Tag: AWS

My new paper on Cybersecurity in the AWS Cloud

This new paper was just posted as a technical report at Cornell’s arXiv (https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.12905), but it will be submitted for publication in the future. PDF of the paper.

From the abstract: This paper re-examines the content of a standard advanced course in Cybersecurity from the perspective of Cloud Computing. More precisely, we review the core concepts of Cybersecurity, as presented in a senior undergraduate or graduate class, in light of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.

This paper has three goals: (i) to aid faculty in cloudifying a Cybersecurity offering; (ii) to re-examine Cybersecurity in light of the new paradigm of Cloud Computing; and, (iii) as a guide for preparing for the AWS Security Specialty certification. The paper presents an outline of Cybersecurity, with topics examined in the context of AWS, and with a long bibliography for a more in-depth study of each topic.

It should be mentioned that this paper is a second paper in a sequence on cloudification with AWS; the first one, Cloudifying the Curriculum with AWS, can be found here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04020, and it was mentioned in this blog post. I mention the AWS security speciality certification exam in this post.

My new paper on cloudifying the curriculum with AWS

This new paper was just posted as a technical report at Cornell’s arXiv (https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04020), but it will be submitted for publication in the future. PDF of the paper.

From the abstract: The Cloud has become a principal paradigm of computing in the last ten years, and Computer Science curricula must be updated to reflect that reality. This paper examines simple ways to accomplish curriculum cloudification using Amazon Web Services (AWS), for Computer Science and other disciplines such as Business, Communication and Mathematics.

In this paper we present the cloudification journey at our institution, California State University Channel Islands, where we have thriving programs under the department of Computer Science, that include Computer Science, Information Technology, Mechatronics Engineering, and a Masters program in Computer Science. We have partnered with AWS Academy and AWS Educate to bring cloud expertise to the students we serve – about 600 majors, in a campus of over 7,000 students. The paper gives the details.

AWS Educate workshop at CI

Today, Friday January 24, 2020, we are hosting an AWS Educate workshop on the CSU Channel Islands campus, on Cloudifyig the Curriculum. The workshop will be held in Broome Library (easily recognizable as the only modern building on campus – here is its location on the campus map: http://maps.csuci.edu/?id=502#!m/189826).

Once you are in Broome library, please go to the second floor, to room number 2330. We will be starting at 9:30am, and finishing at 3:30. We will be catering both a continental breakfast and a lunch at around 12:30pm.

The registered guests can pick up their parking passes from Placer Hall (see map below). With the passes the guests can park in any lot “A”.

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud

When mainstream cloud computing first began to appear on the horizon, (Amazon launched its Elastic Compute Cloudproduct in 2006.) many organizations were initially hesitant to entrust their most valuable data and processes to a technological innovation named after something that appears so delicate.

Oh, how times have changed. Today, an estimated 96% of organizations use cloud computing, with over 80% operating multi-cloud landscapes thanks to a range of benefits that include efficiency, scalability, flexibility, mobility, disaster recovery and security.

As organizations continue to transition more of their computing infrastructure to cloud environments, the decision on what provider to use commonly comes down to the Big Three — Amazon Web Services vs. Microsoft’s Azure vs. Google Cloud Platform. And one of the top concerns when choosing a cloud computing provider is, yes, security.

securityboulevard.com/2019/12/aws-vs-azure-vs-google-whats-the-difference-from-a-cloud-security-standpoint/

The Cloud runs on Linux

A decade ago clouds were more marketing hot air than reality. Today, IDC says more than a third of all IT spending worldwide is on the cloud. Looking ahead, Gartner predicts that half of global enterprises will have gone all-in on the cloud by 2021. And the Cloud runs on Linux.

www.zdnet.com/article/2019s-five-biggest-linux-and-open-source-stories/

AWS and Azure

seekingalpha.com/article/4313893-aws-and-azure-racing-for-best-business-opportunity-of-21st-century

Summary

  • AWS just wrapped up its annual user conference, launching 28 new products at the conference.
  • Cloud platforms are evolving from a focus on commoditized IT infrastructure compute instances to offering an incredibly wide range of services.
  • Every company must utilize the cloud to access the leading technologies.  AWS and Azure are clearly in the leadership positions.
  • Thoughts on valuation in the context of what AWS CEO Andy Jassy calls the “most titanic shift that we’ve seen in technology in our lifetime”.

AWS Solutions Architect salary

As the demand for professionals with AWS certification continues to rise, so too do their salaries and benefits. In the USA, AWS solutions architect certification is reported to be the highest-earning certification, at an average annual salary of $113,000. 

Outside of the US, countries such as Canada, Australia, UK, Malaysia, Singapore, UAE, and India are great places for AWS solutions architects to work. Below is a series of tables showing AWS solutions architect salary for beginners, intermediary, manager, and late-career levels in the countries mentioned above. This data is compiled from Payscale. 

See here for more:

www.simplilearn.com/average-annual-salary-of-an-aws-solutions-architect-article

The Rise of Serverless Computing

An excellent article on Serverless Computing, by Paul Castro, Vatche Ishakian, Vinod Muthusamy, Aleksander Slominski, in the Communications of the ACM, December 2019, volume 62, no. 12, pages 44-54 (https://doi.org/10.1145/3368454)

Studies of reported usage of cloud resources in datacenters show a substantial gap between the resources that cloud customers allocate and pay for (leasing VMs), and actual resource utilization (CPU, memory, and so on). Enter Serverless computing where VMs do not have to be provisioned; it is a FaaS (Function as a Service) paradigm. In the cloud context, the current serverless landscape was introduced during an AWS re:Invent event in 2014. Since then, multiple cloud providers, industrial, and academic institutions have introduced their own serverless platforms.