Webinar on Securing Cloud Access

 

Welcome to the first installment of Datapipe’s 5in15 Webinars, where I run through five slides of information in 15 minutes. These quick presentations are designed to share information about products or thoughts in the industry. Our debut episode takes a look at something that’s always top of mind for the enterprise: security within cloud deployments.

Gone are the days of a strict nine-to-five work environment. Nowadays, we live in a world of flexible work schedules and 24-hour businesses. That can result in difficulties with enterprise IT—a common issue is remote access users, such as quality assistance or UI developers, needing access to AWS or other cloud resources in a secure manner. It’s not an easy thing to grant, and we’ve seen this challenge in a number of areas. That’s why we’ve partnered with FortyCloud to provide a solution: 2Factor Secure Cloud Access for AWS.

Before discussing the solution, though, it’s important to take a look at some of the problems and challenges of transitioning to the cloud:

  • The security processes, tools and standards in traditional IT environments don’t necessarily translate to the public cloud.
  • The concern of giving up control of an organization’s data is still high.
  • It’s not easy to create, manage and distribute credentials, especially with a third party involved. Those credentials often grant access to the underlying network to all users.

These problems create a ripple effect: due to security concerns, enterprises are unable to take full advantage of the public cloud’s benefits, including power, flexibility and scalability. Current work arounds often increase latency by introducing proxies or multiple network hops and can bring about all sorts of access issues.

Our 2Factor Secure Cloud Access for AWS aims to put these fears at ease. It integrates Datapipe Auth – a centrally managed two-factor authentication solution requiring a password and pin – with FortyCloud’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) security model, delivering enhanced security, access, and control to clients operating AWS environments. And rather than giving every user the same amount of access, it adds identity-based firewall access and user VPN to AWS with Roles Based Access Control (RBAC) and Management. In essence, this solution gives users network-based access control to a cloud environment.

Things can get a bit more complex in AWS environments, where we have to consider policies and size of deployment. With FortyCloud, we help users access data securely, regardless of their location. The goal, of course, is to provide not only improved security, but also enhanced control and greater compliance. The public cloud shouldn’t lose any of the traditional IT security standards, and it won’t with 2Factor Secure Cloud Access. This product also ends common hacking practices, like brute force or password phishing, by removing the risk of password compromise. And customers can remain in the driver’s seat, as administrators are able to control, monitor and report on employee remote access.

There are a number of challenges and obstacles in the enterprise. Security shouldn’t be one of them. For more information, please visit our 2Factor Secure Cloud Access page. You can view the full 5in15 webinar below, and feel free to give us a shout on Twitter with any questions or insights using the hashtag #DP5IN15.

Best Practices and Updates for AWS Cloud Database Migration Services

server-1235959_960_720-1Blog first posted at https://www.datapipe.com/blog/2016/09/23/best-practices-and-updates-for-aws-database-migration-services/

Our partners at AWS have a plethora of resources available to AWS users touching on a wide variety of subjects. One recently released white paper, “AWS Database Migration Services Best Practices,” dives into the ins and outs of migrating from a source database to a target database. It can be a lot to digest, and as a Relational Database Services partner, we’ve worked extensively with the AWS Database Migration Service since its launch, and can provide some insight on how to best utilize it.

Companies looking to modernize to a cloud platform or a modern database – or perhaps migrate for licensing reasons – often have had to plan for extensive outages when making the change. The AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) enables organizations to migrate data to and from a variety of databases located in Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), those running on Amazon EC2, and also those running on-premises. The service supports homogeneous migrations, such as Oracle to Oracle, as well as heterogeneous migrations, such as Oracle to Amazon Aurora. Whether it’s a homogeneous migration or not, the service tracks changes being made to the source database so that they can be applied to the target database to keep the two in sync. You can also customize table mappings and perform translations.

When using AWS DMS, a user provisions a replication server, defines source and target endpoints, and creates a task to migrate the data. A standard task has three major phases: the full load, the application of cached changes, and ongoing replication.

There are a handful of important considerations when creating a task. You’ll want to choose your migration type, either by migrating existing data, replicating changes, or a combination of both. You’ll also need to determine whether you want a task to start upon creation (the default on AWS), and tell AWS DMS what to do with tables that already exist. AWS DMS also includes options for dealing with large objects (LOBs). Since they require more processing and resources than standard objects, you can choose to either not include them, have a limited LOB mode, or go full LOB, and AWS DMS will not discriminate based on the size of objects. It’s also a smart approach to enable logging, as that will keep you updated on any informational, error, or warning messages.

In addition, AWS just announced enhancements for Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. Users can now use RDS for PostgreSQL as a source for AWS DMS. From the AWS blog:

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL now supports logical replication on RDS for PostgreSQL versions 9.4.9 and 9.5.4. With logical replication, we have added support for logical decoding, and you can setup logical replication slots on your instance and stream changes from the database through these slots. A new rds_replication role, assigned to the master user by default, can be used to grant permissions to manipulate and stream data through logical slots. To enable logical replication, set the parameter rds.logical_replication to 1. These logical slots also enable the RDS for PostgreSQL to be used as a source for AWS Database Migration Service (DMS).

Finally, AWS recently announced continuous data replication for DMS, which enables you to keep your database up to date after the initial migration. With this feature, you can now have high availability during the replication process by specifying Multi-AZ when you create your replication instances.

You can learn more about using RDS for PostgreSQL as a source for DMS in the AWS Database Blog and RDS documentation. You can also refer back to our previous blog posting on AWS DMS when it was launched into preview mode earlier this year. And to dive further into AWS DMS, check out the Best Practices whitepaper.

Cloud Security All Businesses Can benefit from

One of the best ways to avoid security issues is to have a proactive approach. That’s true whether you have applications in the cloud or not. Sandra Lambert at Tech.Co recently wrote a piece on the lessons startups can learn about cloud security. It’s great advice, but it shouldn’t stop at startups — there are applicable tidbits and benefits for businesses of all sizes, from tiny two-person operations to the enterprise.

Keep your data safe

Of course, this is a big reason why strong cloud security is important. Not only will you ensure that an outsider will be unable to access your cloud, you’ll also keep employees from accessing files they shouldn’t be able to. Particularly at the enterprise level, there are going to be files that all employees won’t need to access. Having all those hands in the proverbial cookie jar only heightens the risk of something going wrong.

This is why data monitoring is so important. Having an MSP or another monitoring system in place will free up your IT staff’s time to focus on other endeavors. You’ll also know that your programs are always up to date, which means you’re protected from the most recent viruses. Finally, if you’re using a system within the cloud, it’ll be able to scan to any device that’s connected to the cloud. Any computer, laptop, smartphone, tablet or other device you own will also be protected. For the enterprise, where smartphones often go hand-in-hand with laptops, that’s a great benefit. Executives can also take a look at the data from these programs and find out if any employees need a refresher on safe usage practices.

Utilize your storage

When a business first migrates to the cloud, they’re often in awe of all the extra space they have. Since tablets and smartphones in particular have limited storage space, you could theoretically store 100 percent of your programs and files within the cloud, keeping your devices’ hard drives as good as new.

The cloud will also sync files to all connected devices and create backups. If you accidentally delete something on one device, you can rest easy knowing it’s not gone forever. What’s more, the cloud is fully automatic in areas like updating software, so anytime there’s a new patch for a product, the cloud does the updating for you — no need to worry about using versions with known vulnerabilities.

Stay cost effective

The cost savings between the cloud and a managed service provider versus on-premises is quite staggering. Since cloud computing removes the need for owning large hard drives and other storage options — not to mention the need for buying software for your devices — a secured cloud ends up saving the enterprise money. At Datapipe, our billing system is totally transparent with no hidden costs.

Additionally, the cloud provides more flexibility for a business. It’s frustrating to buy equipment that barely ends up getting used, or to find yourself limited by a lack of equipment. Particularly at the enterprise level, the ability to scale quickly is important. With the cloud, you’re able to buy additional storage when you need it, and you can reduce your projects and infrastructure when things slow down. In today’s world, a company must be agile. The cloud allows that agility to happen.

Improved life for remote workers

As more companies offer remote policies for their workers, the importance of staying connected grows even larger. As long as they have an Internet connection, employees can access the latest, most up-to-date information from the cloud. For those who travel often or work remotely, it’s a lot easier to stay in the loop. Enterprises must make sure all employees are briefed on safe cloud practices so that they can take advantage of what the cloud has to offer.

Additional Reading:

Enterprise Starting to See Security Benefits of the Cloud

Best practices for locking down your cloud

Seven best practices for cloud security

Blog to Blog

With all of my fathers written publications I would have thought he would be blogging by now.  Alas I am not sure that he is, I will have to keep an eye on that.  I know that he has been pondering joining Facebook for about for I would say 3 months now but I am guessing he hasnt taken the plunge yet.  I say Dad you have some great insights and thoughts to share so here is one vote for you to start your blog.

http://www.boblucky.com/newbio.html