AWS reInvent: Key Takes on Cloud Security, Management, and Adam Spelinsky’s Remarks on Cloud Today
On the 27th of November a decade ago, global leading Cloud Service Provider AWS held it's first major annual conference- Re:Invent with a focus on AWS partners and the AWS ecosystem. The three day event now done annually, gathers the cloud community to meet, get inspired, and rethink what's possible. It is also an avenue for AWS to announce and launch some products and services.
At the 2022 edition which started on the 27th of November and ended on the 2nd of December, The AWS VP and Chief Evangelist, Jeff Barr, plus a select group of AWS Developer Advocate colleagues announced some of the most impactful and exciting products and services to debut.
In this post, we’ll be discussing some of these debutant services in the areas of security, identity & compliance, and cloud management. For some of us who are fairly new to AWS, security, identity & compliance services focus on services that enable you to secure your workloads, data, applications, and your AWS account in general. While cloud management services focus on services that determine the health and predictability of your cloud workloads on your AWS console.
Before we speak generally, on AWS CEO’s remark on organisations navigating these uncertain times with cloud computing.
Security, Identity & Compliance Debutant Services
- Inspector Now Scans AWS Lambda Functions for Vulnerabilities: AWS Lambda lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers.With this new capability, you no longer need to use AWS and third party tools to analyse your mixed workloads, such as EC2 instances, container images, and Lambda functions, against common vulnerabilities.
- Data Discovery for Amazon Macie: Amazon Macie is a data security and data privacy service that uses machine learning (ML) and pattern matching to discover and protect your sensitive data.This new capability on Amazon Macie allows you to gain visibility into where your sensitive data resides on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) at a fraction of the cost of running a full data inspection across all your S3 buckets.
- Amazon Verified Permissions (Preview): This central fine-grained permissions management system simplifies changing and updating permission rules in a single place without needing to change the code. With Amazon Verified Permissions, application developers can let their end users manage permissions and share access to data. For example, application developers can use Amazon Verified Permissions to define and manage fine grained permissions to determine which Amazon Cognito users have access to which application resources.
These security services help you improve the security posture of your AWS account, and are largely available through your AWS Management console.
Management Debutant Services
- New – AWS Config Rules Now Supports Proactive Compliance: This release extends AWS Config rules to support proactive mode so that they can be run at any time before provisioning and save time spent to implement custom pre-deployment validations.
- New for AWS Control Tower – Comprehensive Controls Management (Preview):You can use the new capability to apply managed preventative, detective, and proactive controls to accounts and organisational units by service, control objective, or compliance framework.
Just like the new security services, these management services are available to AWS users through your AWS management console. Log into your AWS Management Console, in the search tab, search for any of these services, and get to understand them better by playing around with them.
Adam Selipsky’s Remarks on Cloud Computing today
Regarding cloud computing and these uncertain times, AWS CEO, Adam Selipsky, implores organisations globally to not, “cut back” and “slow down” on investing in cloud computing; stating that, “the cloud is more cost-effective and many customers are saving 30% or more.”
He went on the cite AirBnB as a perfect example as an organisation who, during the Covid-19 pandemic, was able to downsize on their IT workload in a cost effective way, having been one of the early cloud adopters in the hospitality industry, and by doing this was able to bounce back, and scale up post pandemic!
We agree with Selipsky’s idea for organisations to lean in more towards cloud computing, especially in these uncertain times. What better time than to reduce your total cost of ownership for your critical IT workloads than now?
However, we would have wanted Mr. Selipsky to have delved deeper into how organisations can optimise and manage their AWS costs as he encourages more cloud adoption—also seeing that cloud cost optimisation is still a major cloud challenge for organisations globally. Rahul Subramanian of CloudFix shares our point of view as well, stating that, “AWS had a large opportunity that they didn’t fully capitalise on,” and he wishes that “Adam had done more to directly address customers’ concerns about the cloud being more expensive. He discussed customers saving anywhere from 40-70%, but with no detail.
“Customers need greater clarity about what they should do. I am sure they will come out with more case studies in the future, but I think that’s what customers need now. In this time of economic uncertainty, data and details to drive those decisions are key.”
Wendu and Cloud Cost Clarity
This, therefore, emphasises the need for a Cloud Cost and Security Management Platform. A means where cash strapped organisations can protect their cloud investment on AWS, making sure that every penny spent on their workloads on AWS is accounted for—such insights that drive clarity within organisations to ensure that cost optimization opportunities on their workloads are taken advantage of, and their workloads are well secured, preventing any money loss through security breaches.
Learn more about Wendu here, and you can also request a demo to see Wendu in action.