Is Serverless Cloud Computing Right for Everyone?

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Enterprises have long utilized Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to take advantage of benefits like scalability, cost savings and the ability to turn updates and hardware maintenance over to an outsourced provider. Taking advantage of these cloud computing options has given some organizations the ability to shut down servers or data centers. Now, serverless cloud computing promises to further these benefits.

Serverless cloud computing, often called simply, “serverless” is a software architecture that’s emerging as a way to dynamically allocate storage, compute and memory. Rather than infrastructure and operations teams manually allocating these items from technology partners, the serverless option automates these tasks, including patching, backup, and security functions. Enterprises using serverless frequently mention two major benefits:

IT Thinks More Like a CIO as a Whole. When the manual tasks are removed from IT professionals, they are freed up to focus on strategy, business deliverables and streamlining broader processes with further automation. They are also able to spend more time on tasks related to application performance interfaces (APIs) and integrating applications and systems.

The Bite Is Taken out of Infrastructure Costs. With traditional on-site or cloud computing, any underutilized server or data center is costing the enterprise money. If an enterprise is utilizing IaaS and renting 50 servers, but 49 sit idle, that cost is still coming to the enterprise. With serverless, the problem of idle infrastructure goes away. The enterprise simply pays a fraction of a penny every time they task the provider to complete a function.

These benefits make serverless an enticing cloud computing option, but it is not without risk. Moving to serverless can require a complete rearchitecting of applications or you may need to switch out complete databases, which can be disruptive. It can also be challenging to monitor or detect bugs in a serverless infrastructure, and enterprises may be reluctant to risk provider lock-in.

Despite the risks, you may still want to explore serverless cloud computing. If you do, use the following steps to determine if it’s right for your enterprise:

  • Be very familiar with your data architecture, including how you store and manage it, as well as how it integrates with your front-end platforms.
  • Know your team’s weakness for shiny objects. Serverless innovations are emerging quickly and it’s easy to buy an option that’s a burden rather than a benefit.
  • Evaluate the skills that you have in-house. Are you equipped to manage a serverless infrastructure or will it quickly demonstrate a weak spot?
  • Think green. Rather than converting a major system to serverless, think about greenfield initiatives where you can take advantage of a new department-level application that’s being introduced to dip your toe into serverless as an infrastructure strategy.

There’s no doubt that serverless presents some exciting cloud computing opportunities for cost savings and efficiencies for IT. Contact us at Truth Comm to find out more about serverless and whether it’s right for your enterprise.

How AI and Machine Learning Impact Cloud Security

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A recent report from the Ponemon Institute regarding how much it costs to contain a data breach sheds light on the high cost involved for organizations. The report makes it clear that combating cybercriminals requires a serious approach to cloud security.

Every organization will need to customize its approach to a cloud security strategy, but across the board for all industries, artificial intelligence (AI) can play an effective role in your strategy. AI is a type of software that enhances traditional cloud security technology.

Related to AI is machine learning, which is often described as a “subset” of AI. Machine learning utilizes various algorithms on your data, allowing it to “learn” from it. For example, your data patterns are like a fingerprint — it’s different from any other pattern. Your machine learning technology analyzes these patterns and can learn from it and make adjustments as needed.

Catching Abnormalities

When you utilize AI and machine learning, you can improve your processes for finding anomalies. Typically, the system is set up so that when an abnormality is discovered, an IT manager is alerted, or the system can be configured to automatically shut down a user where the abnormality is suspected of originating from.

It’s this fast response that can keep a potential threat from escalating to the point where it does damage or protects you from further damage than it has already caused. If some dangerous code has already begun to infiltrate your network, the AI and machine learning technology will respond, locking it out and preventing a data leak.

Choosing Technology That Works for You

For organizations that have brought AI and machine learning into the cloud security mix, they’ve found rather than toiling with mundane yet important tasks, their technology is working on those things and at a much more efficient rate. This gives IT teams more time to deal with other situations that can further their business goals.

While nobody is saying technology can replace humans, it definitely adds value when used in a comprehensive strategy. To get the best technology for your situation, you need someone who can assist you in weeding out the solutions that might look intriguing but ultimately won’t serve you well.

At Truth Comm, we can connect you with some of the best cloud security services on the market. Our approach is to get to know what your business does, how it operates, and what technologies we can put in place to match exactly what your system requires. Contact us, and let’s discuss our methods.

Planning for Multi-cloud Innovation

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The push to cloud migration is only expanding, and for many organizations the initial motivation of reduced costs or a better customer experience is making way for strategies focused on innovation. The fast pace of change will continue, but enterprises who value agility in pursuit of innovation will be looking for a strategy to adopt a multi-cloud environment.

In many cases, this journey to multi-cloud begins with enterprises coming to the realization that it’s impossible to succeed without dedicating more of their time, effort and budget to innovation. This is generally approached with a combination of strategies to cut costs and an effort to migrate more workloads to the cloud, with multi-cloud increasingly a common solution.

This focus on innovation is often a later priority as enterprises embrace multi-cloud solutions. What begins as a pursuit of redundancy for security purposes or the avoidance of provider lock-in eventually emerges as an innovation strategy and it becomes a key benefit of a multi-cloud environment.

From infrastructure to innovation: In the early days of cloud computing, the focus was infrastructure, with providers keeping pace with one another in terms of network connections, solutions for storage and instance types. Platform-level services gave enterprises the ability to add database instances and other applications.

As the cloud market is maturing, innovation is shifting to more complex innovation, from big data to the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence. This new level of innovation is causing enterprises to look at multi-cloud a bit differently. They realize that the rapid pace of technology innovation requires them to access more than one cloud solution to keep pace with their competitors.

How enterprises can plan for a multi-cloud environment:

Create a data management plan: Data management remains one of the biggest challenges for IT. From collecting and securely storing it, to processing it for useful application and then eventually retiring it, the complexity can be a lot to manage. Enterprises need a comprehensive approach to data, with location, accessibility, security, privacy and durability all requiring attention.

Your strategy should be ready for multi-cloud. If you’re pursuing cloud migration, you should assume that one cloud will not be enough. The pace of innovation requires you to incorporate more than one cloud into your strategy.

Look at applications holistically: Your application is complex and requires a variety of support structures for successful hosting in the cloud or across multiple clouds. Whether it’s run in your data center or at the edge, think more broadly about what you need to support a flexible application in the cloud.

Don’t let multi-cloud “happen” without a strategy: If you don’t work on a strategy for multi-cloud, shadow IT will gradually make it your reality without your input. Don’t force your enterprise into a do-it-yourself setting, where developers create fragmented solutions to cover what your enterprise needs.

To learn more about how multi-cloud environments foster innovation for your enterprise, or to discuss leveraging multi-cloud solutions for your needs, contact us at Truth Comm.

Cloud Security Strategies Should Include a Stable Agent Partner

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Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) deserve the headlines they’ve generated over the last few years, and these technologies have been used to shore up cloud security for many organizations. However, technology alone can’t solve all the issues that IT teams encounter where security is concerned.

The Machine Learning Method

When you want to collect data and then analyze specific features of it to set up and train models, machine learning is your friend. You can augment your models to accomplish various outcomes, and this is something that is of great use to enterprises that have massive amounts of data.

But machine learning isn’t specifically for large companies — it can also be leveraged in small- to medium-sized businesses that want more automation in their business model.

The Cloud and AI

What was once a rarity in the cloud environment is now the norm for cloud providers. They’re embracing AI for more enhanced security services. For example, providers have adopted Amazon’s AWS (Amazon Web Services), which is a mix of Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service, for continuously monitoring their systems for added protection against actions that are not authorized.

For organizations that want added layers of protection running in the background, AI and AWS can be of great interest, especially for hyperscale cloud providers due in part to the massive amounts of data that move across their networks.

Other Methods for Protection

Despite all of the advancements of AI and machine learning, there are a number of third-party security providers who are not willing to say it’s a fix-all for organizations looking for more protections. Rather, they would like to see the technology more in tune with various binary decisions, because many malware detection solutions offer exceptional scanning tools that can protect the most sensitive information.

While a robust method of adding more layers of cloud security is never a bad idea, the cost can be considerable, which is why some organizations have found a reliable and sensible method of running simple statistical analysis on a regular basis rather than rely on AI and machine learning for everything.

Employee Training

The latest technologies can provide a great amount of assurance for enhanced cloud security, but without the right employee training, the time, effort and cost put toward hi-tech tools can be thwarted.

Educating the workforce on how they become the weak link in a system can protect against unforeseen insider issues. Education, technology and a third-party provider of managed services can combine for a more comprehensive cloud security solution.

At Truth Comm, we are the agent that can put your organization in touch with the cloud security solutions you need to maintain the integrity of your data and your reputation. Contact us and let’s get started on a safer, more efficient way of protecting your system.

Managing Compliance With Cloud Solutions

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As cybersecurity breaches make more common appearances in the headlines, it’s impossible to overstate the role that security and compliance issues are playing in the decisions CIOs make for their organizations. Protecting client data is a priority, but there are also other considerations to weigh when choosing the right technology to support compliance.

For instance, the way that data is stored, accessed and analyzed has a big impact on a company’s agility. If the data is locked up so tight that it can’t be readily accessed for decision-making, that can slow down critical advances that spur growth.

One of the big influences in compliance currently is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that went into effect May 25. The rules laid out by the European Union include some stringent measures governing the ways that companies can handle data, and more clearly defines what constitutes personal data. GDPR requires companies to allow consumers the right to be forgotten, as well as mandatory disclosure any time there is a data breach.

It’s important not to treat compliance as a task that can be checked off a list. Instead, it should be a continuous monitoring and management focus, with companies striving to reach the next level of protection they can provide for customers.

There were likely some organizations that reached the deadline for GDPR and then found that their budgets were woefully inadequate for what was required to handle data appropriately. Some will spend the following months playing catch-up as they strive to implement every compliance requirement and avoid penalties.

Send in the cloud solution. While no software will make adhering to GDPR easy, there are tools available to make compliance a more streamlined area of management. The ability to set policies in a system and then have it handle data accordingly makes it easier to locate, categorize and correctly handle different types of data.

One of the challenges of cloud technology, in general, is that when using a public cloud solution, the company may really not have any idea where any specific piece of data is being stored. With a cloud solution designed to handle compliance issues, tracking the location of a data item is much more simple.

In addition to helping with compliance concerns, a cloud solution can also aid in the overall strategy related to handling the flood of data and how to best use it to create strategic growth or improve the customer experience.

If your organization is struggling to keep up with compliance, or you simply recognize the need for a more streamlined way of handling it, contact us at Truth Comm. We look forward to helping you handle your current compliance and prepare for the ongoing nature of compliance management.

Why It May be Best to Complete Cloud Migration in Short Bursts

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Digital transformation is at the center of goals and objectives for many enterprises, with cloud migration the vehicle for reaching those goals. Whether it’s improving productivity or bettering the customer experience, there are many reasons to turn to a digital transformation plan to help achieve those objectives.

What enterprise IT must decide is which workloads to move and when. There are basically two mindsets when it comes to cloud migration: a long-term, comprehensive plan, or a series of short-term cloud transitions. Take a look at the differences:

Long-term: Company A has a comprehensive digital transformation strategy that will, after a three-year process, have transitioned 70% of workloads to the cloud. The plan involves evaluating managed services providers, determining network requirements for cloud platforms, new security and disaster recovery policies, and inventorying hundreds of workloads to evaluate their readiness for cloud migration.

At the end of three years, Company A can step back and evaluate the success of their digital transformation, including return on investment as well as customer experience and productivity metrics. Company A may have much to celebrate.

Short-term: Company B also has a comprehensive digital transformation strategy, but the approach is quite different. Rather than a single process, Company B is planning smaller-scale projects that will each take a workload or set of workloads and migrate them to the cloud. For each migration, security and network concerns will be evaluated and addressed as necessary.

Company B will also have moved the bulk of their workloads to the cloud, but they will have been celebrating their successes all along. Rather than waiting three years to determine return on investment and metrics related to customer experience and productivity, they’ll be able to demonstrate a gradual but relatively quick improvement in each of these areas over the three years.

In each of these situations, digital transformation goals have been met. In Company B, those goals have been achieved in small bursts, with the ability to stop and regroup along the way, as well as demonstrate the success of their efforts to leadership, which means better buy-in and access to funding.

As executives, line-of-business managers and other key stakeholders in the enterprise see the impact of cloud migration, momentum for adopting further cloud technologies will build.

To get real answers about the best way to approach a cloud migration, contact us at Truth Comm. We’ll help you determine the right path for your digital transformation, and there will be plenty of celebration along the way.

The Security Problems Caused by Employee Cloud Adoption

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For the last two decades, business security strategies have largely been focused on the perimeter. Firewalls and email filters have worked well to ensure that hackers and questionable sites have no power to disrupt business activities. Your staff knows how to recognize phishing and they are prompted to change passwords on a regular basis. The problem is that none of these measures protect your company from the dangers of employee cloud adoption.

What seems harmless to your employees can be disastrous for the enterprise network. For instance, imagine you have a new sales rep that used a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) solution at their old job. In their excitement to be successful, the sales rep clears the cost of the subscription with their sales manager and away they go, credit card in hand and ready to get started.

Sales goals are met, the sales manager is pleased, but before long, dozens of customer files are in the cloud without the protection of your security measures. As more sales reps hear about the success of their colleague with a cloud CRM, they begin to access the solution and enter their own customers’ data. As a result, employee-level cloud adoption takes off and countless data points are now unprotected.

With a perimeter security approach, this type of employee cloud adoption can go on for years without detection by the IT team. It’s easy to imagine it happening in sales, but on every team and in every department, there’s the potential for downloading a cloud finance tool or a scheduling app that seems completely harmless but presents another area of vulnerability for your organization.

One potential way this type of employee cloud adoption can impact a company is the simple availability of the data. Imagine a sales rep moves on to another company, and they discover that their password still works on the CRM. Now they are working for the competitor, but they have access to customer files, marketing plans, and pricing strategies.

The best IT policies won’t prevent employee cloud adoption, and your perimeter approach won’t secure your network in the cloud age. You need a high level of visibility into network traffic, and you need a tripwire that recognizes when a cloud-based solution is interacting with your internal network so that you can determine user access and other security protocols that protect your infrastructure.

Truth Comm provides the network support you need to protect your enterprise. To learn more about the potential for a security breach through employee cloud adoption, contact us for an appointment.

What Every IT Manager Must Face Today

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As much as we like to think we’re in control of every situation, the number of cyberattacks occurring daily proves otherwise. Gaining more control over how your organization employs technology can help you protect your data. However, the IT manager is in a position where important decisions have to be made about new technology updates, and not everything is going to be solved with a cloud-based solution.

Unpatched and Insecure Software
Flexera, a software management and security company, reports that when software programs aren’t patched correctly, they become security compromises. Their study shows that nearly 10 percent of users in the United States had unpatched Windows operating systems in Q1 2017. Of non-Microsoft programs, 12.6 percent were unpatched in Q1 2017.

Some IT managers attest to having a tough time keeping up with patches. However, there is also an issue in that software developers are more focused on upping the ante on features while also delivering their code on time, which can create a multitude of problems for IT managers tasked with implementing software that is already flawed and vulnerable to attack.

How Much Cloud Is Good for My Company?
Many business-critical systems are in the cloud today, yet committing fully to the cloud is not always the best choice. It was once thought that all IT operations would be cloud-based eventually, but a hybrid model is now the predicted path for many IT managers and their companies.

The main holdback is related to security, but there are also complexity and cost issues that become roadblocks. The fact is, just because you’ve moved a critical service to the cloud doesn’t mean it’s 100 percent scalable and reliable. A safer, more efficient path is to utilize micro services associated with the cloud rather than a one-size-fits-all solution.

What Network Security Measures Are Right for My Organization?
The ideal scenario is to have a system that is easy to use, easy to manage, and practically impenetrable. What’s more likely is that you’re going to have a system that is complex yet leaves a good amount of sensitive data unprotected. Some IT managers have taken an unorthodox yet effective approach by starting with the belief that they’ve already been compromised.

When you start from a point of vulnerability, you begin to think about how you’re going to protect everything, securing all the company data instead of focusing solely on protecting devices and the network.

At Truth Comm, we know the average IT manager can be overwhelmed by all the telecom options. We’re here to help sort through the confusion and gain more insights about the technology you need. Contact us to get started.

Four Important Benefits of Hybrid Cloud Environments

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Today’s migration to the cloud is business-driven, with enterprises recognizing the need for a customer experience that edges out the competition. Developing user-friendly technology will make a difference in whether companies thrive or wither in the age of digital transformation.

Many companies are recognizing the balance that comes with a hybrid cloud infrastructure. There are unique benefits to merging private and public cloud options:

Better flexibility: There is no one-size-fits-all approach to technology, and companies need to be able to determine which workloads and business processes function best in various environments. A hybrid solution allows for flexibility in choosing where to house different applications and workloads.

Including managed services as part of the hybrid mix also frees up IT personnel to focus on other priorities, and a hybrid setting allows for this process to be constantly in flux as enterprises conduct ongoing evaluations on their infrastructure.

Better security: The protection of company and customer data is a constant concern. A hybrid cloud environment allows for a high level of visibility and control of data. Companies can choose to house more critical data on-premise with a private cloud solution and then outsource lower-security items and cold data storage to a public cloud provider.

When cloud first came on the scene, there was a lot of concern about security. IT professionals are learning ways to mitigate risk, including robust security agreements with cloud vendors. They also now know that cloud data centers are often more heavily protected with security measures that outperform any at an on-site data center.

Improved customer experience: Personalization is the buzzword of the current customer experience. Hybrid solutions make it easier to meet and exceed the pace of your competition because they have the ability to get applications to market faster and improve the ways you interact with your customers. From personalized pop-up ads to content that solves a specific problem, cloud technology helps you build a relationship with your customer.

Opportunities for collaboration: Companies have an increased need for employees in different geographic locations to collaborate on projects and share files. Cloud solutions make this easy and convenient without compromising security.

One of the best advantages of a hybrid solution is that it helps to propel your digital transformation forward. Flexibility and agility without sacrificing performance or speed results in significant improvements in productivity and cost savings for your company.

If you want to stay ahead of the technology curve, contact our consultants at Truth Comm. We pride ourselves on being an extension of your organization as we work to help you identify the right carriers for your company. Our consultation is free, so call us today.

Don’t Miss These Important Steps When Switching to Cloud Technology

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If your company has chosen a cloud-based application for your next software investment, you’re likely excited about many of the benefits you expect to experience. Perks like better scalability and increased agility are great reasons to switch to cloud solutions, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t often bumps along the way.

Keep in mind these considerations so your transition to cloud technology is as smooth and pain-free as possible:

Understand and address security concerns. In many cases, cloud software offers improved security over the protection an on-site solution could provide. What can get murky, though, is deciding who’s responsible for each part of your security. Don’t assume your vendor is addressing this issue. Instead, come up with a written plan that clearly outlines the responsibilities your IT department and your vendor will be covering.

The security of cloud solutions can get especially tricky because it’s rare that a company makes a unilateral switch to cloud-based software. In most situations, cloud solutions are gradually added to the mix. This can leave holes in security, where information is being shared across cloud and on-site applications, so be sure to address it.

Help your employees understand the changes. Transitioning to cloud-based technology can be complex, and your line-of-business managers and their teams will need a basic understanding of the structure supporting their processes. Keep them informed about the changes and get their input to increase buy-in.

Talk through the importance of high-quality passwords and other security features, too. Explain how the security of your system is supported and the steps they can take to help further protect the data you have in your system.

You’re not on your own. It’s never a good idea to implement a cloud application on your own. Select a vendor partner that is proactive about understanding your business processes and will provide the services you need. For instance, you may want a vendor that will offer educational opportunities and provide training for your team.

The right vendor will make sure your transition to a cloud solution is as smooth and easy as possible. They can also help you design your infrastructure in a way that best supports your business processes. Many companies integrate cloud solutions slowly, and your vendor can help you determine which pieces of your business are best handled by cloud technology.

If you’re looking for a cloud vendor that will not only walk you through the transition, but give you straight answers to your questions and concerns along the way, make an appointment with Truth Comm. We offer the technical support you want while providing the truth you need about your technology.

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