Researchers reported that thousands of U.S. veterans, law enforcement officers, and intelligence personnel had their personal data exposed in an unsecure Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket. In recent months, it has been alarmingly common to find wide-open S3 buckets that contain personally identifiable information. Amazon Web Services (AWS), eventually, prompted to remind its users to block public and private access to their storage buckets. Security software firm UpGuard reported the latest incident on Sept. 2. This is the same company that earlier this year discovered misconfigured S3 buckets containing information on Verizon account holders, Dow Jones customers, and, on […]
Amazon Recovers from Widespread Disruptions
Related: AWS Blames Unplanned Systems Restarts for S3 outage A wide range of Amazon Web Services (AWS), as well as parts of the Internet, were affected by a glitch in the Amazon Simple Storage Service. The problem started just before 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time (PST) on Tuesday. It was concentrated in AWS’ Northern Virginia (U.S East-1) region, which is the oldest and where the company estimates the majority of its cloud servers. AWS stated on Twitter and its Service Health Dashboard, which was also temporarily affected, that the S3 service operating out of the Northern Virginia region was experiencing […]
Amazon S3 Object Lambda now generally available Amazon Web Services (AWS), makes it easier to customize data that is retrieved from Amazon S3 for use by other applications. The new S3 object lambda feature is now available. Users can run code against their data while it’s being transferred from Amazon S3 into another application. This feature is especially useful for organizations who share their S3 data to multiple applications that have their own formatting requirements. Instead of creating a proxy layer to transform data as it leaves S3, or making multiple copies the same data for each application, S3 Object Lambda allows users to transform their S3 data using AWS Lambda function. S3 Object Lambda allows you to add your code to process data retrieved form S3 before returning to an application,” Danilo Poccia, AWS evangelist, stated in a blog post last Wednesday announcing its availability. This feature will make it easier to, among other things, remove customer data before it is used for analytics, convert a XML dataset to JSON, and add information from another service to an existing dataset. Poccia stated that S3 Object Lambda uses AWS Lambda functions to “automatically process, transform and store your data as it is being retrieved by S3”. “The Lambda function can be invoked inline with a standard GET request to S3 so you don’t need to modify your application code. As described by Poccia, using S3 Object Lambda involves five steps.
To transform data for your case, create a Lambda Function. From the S3 Management Console, create an S3 Object Lambda access point. Select the Lambda function you created above. To allow S3 Object Lambda access the original object, provide a supporting S3 Access Point To retrieve data from S3, update your application configuration. S3 Object Lambda can currently be accessed in most AWS regions. It can be accessed via AWS Command Line Interface (Management Console), SDKs or the SDKs. More information is available here.
Amazon 3 Console now generally available
Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), announced that its new console to manage Amazon S3 object storage resources has been made generally available. This was after an opt-in trial. The new Amazon S3 console was first announced at last year’s re:invent 2016. It is now available to registered AWS users. An introductory video explains that the Amazon S3 console can be used to interact with Amazon S3. The console allows you to perform Amazon S3 tasks with no code. The new UI has an overview panel that displays a summary of S3 object properties and metrics. There is also a new […]
Amazon’s London Datacenters are Now Open for Business
Amazon Web Services (AWS), which launched a new cloud region in Ontario earlier this month, made Canada its home. It’s expanding its presence on the other side, this week. AWS announced Wednesday the launch of its newest regional in London, England. It has two availability zones and is AWS’ third European region, after Ireland and Frankfurt. “Our AWS Europe Region (London) is now open for business and we are excited that we can offer a complete range of services — starting with our foundational service stack in compute, storage and networking, to our more advanced solutions, and applications,” wrote Amazon.com’s […]
Amazon’s JEDI Protest Hinges On Microsoft’s ‘Noncompliant Storage’
Recent court documents that were not sealed by Amazon shed light on Amazon’s lawsuit against the Pentagon over its $10 billion cloud contract with Microsoft. A federal judge granted Amazon’s request to halt the contract’s construction. After receiving bids from major cloud vendors in the past, the Department of Defense (DoD), last fall awarded the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract to Microsoft. This surprised many industry watchers who expected Amazon Web Services to win the contract. Late 2019, Amazon filed suit against DoD to contest Microsoft’s win. This was followed by a request in January for an injunction. In February, […]
Global Knowledge
It can be difficult to decide what to measure for any product or service due to conflicting advice from best practice frameworks. DevOps, for example, tells us that we should measure everything and make the measurements available to everyone. This makes metrics more accessible, but it is important to understand the question your metrics must answer in order to avoid being overwhelmed. Global Knowledge is a view that allows us to explore all options before we choose the best path for our organization. We will be looking at three common metrics questions and how ITIL (r) can help us solve […]
Global Knowledge
Abstract Microsoft Azure Backup, cloud-based data backup, is well-suited for both small and large companies. It can be integrated with System Center Data Protection Manager. Sample The easiest way to get started with Azure, or “the Microsoft cloud”, is to use it to backup one or more Windows servers. Although the process is more complicated than you might think, it can be done quickly if you have a guide (such as this whitepaper, I hope!). The service was tested for me by my company. The screenshots and examples here are from “real life”. Azure backup is affordable (costs have fallen […]
Recovering from the brink
Andrew Ball, head, IT Performance Audit at Audit Commission, was one the speakers at last week’s BPUG Congress. He spoke in a session on programme and strategic project management about how to deal with problems when projects go wrong. His main argument was to plan for failure and avoid projects going sour. Although it sounds negative, it is really about constructive management of risk. Risk management can help you plan for failure, whether you start planning or when you notice the warning signs that Andrew identified: Slippage A conspiracy of silence: No one speaks about project problems A big project […]
Global Knowledge
This post will answer your questions about IT pranks that you can pull off for April Fools Day or any other day of the year. We have an IT prank that will surprise you, whether you are an IT pro with decades’ of experience or a novice who just discovered that CTRL+SHIFT+ESC allows you to access the task manager faster (you’re very welcome). Let’s be real, first: These pranks should be considered lighthearted. *If the prank involves accessing computers of others, be sure to check your company’s policy. *Retain your target’s computer files. Don’t place a target in a situation […]