering that its President and CEO, Krill Tatrinov has deep experience with Microsoft, and was in fact, the former Executive Vice-President of Microsoft’s Business Solutions Division. Before that, he was in charge of many key technological divisions in Microsoft. Since he took helm in 2006, Citrix has taken many steps to move closer to Microsoft, and in this summit, this strategy was made clear.
During a keynote address, PJ Hough, Senior Vice President products, announced that Citrix and Microsoft customers can deploy Windows 10 desktop on the Microsoft Azure platform directly, with the additional choice to deploy apps as well on Azure. With such an integration in place, both Microsoft and Citrix are reaching out to mutual customers to help them transition to the cloud more easily. They are specifically planning to focus on those customers who have concerns regarding cloud. A report titled Global Business Technographics Infrastructure Survey released by Forrester shows that 38 percent of enterprises that were surveyed have not adopted any kind of cloud infrastructure, while another 23 percent have adopted just one cloud. This report clearly shows that cloud is not as ubiquitous as it may seem, and there’s always more room for penetration.
That is exactly what both the companies may do together under the invigorated relationship. Customers who already own XenApp or XenDesktop licenses can choose to move to Citrix Cloud-as-a-service. To help them with this transition, Citrix will be offering a substantial set of tools and expert knowledge using both Citrix’s and Microsoft’s offerings. This way, existing customers can get the advantages of cloud without having to pay extra, as the cost of their license will be adjusted towards this transition.
Besides its partnership with Microsoft, Citrix also announced a new pilot program for existing Citrix Service Providers (CPS), who wish to move their deployments to Citrix Cloud. Though this service is free as of now, Citrix plans to introduce a monthly licensing model in the future. With such a product, providers can have a Desktop-as-a-service option for hosting different Citrix technologies.
Also, Citrix is planning to introduce a new set of tools called Smart Check and Smart Scale to help customers deploy and configure apps and mobile workspaces on Citrix Cloud. These two offerings will join the existing Smart Tools family, and are believed to ease the process of cloud transition.
In all, Citrix is making a big push to reach out to those enterprises that have not moved to the cloud yet. To this end, it has renewed its partnership with Microsoft and has come up with a slew of tools to make the process easier for enterprises.
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