Enterprise organizations today face a daunting array of challenges in their quest to deliver optimally secure IT services that comply with corporate and government mandates. Addressing such challenges has never been a trivial affair. Indeed, over the past decade and more, as technology stacks and platforms have increased in their heterogeneity and complexity, meeting the demands of effective risk governance has only become more difficult. As is the case with much of enterprise management, the challenge here isn’t typically a matter of inadequate tools or…
Much of the work we do at ONUG has a bias toward enabling the enterprise to consume cloud services from multiple providers. Clearly, the obstacle that makes this so challenging is the absence of standards for cloud consumers. ONUG’s Automated Cloud Governance Working Group is fully committed to tackling these problems and, fortunately, we’ve got the ear of most of the CSPs. Working side by side with Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM every week on the Cloud Security Notification Framework (CSNF) is very gratifying for…
When the pandemic began, many enterprises quickly moved their business operations to the cloud to better manage remote working. As a result, enterprises had to scale up their remote user connectivity infrastructure so all employees could connect to their business applications while working from home. However, the updated infrastructure was often layered on top of legacy network architecture, resulting often in inconsistent connectivity performance, and thereby impacting employees’ user experience. In fact, end-user complaints about application performance due to excessive slowdowns, network congestion, and performance…
The ONUG Community has been focused on building and running infrastructure that supports multiple cloud providers along with their on-prem data center resources. It’s hard and complex on so many levels; you have to wonder, is it worth it? All cloud providers offer different tooling and constructs up and down their stacks for consumers, which are different than on-prem. This makes moving from one cloud provider to another, or just starting new projects with a new cloud provider, hard. Try moving an application and its…
Secure access service edge (SASE), a category defined by Gartner in 2019, represents the blueprint of the networking and security architecture of the future. The SASE model consolidates many networking and security functions traditionally delivered in siloed point solutions–into a single, integrated cloud service. Many vendors have slapped the term SASE onto their current offerings without truly providing the upside of a SASE platform. IT leaders also have to take into consideration that deploying an infrastructure with SASE principles will not, on its own, ensure…
Many ONUG enterprise consumers have shared the toil that their SecOps/DevSecOps teams face daily. “The room” is often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of attacks as well as the tools and playbooks necessary to sort through all of the relevant alerts. What alerts are ACTUALLY relevant? That’s a constant work in progress. This challenge is at the heart of what CSNF offers to not only the Enterprise consumer but also 3rd party security solutions providers. What is CSNF and why NOW is the perfect time…
Interest in Zero Trust has exploded recently, partly due to its catchy name and seemingly broad usage throughout the cyber security industry (Zero Trust washing?). But, there is also another more compelling reason for the rise in interest in Zero Trust – we really need it. When speaking with customers, many of them tell me they are struggling to get a handle on the risks associated with hybrid work and direct-to-app connectivity. The new reality is that our attack surfaces have expanded dramatically while cyberattacks…
For those who attend technical conferences, it’s hard not to come away with the energy to execute on new ideas. I’m certainly feeling that way after ONUG Spring 2022. Attendees at the conference showed an overwhelming interest in the Cloud Security Notification Framework (CSNF) and how it can reduce toil for the SecOps community. The success of the CSNF demonstration at ONUG Spring, and the proven value that it will provide to the ONUG Community of cloud consumers, provides even more motivation for ONUG’s Automated…
We did it; it was nail biting, but we came together in numbers at the Meadowlands of New Jersey over a few brisk spring days in late April. I was nervous when I sent the first invitations for speakers to present at ONUG Spring back in January. If speakers were not able to attend in-person then community members wouldn’t be able to either. We just didn’t know if the community was ready to meet in-person. Well, we had over 50 speakers present in-person, over 500…
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) represents the network and security architecture blueprint of the future, consolidating many networking and security point solutions into a single, integrated cloud service. The ability to monitor end user experience across a SASE architecture is critical. Here’s one company’s story of how they used digital experience monitoring to gain visibility across their SASE architecture. Leading Provider of Healthcare Coverage for 80+ Years Leading the way in supporting patient-focused care, this health insurance provider delivers coverage to more than 700,000 customers….