POPULARITY
In dieser Episode sprechen wir mit zwei AWS Heroes über den AWS Summit Hamburg am 5. Juni 2025. Markus Ostertag und Thorsten Höger geben als langjährige Summit-Veteranen einen exklusiven Einblick in das, was Besucher erwartet und teilen ihre persönlichen Highlights und Networking-Tipps. Kernthemen der Episode: - Warum der Summit 2025 in Hamburg stattfindet - Content-Highlights: Über 100 Sessions zu Gen AI, Cloud Transformation und mehr - Die AWS Community Lounge als wichtiger Treffpunkt - Das neue AWS for Software and Technology Loft - Women of the Cloud Stage mit erweitertem Programm - AWS HouseWarming am Vortag mit über 60 Hands-on Workshops - Networking-Möglichkeiten und Festival-Atmosphäre Summit-Tipps für Neulinge: - Vorab die Agenda durchgehen und interessante Sessions markieren - Flexibel bleiben und nicht zu strikt planen - auch spontane Entdeckungen zulassen - Die Community Lounge als erste Anlaufstelle nutzen - hier gibt es praxisnahe Erfahrungsberichte - Aktiv das Gespräch suchen, z.B. beim Mittagessen oder an den Expo-Ständen - AWS Announcements der letzten Wochen als Gesprächseinstieg nutzen - "Walk the Summit" Format für Frauen in Tech nutzen, um gemeinsam die Veranstaltung zu erkunden - Balance zwischen Sessions, Expo und Networking finden - Genug Zeit für spontane Gespräche einplanen Die AWS Community Lounge - Highlights: - Eigene Stage mit Community-kuratiertem Programm "von der Community für die Community" - Praxisnahe Sessions mit ehrlichen Einblicken in Herausforderungen und Lösungen - Hands-on Erfahrungsberichte von AWS-Anwendern - Offener Networking-Bereich zum Austausch mit erfahrenen Community-Mitgliedern - Tiefgehende technische Diskussionen im "Maschinenraum" - Idealer Startpunkt für Summit-Neulinge zum Kontakte knüpfen - Direkte Gespräche mit Vortragenden und Community-Experten - 7 Slots mit ausgewählten Community-Speakern Besondere Highlights: - Keynote mit Stefan Höchbauer (AWS), Dr. Steffen Merkel (DFL) und Donja Florence-Aimer (Hapag Lloyd) - Kundenvorträge von BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Trade Republic, E.ON u.v.v.v.m. - Interaktive Bereiche wie AI Escape Room und SaaS Builders' Showdown - Riesenrad, DJs und Networking Reception mit Live-Musik Links: - ‼️ AWS Summit Hamburg Registrierung ‼️ - AWS Summit Hamburg Agenda - AWS Housewarming Anmeldung - AWS for Software and Technology Stage Programm - AWS x OMR Reviews SaaS Leaders Breakfast - AWS Community DACH Über die Gäste: - Markus Ostertag ist Chief AWS Technologist bei ADESO und seit 2016 AWS Hero - Thorsten Höger ist selbstständiger Cloud-Berater für regulierte Kunden und seit 2017 AWS Hero Hosts: - Jana Kupfer (AWS) - Michelle Mei-Li Pfister (AWS) AWS Cloud Horizonte ist der offizielle deutschsprachige AWS Podcast.
In einer zweiten Folge des unserer kurzen Serie über das Thema wie Cloud-Services wirklich entstehen teilt Thomas weitere, reichhaltige Erfahrungen aus über 13 Jahren Service-Entwicklung. Seine Erkenntnisse gewähren einen exklusiven Blick hinter die Kulissen, wie AWS seine erfolgreichen Cloud-Services von der Startphase bis zur kontinuierlichen Evolution gestaltet. Der Weg zum perfekten Service-Launch ist für AWS paradoxerweise dann am erfolgreichsten, wenn er "langweilig" verläuft. Diese scheinbar simple Philosophie verbirgt eine durchdachte Strategie: Intensive Vorbereitungen, umfassende Tests und präzise Abstimmungen mit allen Beteiligten sorgen für reibungslose Starts neuer Services. Das bewährte "You build it, you run it"-Prinzip stellt dabei sicher, dass Entwicklerteams von Anfang an die volle Verantwortung für ihre Services übernehmen. Besonders ist der Einblick in die organische Entwicklung der Teams parallel zum Servicewachstum. AWS fördert dabei gezielt die persönliche Entwicklung seiner Mitarbeiter durch interne Rotationen und aktiven Wissensaustausch. Diese Dynamik ermöglicht es den Teams, mit ihren Services zu wachsen und gleichzeitig frische Perspektiven zu bewahren. Die kontinuierliche Modernisierung bestehender Services zeigt AWS' Engagement für technische Exzellenz. Dabei steht stets der Kundennutzen im Vordergrund - sei es durch transparente Migrationen zu neuen Versionen oder durch aktive Unterstützung bei notwendigen Änderungen. AWS nutzt dabei seine eigene Infrastruktur, um Effizienz und Skalierbarkeit zu maximieren. "Der entscheidende Teil unseres Erfolgs liegt im gemeinsamen Verständnis unserer Ziele", reflektiert Lobinger. "Es geht nicht um das 'Was', sondern um das 'Wie' - und dabei steht der Kunde immer im Mittelpunkt." Diese Philosophie zieht sich wie ein roter Faden durch AWS' Serviceentwicklung und schafft eine Kultur der Innovation und Zusammenarbeit.
In dieser Episode gewährt Thomas Lobinger, Senior Software Development Manager bei AWS, faszinierende Einblicke in die Entstehung von AWS-Services. Mit über 13 Jahren Erfahrung in der Entwicklung innovativer Cloud-Lösungen teilt er, wie aus ersten Ideen erfolgreiche Produkte werden. Der Weg beginnt meist mit der Inspiration - sei es durch Kundengespräche, technologische Entwicklungen oder die Verbindung bestehender Lösungsansätze. Dabei steht die intensive Validierung im Mittelpunkt: "90% der Zeit verbringen wir mit Kundenvalidierung", betont Lobinger. Der bewährte "Working Backwards"-Prozess von AWS spielt hierbei eine zentrale Rolle. Durch standardisierte Dokumentation in Form von Press Releases und detaillierten Ausarbeitungen werden Ideen systematisch auf ihre Umsetzbarkeit und ihren Kundennutzen geprüft. Besonders spannend ist der Einblick in die Teamzusammenstellung. AWS setzt auf eine ausgewogene Mischung aus erfahrenen Entwicklern und frischen Talenten. Entscheidend ist dabei vor allem die Begeisterung fürs Projekt: "Ich würde Leute nehmen, die Bock darauf haben", beschreibt Lobinger seinen Ansatz. Am Beispiel des kürzlich entwickelten Services "Partyrock" zeigt sich, wie auch unkonventionelle Wege zum Erfolg führen können. Was als interne Lösung für KI-Experimente begann, entwickelte sich durch direktes Leadership-Feedback und agile Entwicklung zu einem vollwertigen AWS-Service. Der Podcast verdeutlicht eindrucksvoll, wie AWS durch konsequente Kundenorientierung und eine Kultur der Innovation seine Services entwickelt. Dabei werden sowohl etablierte Prozesse als auch die Flexibilität geschätzt, neue Wege zu gehen, wenn es der Innovation dient.
Want to start your journey in AWS Cloud but not sure where to begin? In this episode of the InfosecTrain podcast, we provide a step-by-step guide to getting started with AWS, from account creation to launching your first Amazon EC2 instance.
In this episode of the InfosecTrain podcast, we explore AWS Cloud Storage Services, their key features, and how businesses can leverage them for scalability, security, and cost efficiency.
AWS Morning Brief for the week of March 10th, 2025 with Corey Quinn. Links:Amazon Bedrock launches Session Management APIs for GenAI applications (Preview)Announcing Amazon GameLift StreamsAmazon Q Developer announces a new CLI agent within the command lineAWS Secrets Manager increases the API Requests per Second limitsAWS Transfer Family announces reduced login latency for SFTP serversIAM Access Analyzer now supports Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)Streamline your AWS Marketplace renewalsIntroducing an enhanced local IDE experience for AWS Step FunctionsEnd of support notifications and enhanced discoverability for Amazon EKSThe end of an era: the final AWS DeepRacer League Championship at re:Invent 2024Securely onboarding countries to the AWS Cloud
Cos'è il NIST Cybersecurity Framework e perchè è importante conoscerne le linee guida? Quali sono le novità introdotte con l'ultima versione? In che modo il whitepaper AWS può aiutare a navigare il NIST CSF? Oggi ne parliamo con due colleghi di AWS, Carmela Gambardella (Senior Solutions Architect) e Francesco Grande (Partner Solutions Architect).Link utili:- Aligning to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework in the AWS Cloud
In dieser Episode von Cloud Horizonte sprechen Oliver und Pavel auf dem AWS Summit in Berlin mit Frank Alsmann (VHV Versicherung) und Philipp Richter (Public Cloud Group) über die Cloud-Transformation der VHV. Die VHV migriert Anwendungen von On-Premise in die AWS Cloud – mit Fokus auf Serverless-Technologien wie AWS Lambda. Wir diskutieren die Herausforderungen einer solchen Migration, von Sicherheit und Kostenoptimierung bis hin zur Modernisierung des einer konkreten Anwendung, des Tarifrechners. Es geht nicht nur um Technik: Die Cloud-Reise ist auch eine kulturelle Veränderung. Wie nimmt man Mitarbeitende mit? Welche Rolle spielen Schulungen, Compliance und FinOps? Erfahren Sie, warum Cloud nicht nur Effizienz bringt, sondern auch neue Denkweisen in Unternehmen etabliert. Wir sprechen über Lessons Learned, den langfristigen Wandel in der IT und wie Unternehmen wie die VHV sich für die Zukunft aufstellen.
Mit Oliver Hackert, Geschäftsführer IT Services Operations Management bei Swiss Life Deutschland In dieser Episode sprechen wir mit Oliver Hackert über die erfolgreiche Cloud-Transformation bei Swiss Life Deutschland. Als einer der führenden Finanzdienstleister in Europa hat Swiss Life Deutschland den Weg in die AWS Cloud gemeistert - mit spannenden Learnings für die gesamte Versicherungsbranche. Die Ausgangssituation: Von On-Premise zur Cloud-Strategie Herausforderungen und Lösungen bei der Migration Sicherheit und Compliance in der Cloud Messbarer Erfolg: 20% Kosteneinsparung und 70% schnellere Provisionierung Change Management und Mitarbeiter-Enablement Zukunftstrends in der Versicherungs-IT Timestamps 00:00 - Intro und Vorstellung 02:25 - Der Start mit AWS bei Swiss Life Deutschland & die Migration komplexer Systeme 06:30 - Sicherheit und Compliance und regulatorischen Anforderungen 11:35 - Migrationsstrategie: "Lift & Shift" statt Refactoring 13:49 - Die drei größten Herausforderungen der Migration 19:50 - Was sind die messbaren Verbesserungen? 22:30 - Change Management in der Praxis 27:10 - IT-Trends in der Versicherungsbranche Links Oliver Hackert auf LinkedIn Swiss Life Medienportal AWS Cloud Adoption Framework AWS Financial Services Competency Program Über den Gast Oliver Hackert ist Geschäftsführer und Leiter IT Services Operations Management bei Swiss Life Deutschland. In dieser Rolle verantwortet er den gesamten Tech Stack und hat die Cloud-Transformation initiiert und erfolgreich umgesetzt. Hosts Oskar Neumann (AWS) Jana Kupfer (AWS) AWS Cloud Horizonte ist der offizielle deutschsprachige AWS Podcast.
CMMC and DFARS compliance is hard - especially in the cloud.Got AWS? They've given you tools that make compliance much easier!In this episode, I sit down with Travis Goldbach from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to break down the solutions AWS has created to simplify CMMC and DFARS compliance.
In dieser Episode spricht Oskar Neumann von AWS mit Christian Ritter (Lead IT, People & Technology) von bonprix. Als Teil der OTTO Gruppe ist bonprix eines der erfolgreichsten Tochterunternehmen (€1.5Mrd Umsatz in 2023/2024) und zählt zu den größten deutschen Online Modehändlern. Mit rund 2.500 Mitarbeitenden weltweit, zählt das Unternehmen mehr als 10 Millionen aktive Kund*innen in Europa. Unter dem Slogan Fashion made Smarter setzt die OTTO-Tochter vermehrt auf innovative Lösungen in der Produktentwicklung als auch Vermarktung. Zum Sortiment zählen vorallem Kleidung und Accessoires für Damen, Herren und Kinder sowie Home- und Living-Produkte. Als vertikale Fashion Brand vertreibt bonprix zudem eigene Modekollektionen. Ende 2022 hatte bonprix mit der Vorbereitung ihrer E-Commerce Migration vom ehemals on-premise (stationär) geführten Data-Center in die AWS Cloud begonnen und schloß diese knapp 1 Jahr später erfolgreich ab. Im Gespräch teilt Christian Einblicke in die Weiterentwicklung der Teams, Vorstellungen über die AWS Cloud sowie einen Ausblick in die weitere Optimierung des bonprix E-Commerce. Ein besonderer Dank geht an das AWS Account Team um Nils Seibeld, Lars Reimann, Mario Keller sowie AWS Professional Services (ProServe) für die Betreuung während der Migration sowie Aufbereitung der Cloud Migration Journey.
In der heutigen Folge nehmen wir euch mit auf eine Reise in die dynamische Welt des Cloud Computings, speziell zugeschnitten auf die Versicherungsindustrie. Eure Hosts Dominik Badarne und Herbert Jansky freuen sich, heute gleich zwei hochkarätige Experten begrüßen zu dürfen: Christian Richter und Fabian Lober.Christian Richter betont die Flexibilität und Skalierbarkeit von AWS, das keine Lizenzen oder Produkte verkauft, sondern per-Use-Services anbietet. Seit 2006 wurden die Preise bereits über 130 Mal gesenkt, um diese Vorteile an die Kunden weiterzugeben. Fabian Lober hebt die Bedeutung der Zusammenarbeit zwischen verschiedenen Anbietern hervor und spricht über die einzigartigen Services und Konferenzen von AWS, wie die innovative re:Invent.In dieser Episode diskutieren wir die Herausforderungen und Chancen der Cloud-Transformation, die in der Versicherungsindustrie besonders relevant sind. Christian und Fabian teilen ihre Expertise über die Rolle der Künstlichen Intelligenz und wie AWS eigene Chips entwickelt, um kosteneffiziente Trainings für große Sprachmodelle zu ermöglichen. Wir erfahren, warum rund 61% der Versicherungsunternehmen die Cloud nutzen und wie dies die Branche transformiert.Außerdem werfen wir einen Blick auf die neueste Entwicklung bei Amazon: die Amazon Nova Familie von Large Language Models und wie diese Modelle die Effizienz und Genauigkeit von KI-Anwendungen verbessern. Wir werden auch die Performance von Matt Garman, einem AWS-Manager, erörtern und die Keynote-Highlights der AWS re:Invent-Konferenz sowie deren Bedeutung für die Cloud-Community analysieren.Freut euch auf spannende Einblicke, technische Tiefe und die neuesten Entwicklungen im Cloud-Bereich. Bleibt dran, es lohnt sich!Schreibt uns gerne eine Nachricht!Folge uns auf unserer LinkedIn Unternehmensseite für weitere spannende Updates.Unsere Website: https://www.insurancemondaypodcast.de/Du möchtest Gast beim Insurance Monday Podcast sein? Schreibe uns unter info@insurancemondaypodcast.de und wir melden uns umgehend bei Dir.Dieser Podcast wird von dean productions produziert.Vielen Dank, dass Du unseren Podcast hörst!
Eric Carter of Sysdig joins Corey to tackle the evolving landscape of cloud security, particularly in AWS environments. As attackers leverage automation to strike within minutes, Sysdig focuses on real-time threat detection and rapid response. Tools like Runtime Insights and open-source Falco help teams identify and mitigate misconfigurations, excessive permissions, and stealthy attacks, while Kubernetes aids in limiting lateral movement. Eric introduced the “10-minute benchmark” for defense, combining automation and human oversight. Adapting to constant change, Sysdig integrates frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK to stay ahead of threats. Corey and Eric also discuss Sysdig's conversational AI security analyst, which simplifies decision-making.Show Highlights(0:00) Intro(0:32) Sysdig sponsor read(0:51) What they do at Sysdig(3:28) When you need a human in the loop vs when AI is useful(5:12) How AI may affect career progression for cloud security analysts(8:18) The importance of security for AI(12:18) Sysdig sponsor read(12:39) Security practices in AWS(15:19) How Sysdig's security reports have shaped Corey's thinking(18:10) Where the cloud security industry is headed(20:03) Cloud security increasingly feeling like an arms race between attackers and defenders(23:33) Frustrations with properly configuring leased permissions(28:17) How to keep up with Eric and SysdigAbout Eric CarterEric is an AWS Cloud Partner Advocate focused on cultivating Sysdig's technology cloud and container partner ecosystem. Eric has spearheaded marketing efforts for enterprise technology solutions across various domains, such as security, monitoring, storage, and backup. He is passionate about working with Sysdig's alliance partners, and outside of work, enjoys performing as a guitarist in local cover bands.LinksSysdig's website: https://sysdig.com/Sysdig's AWS Cloud Security: https://sysdig.com/ecosystem/aws/Sysdig's 5 Steps to Securing AWS Cloud Infrastructure: https://sysdig.com/content/c/pf-5-steps-to-securing-aws-cloud-infrastructure?x=Xx8NSJSponsorSysdig: https://www.sysdig.com
Send us a textReady to unlock the secrets of AWS security? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Brandon Carroll, a senior developer advocate at AWS, as he shares his incredible journey from a Cisco-focused on-prem instructor to a key player at AWS. You'll discover how community feedback shapes AWS services and the vital role of educational content in demystifying complex technologies. This episode is packed with valuable insights for anyone navigating the hybrid and multi-cloud networking landscape, offering a clear comparison between AWS security and traditional on-premises practices.Wondering how to transition smoothly to AWS cloud services while maintaining security? We dive into the challenges network engineers face, such as the shift in control and visibility, and the intricate shared responsibility model. Brandon sheds light on the abstraction layers and the steep learning curve involved in mastering AWS's approach to cloud resources. We'll also tackle the complexities of service insertion in the cloud versus on-premises setups, providing a comprehensive guide to adjusting your strategies for cloud adoption.Curious about cloud security and compliance? We examine how AWS integrates frameworks like HIPAA and PCI within cloud environments, leveraging services like AWS Config and Security Hub for seamless interactions. Brandon highlights the advantages of AWS's API-first design and transitions from traditional security tools to modern AWS services. We'll also address emerging security challenges, including threats from generative AI. Don't miss our call to action to stay connected with Cables to Clouds through our podcast platforms, YouTube channel, and social media for more invaluable knowledge on AWS security and cloud computing.Check out the Fortnightly Cloud Networking Newshttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/Visit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cables2cloudsFollow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2cloudsMerch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatjArt of Network Engineering (AONE): https://artofnetworkengineering.com
A cloud service is only as good as the team of network engineers who keep it up and running. In this episode, AWS Vice President and Distinguished Engineer Tom Scholl breaks down the importance of security and legwork needed to support the company's massive infrastructure. Corey picks Tom's brain while singing the praises of the AWS DDoS Protection Team, marveling at the scale of the modern internet, and looking ahead to the next generation of network engineers that could land at AWS. If you've ever wondered about the inner workings of the AWS cloud, then this is the discussion for you.Show Highlights: (0:00) Intro(1:09) The Duckbill Group sponsor read(1:42) The importance of a good network for AWS(3:38) Evolution of networking(6:03) Efficiency of the AWS DDoS Protection Team(7:29) AWS Cloud and weathering DDoS attacks(10:03) Policing network abuse(12:08) Walking the SES tightrope and network attacks(15:00) Ensuring the security of the internet(17:53) The Duckbill Group sponsor read(18:37) Scale of the modern internet(20:47) Migrating the AWS network firewall(21:54) Internal network scaling(24:27) Preparing for DDoS disruption(29:14) Finding the next generation of network engineers(32:15) Where to learn more about AWS cloud securityAbout Tom Scholl:Tom Scholl is a VP and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the infrastructure organization. His role includes working on AWS's global network backbone, as well as focusing on denial of service detection and mitigation systems. He has been with AWS for over 13 years.Prior to AWS, Tom was a Principal Network Engineer at nLayer and AT&T Labs (formerly SBC Telecom). He also previously held network engineering roles at OptimalPATH Digital Network and ANET Internet Services. Links Referenced:AWS Security Blog: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/How AWS threat intelligence deters threat actors: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-aws-threat-intelligence-deters-threat-actors/Using AWS Shield Advanced protection groups to improve DDoS detection and mitigation: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/using-aws-shield-advanced-protection-groups-to-improve-ddos-detection-and-mitigation/AWS re:Inforce 2024 presentation on Sonaris and MadPot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38Z9csvyFDgNANOG 2023 presentation on AWS networking infrastructure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tcR-iQce7s AWS re:Invent 2022 presentation on AWS networking infrastructure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJNR_dX8g8c AWS re:Invent 2022 presentation on Scaling network performance on next-gen Amazon EC2 instances: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNYpWa7gf1A&t=1373sIEEE paper on Scalable Relatable Diagram (SRD): https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9167399SponsorThe Duckbill Group: https://www.duckbillgroup.com/
Send us a Text Message.How do government agencies ensure their cloud solutions are both secure and efficient? Join us on the Cables2Clouds podcast as we unravel the complexities of Government cloud solutions with our distinguished guest, Erica Cooper from Cisco. With her deep expertise in cloud technology tailored for the government sector, Erica provides invaluable insights into the unique requirements and security considerations of Government cloud environments. We explore why Microsoft Azure is a favored choice due to its integration with Office 365 and the critical role of hybrid solutions like Azure Hub and HCI in maintaining secure, isolated environments essential for national security.Ever wondered about the painstaking process of transitioning government applications from physical servers to the cloud? We tackle this intricate journey, focusing on US government deployments and the substantial presence of Microsoft Azure for Government (MAG) in these projects. Erica sheds light on the importance of having a point of presence in the continental US (CONUS) for effective communication and operational efficiency. We also delve into the global proliferation of Microsoft Azure for Government services, comparing it with AWS GovCloud and discussing the significance of terms like CONUS and OCONUS in this context.In our deep dive into implementing GovCloud, we emphasize the paramount importance of security in managing and deploying government cloud resources. Erica walks us through the rigorous vetting processes, security clearances, and collaborative efforts necessary to build and manage secure cloud infrastructure. We touch on the logistical challenges, from coordinating escorts to setting up secure facilities, and discuss the integration of AWS Cloud and Cisco's Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller for enhanced network visibility. Don't miss out on this comprehensive discussion that highlights the practical benefits of transitioning from traditional data centers to sophisticated cloud environments. Stay tuned for more insights, and remember to subscribe and follow us on social media for the latest updates!Check out the Fortnightly Cloud Networking NewsVisit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cables2cloudsFollow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2cloudsMerch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatjArt of Network Engineering (AONE): https://artofnetworkengineering.com
Just because the AWS Cloud hangs above our heads, doesn't mean your bill needs to be just as sky-high. In this Screaming in the Cloud Summer Replay, Corey is joined by Airbnb Staff Software Engineer Melanie Cebula. Her job is to ensure they keep their monthly cloud bill low, and that the cost isn't just there for a temporary stay. Hear Melanie and Corey chat about the vital role engineers play in helping balance the company books, tricks to optimizing your organization's cloud spending, how inexperience can have a dangerous effect on cost-cutting, and the growing pains facing today's world of data infrastructure. We hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane (just be sure you checkout on time to avoid any fees).Show Highlights: (0:00) Intro to episode(0:27) Backblaze sponsor read(0:54) The role of a Staff Engineer(2:09) Working for a large company reliant on the cloud(3:59) Melanie's Area of Expertise(5:58) Efficiently Managing AWS Bills(11:33) Optimizing cloud spend(14:50) The harmful hesitancy to turn things off(18:17) Inexperience and cost-saving measures(21:17) Firefly sponsor read(21:53) How to avoid snowballing cloud bills(23:40) Kuberentes and cloud billing(27:12) The perks of compounding microservices(29:19) Misconceptions about Kuberentes(31:10) Growing pains of data infrastructure(34:44) Where you can find MelanieAbout Melanie CebulaMelanie Cebula is an expert in Cloud Infrastructure, where she is recognized worldwide for explaining radically new ways of thinking about cloud efficiency and usability. She is an international keynote speaker, presenting complex technical topics to a broad range of audiences, both international and domestic. Melanie is a staff engineer at Airbnb, where she has experience building a scalable modern architecture on top of cloud-native technologies.Besides her expertise in the online world, Melanie spends her time offline on the “sharp end” of rock climbing. An adventure athlete setting new personal records in challenging conditions, she appreciates all aspects of the journey, including the triumph of reaching ever higher destinations.On and off the wall, Melanie focuses on building reliability into critical systems, and making informed decisions in difficult situations. In her personal time, Melanie hand whisks matcha tea, enjoys costuming and dancing at EDM festivals, and she is a triplet.Links Referenced:Twitter: https://twitter.com/melaniecebulaMelanie Cebula's website: https://melaniecebula.com/SponsorsBackblaze: https://www.backblaze.com/Firefly: https://www.firefly.ai/
Looking to build a career in the cloud? This comprehensive roadmap will guide you through the essential steps to kickstart your career in cloud computing and solution architecture. Whether you're just starting out or looking to advance your skills, this video covers everything you need to know.Cloud Career Mentor:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCIlB0ypTatNVjPPPNEPGFCQ https://app.cloudcareermentor.com/bearded-it✅ Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for insider tips and practical advice on launching your tech career, straight from industry experts! https://thebeardeditdad.ck.page/55f710292bSupport the Show.
Guest Bio: Mark Schwartz joined AWS as an Enterprise Strategist and Evangelist in July 2017. In this role, Mark works with enterprise technology executives to share experiences and strategies for how the cloud can help them increase speed and agility while devoting more of their resources to their customers. Mark has extensive experience as an IT leader in the government, private sector, and the nonprofit world, and with organizations ranging from startup to large. Prior to joining AWS, he was CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (in the Department of Homeland Security), where he led a large digital transformation effort, moving the agency to the cloud, introducing and refining DevOps and Agile techniques, and adopting user-centric design approaches. From his work at USCIS, he developed a reputation for leading transformation in organizations that are resistant to change, obsessed with security, subject to considerable regulation and oversight, and deeply bureaucratic. Before USCIS, Mark was CIO of Intrax Cultural Exchange, a leader in global youth exchange programs, and CEO of a software company. Mark is the author of The Art of Business Value , A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility, War, Peace and IT and The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy. Mark speaks at conferences internationally on such subjects as DevOps, Leading Change, Driving Innovation in IT, and Managing Agility in Bureaucratic Organizations. He has been recognized as a Computerworld Premier IT Leader and received awards for Leadership in Technology Innovation, the Federal 100 IT Leaders, and a CIO Magazine 100 award. Mark has both a BS and MA degree from Yale University, and an MBA from Wharton. Social Media/ Website: Mark's LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/innovativecio Mark's AWS Executive Insights page with links to all his blogs posts and books https://aws.amazon.com/ar/executive-insights/enterprise-strategists/mark-schwartz/ Books/ Resources: The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy: Digital Transformation with the Monkey, the Razor and the Sumo Wrestler by Mark Schwartz https://www.amazon.co.uk/Delicate-Art-Bureaucracy-Transformation-Wrestler-ebook/dp/B086XM4WCK/ The Art of Business Value by Mark Schwartz https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Business-Value-Mark-Schwartz/dp/1942788045 A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility by Mark Schwartz https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seat-Table-Leadership-Age-Agility/dp/1942788118/ War, Peace and IT: Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age by Mark Schwartz https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Peace-Business-Leadership-Technology/dp/1942788711 Reaching Cloud Velocity: A Leader's Guide to Success in the AWS Cloud by Jonathan Allen et al https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reaching-Cloud-Velocity-Leaders-Success/dp/B086PTDP51 Ahead in the Cloud: Best Practices for Navigating the Future of Enterprise IT by Stephen Orban https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ahead-Cloud-Practices-Navigating-Enterprise-ebook/dp/B07BYQTGJ7 Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War by Paul Kennedy https://www.amazon.co.uk/Engineers-Victory-Problem-Solvers-Turned-ebook/dp/B00ADNPCC0 The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim https://www.amazon.co.uk/Phoenix-Project-Devops-Helping-Business/dp/1942788290/ The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data by Gene Kim https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unicorn-Project-Disruption-Redshirts-Overthrowing/dp/1942788762 Interview Transcript Ula Ojiaku: Mark, thank you so much for making the time for this conversation. Mark Schwartz: Thank you, my pleasure. Ula Ojiaku: Great. Now let's start with you know, the question I usually ask my guests: who's Mark? What makes him tick? Mark Schwartz: And they can answer that question. It's not a hard one. where to start? Um, you know, I always enjoy my work. That's a thing about me. I like to think that people have fun working with me because I tend to laugh a lot. And even you know, when the work is boring, I find ways to make it interesting. I just enjoy doing things and accomplishing things. I think if we're going to talk about my books, and some of the things I've done later, an important thing to realize is that, I started out, you know, when I went, when I was in high school, when I went to college, I was pretty sure I wanted to study computer science and get involved with these computer things. But when I was actually studying, I realized there were all these other interesting areas, I'm just, you know, endlessly curious. And so, I wound up studying all kinds of other things, in addition. And the result was that when I finished college, I decided to go to graduate school in philosophy. And I spent a few years getting a master's degree in philosophy. And the fact that I'm curious about so many things and read so many different things, I think it enters into a lot of what I do. I like to pull analogies from non-IT related fields and, and, and I'll call upon all the things I've learned in all sorts of different areas, as I'm writing and speaking and working. Ula Ojiaku: It shines through in your book, definitely. Mark Schwartz: Yes, I think it does. That's partly an explanation for what you see in my books. I think, um, you know, I sometimes say that I have trouble reading business books generally. Because I kind of find them boring. They tend to make the same point over and over again, and to be very just so one directional, you know, just on the same subject, and it's a little bit odd because in every other subject, the books tend to refer to other books in other fields and there's this extra dimension and that helps you understand what the author is getting at. But in business books, they, you know, aside from having a quote now and then from a famous leader or something, they don't tend to do that, they don't, they don't sort of call upon the whole history of literature and writing. And so, I have a little bit of fun in writing my books in trying to see if I can add an extra dimension just by reference and by bringing in other things that are a little bit orthogonal to the subject matter. Ula Ojiaku: And that kind of, you know, brings home the point that life isn't black and white. It's actually a complex or a complex kind of, you know, maze and of different disciplines, different ideologies and different viewpoints that make it what it is really. Mark Schwartz: Yeah well, of course, that was part of the fun of my recent book on Bureaucracy. You know, because I know we all, we want to throw up when we encounter bureaucracy, you know, it disturbs us in so many ways. And one of the things I wanted to say in the book is, well, actually bureaucracy is all around you all the time in unexpected places and it usually doesn't drive you crazy, actually. Yeah... Ula Ojiaku: Well, I have a lot of questions for you on your book, The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy, which is a catchy, catchy title on its own, very clever. But before we get to that, what do you do when you're not working? I know, you said you love work and you've also said that you're curious about so many things, which means that you read broadly - that's my interpretation. So, what do you do when you're not ‘working'? Mark Schwartz: Yes, I read broadly, is one thing. In the past, I played the guitar a lot. And I don't quite as much lately. I don't know why, you know, I'll start doing it again. I'm sure at some point. But while I was living in San Francisco, I was actually playing in bars and coffee shops, I have a singer, who I performed with. Ula Ojiaku: Really? Wow! Mark Schwartz: And that was really fun. And then the other thing I do is travel, I've really traveled a lot. And, yeah, there was one period in my life where for about five years, I was bumming around the world with a backpack with you know, occasional returns to the States to work a little bit and make some money and then go traveling again. So, one of the joys of my current job is that, I get to do a lot of traveling to interesting places. Ula Ojiaku: So, where would you say is your ideal getaway destination? Mark Schwartz: Oh, let's see. I'm a big fan of Brazil. That, I have good friends there and it's really nice to see them and the atmosphere is always kind of fun there. Ula Ojiaku: Okay. Mark Schwartz: I don't know what I've discovered so many places around the world that I've really loved being. I lived in Japan for a year and that is a place that I love to go to, especially for the food. Yeah, I like good food. But I don't know I've found so many places that made me feel like I'd like to spend more time there. And of course, you can't really spend more time everywhere. Ula Ojiaku: Interesting. So, let's, let's go to your book, “The Art of Delicate Bureaucracy”. What was the inspiration behind that book? Mark Schwartz: Well, for all of my books, before I wrote, before I wrote them, I was thinking, ‘why hasn't anybody else written a book on this topic?' People don't write books on bureaucracy, at least not, you know, popular books, there are academic books on bureaucracy. And the same thing happened to me with my first book, “The Art of Business Value”, where I said to myself, we keep talking about business value in the IT world, like, is it obvious what it means? You know, what, why isn't anybody writing a book about what business value means? So, bureaucracy is one of those things. I have a lot of experience with it first of all, I was a CIO in a government agency. But it turns out, it's not just the government, whenever I tell people about my government experience, when I speak at a conference, people come up to me afterwards and say, ‘Oh, my company's just like that. I work for a financial services company; we have lots of bureaucracy'. And I work with a lot of people who are trying to pull off some sort of digital transformation, which is change on a big scale, that's changing traditional organizations on a big scale. And bureaucracy is always in their way because bureaucracy tends to resist change; it strongly tends to resist change. So, if you're doing a big change, then you're probably going to come up against it. So, I thought maybe with my experience as a bureaucrat, or at least experience in the big bureaucracy, I could give some pointers to people who are trying to cause big change, and yet are facing bureaucratic obstacles. And I can't imagine that there's any organization, at least any large organization that does not have bureaucratic obstacles to digital transformation. So, that got me started on it. And then as I started to think about bureaucracy and research it, I realized this is actually a really interesting topic. Ula Ojiaku: You had an interesting introduction to the book. You said, “we are bureaucrats all.” Why that claim, you actually were saying, everyone is a bureaucrat, and I know you made a statement that's similar to that earlier on in this conversation - why? Mark Schwartz: Well, of course, I have to define in the book, what I mean by bureaucracy and all that. And I follow the generally what's accepted as the academic definition. It mostly comes from the sociologist Max Vabre, who is writing around 1920. And, and he talks a lot about bureaucracy, and it's fairly complicated, but I simplify it in the book. Basically, what it comes down to is a bureaucracy is a way of organizing socially, that has rigid formal roles for people and rigid formal rules. And that's the essence of it. You know, bureaucracy, there are rules and they have to be applied uniformly to everybody. And there's a division of labor and you know, a hierarchy. So, it has rigid roles of people who have to sign off on things and approve things. So, with that is the definition. I think it, it connects with the very human tendency to try to structure things and constantly improve them and optimize them. So, if you find a good way of doing something, you tend to turn it into a rule, you know, this is the way it should be done from now on. Ula Ojiaku: Best practice! Mark Schwartz: It's the best practice. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also, we, in, social organization, we'd like people to be accountable or responsible for things. And we know that you can't hold somebody accountable unless they have authority to perform their role. So, when you put those things together, it's very natural for us to set up these organizational systems, where we assign roles to people, and give them authority, and we make rules that encapsulate the best way to do things. And, essentially, that's bureaucracy. So, bureaucracy, I find, is everywhere around us in one form or another. But it doesn't drive us crazy most of the time, so we don't notice it. Ula Ojiaku: Maybe if it's serving us, then we wouldn't notice it. But… Mark Schwartz: It does serve. And if you look at the cases where it does drive us crazy, they have certain things in common. And in the book, I say there are three characteristics that bureaucracies often take on which they don't need to, it's not part of the definition of bureaucracy, but they often take on these characteristics. And it's those three characteristics that are what drive us crazy. And so, the goal, ultimately is to eliminate those three characteristics or turn them into something else. Ula Ojiaku: I know that the listeners would be curious to know what the three characteristics of bureaucracy that drive us crazy are? Is that so or should I just tell them go buy the book? Mark Schwartz: Yeah, go buy the book! Well, let me tell you the three characteristics, and also their opposite, which is what we really want. So, the first characteristic that drives us crazy, I think, is that bureaucracies tend to be bloated instead of lean, that would be the opposite in my view. There's no reason why a bureaucracy has to be bloated and wasteful. It could be lean, but it's one of those things that bureaucracy tends to become. So that's the first one. The second one is that bureaucracies tend to petrify, as opposed to learning. So, when I say petrifies, I mean that the rules and the bureaucracy don't change, or don't change as often as they should, or don't change continuously, which is really what rules should do. Now, that's not necessarily a characteristic of bureaucracy, but the definition, the definition says the rules have to be applied rigorously. You know, once you have a rule, everybody has to follow it. But it doesn't say that the rules have to stay the same forever, they can change. The opposite of a petrified bureaucracy is a learning bureaucracy, where the rules are constantly adjusted, based on what the people in the organization learn. And there are plenty of good examples of learning bureaucracies out there. And your goal is to transform the one into the other, the petrified into the learning. The third is, bureaucracies tend to be coercive, rather than enabling. Coercive, meaning that they're there to control employee behavior, to force employees to behave in ways that otherwise they wouldn't want to. They tend to be ‘no' saying, they say ‘no', a lot. Your bureaucracy for your expense reporting policy in your company probably says, ‘no that expense is no good because X Y and Z.' There are plenty of examples of enabling bureaucracies, where the point is not to stop you from doing things or force you to do something you don't want to. But the bureaucracy provides a support structure, provide best practices, as you said, that help you do your job well. And there's no reason why bureaucracies can't do that. So, the three bad characteristics are bloat, coercion, and petrify. Ula Ojiaku: Okay, nice. So, it sounds like the way you've described bureaucracy, when you look at it from a positive slant, would it be the same thing as guardrails, putting guardrails in place, or giving people the right degree of freedom? Mark Schwartz: Yeah, that's exactly the idea. What I find is that guardrails and automation are ways of implementing bureaucracy, that lead to those three good characteristics rather than the bad ones. Let's say in software development, in DevOps, for example, it's a good idea to put guardrails, security guardrails, for example, around what people can do, and automated security tests and things like that. Because then the developers or the DevOps teams, they can go charging ahead full speed, knowing that they can't do anything wrong, you know, because the guardrails are there. And they get immediate feedback, if they do something that's going to put them outside the guardrails and they can just immediately fix it. So, it's very empowering for them, lets them move fast. And it also gets rid of that coercive element of you know, I write some code and then somebody comes in afterwards and says, ‘no, you can't deploy that'. That's annoying. Instead, I can run the security tests myself, as a developer, see if there's anything that's problematic, fix it right away if I want to, so it's all under my control. But the end result is still the same. The bureaucracy is still there. It's just automated and implemented as guardrails. Ula Ojiaku: It's enabling, like you said before, instead of hindering. Mark Schwartz: And it's lean, because it's very inefficient and wasteful, if you write some code, and then at the very end of the development process, somebody finds a security flaw. And now you have to remember what you were doing. And, you know, go back and relearn your code and make changes then, so that's wasteful, as opposed to lean. It's coercive, as opposed to enabling. And if you're good at doing these things, then you keep updating your guardrails and your security tests based on new security threats you learn about or new policies or whatever. So, you make a learning bureaucracy as well. Ula Ojiaku: Interesting. In the book as well, you said you want us to be calm, chaos monkeys, knights of Ockham, lean sumo wrestlers, very interesting oxymoron there. And you know, black belt experts, could you tell us more about those terms? Why did you use those terms? Mark Schwartz: Because they made me laugh of course. Ula Ojiaku: Well, they made me laugh too. Mark Schwartz: So, I thought about what I learned about coping with bureaucracy, especially in my government job, but also from reading and from talking to other people. And I realized I had about, you know, 30 techniques for coping with bureaucracy, I call them plays. And I just grabbed those 30 techniques, but I thought about it, and I realized they divided into three. And the three, I could sort of associate with a personality, almost. You know, that these 10 plays are associated with this personality, these 10 plays are associated with this one. And I came up with these three personalities that I thought describe those plays. And the three personalities are the monkey, and the razor, and the sumo wrestler. And, you know, I think, I could stop right there, because it's probably obvious why I associate those with these plays, but I will go a little further. Ula Ojiaku: Please… Mark Schwartz: So, I realized that some of the things we did, the ones that I call the plays of the monkey, the way of the monkey, those things had to do with provoking. You know, monkeys are mischievous, provocative, and sometimes annoying. And a bunch of the techniques had to do with trying to be provocative. And the razor and I'll give you some examples in a minute. The razor, to me is all about being lean. It's about trimming away waste. And it also refers to the philosophical principle of Ockham's razor. Ockham was a medieval philosopher, right, William of Ockham. And he's generally credited with an idea that something like if you have a choice between a simple explanation, and a complicated explanation, you should prefer the simple one. That's not really what he said. But that's, that's what most people associated with him. That's the principle of Ockham's razor. And, and so it's called a principle of ontological parsimony, meaning, you shouldn't presuppose the existence of more things than you need to, in order to explain something. So, you know, don't make up nymphs. And you know, I don't know, water dryads and whatever's to explain something that you can equally just explain through simple physical laws. Ula Ojiaku: Just saying, 'keep it simple...' Mark Schwartz: Yeah, keep it simple, in a way, right? So that's called the principle of ontological parsimony. And I said, there's a similar principle of bureaucratic parsimony, which says that if you're trying to implement a control, and you can do it in a simple way, or you could do it in a really complicated way, do it a simple way. And so, it's a principle of leanness because I find that bureaucracies, when they get bloated, they have these really complicated wasteful ways of doing something that they could they could accomplish exactly the same thing, but in a simpler way. So that's the razor. And then a sumo wrestler. Well, Sumo is the sport where, you know, two massive people sort of bang into each other, right? And the goal is you want to push your opponent out of the ring, or you want to make them fall and touch the ground with something other than their feet. And if you can do either of those things, you win. So, if you're a big massive person and you're trying to accomplish those things, you might think that the best thing to do is charge your opponent and push really hard. But if your opponent then just either dodges or just is soft and lets you push, well, you're probably going to go flying out of the ring, right? So, one of the principles in Sumo is you want to use your opponent's strength against them. And if they push hard, now, go ahead, give them a little pull. And, you know, let them push even harder. And I realized that some of these techniques for overcoming bureaucracy have to do with using bureaucracy actually, on your side, you know, the using the strength of bureaucracy against it. So that's why the sumo wrestler. So, I'll give you examples now on each one, now that I've described my three personalities. So, the monkey does what is sometimes referred to as provoking and inspecting or provoking and observing, in parallel with the Agile principle of inspect and adapt. So, provoke and observe, what the monkey does is try something that's probably outside the rules, or at least is, you know, a borderline and watches what happens. So, an example where we use this is that we have these rules in Homeland Security that essentially said, if you were going to do an IT project, you have to produce 87 documents. And each document had a template, and you have to fill in each section of the template. And these documents would run to hundreds of pages. And so, using the persona of the monkey, let's say, we started to turn in these documents. But in each section of the template, we just wrote a one sentence, one sentence answer, you know, we're very short answer instead of writing pages and pages. And we wanted to see what would happen if we did that, because there was no rule that said, it had to be a really long answer. And eventually, we started to provoke even more, we just left out sections that we thought didn't make any sense for what we were doing. And all of this was unprecedented, you know, it caused a lot of fear. It turned out, and this sometimes happens, that the enforcers of this policy, they were happy when they said, “We've never wanted anybody to write these really long answers to these things, we have to read them. And you know, the intention wasn't to slow people down. As long as you're giving us the right information. That's all we need.” So, in this case, provoking just it turned out that we could defeat a bunch of bureaucracy there, we could, we could make things a lot leaner because nobody objected. But sometimes people do object. And if they do, then you learn exactly what the resistance is, who it is, is resisting, and that gives you valuable information, when you're trying to figure out how to overcome it. So that's the monkey. You know, let's try something a little playful and mischievous, and see what happens. The razor, well, that one follows also on my 87 documents, because we then set up an alternative way of doing things that had only 15 documents. And where there had been 13 gate reviews required for each project. We reduced it to two. And so, all we did, you know, we just used our little razor to trim away all the excess stuff that was in the bureaucratic requirements. And then we showed people that those 15 documents and those two gate reviews accomplished exactly the same thing as the 87 documents and the 13 gate reviews. That's the principle of the razor, that's how the razor works. The sumo wrestler, also a favorite of mine. So, we were trying to convince the bureaucracy to let us do DevOps and to be agile, and it was resisting. And people kept pointing to a policy that said, you can't do these things. And so, we wrote our own policy. And it was a very good bureaucratic policy looked exactly like every bureaucratic document out there. But it essentially said you must use DevOps and you must be agile on it, you know, it set up a perfect bureaucracy around that it's set up ways of checking to make sure everybody was using DevOps. And the theory behind it was the auditors when they came to audit us and said we were being naughty because we were doing DevOps. Their argument was we looked at the policy and we looked at what you're doing, and they were different. And that's the way auditing works. That was the, you know, GAO, the Government Accountability Office, and the Inspector General and all that. So, we figured if we had a policy that said you must do DevOps, and they audited us, well, they would actually be enforcing the policy, you know, they'd be criticizing any part of the organization that was not using DevOps and I thought that's great. So, this is how you use the strength of the bureaucracy against the bureaucracy or not really, against even, you know, it's perfectly good, perfect… Ula Ojiaku: To help the bureaucracy yeah, to help them to improve, improve the organization. But thinking about the monkey though, being provocative and mischievous, do you think that there has to be an element of you know, relationship and trust in place first, before… you can't just you know… you're new, and you've just gotten through the door and you start being a monkey… you probably will be taken back to wherever you came from! What do you think? Mark Schwartz: Well, it helps if you're giggling while you do it. But you know, I think the goal here is to figure out the right levers that are going to move things. And sometimes you do have to push a little bit hard, you know, you do need to take people out of their comfort zone. Usually, you want to do these things in a way that takes into account people's feelings, and you know, is likely to move them in the right direction, rather than making them dig in their heels. But I'll give you a couple of examples of Monkey tactics that are less comfortable for people. One is simply, you know, there's a status quo bias. It's a known, well-known cognitive bias; people tend to prefer the status quo or look the other way about it's failings and stuff. So often, when you're trying to make a change, people say, we're fine the way we are, you know, everything's okay. So, one of the things the monkey tries to do is, is to make it clear that the status quo is not acceptable, you know, to show people that it actually if they think about it, it's no good. And so, for example, when we decided to move to the cloud, instead of working in our DHS data center, people said - of course at the time it was a big concern, ‘was the cloud secure enough?' And in the persona of the monkey, the right response is, ‘are we secure enough now?' You know, ‘don't you realize that we're not happy with our security posture today?' ‘It's not like, the cloud has proved itself. I mean, we have to compare our security in the cloud versus our security in the data center. And yes, I'm very sure it'll be better in the cloud and here's why…' But you can't start from the assumption that you are fine right now. In general, when we're talking about the cloud, that's the situation. Companies are using their own data centers. And it's like, you know, we have to teach them that they can do better in the cloud. But the truth is that they're not happy in their own data centers, if they think about it, right? There are security issues, there are performance issues, there are cost issues. And they're aware of those issues, right, they just look the other way. And because they're comfortable with the status quo, so the monkey has to sort of shake people up and say, ‘It's not okay, what you're doing now!' Another example, and this is really harsh, and I wouldn't use it in most cases. But let's say that this was in Homeland Security. Let's say that Homeland Security is enforcing a very bureaucratic process that results in IT projects, taking five years instead of six months. And let's say, you know, the process is there on paper, the rules say, ‘Do this', the people are interpreting the rules in a way that makes things take five years. Sometimes, the monkey has to go to somebody who's in their way and say, ‘We are in the Department of Homeland Security, this IT project is going to make people more secure in the homeland. Are you comfortable with the fact that you are preventing people from being more secure for the next four and a half years, when we could…' You know, it's a matter of personalizing it. And that sometimes is what's necessary to get people to start thinking creatively about how they can change the bureaucracy. You know, ‘I hate to say it, but you're a murderer', you know, essentially is the message. It's a monkey message. And like I said, you know, it's not the preferred way to go about doing things. But if you have to, I mean, the lives of people are at stake, and you've got to find a way to get there. Ula Ojiaku: So how can leaders because your book, The Art of Business Value, in your book, you said that “leaders create the language of the organization, and they set up incentives and define value in a way that elicits desired outcomes.” So, in essence, I understand that statement to mean that leaders set the tone, and you know, kind of create the environment for things to happen. So, how can leaders implement or apply bureaucracy in a way that enables an organization where, before it was seen as a hindrance, how can they do this? Mark Schwartz: My thought process was, if we all agree, we're gonna try to maximize business value? How do we know what we mean by it? And I realized, a lot of Agile people, you know, people in our Agile and DevOps community, were being a little bit lazy. You know, they were thinking, ‘Oh, business value, you know, it's returns on investment, or, you know, it's up to the business (to define) what's business value.' The tech people just, you know, do the work of providing a solution. And to me, that's too lazy. If you're going to be agile, be it you have to be more proactive about making sure you're delivering business value. So, you have to understand what it means. You have to actually do the work of, you know, figuring out what it means. And what it means is not at all obvious. And, you know, you might think it has something to do with return on investment or shareholder value or something like that. But when you really closely examine it, that is not the right way to define it, when it comes to deciding what its efforts to prioritize and all that that's, you know, the case that the book makes, and I explain why that's true. Instead, I say you have to think of business value within the context of the business's strategy and its objectives as a business. There's no like, abstract, this has more business value than this because we calculated an ROI or something like that, that doesn't work reprioritizing. It's always asked within the context of a particular business strategy. And the business strategy is a direction from leadership. There might be input from everybody else, but ultimately, you have leaders in the organization who are deciding what the strategic objectives are. So, for example, if you are a traditional bank, or traditional financial services company, and you look around you and you see there are all these new FinTech companies that are disrupting the industry, and you're worried, well there are a lot of different ways you can respond to those disruptive FinTechs. And how you're going to choose to respond depends on your preferences, it depends on the situation of your company, in the industry, the history of your company, all of those things. But of the many ways you can respond to that disruption, you're going to choose one as the leader of your enterprise. Well, what adds business value is whatever supports that direction you choose to go. You can't think of business value outside of that direction, you know. That's the case that I make. So, leaders don't just set the tone and the culture there, they're actually setting strategic direction that determines what has business value. And then the people who are executing the agile teams have to take it upon themselves to make sure that whatever they're doing is going to add business value in that sense. So, the role of leadership then becomes direction setting and visioning for the future and communicating the vision to the people who are working and providing feedback, you know, on whether things are actually adding business value or not . And that's the key responsibility. Now, in order to do that, in order to motivate people to deliver according to that idea of business value, there are certain techniques as a leader that you have to keep in mind, there are ways that you get people, you get a big organization to sort of follow you. And one of the ones that's become most important to me to think about after talking to a lot of leaders about how they're running their organizations, and what's working, is using middle management as a lever for accomplishing those things. So often, I'll talk to leaders of a business, and they'll say, our problem is the frozen middle, middle management is, you know, they're just not changing the way we want, we want to, we want to cause a big transformation, but middle management is getting in the way. And I tell them, ‘that's pretty much a myth.' You know, ‘that's not actually what's happening, let's look more closely at your organization.' Almost always, middle management is still trying to do the best they can, given the situation that they're in. And the way that you get them to align themselves behind the change is, you change their incentives or their role definition, or how you tell them what you're expecting from them, you don't say “change”, you know, and start doing X and Y, you change what success looks like for their position. And then they adapt to it by becoming engaged and finding ways to get there. So, there's almost always a leadership problem when you have that frozen middle effect. And, and I've seen it work really well that, you know, all of a sudden, you get this big leverage, because you just do a little bit of tweaking of role definitions, and bring everybody into solving the problem. And actually, there's an example, I love to talk about a history book, like I said before, I like to bring in other things, right? It's called the Engineers of Victory. And it's about World War Two, the Allies realized that they had to solve a set of problems, I think there was six or so problems. One of them was how do you land troops on a beach that's heavily defended? They realize they were just not going to be able to win the war until they could do that. But nobody knew how to do it. Because, you know, obviously, the bad guys are there on the beach, they're dug in, they put barbed wire everywhere, and mines, and you know, all this stuff. And it's just going to be a slaughter if you try to land on the beach. So, this book, Engineers of Victory, makes the case that what really won the war, was figuring out those solutions. And who was responsible for figuring out those solutions? It was middle management, basically. It was the, you know, within the structure of the army, it was the people not at the top who had big authority, you know, the generals, and it was not the troops themselves, because they weren't in a position to figure out these things. It was middle management that could see across different parts of the organization that could try things and see whether they worked or not, that, you know, essentially could run their own mini skunkworks projects. And eventually, they came up with the solutions to these problems. So, I think that's very encouraging for the role of middle management, you know, that a lot of problems have to be solved at that layer in order to pull off a transformation. And it really can be done. And this is a beautiful example of it. Ula Ojiaku: It reminds me of, you know, my experience in a few transformation initiatives. So, the middle, the people who are termed to be in the frozen middle, are, like you said, they want to do what's best for the company, and they show up wanting to do their best work, but it's really about finding out, ‘Where do I fit in, (with) all this change that's happening?' You know, ‘if my role is going away, if the teams are going to be more empowered, that means I'm not telling them what to do, but then what do I do now?' So, the clarity of what the ‘New World' means for them, and what's in it for them, would help, you know, make them more effective. Mark Schwartz: And the mistake that's often made is to say to them, ‘start doing DevOps' or, you know, ‘start doing agile or something.' Because if you don't change the definition of success, or you don't change the incentives that, you know, then it's just, make work and they're going to resist it. You know, if you say your incentive is to get really fast feedback or you know, one of the other goals of DevOps, because of the following reasons, it helps the business this way, so let's try to reduce cycle time as much as possible for producing software. Okay, that's a change in the incentive, or the, you know, the definition of success, rather than just telling somebody you have to do DevOps, you know, read a book and figure it out. Ula Ojiaku: So, what other books because you mentioned the Engineers of Victory, are there any other books you would recommend for the listener to go check out if they wanted to learn more about what we've talked about today? Mark Schwartz: Well, I think, you know, obviously, my books referred to War and Peace by Tolstoy, Moby Dick, another great one. You know, you probably need to read my books to figure out why those are the right books to read and Engineers of Victory. As I said, I think that one's a great one. Within the field, there are some DevOps books that that I like a lot, of course, Gene Kim's books, The Phoenix Project, and now The Unicorn Project, the sequel to that. Because those are books that give you a feel for the motivation behind all the things that we do. The Mechanics of Things, there are plenty of books out there that help you learn the mechanics of how to do continuous integration and continuous delivery. And then the cloud is I think it's really transformative. You know, it's the cloud itself is a tremendous enabler. I work at AWS, of course but I'm not saying this because I work at AWS, it's more than I work at AWS because I believe these things. And my teammates have written some good books on the cloud. Reaching Cloud Velocity, for example, by Jonathan Allen and Thomas Blood is a great one for reading up on how the cloud can be transformative. But my other teammates, Gregor Hope, has written a number of books that are really good, Stephen Orban did A Head in the Cloud. So, I think those are all… should be at the top of people's reading lists. And then, of course, I recommend my books, because they make me laugh, and they might make you laugh, too. Ula Ojiaku: Definitely made me laugh, but they've also given me things to think about from a new perspective. So, I totally agree. And so, where can people find you if they want to reach out to you? Mark Schwartz: Yeah, LinkedIn is a great place to find me. If you're with a company that is an AWS customer, feel free to talk to your account manager, the sales team from AWS and ask them to put you in touch with me, is another easy way. LinkedIn is kind of where I organize my world from so find me there. Ula Ojiaku: Okay. Sounds great. And any final words for the audience or for the listeners. Mark Schwartz: Um, I, I have found that these things that you want to do to take advantage of the digital world, and I think we're all sort of pointing ourselves in that direction, there are these amazing things you can do in the digital world. They're sometimes challenging to get there, but it's very possible to get there. And one thing I've learned a lot at Amazon is the idea of working backwards, you know, you get that picture in your head for where you want to be and then you say to yourself, ‘I can get there. Let me work backwards and figure out what I have to do in order to get there.' And you might be wrong, you know, you should test hypotheses, you start moving in the right direction, and of course, correct as you need to. But you can do it with confidence that others are doing it and you can too no matter what your organization is, no matter how much you think you're a snowflake and you know different from every other organization. You can still do it. And with just some good intention and good thinking you can figure out how to how to get there. Ula Ojiaku: Thank you so much, Mark. That was a great close for this conversation and again, I really appreciate your making the time for this interview. Thank you. Mark Schwartz: Thanks for having me. Ula Ojiaku: You're welcome.
In this episode, join Morgan Willis, Principal Cloud Technologist from AWS, as she guides you through mastering your AWS Cloud skills.
Mark Lazarus joins Ramon and the PD Flight Crew this week in the MissionCTRL studios to share his 20-year journey in IT and discuss how IT programs are transforming lives. Lazarus serves as the Program Manager of Information Technology at The Workplace's Tech Ready Career Training Program. In high school, Mark was an avid athlete, participating in basketball, track, and martial arts. After an injury, his guidance counselor recommended pursuing a career in IT. Following this advice, Lazarus earned an Associate Degree in Computer and Information Systems Security and Information Assurance from Norwalk Community College, followed by a Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology with a minor in Sociology from UConn. Mark's extensive real-life experience makes him the ideal advocate for serving the Bridgeport community by bridging the gap between job seekers and employers' demands. The Tech Ready Career Training Program focuses on accessibility, designing courses that equip participants with the skills and certifications needed to excel in the dynamic field of technology. In the "Tech Ready Career Training" segment, participants will have the opportunity to take classes covering a wide range of essential IT skills: CompTIA A+, CompTIA Network+, CompTIA Security+, CompTIA Server+, SQL, Project Management, AWS Cloud, Google Cloud, Python, and IC2 Cybersecurity. Before we dive into today's main discussion, Ramon recaps his recent trip to Arizona, the PD Flight Crew shares updates on changes in web cookies that businesses need to be aware of, and we celebrate the Knicks making it to the second round of the playoffs. . . . Find Mission CTRL on Anchor, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and our website. Mission CTRL aims to ignite the innovative spirit inside us all through providing budding and successful entrepreneurs and community leaders with a platform to share their stories and inspire others. Tune in every Wednesday and catch up with the team at Peralta Design as we unleash the origin stories behind some exceptional leaders, share marketing/branding insights, and navigate the ever-changing currents of pop culture. Subscribe for weekly branding and entrepreneurial content here! To learn more about Peralta Design's work visit peraltadesign.com. #welaunchbrands #digitalagency #mbeagency #mbe #digital #branding #marketing #web #startups #creative #BrandU #w2 #fulltime #leadership #contentcreator #contentstrategy #marketingstrategy #entrepreneurs #business #launchyourbrand
MotorTrend's Ed Loh & Jonny Lieberman are back with their final episode from the CES show! FIRST, the guys chat with MotorTrend's 2024 SDV Innovator Award Winner - Worldwide SDV Tech Leader for Amazon Web Services, Stefano Marzani, about how AWS Cloud Services are assisting the automotive industry, and what our Software Defined future will look like. NEXT, the guys chat with Mercedes Benz AG Chief Software Officer, Magnus Oestberg, about their recent approval for Level 3 SAE Certification, how Mercedes is using ChatGPT, and MBUX Sound Drive by Will.i.am! 0:42 - Question of the Week! Formula-E. 2:35 - About today's guests. 6:15 - How is AWS Cloud assisting the automotive industry? 7:11 - The Big Loop. 8:18 - You're taking my data!? 13:34 - Digital Cockpit. 18:22 - Smartphones on wheels! 22:10 - Virtual testing, digital twin. 25:30 - Consumer application. 27:10 - Application to super car manufacturers. 30:42 - Ed & Jonny react to Stefano, introduce to Magnus. 32:15 - Mercedes' Magnus Oestberg! 33:40 - Drive Pilot Automated Driving. 36:36 - How did Mercedes achieve Level 3 Autonomy first? 42:22 - Consumer adoption. 46:43 - How Mercedes is using ChatGPT. 54:26 - MBUX Sound Drive with Will.i.am.
Thu, 01 Feb 2024 16:30:00 +0000 https://podcast.cloudonaut.io/85-losing-trust-in-kms c88b842d6dc869b9d099d0c0a50d6ca5 Andreas and Michael are losing trust in KMS because of a potential key policy privilege escalation. Andreas and Michael Wittig are building on AWS since 2009. Follow their journey of developing products like bucketAV, marbot, and HyperEnv and learn from practice. Topics KMS Key Policy Privilege Escalation AWS Management Console misses ability to integrate with AWS Marketplace solutions AWS News Check Links KMS Key Policy Privilege Escalation AWS CodeBuild announces support for reserved capacity Amazon ECS announces managed instance draining AWS announces higher read IOPS for Amazon Elastic File System Amazon ECS Service Connect introduces support for automatic traffic encryption with TLS Certificates Amazon Inspector now supports CIS Benchmark assessments for operating systems in EC2 instances Amazon EKS and Amazon EKS Distro now support Kubernetes version 1.29 Provisioned capacity for API limits now available in Amazon Cognito Yan Cui on Provisioned capacity for Cognito API limits Subscribe Make sure you are not missing upcoming shows … Podcast feed YouTube channel Newsletter Projects bucketAV — Antivirus protection for Amazon S3 marbot — AWS Monitoring made simple! HyperEnv for GitHub Actions — Deploy self-hosted GitHub runners on AWS with ease! attachmentAV — Antivirus for Atlassian Jira and Confluence Contact and Feedback hello@cloudonaut.io Mastodon (Andreas) Mastodon (Michael) LinkedIn (Andreas) LinkedIn (Michael) 85 full Andreas and Michael are losing trust in KMS because of a potential key policy privilege escalation. no Andreas Wittig and Michael Wittig focusing on AWS Cloud
This episode of Software Engineering Daily is part of our on-site coverage of AWS re:Invent 2023, which took place from November 27th through December 1st in Las Vegas. In today's interview, host Jordi Mon Companys speaks with Kevin Kelly who is the Director of the AWS Cloud Institute. Jordi Mon Companys is a product manager The post AWS re:Invent Special: The AWS Cloud Institute with Kevin Kelly appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
Thu, 11 Jan 2024 19:30:00 +0000 https://podcast.cloudonaut.io/84-aurora-serverless-is-dead-long-live-aurora-serverless 4fde3015f18cb6f7b6fc446b320a39ba AWS announced the end of life for Aurora Serverless v1, Andreas and Michael discuss the consequences for their workloads. Andreas and Michael Wittig are building on AWS since 2009. Follow their journey of developing products like bucketAV, marbot, and HyperEnv and learn from practice. Topics AWS product launches in 2023 AWS CloudShell supports Docker AWS Marketplace reduces fees Auto-scaling hooks and ELB connection draining Aurora Serverless v1 EOL Keep Terraform providers up to date! OpenTofu generally available NAT instance AMI out of maintenance EC2 Instance Connect Endpoints not HA? Links AWS Product Launch Count By Year by Sumiya AWS CloudShell now supports Docker in 13 Regions AWS announced reduced marketplace fees during the Partner Keynote Connect to your instances without requiring a public IPv4 address using EC2 Instance Connect Endpoint OpenTofu is going GA Subscribe Make sure you are not missing upcoming shows … Podcast feed YouTube channel Newsletter Projects bucketAV — Antivirus protection for Amazon S3 marbot — AWS Monitoring made simple! HyperEnv for GitHub Actions — Deploy self-hosted GitHub runners on AWS with ease! attachmentAV — Antivirus for Atlassian Jira and Confluence Contact and Feedback hello@cloudonaut.io Mastodon (Andreas) Mastodon (Michael) LinkedIn (Andreas) LinkedIn (Michael) 84 full AWS announced the end of life for Aurora Serverless v1, Andreas and Michael discuss the consequences for their workloads. no Andreas Wittig and Michael Wittig focusing on AWS Cloud
This episode of Software Engineering Daily is part of our on-site coverage of AWS re:Invent 2023, which took place from November 27th through December 1st in Las Vegas. In today's interview, host Jordi Mon Companys speaks with Kevin Kelly who is the Director of the AWS Cloud Institute. Jordi Mon Companys is a product manager The post AWS re:Invent Special: The AWS Cloud Institute with Kevin Kelly appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
This episode of Software Engineering Daily is part of our on-site coverage of AWS re:Invent 2023, which took place from November 27th through December 1st in Las Vegas. In today's interview, host Jordi Mon Companys speaks with Kevin Kelly who is the Director of the AWS Cloud Institute. Jordi Mon Companys is a product manager The post AWS re:Invent Special: The AWS Cloud Institute with Kevin Kelly appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
How can you build a robust cloud security program in AWS, particularly as a startup and small to medium-sized businesses navigating AWS in 2024? We spoke to Chris Farris, who is the event chair for fwd:cloudsec, a known cloud security expert and one of the first AWS Heroes for security. Chris shared his insights on how to build a security strategy that is both practical and effective in today's dynamic cloud environment. From discussing the importance of AWS organizations and Identity Centre to breaking down the complexities of cloud security posture management. You will hear actionable advice and best practices. Guest Socials: Chris's Linkedin (@chrisfarris) Podcast Twitter - @CloudSecPod If you want to watch videos of this LIVE STREAMED episode and past episodes - Check out our other Cloud Security Social Channels: - Cloud Security Podcast- Youtube - Cloud Security Newsletter - Cloud Security BootCamp Questions Asked: (00:00) Introduction (02:59) A bit about Chris Farris (03:30) fwd:cloudsec Conference (04:19) AWS Hero program for Cloud Security (05:23) Building Effective Cloud Security Programs (11:39) Top Recommendations for AWS Cloud Security (13:34) What is AWS IAM Identity Center? (18:02) How to Set Up AWS IAM Identity Center? (20:13) Cloud Security in different industries (29:31) The role of a Cloud Security Engineer (34:30) Cloud Security Breaches (38:02) Educational Resources in Cloud Security (42:41) The Fun Section Resources spoken about in this episode: fwd:cloudsec AWS IAM Identity Center Leveraging AWS SSO (aka Identity Center) with Google Workspaces breaches.cloud
Join us as we explore Experian's shift to a dynamic, cloud-first approach. Learn how, in collaboration with the AWS Innovation team in Australia, they adopted the working backwards methodology to leverage the AWS Cloud, resulting in enhanced brand experiences for consumers.
We are live from AWS re:Invent 2023 in Las Vegas, direct from the Expo floor, with a limited series of episodes talking to AWS leaders on themes of the conference, as well as filling in on all of the news and gossip.In this weeks second double feature, we are looking at Sovereignty & Cyber, we focus on how AWS Cloud is responding to two of the biggest challenges today. Dave, Sjoukje and Rob dig into this in two separate sessions with:Max Peterson, VP sovereign cloud, AWS about the importance of recognising sovereignty, how AWS frame the requirement and the response.Gary Meshell, MD Global GSI cybersecurity program & Anne Saunders, Global Cybersecurity Director, Capgemini about the growing threat and sophistication of Cyber in an evermore complex world.GuestsMax Peterson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxrpeterson/Gary Meshell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garymeshell/HostsDave Chapman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/Sjoukje Zaal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sjoukjezaal/Rob Kernahan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-kernahan/ProductionMarcel Van Der Burg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcel-van-der-burg-99a655/Dave Chapman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/SoundBen Corbett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-corbett-3b6a11135/Louis Corbett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louis-corbett-087250264/
Build the thing you wish you had right now. That's the story behind Hacking Postgres, Ep 9, where Ry sits down with Bertrand Drouvot of AWS Cloud. Today they talked about the struggles of trying to build from scratch vs having a template, what should be core vs an extension, and being able to see what's really happening inside your database.
Follow me to see #HeadsTalk Podcast Audiograms every Monday on LinkedInEpisode Title:
Experience-Based Acceleration (EBA) is an AWS program to accelerate cloud journeys. Today Jillian Ford speaks with Bilal Shirazi (Principal EBA Lead North America) and Rughved Gadgil (Senior Solutions Architect) and explores the benefits of EBA to overcome barriers in your cloud projects. Whether you're just getting started or in the middle of a migration, learn how EBA's can achieve outcomes in days not months. Deliver your first ML use case in 8–12 weeks (blog post): https://go.aws/3Qmfzm1 Level up your Cloud Transformation with Experience-Based Acceleration (EBA) (blog post): https://bit.ly/3Qrk2nG
Last week in security news: When It Comes to Email Security, The Cloud You Pick Matters, Enable external pipeline deployments to AWS Cloud by using IAM Roles Anywhere, How AWS threat intelligence deters threat actors, and more!Links: When It Comes to Email Security, The Cloud You Pick Matters Enable external pipeline deployments to AWS Cloud by using IAM Roles Anywhere Get the full benefits of IMDSv2 and disable IMDSv1 across your AWS infrastructure How AWS threat intelligence deters threat actors Overhauling AWS Account Access with Terraform
AWS Morning Brief for the week of September 18, 2023 with Corey Quinn. Links: Amazon SNS FIFO topics now support message delivery to Amazon SQS Standard queues Announcing API Gateway console refresh Cost Anomaly Detection increases custom anomaly monitor limit to 500 Custom notifications are now available for AWS Chatbot How to Integrate Amazon CloudWatch Alarms with Atlassian Confluence Knowledge Articles Building a secure webhook forwarder using an AWS Lambda extension and Tailscale Deploy Generative AI Models on Amazon EKS Troubleshoot networking issues during database migration with the AWS DMS diagnostic support AMI Using AWS CloudFormation and AWS Cloud Development Kit to provision multicloud resources Combining content moderation services with graph databases & analytics to reduce community toxicity AWS Private Certificate Authority Retail Partner Conversations: How Rokt is impacting the future of retail Simplify access to internal information using Retrieval Augmented Generation and LangChain Agents How to view Azure costs using Amazon QuickSight Centralized Dashboard for AWS Config and AWS Security Hub Benefits of Domain Registration with Amazon Route 53 Use Bring your own IP addresses (BYOIP) and RFC 8805 for localization of Internet content Using NAT Gateways with multiple-Amazon VPCs at scale Navigating change: From ophthalmologist to AWS Cloud expert
Java is notorious for slow cold starts in Lambda. But why? What can you do to make them faster? Is it time to ditch Python and make your way to the JVM? Join Vadym and Allen as they talk about Java's journey in serverless and explore some of the optimization techniques developers use to mitigate cold starts like Snap Start, priming, and using GraalVM. About Vadym Vadym Kazulkin is Head of Development at ip.labs GmbH, a 100% subsidiary of the FUJIFLM Group, based in Bonn. ip.labs is the world's leading white label e-commerce software imaging company. Vadym has been involved with the Java ecosystem for over twenty years. His focus and interests currently include the design and implementation of highly scalable and available applications, Serverless and AWS Cloud. Vadym is the co-organizer of the Java User Group Bonn meetup and AWS Community Builder in the Serverless category. He's also a frequent speaker at various Meetups and conferences. Links Twitter - https://twitter.com/VKazulkin LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vadymkazulkin Java User Group Bonn - https://www.meetup.com/jug-bonn GraalVM - https://www.graalvm.org --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/readysetcloud/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/readysetcloud/support
In this conversation we are discussing how to protect your data in the AWS cloud. I am joined by John Mathew George, Lead Security Architect for AWS at T-Systems.
Looking for the easiest AWS Cloud certification you can possibly get? You might have heard that some are harder than others. But why don't you go for the easiest one, gain confidence and start building your way up? A great place to start is with the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification. This entry-level certification is designed for individuals with little or no experience in the Cloud, and covers all the foundational concepts of AWS Cloud computing. Plus, it's relatively easy to obtain compared to other AWS exams. By earning this certification, you'll gain a solid understanding of the basics of AWS services and how they work together. It will set you up for success in the Cloud industry and serve as proof of your knowledge and skills. You'll be well on your way to landing a high-paying job in the tech industry with future AWS certification preparation. Ready to level up your career with an AWS certification? Check out this episode on the easiest AWS Cloud certification you can possibly get and start your journey to becoming a certified AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. ✅ If you found this episode helpful be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss future episodes
In this episode of the podcast we bring on a couple all-stars from our Amazon Web Services team to discuss how we approach software development, high performance compute, data storage, and security. Naturally, the conversation gets into some AI and ML speculation and sci-fi movie talk. PODCAST GUESTS: Nandu Shah: VP of Information, Hermeus Jay Naves: Sr. Solutions Architect, AWS Scott Dieckhaus: Aerospace World Wide Solutions Leader, AWS Scott McCutchen: Senior DevOps Engineer, Hermeus
Anthony Sequeira talks about what it takes to start a career in the IT Field. We also talk about the ever-changing landscape of the cloud and what people can do to gain important skills. Anthony Sequeira, CCIE No. 15626, is a seasoned trainer and author regarding all levels and tracks of Cisco certification. Anthony formally began his career in the information technology industry in 1994 with IBM in Tampa, Florida. He quickly formed his own computer consultancy, Computer Solutions, and then discovered his true passion—teaching and writing about Microsoft and Cisco technologies.The Code of Entry PodcastThe Code of Entry Podcast, hosted by the insightful Greg Bew, delves deep into the...Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the show
Keith Townsend, the Principal of the CTO Advisor, sits with Red Hat Director of Market Insights, Stu Miniman, to discuss platform engineering and Red Hat's collaboration with AWS Cloud. IBM sponsored this conversation. Visit Red Hat's Kubecon booth - red.ht/KubeConEU2023 To learn more about ROSA partnerships with SaaS providers - https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-and-celonis-make-hybrid-multicloud-reality-intelligent-business-execution https://newsroom.ibm.com/2022-05-11-IBM-Signs-Strategic-Collaboration-Agreement-with-Amazon-Web-Services-to-Deliver-IBM-Software-as-a-Service-on-AWS
Cloud Security Podcast - This month we are talking about "Building on the AWS Cloud" and next up on this series, we spoke to Chad Lorenc (Chad's Linkedin) about AWS Security Reference Architecture, Cloud Adoption Framework & Security Maturity Model are 3 ways to level up the maturity you have in Cloud . In this episode Chad Lorenc, from AWS shared lessons and talk about How AWS Customers can prepare to use 3 models to Crawl, Walk & Run their security practice. Episode ShowNotes, Links and Transcript on Cloud Security Podcast: www.cloudsecuritypodcast.tv Host Twitter: Ashish Rajan (@hashishrajan) Guest Twitter: Chad Lorenc (Chad's Linkedin) Podcast Twitter - @CloudSecPod @CloudSecureNews If you want to watch videos of this LIVE STREAMED episode and past episodes - Check out our other Cloud Security Social Channels: - Cloud Security News - Cloud Security BootCamp Spotify TimeStamp for Interview Questions (00:00) Introduction (03:35) A word from our sponsors - check them out at snyk.io/csp (03:51) A bit about Chad (05:38) How things are different in the Cloud (07:59) The Maturity framework of AWS (11:20) How maturity scales in AWS (13:17) Anti-Patterns when building maturity in Cloud (15:35) Framework examples on how to build maturity models (19:27) Mapping maturity models to business objectives (20:19) The role of cloud native tools (26:23) Patterns in AWS to watch out for (28:38) Challenges for security leaders trying to get into cloud (35:07) Foundational pieces for building maturity in AWS (37:50) How to implement AWS Control tower? (43:09) Give developers more freedom in cloud (47:34) Benchmark scales for security maturity (51:27) Resources to help you build your own maturity roadmap See you at the next episode!
Cloud Security Podcast - This month we are talking about "Building on the AWS Cloud" and next up on this series, we spoke to Patrick Sanders (Patrick's Linkedin) & Jospeh Kjar (Joseph's Linkedin), Snr Cloud Security Engineer at Netflix on what does it take to reimagine multi-account deployments gave them both security and speed. Episode ShowNotes, Links and Transcript on Cloud Security Podcast: www.cloudsecuritypodcast.tv Host Twitter: Ashish Rajan (@hashishrajan) Guest Twitter: Patrick Sanders (Patrick's Linkedin) & Jospeh Kjar (Joseph's Linkedin) Podcast Twitter - @CloudSecPod @CloudSecureNews If you want to watch videos of this LIVE STREAMED episode and past episodes - Check out our other Cloud Security Social Channels: - Cloud Security News - Cloud Security BootCamp Spotify TimeStamp for Interview Questions (00:00) Introduction (03:06) snyk.io/csp (03:41) A bit about how Patrick and Joseph got into the Cloud Space (06:00) Building blocks of scalable AWS infrastructure (09:14) Should there be a seperate account for forensics (12:44) Diff AWS Org for dev and prod? (13:45) How to ensure dedicated IR account is secure? (15:10) 1st step to building a new startup in AWS (17:39) Should non prod and prod accounts be seperate? (21:29) How do you ensure visibility into your AWS organisation? (25:04) Integrate FIM into AWS (26:29) Layers for a multi account strategy (28:23) Challenges from going from one account to multi account (34:03) Bringing identity to the application (38:25) The importance of IMDS (42:07) The security benefit of using IMDS (45:34) Managed identity in AWS (46:40) Why developer experience is important? (49:49) What do cloud security engineers do ? (53:05) Where you can find Joseph and Patrick? See you at the next episode!
Cloud Security Podcast - This month we are talking about "Building on the AWS Cloud" and next up on this series, we spoke to Alexis Robinson (Alexis's Linkeidn), Senior Manager, Regulatory Compliance at AWS. FEDRAMP AWS environment can be made easy with the right security assessment framework for your organization. Alexis shared lessons and talk about How AWS Customers can prepare to increase their chances of getting FedRamp certified. Episode ShowNotes, Links and Transcript on Cloud Security Podcast: www.cloudsecuritypodcast.tv Host Twitter: Ashish Rajan (@hashishrajan) Guest Twitter: Alexis Robinson (Alexis's Linkeidn) Podcast Twitter - @CloudSecPod @CloudSecureNews If you want to watch videos of this LIVE STREAMED episode and past episodes - Check out our other Cloud Security Social Channels: - Cloud Security News - Cloud Security BootCamp Spotify TimeStamp for Interview Questions (00:00) Introduction (05:35) A bit about Alexis (08:20) What is FedRAMP and why people care about it? (11:05) Scope of companies included in FedRAMP? (13:12) Zero Trust Architecture and FedRAMP (14:07) The concept of Controlled Inheritance (15:43) Working with Authorising Officials (16:44) Working with Security Control Officers (17:46) AO Checklist to full compliance (20:42) Conflicts in FedRAMP (25:59) Common pitfalls to avoid on FedRAMP Journey (31:38) The anti-patterns in getting FedRAMP Compliant (35:34) FedRAMP is not just GovCloud (38:12) Requirements with FedRAMP (39:48) Where do people fall short with FedRAMP? (41:26) How to make FedRAMP more developer friendly? (44:17) How is FedRAMP different for Govcloud? (47:21) What skillsets do you require in a team for FedRAMP? (49:07) How to learn about FedRAMP (53:09) Fun Questions See you at the next episode!
Cloud Security Podcast - This month we are talking about "Building on the AWS Cloud" and next up on this series, we spoke to Mrunal Shah (Mrunal's Linkedin), Head of Container Security at Warner Bros. Discovery. We talk about how to build a Container or K8s security program while best practices are maintained and team have the right capability and tools. 4 Cs - Cloud, Container & Cluster, Code can be foundational to this Episode ShowNotes, Links and Transcript on Cloud Security Podcast: www.cloudsecuritypodcast.tv Host Twitter: Ashish Rajan (@hashishrajan) Guest Twitter: Mrunal Shah (Mrunal's Linkedin) Podcast Twitter - @CloudSecPod @CloudSecureNews If you want to watch videos of this LIVE STREAMED episode and past episodes - Check out our other Cloud Security Social Channels: - Cloud Security News - Cloud Security Academy Spotify TimeStamp for Interview Questions (00:00) Intro (02:01) https://snyk.io/csp (02:30) Mrunal's Professional Background (03:04) Why containers are popular (technical reasons) (04:05) Why containers are popular (leadership reasons) (05:39) Challenges with running a Container Security Program (Leadership) (06:34) Team skill challenge in a Container Security Program (08:57) When to pick AWS ECS vs AWS EKS? (10:53) ECS or EKS for building Banking Applications? (13:12) Would Kubernetes/ Containers be preferred for security reasons? (15:04) What would Amazon's responsibility be for security with ECS/EKS? (16:13) What is bad about working with Containers in AWS? (19:40) Is there a need for anti-virus in a container world? (20:36) Balance of security when working with containers? (22:08) Threat Detection and Prevention in a Container Security Program (22:57) Using AWS Services for Threat Detection with Containers? (25:14) Runtime Threat Discovery vs Agentless Threat Discovery for containers in Cloud? (29:11) Prevention on the left vs Detection on the right of SDLC (29:22) Cluster Misconfig vs Service Misconfigurations? (30:19) Vulnerability Management vs Misconfiguration Management? (31:50) Inspector in a Container Security Program? (32:36) Detective in a Container Security Program? (35:36) Can AWS Services help when Non-AWS services are in use? See you at the next episode!
Cloud Security Podcast - This month we are talking about "Breaking the AWS Cloud" and next up on this series, we spoke to Seth Art (Seth's Linkedin) Cloud Penetration Testing Lead (Principal) at Bishop Fox. AWS cloud project to pentest AWS cloud architecture are not spoken about much - this stops today. We have Seth who works in the Cloud Penetration testing space to talk about open source tools and what Cloud pentesting is all about. Episode ShowNotes, Links and Transcript on Cloud Security Podcast: www.cloudsecuritypodcast.tv Host Twitter: Ashish Rajan (@hashishrajan) Guest Twitter: Seth Art (Seth's Linkedin) Podcast Twitter - @CloudSecPod @CloudSecureNews If you want to watch videos of this LIVE STREAMED episode and past episodes - Check out our other Cloud Security Social Channels: - Cloud Security News - Cloud Security Academy Spotify TimeStamp for Interview Questions (00:00) Introduction (04:24) A bit about Seth (06:10) Web App Pentesting vs Cloud Pentesting (08:11) Working with scale of multiple AWS accounts (10:20) What can you expect to find with Cloud Pentesting? (12:14) Foundational pieces about approaching pentesting in Cloud (15:19) How to start a Cloud Pentest? (18:25) The importance of IAM (23:43) Common services in AWS to look at (25:58) Mistakes people make for scoping (29:18) The role of shared responsibility in Cloud Pentesting (32:38) Boundaries for AWS pentesting (35:13) Nmap between 2 EC2 instances (36:37) How do you explain the findings? (40:26) Skillsets required to transition to Cloud Pentesting (45:41) Transitioning from Kubernetes to Cloud Pentesting (48:55) Resources for learning about Cloud Pentesting. (49:47) The Fun Section See you at the next episode!
Cloud Security Podcast - This month we are talking about "Breaking the AWS Cloud" and next up on this series, we spoke to Nishant Sharma (Nishant's Linkedin), Director, Lab Platform, INE. If you have tried pentesting in AWS Cloud or want to start today with AWS Goat, then this episode with Nishant, behind AWS Goat will help you understand how you can upskill and maybe even show others how to be better at pentesting AWS Cloud. Episode ShowNotes, Links and Transcript on Cloud Security Podcast: www.cloudsecuritypodcast.tv Host Twitter: Ashish Rajan (@hashishrajan) Guest Twitter: Nishant Sharma (Nishant's Linkedin) Podcast Twitter - @CloudSecPod @CloudSecureNews If you want to watch videos of this LIVE STREAMED episode and past episodes - Check out our other Cloud Security Social Channels: - Cloud Security News - Cloud Security Academy Spotify TimeStamp for Interview Questions (00:00) Introduction (03:51) snyk.io/csp (04:51) What is Cloud Pentesting? (06:19) Cloud pentesting vs Web App & Network (08:37) What is AWS Goat? (13:12) Do you need permission from AWS to do pentesting? (14:03) Pentesting an application vs pentesting AWS S3 (15:40) What is AWS Goat testing? (18:14) Cloud penetration testing tools (19:59) How useful is a metadata of a cloud instance? (22:24) AWS Pentesting and OWASP Top 10 (25:31) How to build internal training for Cloud Security? (29:43) Keep building knowledge on AWS Goat (30:33) Using CloudShell for AWS pentesting (34:09) ChatGPT for cloud pentesting (36:28) Vulnerable serverless application (39:40) Pentesting Amazon ECS (43:01) How do you protect against ECS misconfigurations? (47:38) What is the future plan for AWS Goat? (50:28) Fun Questions See you at the next episode!
Cloud Security Podcast - This month we are talking about "Breaking the AWS Cloud" and next up on this series, we spoke to Gafnit Amiga (Gafnit's Linkedin), VP of Security Research at Lightspin who recently discovered the AWS Elastic Container Registry Public (ECR Public) vulnerability. She spoke to us about how she goes about doing cloud security research and what AWS ECS and ECR is. Episode ShowNotes, Links and Transcript on Cloud Security Podcast: www.cloudsecuritypodcast.tv Host Twitter: Ashish Rajan (@hashishrajan) Guest Twitter: Gafnit Amiga (Gafnit's Linkedin) Podcast Twitter - @CloudSecPod @CloudSecureNews If you want to watch videos of this LIVE STREAMED episode and past episodes - Check out our other Cloud Security Social Channels: - Cloud Security News - Cloud Security Academy Spotify TimeStamp for Interview Questions (00:00) Introduction (02:28) snyk.io/csp (02:57) A bit about Gafnit (05:15) What is AWS ECS and ECR? (08:18) Why do people use ECS and ECR? (09:58) The ECR vulnerability Gafnit discovered (15:16) Vulnerability scanning for containers in AWS ECR (16:42) How do you find undocumented APIs in AWS? (17:58) Attack techniques in AWS (22:43) How to protect your AWS accounts? (25:14) Focus areas for Cloud Security Research in 2023 (25:48) Finding vulnerability through research (29:00) Resources for Cloud Security Research (31:04) The Fun Section See you at the next episode!
Cloud Security Podcast - If Hacking the Cloud is on your mind for 2023 then in this "Breaking the AWS Cloud" month we are kicking things with Nick Frichette (Nick's Linkedin), a Senior Security Researcher from DataDog who is also maintains the site Hacking the Cloud linking offensive security research for AWS, Azure, GCP. Episode ShowNotes, Links and Transcript on Cloud Security Podcast: www.cloudsecuritypodcast.tv Host Twitter: Ashish Rajan (@hashishrajan) Guest Twitter: Nick Frichette (Nick's Linkedin) Podcast Twitter - @CloudSecPod @CloudSecureNews If you want to watch videos of this LIVE STREAMED episode and past episodes - Check out our other Cloud Security Social Channels: - Cloud Security News - Cloud Security Academy Spotify TimeStamp for Interview Questions (00:00) Introduction (02:38) snyk.io/csp (03:26) A bit about Nick (04:15) How is Security research different? (05:55) How to approach cloud security research? (07:24) How to pick the service you want to research? (08:51) What is AWS AppSync? (09:30) What is Confused Deputy Vulnerability? (10:16) The AppSync Vulnerability (12:09) Cross Account in AWS (13:41) Blue Teaming Controls when doing research (14:22) Framework for detective controls (16:01) What to do if you find an AWS vulnerability? (17:20) Legal constraints of security research (20:13) Where to get started in Cloud Security Research? (22:45) Are some misconfigurations becoming less common? (24:59) What is IMDSv2 and how is it different to IMDSv1? (27:00) Why is SSRF bad? (28:52) Cloud Pentesting Platforms (29:57) The story being hacking the cloud (31:25) Who should think about breaking the cloud? (34:02) Cloud Security Research Tools (36:38) How to access AWS environment for research? (39:12) Security Lab Resources (40:04) The Fun Questions See you at the next episode!