Cloud, Security and Technology

Last month I finished a project with the Azure team that involved building a secure PaaS based solution that provides a step by step guidance and automation to allow researcher to be able to use Machine Learning to run scientific experiment securely. Key thing here is that it's built to be /Secure/ Problem Most times when a traditional experiments are run, an experimenter or researcher starts with a data set they got their hands on, and uses tools such as Jupyter notebook to create an R or Python based experiment. Frequently this experiment is using a simple data science VM or a workstation. The scientist will then run the experiment (which maybe computationally intense) and turn to a cloud solutions to score the experiment in Google or Azure, and finally run Tableau or PowerBI or Excel for visualization. Since researchers are not security experts and do not think that what they are working on should consider their work as possibly sensitive they may expose their work...

Today I have finished publishing my latest great work of security and compliance content. Check it out!. A Practical Guide to Designing Secure Health Solutions Using Microsoft Azure whitepaper providers readers considerations guidance for using cloud technology, includes risk management, shared responsibility considerations, establishing an information security management system, understanding industry and local regulations, and establishing standard operating procedures. It outlines, and provides recommendations to 13 security principles that are both aligned to a standard information security management standard, such as ISO 27001, and standard development processes, such as Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle (SDL). The paper also gives readers a direct view of the key principles by applying them to a ‘lift and shift’ health based case study. Whitepaper Table of Content Compliance and security methodology   Standard operating procedures Incorporat...

Rapid adoption of cloud computing requires a clear understanding on what and how you will manage the move.  I had discussed that cost and trust are the key driving factors for cloud adoption in a previous blog. In this blog I'll expand on the key things companies should consider when moving to the cloud. A while ago, I had a room full of executives from a major mining organization. Our discussion was about cloud trust. In the discussion the CTO asked me a great question - "If you were working for me, what would you do to secure our environment as we adopt the cloud?"  Here's a digest of what I recommended: First I asked - Do you know what you are trying to protect? Problem most organization face is knowing what they should invest the most into protecting. In the cloud security trends report posted by Microsoft indicated that about 40% of organizations do not have a uniform classification methodology. As you see all industries that where surveyed in this ...