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The pandemic has undoubtedly super-charged digital transformation strategies, leading many organisations to accelerate their migration to the cloud or modernise existing cloud-based applications to keep pace with their competition.

However, cloud migration itself should never be the goal its essential to identify your business goals, not just your technology goals, and how cloud migration and modernisation will help you to achieve them alongside broader cultural and process changes.

This integration drives greater agility, the adoption of new processes and encourages innovation. With 2022 approaching at pace, organisations can no longer ignore the cloud. Instead, they must consider it as the key to enabling digital transformation.

Skill up or lose out

Making sure your business is fit for the future both from a personnel and technical perspective is crucial to success. The alternative after two extremely challenging years and the potential of ongoing uncertainty next year, is unnerving.

We are all too aware that the IT skills gap is an ever-growing chasm potentially extended recently by the buoyant tech job market: cloud native skills top the hiring lists of nearly half of hiring managers.

Upskilling your existing teams means you can bring staff with deep understanding of your business on the digital transformation journey with you. Cloud empowers your teams, providing them with a toolkit that allows them to build amazing products quickly, reliable and cost-effectively.

Digital transformation is also a skills transformation, and ultimately this provides staff with the power to innovate quickly rather than focusing on the undifferentiated heavy lifting of managing racks and servers or database admin that a cloud provider can do.

Dont treat the cloud like another data centre

Its important not to just see the cloud as a new data centre, replicating old processes and silos in your new cloud environment.

In the cloud, everything is programmable you can get new storage/compute almost instantly, automate your infrastructure and network setup, automate your release processes, and get access to an amazing toolbox for achieving this with products and services built for easy implementation by cloud providers.

You should also consider how your teams can benefit from new ways to build and operate your digital products and accelerate innovation. For example, serverless lets you develop without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. And as technology now extends into every aspect of business, it is no longer entirely under the purview of the IT team.

This means that old silos between teams need to come down, and a more collaborative approach should be taken.

A great example of this is how Developers, Security and Operations have started to work much more closely together. Proper adoption of DevOps can really help with improving time-to-market, getting feedback faster from your customers and getting new features out faster, more often and more reliably.

Transform your business perspective

Both the preceding issues demonstrate that digital transformation with cloud is not just an IT project. Cloud is a new way to do business, so you also need to transform perspectives on IT and on cloud across your business, and this comes with communication and transforming operating models.

One of the clearest examples of this is the rise of FinOps. This is a joined-up approach from Cloud Operations and Finance teams to help overcome some of the frictions that can sometimes arise Finance teams need to get used to the variable cost models of cloud and Developers need to be encouraged to take greater accountability for the spend they incur.

Cloud also transforms how Product teams operate, enabling them to shift from quarterly or monthly release cadences to a more frequent, feature-driven release cadence. Ideas can be tested, feedback can be gathered and improvements made in hours or days, and released instantly, providing value to customers and therefore to the business as a whole.

Cloud can also count towards sustainability initiatives. According to research from 451 Research, migrating business applications to the public cloud could reduce energy consumption by 80%, and carbon emissions by 96% further evidence of the benefits to expedite cloud migration strategies as part of digital transformation programmes, particularly in the drive towards a Net Zero future.

Make the time to modernise

While it may feel that once a migration programme has been completed it marks mission accomplished, it is far from the end of the journey.

Ensuring applications are modernised once an organisation is in the cloud will keep your applications fit for purpose. For example, there are cloud-native technologies available, like off the shelf machine learning products, which remove the need for organisations to procure scarce and expensive skills and instead utilise the skills of cloud providers.

Taking advantage of the cloud as transformational for both technology and the wider business requires a holistic approach to migration. Consider skills, consider the business goals, consider how you will use cloud-native services and above all how you will bring the business along with you on your transformation journey.

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Contributed | The role of the Cloud in digital transformation - DIGIT.FYI

In a previous blog post, I discussed the different applications of integrity for Zero Trust and provided four use cases highlighting integrity in action. The reality is that many organizations cant realize any of this on their own. But they dont need to. They can work with a company like Tripwire as a partner on their Zero Trust journey.

Lets explore how they can do this below.

Security teams can begin their Zero Trust journeys by establishing a baseline of integrity. Infosec personnel need a trusted state of their employers systems and information to understand the security, compliance, and operational state of their employers assets over time. Only if they establish a single source of truth can they monitor for low-priority, routine changes as well as events that could signify a security incident. These include the addition of unrecognized binaries and the alteration of access privileges on critical files.

With this continuous monitoring capability, the integrity platform also becomes critical to successful prevention and detection within a Zero Trust environment. In that sense, integrity management doesnt just serve as the foundation for Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA). It also serves as the ultimate backstop should attackers get in, as these threat actors need to make a change to perform their malicious activity sooner or later.

Once they have an integrity-based Zero Trust program in place, organizations can then continuously revalidate the trustworthiness of systems and information using security tools such as those offered by Tripwire. They can turn to four solutions in particular. Those are security configuration assessment, policy compliance, vulnerability assessment, and integrity monitoring.

Security teams need to trust that their employers information and data is configured to a secure baseline that aligns with policy. This can help to ensure that the Trust Policy Engine makes appropriate risk-based decisions for connection requests to different business assets. Towards that end, Tripwire Enterprise provides a combination of platforms and policies for organizations to determine how their assets are configured. This assessment of security policy is available for integration via APIs and apps connected to Tripwire Enterprise. Simultaneously, Tripwire Configuration Manager provides assessment of cloud infrastructure such as cloud accounts, storage, and SaaS solutions, thereby allowing for Zero Trust to extend beyond on-premises assets.

Security teams dont just need to worry about protecting their employers assets against digital threats. They also need to make sure they fulfill any relevant compliance obligations that cover some or all of their systems and data. Tripwire Enterprise can provide compliance assessment results to inform trust policy decision making, as well as satisfy auditor requirements. Where it can be difficult to assign a static asset scope to a compliance requirement, Zero Trust using compliance results from Tripwire can provide assurance that all entities involved in a particular system are compliant.

An important part of Zero Trust is evaluating risk, such as software vulnerabilities. Indeed, a Zero Trust policy might specify that assets with vulnerabilities providing remote privilege access should not be able to connect to specific data sets, for instance. It might also specify vulnerability score thresholds for access to specific sets of resources.

These functions emphasize the need for infosec personnel to assess their employers infrastructure for known vulnerabilities. With that said, Tripwire IP360 provides both agent-less and agent-based vulnerability assessment across a variety of asset types including servers, workstations, network devices, containers, and cloud workloads. Those tests yield visibility into vulnerabilities affecting the operating systems and applications on those devices, and they provide results in a robust REST API that apply to both access requesters and ZTA resources such as Network Access Control (NAC) and Privileged Access Management (PAM) platforms.

Finally, security teams need to close any gaps left over from their security configuration assessments, policy compliance initiatives, and vulnerability assessments. Otherwise, an attacker could exploit undetected or unremediated vulnerabilities and abuse them to gain access to an organizations network. Thats why its not enough for security teams to implement these solutions and other solutions once and leave them alone after that. They need to bring in integrity monitoring to spot potential deviations. In the example of security configuration, for instance, that would mean establishing a baseline configuration and then monitoring that configuration for changes. This can help security teams to identify and address risk proactively before the Trust Policy Engine needs to make a decision about access. It can also help to spot changes in the configuration of the Zero Trust policy, the Trust Policy Engine, and any of the other supporting components themselves.

Ultimately, theres no Zero Trust without integrity. Security teams need to use this realization to get Zero Trust right the first time and to continue getting it right from there.

To learn more about how Tripwire can help, download this whitepaper: https://www.tripwire.com/misc/a-tripwire-zero-trust-reference-architecture.

Originally posted here:
How Tripwire Can Be a Partner on Your Zero Trust Journey - tripwire.com

Rockwell Automation has launched an ambitious plan to accompany automation in manufacturing plants, regardless of their level of digital maturity. We look at the benefits it brings.

Industries are not stopping in the race for automation and need strategic partners with enough experience to guide them on that path. At the Rockwell Automation campus in Medelln, Colombia, they work on various fronts regarding the future of industrial automation and the software that supports it.

Csar Arango, Engineering Manager, Rockwell Automation, said: When I talk about the future, I refer to the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) proposal in the cloud, that is, the possibility of hosting all of an industrys software in the cloud and not on local servers.

In addition to having deployed the necessary programs as well as benefiting from the associated saving costs, workers can access various aspects of the operation process without being in the plant.

SaaS offers advantages such as multi-location, immediate connection and collaboration between multiple locations. The suite that provides these services is FactoryTalk Hub, focused on software to support an ecosystem of industrial applications. And it is in line with what companies like Microsoft, Accenture, Salesforce and PTC, among others, have done.

88% of executives expect to optimize technology through services that are in the cloud, not by using their servers. Services is where we start to play, said Arango.

Rockwell Automation intends that in the next five years, IT and OT (Operational Technology) converge to take advantage of the significant advantages and computing capacity that the cloud offers and, thus, give better tools to the OT world.

This convergence will open many possibilities such as providing access to the software from anywhere, sharing information internally and with clients, enabling on-demand scaling, and as a result, generating cost reduction and performance improvement.

The products they have been developing allow the client to view the status of a plant in real-time or have analysis based on Big Data to identify deviations of any of the devices.

Arango points out that if a conveyor belt in a factory stops, the entire plant must stop. And this may be since no one perceived the vibration level was changing slightly for a few days. It is something that could be foreseen. This solution aims to optimize costs and generate fewer failures in the plants.

FactoryTalk in three stages

In FactoryTalk Hub, there are three main chapters: Design, operation and maintenance. For its development, Rockwell Automation has made a strategic alliance with Microsoft. In the Design Hub, the tools allow you to migrate from previous versions of drivers to the most up-to-date ones to develop the capacity of emulation and design through the cloud.

For example, if you are looking to design a cookie production plant, you can simulate the entire process in the cloud through software before creating it in the physical world.

The Medellin team engages in the Design Hub with file type conversion tools, Logix controller update, project analysis and digital engineering, emulation tools, digital twins and many other emerging technologies.

The Operation Hub, Plex Systems (recently acquired by Rockwell Automation) is a leader in cloud-native innovative manufacturing solutions operating in 2,400 plants in 37 countries and processing around 8.5 billion transactions per day. Through software with the same name, it allows managing and automating production. To connect on-premises or edge devices to the cloud requires IoT technology.

As the Maintenance Hub, Rockwell Automation, with its subsidiary Fiix, provides a cloud-native computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) powered by AI.

Then there is the FactoryTalk Vault, launched a year ago at the Automation Fair. This application drives the management and control of industrial automation programs, allowing companies to optimize their backup costs. It combines with design tools to keep their control software versions in the cloud updated.

About Rockwell Automation

Rockwell Automation is a provider of industrial automation and Digital Transformation solutions. Rockwell Automation sectors include intelligent devices, software and control, and lifecycle services. The company operates its business approximately 100 countries worldwide, including United States, China, Canada, Italy, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia.

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Medelln Campus writes the future of worldwide industrial automation - Intelligent CIO ME

Advertorial One of the key factors to consider when evaluating an IT solution is concerned with how fast updates are brought to the market. Releasing an application is not enough. You need to work on it every day, add new features and services and simultaneously keep it running. Yet you can't just turn off the app, update it, and turn it on again. Your online store should be up and running while the guys wearing shabby knit sweaters are deploying your latest updates.

To make sure that the update implementation process remains unnoticed by users, you need to resort to special microservices, containers and the orchestration infrastructure. This is the definition of Kubernetes. With this solution, manual management of different versions, subversions, and parts of an application becomes unnecessary. This makes the system more powerful, reliable, stable, and expandable. Overall, it becomes easier to use.

How Kubernetes helps businesses:

Businesses profit from using Kubernetes as it helps them automate their work. Using Kubernetes significantly reduces the amount of money spent on hardware and human resources. It allows the project team to focus on their main task of website development rather than website administration. Here's how it works:

Kubernetes uses a virtual machine by G-Core Labs combined with a DevOps approach, thus helping businesses automate routine tasks. In this case, the application is launched and works at any stage in the same way as if it were launched and would work on the developer's local host.

"The economic, organizational and social consequences of the pandemic will continue stimulating digital innovations and cloud services", - believes Henrique Cecci, Senior Research Director at Gartner. This consulting company expects end users to spend more than $480 billion on public cloud services next year.

Public clouds simplify the work with Kubernetes significantly as they use modern infrastructure solutions such as API. This synergetic system makes it possible to distribute the workload within the cloud efficiently, thus enhancing the profit you get from your IT investments.

Here is how it works: imagine that you run a service with users in ten countries working with two clouds, with the main cloud being located in America and the backup - in Europe. In the past this was enough, but as new legal requirements have been introduced to one of the markets, you now need to store user data on the territory of the respective country.

In this case, you will most likely address one of the cloud providers - for example, G-Core Labs. As a result, you will get access to a virtual machine featuring a powerful CDN and other resources, which will allow you to deploy and manage containers most efficiently using Kubernetes. Thanks to a content delivery network with over 140 points of presence in 100 cities around the world, your servers with all the users' personal data will be located on the territory required by law.

Usually, businesses connect with a provider because they have to, yet it brings a positive effect in the end. After migration, the service clients in the desired region download files 22.5 times faster, while storage and download fees make up about the same sum that you previously paid for storage alone.

Kubernetes allows businesses to reduce their infrastructure costs and helps companies get the most of their IT investments. Migrating to a public cloud also brings businesses further bonuses. For example, in G-Core Labs, outbound traffic and the configuration of cluster nodes through the cloud control panel or via API are free of charge. You pay only for virtual machines, disks and load balancers.

Therefore, you will pay due attention to the four main sectors allowing you to save money - the cloud, the cluster, the main tools, and the company's culture. At the same time, you will also be able to reduce the amount of money spent on Kubernetes itself, while taking the full advantage of using this technology.

Automatic scaling provided by Kubernetes results in high availability and maximum application performance, which are both important for businesses. Now, when you need a new container for some service, you contact the provider and connect the new server to the cluster. Kubernetes automates this process. It uses an API request to order a virtual machine from a cloud provider, connects it to the cluster, and adds the required pod (container) with the required parameters.

This platform turns out to be very helpful in many other cases as well. Let's imagine that you've launched an application in Kubernetes and that its containers are already receiving some traffic. When the CPU load increases, the platform will notice this and will automatically increase the number of machines used in order to distribute the requests properly.

Using special metrics and tests allows the system to quickly identify damaged or unresponsive containers. Failed containers are created anew and get restarted on the same pod. This allows programmers to focus on development instead of doing routine administrative tasks.

Kubernetes allows developers to create production-like environments for automated testing. General application logs and Kubernetes app logs will help you detect problems and errors even faster.

Imagine that you've decided to completely redesign your cybersports video streaming app. The new layouts have already been internally tested by the team and have been sent to focus groups for trial. Everything seems to be fine. In your own cloud, everything works well. But what is it going to look like on production? To answer this question, you can resort to the so-called canary testing which implies a partial release of a certain service. While the overall check is still in progress, small amounts of live traffic are sent to the released application parts. The results are tracked and compared with the ideal, allowing you to make decisions concerning the app launch.

Such "traffic injections" remain unnoticed by the users because the containers are duplicated, and the users get redirected from one container to another. For orchestration purposes, you can use Kubernetes provided by G-Core Labs. The provider's virtual machines work with high-performance servers that have Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Ice Lake) of the 3rd generation. In April 2021, G-Core Labs became one of the world's first companies that started integrating such processors into their infrastructure.

Businesses should consider migrating to the Kubernetes platform in quite several cases:

Migrating to Kubernetes is necessary for companies that need to maintain their information systems online 24/7. This is exactly why using Kubernetes together with the cloud technologies offered by G-Core Labs is the ideal solution.

Sponsored by G-Core Labs

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How Kubernetes lowers costs and automates IT department work - The Register