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Archive for the 'Conference' Category

May 7th, 2013 | Interop Staff

4 Steps to Properly Secure Your Privileged Accounts – #Interop

A post by Josh Conroy, Support Engineer at Thycotic Software.

When setting up security policies to protect your privileged accounts, administrators have to walk the fine line of providing security while still being convenient for the user.

Both security measures that are inconvenient for the user and those that present lack of security may pose a liability. These are also two reasons security precautions are dismissed by management. Here are four steps you can take to help properly secure your privileged accounts.

Changing Passwords Regularly and Using Strong Passwords. Passwords on privileged accounts should be updated system-wide on a regular basis. Rotating passwords regularly reduces the odds of passwords being cracked and helps mitigate the damage should an account be compromised.

Passwords for privileged accounts should be complex, difficult to guess and not repeated among accounts. The biggest hurdle when using complex passwords is they are difficult to remember and that difficulty encourages bad security practices, such as writing passwords down on paper, reusing passwords and choosing weak passwords.

Central Access to Privileged Accounts. Keeping one centralized, protected source of credential data is more secure than keeping logins written on paper or saved in Excel files in multiple areas across your network. A centralized location will assist in tracking your accounts. It helps to limit access to this information while still providing easy access for administrators.

Auditing Access. It is important to know who has access to privileged accounts and how often these accounts are being used. This helps to clarify which accounts need special attention so their security settings are adjusted. For example, some accounts may require stricter access control, stronger passwords or a more aggressive password change schedule.

Restricting Access. Being that privileged accounts have access to sensitive data and are used to run company critical applications, you will want to limit who accesses these accounts. Only users that work directly with an account should have access to the password. This creates accountability when using accounts that are not directly tied to a user. Additionally, having a mechanism in place to restrict privileged account access   greatly improves the level of security a company has over its accounts. For example, employee account usage can be monitored, which is often important when employees leave an organization.

Following these steps will help with the protection of your privileged accounts, but implementation is always an important. Using a credential storage system specifically focused on corporate use, such as Secret Server, can help accomplish these security points as well as make the transition from the current policy to a more secure policy as painless as possible.

May 2nd, 2013 | Interop Staff

Big data means everything and nothing (it depends who you ask) – #Interop

A guest post by Chris Taylor, Author, Successful Workplace.

It seems big data means something different to everyone. In the great debate/hype about big data, there’s no lack of opinion on the topic and it seems to mostly depend on an individual’s product, skill set and business challenges. This ambiguity shares a great deal of the blame for why the term is often polarizing and why there’s a fair amount of cynicism in corners of the marketplace. Just for fun, let’s take a look at some of the points of contention.

  1. Big data isn’t anything new – This is a very legitimate argument for why big data doesn’t deserve quite so much hype. You’ll hear this argument mostly from the companies that have been solving problems and earning a living with vast amounts of data for decades. There are exceptional examples of this like Nielsen, the company that started off rating the advertising value of media and morphed into consumer preference and pattern juggernaut.
  2. Big data is really about small data – Also a legitimate argument against some of the hype. Companies that crunch data sets, small or large, often find that the pattern exists in just one variable, like the way preferences for wine often come down to our tolerance for acidity. Some of what’s called big data isn’t big when the results come in, but it often takes large data sets to prove that a small amount of data matters…a big data paradox.
  3. Big data is about the right algorithm, not more data - Like the other two points, this is also mostly true. The shows up in the crowdsourced contest Netflix used to improve on the company’s Cinematch predictive powers, which became about tiny tweeks to algorithms to raise results by .01%. There was no human X factor that solved the problem. This argument pits the traditional quantitative analysts against the new breed of data scientists. You could say it is also the fight between math and science and causation and correlation. This is a fascinating debate and I suspect both sides are right in differing circumstances.
  4. The 3 V’s (volume, velocity and variety) aren’t enough – Coming up with a new V for the description of big data is now the object of derision. “How many V’s do you have?” comes up often as an easy way to understand someone’s perspective on the topic but has also reached the point of silliness. Gartner’s Doug Laney came up with the 3 V’s back in 2001 and the debate has raged ever since around value,
  5. Big data is creepy – This one really depends on the definition of creepy. People with Rain Man-like capabilities have always been able to mentally process exceptional amounts of data and that ability could be used to cheat, manipulate and get ahead. Just because we’re able to see more complex patterns in ever more data doesn’t make big data itself creepy. Its use, just like before computerization, is what can be creepy.

At the end of the day, big data is going to continue to be a topic of intense debate because so much of what we do is affected by someone’s ability to gather, analyze and then predict who we are from our patterns, even the non-transactional ones like social media use. Enterprises can’t afford to ignore the technology that their competitors are using to better understand customers and be more efficient in their operations.

Join me in Las Vegas

The big data debate is an excellent example of the value of tapping a wide variety of experts to wade through the hype and find value. I’ll be hosting the Big Data Workshop at Interop in Las Vegas on May 7th and invite you to join us to hear from a broad variety of sources like TIBCO, IBM, Datameer, Fabless Labs, QLogic, HP, Dell, Talend, and the editors of Big Data Republic and Venture Beat. Rarely will you find such an opportunity to hear a full day of so many valuable perspectives.

Receive 25% off the onsite price of a Conference Package or register for a Free Expo Pass with Priority Code “DISPEAKER“.

Apr 29th, 2013 | Kristi

Cloud Provider Managers Wanted – #Interop

The cloud is now a critical part of how most IT departments will deliver value to their organizations. We have an ever-greater understanding of the value of balancing applications and workloads over the entire virtualized infrastructure, whether your own private cloud or the virtual machines running at an infrastructure-as-a-service provider site.

But, what do organizations needs to take the best advantage of the cloud? CIOs are looking for people able to manage relationships with our cloud providers. We cannot realize the benefits of the cloud without properly evaluating, contracting and monitoring.  That is where Cloud Provider Managers come in. The responsibilities of this newly formed position include:

  • Evaluating whether potential cloud providers meet internal and external (regulatory) requirements.
  • Negotiating contracts — including service level agreements — with cloud providers to ensure that the company receives the services and benefits that it expects from the provider for the terms that it’s negotiated.
  • Maintaining critical documentation on each cloud provider to facilitate interactions with that provider, including all API information and details on how to request support.
  • Monitoring cloud providers for important changes to services, including but not limited to new features that would be beneficial, as well as changes that would bring the provider out of compliance with internal or external requirements.

Legal training and technical experience are both a plus for the Cloud Provider Manager position. Interop Las Vegas provides 5-days of in-depth training on the Business of IT as well as a dedicated Cloud Computing and Big Data Track where you can gain first-hand insight into companies that are building cloud solutions today. Take the first step in becoming a Cloud Provider Manager for your organization and register today.

To preview the complete click here.

Apr 26th, 2013 | Kristi

What Makes a Good Collaboration Enabler? – #Interop

With Interop Las Vegas just under two weeks away our countdown of the Top 9 IT Skills of 2013 continues. A happy and collaborative workface are the underpinnings of any great organization, which is why Collaboration Enabler was voted to the top IT Skills in 2013. 29% of survey responders cited they will be launching or upgrading employee collaboration systems in 2013.

When executives think about launching or upgrading an employee collaboration system, they look to IT in the same way that some executives look to IT to stem the ever-rising tide of email at the organization. The key to successfully advancing teamwork is to start thinking of collaboration or social media systems as enterprise apps. And start thinking of tackling these projects not with the viewpoint of an application engineer, but with the eye of an enterprise architect. So what does it take be a good collaborator?

  • A good collaborator possess soft skills, negotiation and organizational change management.
  • Successful collaboration pros will be extremely comfortable following market trends, and perhaps even dabbling a little bit in middleware.
  • Understanding of the technical and business knowledge and the ability to navigate security and compliance concerns.
  • Willing to face down the elephant in the board room that’s holding enterprise collaboration back email.

Getting there won’t be easy but when you do you’ll really have accomplished something. The Collaboration Track at Interop Las Vegas is jam packed with sessions from The Social/Collaboration Marketplace Circa 2013 to Disruptive Trends in Enterprise Video that can help you take the first step towards becoming a Collaboration Enabler for your organization.

To preview the complete click here.

Apr 26th, 2013 | Interop Staff

Mobile Endpoint Security Limitations a Hot Topic at #Interop Las Vegas 2013

A guest post by Rainer Enders, CTO, Americas, NCP engineering

The Android mobile platform and its oft-publicized security limitations, along with those of other mobile operating systems (OSs), are guaranteed to be a hot topic at this year’s Interop event. After all, they have even caught the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which filed a complaint against the four major cellular carriers in the U.S. for not doing enough to protect the private information of subscribers using the Android OS. Continue Reading »

Apr 25th, 2013 | Interop Staff

ScienceLogic selected as a Best of #Interop Finalist

A guest post by Dave Link, CEO of ScienceLogic.

I am so pleased to announce that ScienceLogic was selected as a Best of Interop finalist for the management and monitoring category.

What a privilege it is to be considered and we are super excited to be working once again this year in the Interop.net NOC.  Cloud management is a difficult, amorphous term to understand given the lack of standards and the breadth of what cloud means to different technologies and users.  In the end, I believe that it has never been more important to think about the management of public, private, and hybrid clouds abstracted to service management.  Given the multiple tiers of a complex application, dynamic, and rapid movement infrastructure workloads are deployed upon (often geographically distributed), and the dozens or even hundreds of individual technology components that are required to work together “just right” to deliver a service, it is a vexing problem to achieve detailed and business impact Service Level Management Views – without a crazy amount of set-up and manual tools management/alignment efforts. Continue Reading »

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