Part 2 of WEI’s Cloud Security Foundations series. You can find part 1 here.

Setting up a secure AWS environment is a critical step for any organization looking to leverage the cloud effectively. However, without a solid security foundation, even the most advanced deployments can be vulnerable to costly misconfigurations and breaches. 

According to recent industry reports, 80% of cloud security incidents stem from misconfigurations that could have been prevented with proper foundational controls. In the second edition of the three-part Cloud Security Foundation Series, we’ll walk you through a practical, five-phase roadmap to help you build and maintain a strong security posture in AWS from day one. To read revisit part one, click here. 

Why Automation Matters: The Scale Challenge 

Managing security across 5 AWS accounts manually? Challenging but doable. Managing security across 50+ accounts manually? Nearly impossible. 

This is where AWS Control Tower and Organizations become game-changers. They transform security from a manual, error-prone process into an automated, scalable system that grows with your organization. 

The Foundation: AWS Organizations + Control Tower Automation 

Before diving into the phases, let’s discuss the automation backbone that enables everything else to be possible. AWS Control Tower is essentially an orchestration layer that sits on top of AWS Organizations, automating the setup and governance of your multi-account environment. Think of it as your security automation command center. 

Why This Matters for Cybersecurity 

AWS Organizations provides the basic multi-account structure and consolidated billing. Still, AWS Control Tower builds upon this by offering pre-configured security blueprints, service control policies (SCPs), and ongoing governance controls. The magic happens when these two services work together: 

• Automated account provisioning through Account Factory with security guardrails baked in 

• Centralized logging across all accounts with immutable log storage 

• Preventive controls that stop risky configurations before they happen 

• Detective controls that continuously monitor for drift and compliance violations 

Phase 1: Establish Your Automated Landing Zone 

Automation Deep Dive 

AWS Control Tower’s Account Factory automates account creation using AWS Service Catalog under the hood. This means: 

• Template-driven provisioning: Every new account gets the same security baseline 

• API-driven workflows: Integrate account creation into your CI/CD pipelines 

• Automatic enrollment: New accounts are automatically registered with Control Tower guardrails 

Now that you have your automated landing zone in place, it’s time to tackle the foundation of all cloud security: identity and access management. 

Phase 2: Build a Strong Identity Foundation with Automation 

The Three Pillars of AWS Identity Security 

1. Retire the root account: Protect it with MFA and store the credentials in a vault; never use it for daily tasks. 

2. Centralize identities with automation: Connect Okta, Azure AD, or another IdP to IAM Identity Center and enforce MFA for every human user. Control Tower automatically configures this during landing zone setup. 

3. Least privilege by default: 

• Start with AWS-managed job-function policies only when needed 

• Automate permission reviews: Run IAM Access Analyzer continuously to flag overly broad permissions 

Success Metrics for Phase 2 

• MFA Adoption rate: 100% for all human users with enforced policy and regular compliance audits. 

• Permission violations: < 5 per month across all accounts with real-time monitoring and automated remediation 

• Identity governance compliance: 100% adherence to role-based access control (RBAC) principles 

With identity management automated, let’s focus on protecting your most valuable asset: your data. 

Phase 3: Protect Data Everywhere with Automated Controls 

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them 

Pitfall: Assuming default encryption settings are sufficient 
Solution: Implement organization-wide encryption policies through SCPs 

Pitfall: Forgetting about data in transit between services 
Solution: Use VPC endpoints and enforce TLS through guardrails 

Now that your data is protected, let’s build the detection and response capabilities that will keep you ahead of threats. 

Phase 4: Detect, Respond, and Automate at Scale 

The Three Layers of Detection 

1. Native threat detection with centralized management 

• GuardDuty in all regions & accounts (Control Tower can enable this organization-wide) 

• Security Hub with the AWS Foundational Security Best Practices standard across all accounts 

2. Centralized monitoring through Organizations 
   Stream CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, and GuardDuty findings to the Log Archive account; alert on root logins, IAM policy changes, and high-severity findings 

3. Automated remediation at scale 
   EventBridge rules → Lambda functions that isolate non-compliant resources across all accounts in your organization. 

Automation Highlights 

• Organization-wide deployment: Use Control Tower’s StackSets integration to deploy security tools across all accounts simultaneously 

• Centralized alerting: All security events flow to the Audit account for unified monitoring 

• Automated response: Cross-account Lambda functions can quarantine resources in any member account 

Success Metrics for Phase 4 

• Mean time to detection: < 30 minutes for critical threats with basic CloudWatch alarms and GuardDuty notifications 

• Mean time to response: < 2 hours for high-severity incidents with manual investigation and documented runbooks 

• False positive rate: < 15% for automated alerts as teams learn to tune detection rules 

Security is never “done” – it requires continuous improvement and adaptation to new threats. 

Phase 5: Continuous Security Evolution and Optimization 

Automation Focus Areas 

• Continuous compliance monitoring: Control Tower’s detective guardrails run 24/7 across all accounts 

• Automated drift remediation: When accounts drift from baseline, Control Tower can automatically re-apply configurations 

• Self-healing infrastructure: Combine Control Tower with AWS Systems Manager for automated patching and configuration management 

Automated Guardrail Management 

Control Tower’s APIs now allow you to programmatically manage guardrails across your organization: 

• Enable/disable controls based on compliance requirements 

• Customize detective controls for your specific use cases 

• Automate control assignment to new OUs as they’re created 

Cross-Account Automation 

With AWS Organizations and Control Tower working together, you can: 

• Deploy security tools to all accounts simultaneously using StackSets 

• Centralize log collection from hundreds of accounts automatically 

• Enforce policies across the entire organization through SCPs 

Putting It All Together 

Follow the phases in order but iterate—security is never “done.” Most teams can complete Phases 1–3 within 60 days, then mature their detection and response capabilities over the next two quarters. The key difference with this approach is that automation is built in from the start, not added later. 

Remember the Four Pillars: 

• Automate first: every manual step today is tomorrow’s breach window 

• Guardrails over gates: preventive controls that keep dev velocity high win hearts and audits 

• Measure relentlessly: Control Tower’s compliance dashboard is your yardstick, so use it 

• Scale through orchestration: AWS Organizations + Control Tower handle the complexity so you can focus on business value 

The beauty of this approach is that as your organization grows from 10 accounts to 100+, the security and governance overhead stays manageable because it’s automated from the foundation up. 

Ready to Get Started? 

Building a secure AWS foundation doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Start with Phase 1 this week, and you’ll have a solid foundation in place within 60 days. 

Need help implementing these recommendations? The WEI team has helped dozens of organizations build secure, scalable AWS environments. Contact us to discuss your specific requirements. 

Questions about Control Tower guardrails, Organizations SCPs, or automated account provisioning?  

Coming up next: Part 3 of our series covers Azure Security Blueprints and Microsoft’s five-pillar security model. Subscribe to stay updated!  

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In the previous posts in this series, we explored the fundamentals of cloud governance, strategies for managing shadow IT, best practices for building a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) and implementing continuous compliance on AWS. As organizations increasingly adopt DevOps practices to accelerate innovation, the challenge becomes ensuring that security is seamlessly integrated into this rapid development and deployment cycle. In this post, we’ll explore how to enable secure DevOps practices on AWS, highlighting key principles and best practices for embedding security into every phase of your development workflows.

How to Integrate Security Seamlessly into DevOps

Integrating security into DevOps means making security a shared responsibility across development, security, and operations teams throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC). The goal is to catch and fix security issues early, reducing risk and cost while improving the overall security posture. By shifting security left, integrating security early in the process, and automating security checks, you enable faster, more secure development.

Key benefits of this approach include:

• Identifying and remediating vulnerabilities early, when they are easier and less costly to fix
• Empowering developers to write more secure code by providing automated feedback during development
• Reducing the risk of security breaches and compliance violations
• Increasing the speed and agility of software delivery by catching issues earlier

However, this shift isn’t without challenges. Integrating security into DevOps requires changes to existing processes, tools, and culture. Development, security, and operations teams must collaborate closely to build a shared understanding of risks and responsibilities.

Best Practices for Secure DevOps on AWS

Here are some essential practices for ensuring secure DevOps workflows on AWS:

Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Use tools like AWS CloudFormation and Terraform to define your infrastructure as code. This allows you to version control your infrastructure, apply security best practices consistently, and automate deployments. By scanning IaC templates with tools like and , you can catch potential security misconfigurations early before they make it into production.

Key benefits of IaC for security include:

• Consistency: Security controls are applied uniformly across all resources
• Traceability: All infrastructure changes are tracked in version control
• Automation: Security checks can be integrated directly into your deployment pipelines

Integrate Security into CI/CD Pipelines

Automate security checks within your CI/CD pipelines to continuously safeguard your applications. Implement tools and practices such as:

• Static code analysis to catch security vulnerabilities in the codebase
• Dependency scanning to identify vulnerabilities in third-party libraries
• Container image scanning to detect security risks in containerized applications
• Compliance checks using AWS Config rules to verify that resources meet security and compliance standards

Fail the pipeline if critical security issues are identified, ensuring that vulnerabilities never reach production. This proactive approach has several advantages:

• Early Detection: Vulnerabilities are caught early in development, reducing remediation costs
• Immediate Feedback: Developers receive quick feedback on security issues
• Continuous Compliance: Every change is automatically evaluated for compliance

Use Immutable Infrastructure

Adopt immutable infrastructure patterns to reduce the risk of configuration drift and ensure consistent, secure deployments. With immutable infrastructure, servers are never modified after deployment; updates are made by provisioning new instances from a known-good configuration. Use services like Amazon EC2 Image Builder to maintain secure, up-to-date machine images. Amazon ECR can store and scan images for known vulnerabilities for containerized workloads, while Amazon ECS or EKS helps manage deployments securely.

Security benefits of immutable infrastructure include:

• Consistency: All servers are deployed from a secure, known configuration
• Reduced Attack Surface: Replacing servers, rather than patching them, reduces the risk of configuration drift and vulnerabilities
• Faster Recovery: If a server is compromised, it can be quickly replaced with a clean instance

Implement Least Privilege Access

Follow the principle of least privilege when granting access to AWS resources. Provide users and services only the minimum permissions they need. Use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles and policies to enforce fine-grained access controls and implement IAM best practices such as:

• Using IAM roles for EC2 instances and Lambda functions to assign temporary, role-based permissions
• Rotating access keys regularly to reduce the impact of compromised credentials
• Enforcing strong password policies and enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) for added security
• Regularly reviewing and pruning IAM permissions to ensure they align with users’ roles

These practices help to:

• Reduce the Blast Radius: In the event of compromised credentials
• Limit Insider Threats: By controlling access to critical resources
• Maintain Granular Audit Trails: For tracking resource access and activities

Monitor and Log Everything

Comprehensive monitoring and logging are vital to detecting, responding to, and preventing security incidents. Use AWS services like Amazon CloudWatch and AWS CloudTrail to collect logs and analyze resource activity:

• CloudWatch: Provides real-time monitoring and alerts for AWS resources and applications
• CloudTrail: Records all API activity, offering an audit trail for actions taken within your AWS environment

Aggregate logs from multiple sources to create a single pane of glass for security monitoring and incident response. Enable AWS Security Hub to get a consolidated view of your security posture across accounts and services. With comprehensive monitoring, you can:

• Detect and respond to incidents quickly
• Conduct forensic investigations to determine root causes
• Demonstrate compliance with regulations
• Identify trends for proactive risk mitigation

How WEI Can Help

Implementing secure DevOps practices on AWS requires the right tools, processes, and cultural alignment. WEI’s Cloud and DevOps Services can help you build and scale secure, compliant CI/CD pipelines on AWS. Our certified experts can assist you with the following:

• Assessing your current DevOps practices and identifying opportunities for automation and security integration
• Designing and implementing secure CI/CD pipelines using AWS developer tools and third-party solutions
• Embedding automated security checks and compliance controls into your workflows
• Providing training and enablement to help your teams adopt a security-first mindset

Contact us today to learn more about how WEI can help you enable secure DevOps practices on AWS.

Take Your Next Steps With WEI

Next Steps: WEI, an AWS Select Tier Services Partner, collaborates closely with customers to identify their biggest challenges and develop comprehensive cloud solutions. WEI emphasizes customer satisfaction by leveraging AWS technologies to enhance development, maintenance, and delivery capabilities.

Download our free solution brief below to discover WEI’s full realm of AWS capabilities.

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A critical aspect of any cloud governance program is ensuring continuous compliance with regulatory requirements and maintaining audit readiness. In this post, we’ll dive into how to implement continuous compliance on AWS. We’ll cover the shared responsibility model, key AWS services for compliance, and best practices for automating compliance checks and evidence collection.

Understanding the Shared Responsibility Model

Understanding the shared responsibility model is crucial for cloud compliance. AWS is responsible for the security “of” the cloud, while customers are responsible for security “in” the cloud. This means AWS ensures the security of the underlying infrastructure, such as the physical security of data centers, network infrastructure, and virtualization layer. Customers are responsible for securing their applications, data, operating systems, and network traffic. From a compliance perspective, this means customers are responsible for ensuring their workloads meet applicable regulatory requirements, such as HIPAA, PCI-DSS, or GDPR. However, AWS provides a range of services and tools to help customers meet their compliance obligations.

The Shared Responsibility Model in an AWS Region

Key AWS Services for Compliance

AWS provides a suite of services designed to automate compliance checks and ensure audit readiness:

• AWS Config: Continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations. You can create Config Rules to automatically check for compliance with best practices and regulatory requirements.
• AWS CloudTrail: Records API calls and related events across your AWS infrastructure. CloudTrail logs provide an auditable history of actions taken on your account, which is critical for forensic investigations and demonstrating compliance.
• Amazon CloudWatch: Collects monitoring and operational data through logs, metrics, and events. You can use CloudWatch to monitor security events and set alarms for potential compliance issues.
• AWS Security Hub: Provides a comprehensive view of your high-priority security alerts and compliance status across AWS accounts. Security Hub aggregates findings from AWS services like GuardDuty, Inspector, and Macie.
• AWS Audit Manager: Continuously audits your AWS usage to simplify how you assess risk and compliance. Audit Manager automates evidence collection, making it easier to complete audits and meet compliance requirements.

Best Practices for Continuous Compliance

To implement continuous compliance on AWS effectively, consider these best practices:

1. Define Compliance Requirements: Work with your security, compliance, and legal teams to identify the specific regulatory requirements and industry standards that apply to your workloads. Document these requirements and map them to AWS services and features.
2. Implement Compliance as Code: Use tools like AWS CloudFormation and Terraform to define your infrastructure as code. Embed compliance checks and security best practices into your templates to ensure resources are provisioned compliant.
3. Automate Compliance Checks: Use AWS Config Rules to monitor your resource configurations for compliance continuously. Create custom rules based on your specific requirements or use pre-built rules from the AWS Config Rules Repository.
4. Collect and Analyze Logs: Use AWS CloudTrail and Amazon CloudWatch to collect and analyze logs from across your AWS environment. Implement centralized logging and set up alerts for potential security or compliance issues.
5. Regularly Review and Assess: Regularly review your compliance posture using tools like AWS Security Hub and AWS Audit Manager. Identify gaps and remediate issues in a timely manner. Perform periodic risk assessments and penetration testing to validate controls.
6. Train and Educate: Provide training to developers, operations, and security teams on compliance requirements and best practices. Ensure everyone understands their roles and responsibilities in maintaining a compliant environment.

By following these best practices and leveraging AWS compliance services, you can implement a continuous compliance program that reduces risk and simplifies audit preparation.

How WEI Can Help

Achieving continuous compliance on AWS demands extensive expertise in security, compliance, and cloud operations. WEI’s Cloud Security and Compliance Services can help you design and implement a comprehensive compliance program on AWS. Our certified security and compliance experts can assist you with:

• Assessing your current compliance posture and identifying gaps
• Designing and implementing security controls aligned with regulatory requirements
• Automating compliance checks and evidence collection using AWS services
• Developing incident response and forensics capabilities
• Providing training and ongoing support to ensure continuous compliance

By partnering with WEI, you can ensure your AWS environment meets the highest standards of security and compliance, while freeing your team to focus on innovating and driving business value.

Conclusion

Continuous compliance is not just a regulatory requirement but a critical component of a robust cloud governance strategy. By leveraging AWS services and following best practices, organizations can ensure their cloud environments remain secure and compliant. Partnering with experts like WEI can further streamline this process, allowing your team to focus on innovation and business growth.

Next Steps: WEI, an AWS Select Tier Services Partner, collaborates closely with customers to identify their biggest challenges and develop comprehensive cloud solutions. WEI emphasizes customer satisfaction by leveraging AWS technologies to enhance development, maintenance, and delivery capabilities.

Download our free solution brief below to discover WEI’s full realm of AWS capabilities.

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In the two previous posts in this series, we first explored the fundamentals of cloud governance and then followed up on strategies for managing shadow IT. A key theme throughout has been the importance of establishing a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) to centralize cloud expertise and drive governance across the organization.

In part three of this series, we’ll dive deeper into how to design and operate a successful CCoE. We’ll cover defining the purpose and composition of a CCoE, establishing a governance model, ensuring collaboration, and measuring success.

What is a Cloud Center of Excellence?

A CCoE is a cross-functional team that leads and governs an organization’s cloud adoption and operation. Its primary purpose is to accelerate cloud adoption by establishing best practices, enabling teams, and driving cultural change.

As the AWS whitepaper Overview of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework explains, a CCoE is comprised of two functional groups:

• The Cloud Business Office (CBO): Ensures cloud services meet the needs of internal customers and business services. Owns functions like organizational change management, governance, and cost optimization.
• Cloud Engineering: Owns infrastructure automation, operational tools and processes, security controls, and migration landing zones. Focuses on performance, availability, and security.

The CCoE helps the organization gain traction, provides expertise, and reduces risks in the initial stages of cloud adoption. However, it’s important to note that a CCoE is not always necessary, it depends on the organization’s specific challenges and context.

Determining the Lifespan of Your CCoE

One key decision in designing your CCoE is whether it will be a temporary or permanent team. The AWS blog post suggests that a CCoE is best thought of as a temporary enablement team, as the cloud will eventually become the “new normal” for the entire IT organization.

The functions of a CCoE, such as cloud platform engineering, security, and compliance, will eventually be absorbed into the broader IT organization as cloud maturity grows. The danger is creating a separate silo for the cloud that persists long-term.

However, some organizations maintain a permanent CCoE to continuously optimize cloud operations. The key is ensuring the CCoE enables rather than gates the rest of the organization. As the Microsoft Azure Cloud Adoption Framework states, when successful, a CCoE model creates a significant shift in IT, moving from a control and operations focus to a broker and enablement role.

Key Responsibilities of the CCoE

The primary duty of the CCoE team is to accelerate cloud adoption through cloud-native or hybrid solutions. Key responsibilities include:

• Helping build a modern IT organization using agile approaches
• Developing reusable deployment packages aligned with policies
• Maintaining a functional cloud platform aligned with operational procedures
• Reviewing and approving the use of cloud-native tools
• Standardizing and automating common platform components over time

To fulfill these responsibilities, the CCoE must collaborate closely with application teams, infrastructure teams, security, compliance, finance, and executive leadership. Establishing a regular meeting cadence and clear communication channels is critical.

Establishing a Cloud Governance Model

A core responsibility of the CCoE is establishing a cloud governance model. This includes:

• Defining policies and standards for security, compliance, cost management, etc.
• Establishing processes for provisioning, incident management, change control, etc.
• Clarifying roles and responsibilities across IT and business teams
• Selecting and implementing governance tools and technologies

The CCoE’s role includes creating an initial governance approach for the cloud, with a focus on automating policies and enabling teams. Over time, cloud governance should become integral to overall IT governance.

Ensuring Collaboration and Support

A CCoE requires ongoing collaboration and support from stakeholders across the organization to be effective. Some key strategies include:

• Securing executive sponsorship to champion the CCoE
• Building a cross-functional CCoE team with representation from IT, security, finance, and business units
• Engaging application teams early and often to understand and meet their needs
• Fostering open communication and providing training to build cloud skills

The CCoE should act as a partner and enabler to the business, not a gatekeeper. Building strong relationships and focusing on customer needs is critical. As VMware Tanzu advises, no matter what phase of cloud maturity you’re in, the CCoE can help improve visibility, drive optimization, maintain governance, and align the cloud strategy with business goals.

Measuring Success and Evolving

To ensure your CCoE is effective, establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure its impact. Metrics may include:

• Cloud adoption rate: Track the percentage of workloads and applications migrated to the cloud over time. This measures the CCoE’s effectiveness in driving cloud adoption.
• Cost optimization: Measure the cost savings and avoidance achieved through the CCoE’s efforts. This could include savings from right-sizing resources, reserved instances, or automated shutdown of idle resources.
• Agility and time-to-market: Assess how the CCoE has improved the speed and agility of deploying new applications and features. Metrics could include the time from idea to production or the frequency of releases.
• Compliance and audit readiness: Evaluate the effectiveness of the CCoE in maintaining continuous compliance. Track the time and effort required to prepare for and pass audits.
• Customer satisfaction: Survey internal customers (application teams, business units) to gauge their satisfaction with the CCoE’s services and support. Use Net Promoter Score (NPS) or similar metrics.

Establish a baseline for these KPIs and set targets for improvement. Regularly measure and report on progress to stakeholders.

In addition to quantitative metrics, also gather qualitative feedback from stakeholders. Conduct regular surveys, interviews, and workshops to understand what’s working well and areas for improvement.

Use these insights to evolve and optimize your CCoE continuously. Some areas to regularly reassess and iterate on include 1) Governance policies and processes, 2) Tooling and automation, 3) Skills and training, and 4) Organizational structure.

Remember, a CCoE is not a static entity. Its structure, focus, and services should evolve as the organization’s cloud maturity and needs change. Embrace an agile mindset and adapt the CCoE to continuously meet the needs of the business.

Getting Started

Building an effective Cloud Center of Excellence takes time and iteration. Start small, stay focused on outcomes, and scale as you learn. Some key steps to get started:

1. Define your CCoE’s mission and objectives
2. Secure executive support and assemble a cross-functional team
3. Assess current state and identify gaps in skills, processes, and tools
4. Establish an initial governance MVP and implementation roadmap
5. Communicate early and often to build awareness and gather feedback

By starting lean and delivering value quickly, you can demonstrate the impact of the CCoE and earn the trust and support needed for long-term success.

How WEI Can Help

Designing and operating a successful CCoE requires deep cloud strategy, architecture, security, and governance expertise. A trusted and proven partner like WEI can help with this.

WEI’s Cloud Strategy & Advisory Services help you align your cloud journey with business objectives. Our certified experts can assist you in developing a comprehensive cloud strategy and roadmap to accelerate innovation and drive value from AWS.

By partnering with WEI, you gain access to deep cloud expertise to help you build and operate a high-impact Cloud Center of Excellence. WEI is your trusted guide for cloud success from initial strategy through implementation and optimization.

Next Steps: WEI, an AWS Select Tier Services Partner, collaborates closely with customers to identify their biggest challenges and develop comprehensive cloud solutions. WEI emphasizes customer satisfaction by leveraging AWS technologies to enhance development, maintenance, and delivery capabilities.

Download our free solution brief below to discover WEI’s full realm of AWS capabilities.

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In the first installment of this extended part series, we explored the fundamentals of cloud governance and best practices for establishing a robust governance framework on AWS. We identified shadow IT, which is the use of unapproved cloud services by employees, as a key challenge. In this article, we’ll dive deeper into strategies for managing shadow IT risks while fostering the agility and innovation the cloud enables. We will also focus on leveraging AWS services to improve visibility, automate policies, and provide secure self-service options.

Understanding the Risks and Causes of Shadow IT

Before we jump into solutions, let’s take a moment to understand the risks posed by shadow IT:

• Security vulnerabilities: Unsanctioned cloud services can expose sensitive data if proper controls are not in place. According to Gartner, through 2025, at least 99% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault.
• Compliance violations: Unapproved services may not meet regulatory requirements like HIPAA, PCI, etc.
• Inefficient spending: Redundant services and lack of volume discounts can drive up cloud costs.

So, what fuels the growth of shadow IT? Some common reasons include:

• Slow provisioning processes from central IT: When developers face long wait times to get resources, they are more likely to go around IT and use unapproved services to move faster. Cumbersome approval processes incentivize shadow IT.
• Lack of awareness about approved services: Employees often aren’t aware of all the approved tools available to them. Without clear communication from IT, they assume they need to find their own solutions.
• Desire to experiment with new technologies: Developers want to try the latest tools and services. When IT policies are too restrictive, employees may decide to experiment without approval.

The cloud has accelerated these issues by making it incredibly easy for anyone to spin up new services quickly, often without needing to go through IT. However, while the cloud enables shadow IT, it also provides powerful tools to help govern it.

Strategies for Managing Shadow IT on AWS

As an AWS Select Tier Services Partner, our cloud experts realize that AWS provides several services and tools that can help you discover shadow IT in your environment and mitigate the risks:

1. Gain Visibility with AWS Monitoring Tools

You can’t protect what you can’t see. AWS provides powerful tools to monitor your environment for unapproved activities:

• AWS Config: Continuously assess, audit, and evaluate configurations of AWS resources. Use Config Rules to detect policy violations, like unapproved instance types or unencrypted S3 buckets.
• AWS CloudTrail: Log, monitor, and retain account activity across your AWS infrastructure. Detect unusual API calls that could indicate shadow IT, like IAM user creation outside approved processes.
• Amazon GuardDuty: Continuously monitor for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior. GuardDuty uses machine learning to identify potential security issues.

2. Automate Policies with AWS Control Tower and Service Catalog

Establish guardrails and provision approved services in a self-service manner:

• AWS Control Tower: Set up and govern a secure, multi-account environment based on best practices. Enforce policies with preventive and detective guardrails.
• AWS Service Catalog: Create catalogs of approved resources that adhere to security and compliance requirements. Developers can quickly deploy from the catalog within defined guardrails.

3. Enable Secure Innovation with AWS Organizations

Provide builders with secure sandbox environments to experiment:

• Use AWS Organizations to programmatically provision new AWS accounts for teams to innovate. Apply baseline security policies using Service Control Policies (SCPs) to enforce guardrails across accounts.
• Integrate with AWS IAM Identity Center to centrally manage access to these sandbox accounts.

4. Leverage Landing Zones and Reusable Templates

Establish a secure foundation with a multi-account landing zone based on AWS best practices. Use tools such as:

• AWS Control Tower Account Factory for Terraform (AFT): Provision a fully compliant landing zone according to your requirements using infrastructure as code.
• AWS CloudFormation: Create reusable templates for common architectures that adhere to security standards. Make these available via Service Catalog for developers to use.

5. Foster Open Communication and Training

Ultimately, managing shadow IT requires a cultural shift:

• Engage with business teams to understand their needs and why they may be tempted to use unapproved services. Work with them to find secure alternatives.
• Provide training on approved services, processes for requesting resources, and the risks of shadow IT. Make security engaging and relevant.
• Be transparent about the policies around shadow IT and the consequences of violations. Share examples of how shadow IT has led to security breaches.

By leveraging AWS’s powerful governance tools and following these featured strategies, you can effectively manage shadow IT risks while still enabling the agility and innovation that the cloud unlocks. The key is to automate guardrails, streamline provisioning, and work closely with builders to meet their needs in a secure manner.

In our next post, we’ll explore how to build a Cloud Center of Excellence to drive cloud governance best practices across your organization. Stay tuned!

Next Steps: In today’s cloud-driven world, ensuring meaningful security for an AWS environment is paramount for IT security leaders and the end users they protect. WEI Senior Cloud Architect & Strategist Keith Lafaso; presentsas he unveils the essential best practices to safeguard your cloud infrastructure. Listen below:

The post Shining A Light On Shadow IT: Strategies For Secure Innovation On AWS appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

This is the first installment of a series focused on AWS security. Click here to access part 2.

As businesses increasingly migrate operations to the cloud, ensuring security and efficiency becomes paramount. Cloud governance provides a structured framework that allows organizations to manage cloud services and resources effectively while minimizing risks and maximizing benefits. In this first installment of our cloud governance blog series, we will explore the fundamentals of cloud governance, the importance of implementing a robust framework, and best practices to ensure security and operational efficiency, drawing on insights from my experience as the Principal Cloud Strategist at WEI.

What Is Cloud Governance?

Cloud governance refers to the policies, procedures, and controls that organizations use to manage and secure their cloud environments. It encompasses the oversight and direction of cloud services, ensuring that they are used in a way that aligns with business objectives and regulatory requirements. Unlike traditional IT governance, cloud governance must account for the unique challenges and opportunities presented by cloud computing, such as scalability, on-demand resources, and shared responsibility with cloud service providers (CSPs).

The Importance of Cloud Governance

Effective cloud governance is essential for several reasons:

• Risk Management: By establishing clear policies and controls, organizations can mitigate security risks and ensure compliance with regulatory standards.
• Cost Optimization: Cloud governance helps prevent unnecessary expenditures by implementing cost management practices and avoiding resource sprawl.
• Operational Efficiency: A well-defined governance framework enhances the efficiency of cloud operations through automation and standardized processes.
• Strategic Alignment: Ensures that cloud services are used in a manner that supports business goals and enhances overall performance.

When I first started working with the cloud, I saw how quickly and easily developers could spin up resources. But I also saw how things could get out of control without the right governance in place, especially through the practice of Shadow IT. Many cloud architects will witness fellow colleagues using all kinds of unauthorized cloud services and apps, creating security risks and compliance issues.

This is why I’m so passionate about helping organizations find the right balance between empowering builders and maintaining control. Shadow IT refers to using IT systems, devices, software, applications, and services without explicit approval from the IT department. While it can enable employees to be more productive and innovative, it also introduces serious security risks if left unchecked. Common risks of Shadow IT include:

• Data Breaches: Sensitive corporate data could be exposed if stored in unsanctioned cloud apps
• Compliance Violations: The use of unapproved services can violate regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, PCI, etc.
• Lack of Visibility & Control: IT personnel lose visibility and control over where company data resides
• Inefficient Spending: Redundant services and lack of volume discounts can drive up costs

This is where a strong cloud governance framework comes in. By establishing approved services, enforcing policies, and monitoring usage, organizations can embrace the agility of the cloud while mitigating risks.

Cloud Governance Frameworks

Several cloud governance frameworks are available, each with its own approach to managing cloud environments. The AWS Five Pillars of a Well-Architected Framework is one of the most widely recognized. This framework provides a comprehensive set of best practices designed to help organizations build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient cloud infrastructure.

Best Practices for Cloud Governance

Let’s dive into some key best practices for each of the five pillars:

Security Management

• Active Security Configuration: Ensure that all security features provided by the CSP are actively configured and regularly updated. This includes access controls, encryption, and monitoring.
• Shared Responsibility: Understand and clearly define the security responsibilities shared between your organization and the CSP. Regularly assess and adjust security measures to meet evolving threats and requirements.

Cost Optimization

• Cost Management Controls: Implement basic cost management tools from day one. Use budgeting and monitoring tools to keep track of cloud expenditures.
• Avoid Resource Sprawl: Identify and eliminate unnecessary resources, such as unused virtual machines, outdated snapshots, and excessive backups. Implement policies for resource usage and cost allocation.

Operational Excellence

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Use IaC to automate the provisioning and management of cloud infrastructure. This ensures consistency, compliance, and the ability to replicate environments quickly.
• Continuous Monitoring: Establish monitoring systems to track performance, usage, and security metrics. Use these insights to address issues and optimize operations proactively.

Performance Efficiency

• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): Utilize PaaS offerings to reduce the burden of managing the underlying infrastructure. This allows your team to focus on developing and optimizing applications.
• Scalability & Flexibility: Design applications to leverage the scalability and flexibility of cloud resources. Implement auto-scaling and load balancing to handle varying workloads efficiently.

Reliability

• Failure Detection & Mitigation: Design systems that automatically detect and respond to failures. Use managed services for data redundancy and failover capabilities.
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Align SLAs with your reliability requirements and ensure that your cloud architecture meets the necessary uptime and performance standards.

Sustainability

• Maximize Utilization: Emphasize the importance of maximizing hardware utilization to improve energy efficiency. Optimize workloads and designs to ensure high utilization of hardware. For example, running one host at 60% utilization is more efficient than running two hosts at 30% each due to baseline power consumption. Additionally, it recommends minimizing idle resources, processing, and storage to further reduce overall energy consumption.

In the next part of our series, we’ll dive deeper into the challenges of cloud governance and explore strategies for overcoming them, including how to address shadow IT. Stay tuned!

Next Steps: In today’s cloud-driven world, ensuring meaningful security for an AWS environment is paramount for IT security leaders and the end users they protect. WEI Senior Cloud Architect & Strategist Keith Lafaso as he unveils the essential best practices to safeguard your cloud infrastructure. Listen below:

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Did you decide to come back for more after reading 7 Effective Practices For Multi-Cloud Cost Optimization? I’m glad you did. Now, let’s dive into the world of AWS cost optimization and explore some essential strategies to help you get the most value out of your cloud investments. In this blog post, we’ll cover a range of tips and best practices, from understanding your cost drivers to leveraging AWS tools and services for maximum efficiency. We’ll also discuss the importance of laying a solid foundation, utilizing real-time data, designing effective cost allocation strategies, and embracing a proactive approach to cloud cost management.

Know Your Cost Drivers

The first step in any cost optimization journey is understanding where your money is going. AWS provides a wealth of tools and reports to help you gain visibility into costs, such as AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Cost and Usage Reports. Take the time to analyze your spending patterns and identify the key drivers of your AWS costs, such as EC2 instances, data transfer, or storage. Once you have a clear picture of cost drivers, you can start making informed decisions about where to focus optimization efforts. For example, if you notice that a particular application or workload is consuming a significant portion of your budget, you can investigate ways to optimize its resource utilization or consider alternative architectures.

Establish a Strong Foundation

Before diving into specific cost optimization techniques, it’s crucial to establish a strong foundation for your AWS environment. This means setting up your infrastructure in a way that maximizes value from your investments, improves forecasting accuracy, and continuously measures optimization efforts.

One key aspect of laying this foundation is defining clear goals and objectives for your adoption. What business outcomes are you aiming to achieve? How will you measure success? By aligning your cost optimization strategies with your overall business goals, you can ensure that your efforts are focused and impactful.

Another essential component is establishing the right processes and behaviors within your organization. Encourage a culture of cost awareness and ownership, where teams outside of IT are empowered to make informed decisions about resource consumption. Provide training and education to help everyone understand the impact of their actions on cloud costs. A rising tide lifts all boats!

AWS Networking Workshop With Keith Lafaso

Right-Size Your º£½ÇÖ±²¥

One of the most effective ways to optimize AWS costs is to ensure that you’re using the right size and type of resources for your workloads. Overprovisioning leads to unnecessary expenses, while under provisioning negatively impacts performance and availability.

Regularly review your EC2 instances and identify opportunities to right-size them based on actual usage patterns. AWS provides tools like AWS Trusted Advisor and AWS Compute Optimizer to help you identify instances that are underutilized or overprovisioned. By adjusting your instance types and sizes, you can often achieve significant cost savings without compromising performance.

Leverage AWS Pricing Models

AWS offers a variety of pricing models to help you optimize your costs based on your usage patterns and commitments. For example, if you have predictable and steady-state workloads, you can take advantage of Reserved Instances to obtain significant discounts compared to On-Demand pricing. For workloads with flexible start and end times, Spot Instances can provide substantial cost savings of up to 90% compared to On-Demand prices.

By leveraging Spot Instances for appropriate workloads and implementing best practices like diversifying instance types and handling interruptions gracefully, you can unlock significant cost optimization opportunities.

Implement Auto-Scaling

The manual management of resources can be time-consuming and error-prone, leading to inefficiencies and wasted spend. By embracing automation and scaling techniques, you can optimize your resource utilization and costs.

Implement auto-scaling for your applications to dynamically adjust the number of instances based on demand. This ensures that you have the right amount of resources available when needed, while avoiding overprovisioning during periods of low traffic. Services like AWS Auto Scaling and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling make it easy to define scaling policies and automatically scale your resources.

Optimize Storage and Data Transfer

Storage and data transfer costs can add up quickly, especially as your data volumes grow. To optimize your storage costs, consider using the appropriate storage classes based on your data access patterns.

For example, Amazon S3 offers different storage tiers, such as S3 Standard, S3 Infrequent Access, and S3 Glacier, each with different pricing and retrieval characteristics. Implement lifecycle policies to automatically transition objects to lower-cost storage tiers when they are infrequently accessed. This helps you optimize costs while still maintaining the required level of data durability and availability.

For data transfer, minimize costs by keeping data within the same AWS region whenever possible. Leverage services like AWS Direct Connect or AWS VPN to establish private network connections and reduce data transfer costs. If you need to serve content to a global audience, consider using Amazon CloudFront for content delivery and caching, which can help reduce data transfer costs and improve performance.

Utilize Real-Time Data and Actionable Insights

One of the biggest advantages of the cloud is access to real-time data. AWS provides a wealth of tools and services that enable you to monitor, analyze, and visualize cost and usage data. However, turning this data into actionable insights can be a challenge. We recommend to start by identifying the key metrics that matter most to your business. This could include things like cost per application, cost per customer, or cost per business unit. By focusing on the metrics that align with your goals, you can quickly identify areas for optimization.

Experiment with tools like AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Cost and Usage Reports to create visualizations and reports that make sense for your organization. Don’t be afraid to iterate and refine your approach until you find the insights that drive meaningful change.

Design Effective Cost Allocation Strategies

Effective cost allocation is essential for understanding the true value of your cloud investments and driving accountability across your organization. By accurately allocating costs to specific applications, teams, or business units, you can gain a clearer picture of where your money is being spent and identify opportunities for optimization.

When designing cost allocation strategy, consider factors like your organizational structure, business goals, and the level of granularity required. Tagging resources is a powerful way to enable fine-grained cost allocation, allowing you to slice and dice your cost data in meaningful ways. Cost allocation is not a one-time exercise. As your business evolves and your cloud usage changes, be prepared to adapt your allocation strategies to ensure they remain relevant and effective.

Embrace Proactive Cost Optimization

One of the most important shifts to make in your cost optimization journey is moving from a reactive to a proactive approach. Rather than waiting for unexpected spikes in your AWS bill to prompt action, proactively monitor and optimize your costs on an ongoing basis. Leveraging tools like AWS Budgets and AWS Cost Anomaly Detection to set up alerts and notifications when costs exceed predefined thresholds is one way to accomplish this. This allows you to quickly identify and address issues before they spiral out of control.

Regularly review your resource utilization and right-size your instances to ensure you’re not paying for more than you need. Take advantage of cost-saving opportunities like Reserved Instances and Spot Instances where appropriate.

Most importantly, make cost optimization a shared responsibility across your organization. Engage developers, operations teams, and business stakeholders in the process, and foster a culture of continuous improvement.

Continuously Monitor and Optimize

Cost optimization is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. It’s essential to continuously monitor your AWS costs and usage, and proactively identify opportunities for optimization.

Use tools like AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Budgets to track your spending, set custom budgets, and receive alerts when costs exceed predefined thresholds. This means regularly reviewing cost and usage reports to identify trends and anomalies, and to take corrective actions as needed.

Engage your development and operations teams in the cost optimization process. Encourage a culture of cost awareness and provide training and best practices to help teams make informed decisions about resource usage. Implement tagging strategies to allocate costs to specific applications, teams, or business units, fostering accountability and enabling more granular cost analysis.

Conclusion

AWS cost optimization is a multi-faceted discipline that requires a combination of technical best practices, financial acumen, and organizational alignment. By following the best practices elaborated on above, you can effectively manage AWS costs and maximize the value of cloud investments.

Remember, cost optimization is a journey, not a destination. Stay proactive, stay curious, and keep exploring new ways to optimize your AWS costs. With the right strategies and mindset, you can unlock the full potential of the cloud while keeping your expenses under control. For any questions about cost optimization, please reach out to either myself or another WEI cloud solutions expert. By embracing these cloud cost optimization strategies and leveraging WEI’s expertise, you can unlock the full potential of cloud computing while maintaining a cost-effective and sustainable cloud infrastructure.

Next Steps: Enterprises are increasingly shifting to a hybrid cloud strategy to support and modernize their operations model. Learn why this is critical to meaningful digital transformation. Download our free whitepaper, to find out more.

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If you’re part of an organization that’s jumped on the multi-cloud bandwagon, you’ve probably realized that managing costs across various cloud platforms can be challenging. Each cloud provider comes with its own set of pricing models, billing structures, and management tools, making it a challenge to get a clear picture of your spending and spot opportunities for optimization. But don’t worry, we’ve got your back! In this blog post, we’re going to walk you through some tried-and-true strategies and best practices for optimizing costs in multi-cloud environments.

Understanding Multi-Cloud Cost Drivers

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of optimization techniques, let’s first get a handle on the factors that drive cloud costs in a multi-cloud setup:

• Diverse Pricing Models: Each cloud provider offers a variety of pricing models, like on-demand, reserved instances, spot instances, and committed use discounts. Trying to navigate these options across multiple clouds can feel like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube blindfolded.
• Fragmented Visibility: Each cloud provider has its own dashboard and reporting tools, which can make it tough to get a bird’s eye view of the total cost of ownership (TCO) across all your clouds.
• Complex Cost Structures: Cloud providers may charge based on different metrics (think hourly, per-second, per-request), have different pricing tiers for regions, and offer different discounts. This can make cost estimation and budgeting feel like you’re trying to hit a moving target.
• Increased Management Overhead: Keeping track of spending across multiple cloud platforms can require more effort, collaboration, and potentially additional tools. It’s a bit like juggling, the more balls (or in this case, clouds) you add, the harder it gets.

AWS Workshop With WEI

Multi-Cloud cost Optimization Strategies

Now that we’ve covered the cost drivers, let’s move on to some strategies that can help you keep those costs in check:

• Consistent Tagging and Resource Allocation: Establish a consistent tagging strategy across all cloud environments. This can help you accurately attribute costs to teams, projects, or applications, improving accountability and enabling granular cost tracking and optimization.
• Automated Cost Controls: Make use of automation tools and processes to enforce budgets, set alerts for cost anomalies, and automatically scale resources based on demand or schedules. This can reduce manual effort and ensure proactive cost management.
• Rightsizing and Resource Optimization: Keep a close eye on resource utilization and leverage rightsizing recommendations to match allocated resources (like compute, storage, etc.) with actual workload demands. This can help you avoid over-provisioning or under-utilization.
• Leveraging Pricing Models: Analyze your workload characteristics and usage patterns to determine the most cost-effective pricing models (like reserved instances, spot instances, committed use discounts) across different cloud providers.
• Cloud-Native Design and Automation: Embrace cloud-native architectures and automation practices. This can ensure resources are provisioned and scaled dynamically based on demand, minimizing waste and maximizing cost-efficiency.
• Centralized Cost Management Platform: Consider implementing a centralized cost management solution. This can consolidate cost data from multiple cloud providers, giving you unified visibility, cost allocation, analysis, and optimization recommendations.
• Multi-Cloud Governance and FinOps: Establish a comprehensive multi-cloud governance framework and adopt FinOps practices. This can help align cloud spending with business objectives, enforce policies, and enable cost transparency and accountability across teams and projects.

Cloud cost optimization is an ongoing process, as your business requirements, workloads, and cloud service offerings evolve over time. Regularly reviewing and adjusting your cloud environment is essential to maintain cost-efficiency.

WEI’s cloud solutions include cost optimization engagements, where our experts work closely with your team to monitor, analyze, and optimize your cloud environment, ensuring you stay ahead of changing demands and take advantage of new cost-saving opportunities.

By embracing these cloud cost optimization strategies and leveraging WEI’s expertise, you can unlock the full potential of cloud computing while maintaining a cost-effective and sustainable cloud infrastructure. Contact WEI to learn more. 

Next Steps: Enterprises are increasingly shifting to a hybrid cloud strategy to support and modernize their operations model. Learn why this is critical to meaningful digital transformation. Download our free whitepaper, to find out more.

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It’s Tuesday and you are waiting for work colleagues to join you at lunch for a quick reprieve from the office. You pull out your smartphone and begin browsing to pass the time. An interesting technology article catches your eye and you tap to access the page. Unfortunately, the session times out and your engagement with that journey ends prematurely. Does this experience sound familiar?

According to a recent Google study, 53% of mobile users will abandon a session if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Fair or not, this is the bar that has been set, and serves as a reminder to enterprises of how important it is to modernize applications. Once users leave you behind, it is difficult to get them back as 79% of participants in the same mentioned study said they will not return after a negative experience.

What Makes an Application Modern Today?

Applications used to consist of one singular block of monolithic interdependent code hosted on a single virtual machine (VM), a design considered innovative in its day. But things are different now. To gain greater agility and flexibility, companies hastily transitioned to microservices and container environments. Here, a single application is broken up into small individual modules where each module performs a single defined task or capability. These services are then coupled together to communicate with one another, creating a highly flexible coalition of services that we call the modern application. Here, all necessary components are then contained within a single container.

Benefits of Application Modernization

Application modernization provides greater flexibility as microservices can be deployed in different programing languages and technologies. Modern applications are far more resilient as containers can be easily migrated or deployed to other systems. Updating is easier as each service can be updated and deployed independently of others and new application features and functionality can be released more rapidly to market. Containers and the microservices they host can be scaled up or down to meet fluctuating workload demands in real time.

The 6 R’s of Application Modernization

So, how do you go about updating monolithic and legacy applications to the modern era? AWS created a set of six best practice strategy options that be applied to any business application you may consider modernizing.

1. Retain: Keep the existing application in its present form as it still meets the needs of the organization.
2. Refactor: Improve the code and architecture of the existing application to attain greater scalability and flexibility.
3. Rehost: Move the existing application to a new infrastructure, such as a cloud platform, without changing its code.
4. Replace: Replace the existing application with a pre-built solution or different technology.
5. Rebuild: Create a new application from scratch to replace the existing one.
6. Retire: Discontinue support for the application and retire it. The application is no longer needed

The Paradox of Application Modernization

The speed, dynamics, and scalability of modernized applications will outpace and out scale traditional management and monitoring tools. While they may have been sufficient for an on-prem legacy environment, their product cycle is ending. If your applications are delivering workloads differently, it only makes sense that they need to be managed differently. It isn’t just programmers who need greater agility to increase the velocity of new feature releases and updates. The application admins need greater speed and agility to ensure application environments are always optimized. If not, they will fail to attain the full benefit potential of modernization efforts, thus diminishing ROI and risking losing users along the way.

Monitoring vs. Observability

Monitoring and observability may sound alike, but one is superior in scope to the other. Monitoring was appropriate for traditional on-prem environments. It helped IT personnel track problems, issues, and performance using a list of prescribed metrics that provided a snapshot of the systems that comprised the application environment.

While sufficient for the application models of yesteryear, monitoring no longer cuts it for today’s cloud application environments. The architecture that interconnects an application’s services and interdependencies together is highly complex and visibility is a challenge. Enter observability.

Observability takes monitoring to the next level by aggregating and analyzing data from multiple sources and uses AI intelligence to put the puzzle pieces together. Observability isn’t restricted to alerts and metrics. It also provides insights and context to your environment so IT can properly understand the issues at hand. While monitoring provides a view into your application environment, observability provides full comprehension and understanding.

Intelligent Observability with Dynatrace and Davis

Meet Davis (short for Davis AI-Powered Detection and Response). Davis is part of the Dynatrace performance monitoring and management solution platform for modern applications and cloud environments. Davis uses AI and ML to identify and prioritize issues and security risks in real-time on its own. Besides delivering comprehensive contextual insights to your support team, the platform automatically remediates issues before users are affected and IT can review them. Don’t just upgrade your applications to the modern era, upgrade your application operational tools in tandem with Dynatrace.

Next Steps: Thanks to Dynatrace, full stack application analytics and observability is fully achievable for your AWS-hosted application environments. Converting terabytes of data about your cloud application environment and converting it to real answers and actionable, intelligent automation, companies can maximize their modernized application strategies. We expand on this in our free tech brief,

In this tech brief, we expand on:

• Application Modernization
• Cloud scalability
• Monitoring vs. observability

The post Application Management: Keep Pace With Your Application Modernization appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Cloud security is often viewed as a hindrance to productivity and agility, slowing down the ability to develop new applications and processes. However, when adopting a new cloud environment such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), you must balance adequate cloud security with the cloud’s elasticity and scalability.

Fortinet Security Fabric provides the ideal components to build an autonomous services hub for AWS designed for various business needs. By concentrating on your cloud security services, your enterprise can protect its data and assets while ensuring consistent security policies across the entire infrastructure.

The Fortinet Security Fabric provides AWS cloud users with various security capabilities from a central location, leveraging a cloud-native ability to automatically scale and replicate services in other regions. Here are six ways can provide a balanced and secure cloud environment.

Fortinet For Your AWS Cloud Environment

1. Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) access control. With the FortiGate NGFW, you control who can access your enterprise’s data and what they are able to view. With a cloud services hub, restrictions can be based on cloud resource tags, IP addresses, TCP services, and application control policies for outgoing and incoming traffic.
2. VPN cloud connectivity. Secure the data your enterprise shares across resources with the cloud services hub. The cloud services hub can also use FortiGate NGFWs to establish and maintain secure VPN cloud connectivity from branch offices, other data centers, office locations, remote users, or even from organizational VPCs residing in the cloud. This ensures that all traffic is transmitted confidentially over shared resources.
3. Secure web gateway. With FortiGate you also have the ability to secure web gateways and reduce the risk of malicious communications. By using it as the exit point to the internet, the cloud services hub enforces acceptable internet usage policies for your employees while also reducing suspicious communications.
4. Web application security. Protect users’ personal details such as electronic payments or health information with FortiWeb web application firewall (WAF) as part of your cloud services hub.

Used as the entry point for internet traffic accessing web-based applications, a central set of WAF security policies protects business-critical applications while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements, such as the (PCI DSS) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

5. Email security. With Fortinet’s FortiMail deployed on demand, you can have peace of mind that you have a backup and secure email gateway (SEG) for your enterprise. FortiMail provides security and flexibility for global email deployments without having to worry about availability.
6. Sandboxing. Protecting cloud environments from zero-day attacks is growing increasingly important for enterprises. FortiSandbox can integrate with FortiGate to scan any in-line traffic as part of the cloud services hub. It can help protect applications by leveraging the FortiSandbox JSON API. FortiSandbox also has the capability to scale to Amazon S3 cloud storage buckets, via lambda functions. With the available collaboration tools and the increasing use of public file and image repositories, the ability to safely test suspicious code and expose new threats is more relevant than ever.

Using the Fortinet Security Fabric for your enterprise’s AWS cloud environment provides you with a balanced solution that combines cloud security with the ability to remain flexible and scale to organizational needs.

Contact WEI today if you’re ready to deploy Fortinet for your AWS cloud environment. Our experts will help you determine which services your enterprise needs to maximize cloud security and agility.

Next Steps: Learn more about Fortinet cloud security options by downloading our latest tech brief, “.”

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How much data is your enterprise creating and what are you doing about it? For most companies, data is being created, and subsequently stored, at faster and faster rates. However, many enterprises lack the tools to properly utilize and take advantage of their data, especially those that are still struggling with just the part of the equation.

As technology has advanced, we’ve moved from storing information on tapes to disks and now, in modern times, the cloud. By utilizing the cloud for data storage and processing, enterprises gain great benefits, but no solution is without its costs.

The main issue comes when the data stored on the cloud needs to be utilized by services on-prem or in the data center. is helping to solve this problem and liberate enterprises from the confines of data siloes with their new Keep reading to learn how this solution is redefining cloud data storage.

Find Freedom In Data Management

While a vast majority of enterprises are utilizing the cloud for some amount of data storage, few have utilized it for critical file data, often citing difficulties in moving it one way or the other. As a result, the data lives separately than the applications that need it, reducing the effectiveness and utilization of this data. To get around this problem, some IT teams have re-built workflows to use data while it’s in the cloud, but this comes with its own set of problems.

The bottom line is there hasn’t been a simple solution to solve these cloud data storage and utilization issues… Until now.

Qumulo Shift for Amazon S3 allows IT teams to fluidly move data to and from Amazon S3 with just a few clicks, simplifying the cloud storage process and streamlining interactions with other Amazon Web Services as well.

“I like to think of [Qumulo Shift for Amazon S3] as the easiest way for customers to put their file data to work with all the amazing marketplace apps and cloud native services on AWS,” said Qumulo Technical Marketing Manager David Sniderman, with ESG Senior Analyst Scott Sinclair. “Our file system is designed to help users take advantage of the cloud’s scalable infrastructure for high performance data processing and content creation. Shift lets customers take that data, wherever they create it, and use it with AWS Cloud Service.”

With Qumulo Shift for Amazon S3, Qumulo customers, whether cloud native or creating data on prem, can take that valuable file data and use it with Amazon’s full suite of cloud services.

Why Enterprises Choose Qumulo Shift For Amazon S3

In addition to this simplified data management, enterprises will experience a variety of other benefits, including:

• Improved data availability for your users, wherever they might be located. In a time when many businesses are utilizing remote or , this is a benefit that cannot be overestimated.
• Realtime visibility and control over data and users. Potential issues can be found quicker and any decisions that must be made regarding the management of data will benefit from a full and accurate picture of the current data environment.
• Better data reliability and protection. Thanks to Qumulo’s distributed file system, which aggregates and protects cloud storage, enterprises never have to worry about files lost in the cloud. Secondary copies of data are created by native replication, which adds an additional layer of data protection.
• Lowered total cost of ownership (TCO). In comparison to legacy solutions, Qumulo Shift for Amazon S3 costs less and offers a higher percentage of provisioned capacity.
• Flexibility. Qumulo offers a flexible deployment model, allowing enterprises to create the environment that best suits their performance and capacity needs.

At the heart of it, is making it easier for enterprises to keep their data next to their applications, allowing it to be utilized to meet business objectives.

Are You Interested In Qumulo Shift For Amazon S3?

As a leader in data management, Qumulo is trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major film and animation studios, and some of the largest research facilities around the world. From building smart cars, to vital disease research, enterprises around the world are changing the way they store and utilize data thanks to Qumulo. Our team has experience implementing Qumulo for enterprise companies that process and analyze vast amounts of mission-critical data across several industries. today to learn more about how Qumulo can quickly add value to your data storage environment and strategy.

NEXT STEPS: Check out our latest infographic which shares 7 ways Qumulo is making cloud data storage radically simple. PLUS it includes a case study example of how one of our customers found success leveraging Qumulo with AWS. Click below to learn more.

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Let’s talk about clusters and clouds. We often associate the word “cluster” with terms such as redundancy, resiliency or workload distribution. IT admins have traditionally turned to clustering bare metal systems such as firewall appliances, web servers, and virtual hosting platforms for years. When we consider the “cloud” we think about characteristics such as limitless scalability, elasticity, and simplicity. Of course, the infrastructure that supports these cloud environments is derived from clustered infrastructures, hidden underneath SaaS and IaaS platforms and are thus inaccessible to customers.

Extend Nutanix Clusters Into The Cloud

But what if you extend your clusters into the cloud? You could have then the best of both worlds. That is what has delivered on, cloud-based clusters that reduce both the cost and complexity of today’s most complicated hybrid networks. Think of their solution as a cluster on steroids. For instance:

• In the same way that you are accustomed to firing up additional virtual machines within your on-premises HCI solution, you can now scale out, not only from a capacity perspective, but a geographical one as well. That’s because you can burst added capacity across multiple clouds in order to meet unforeseen demands from multiple regions of the world.
• What you giveth, you can also take back away. Idle machines cost money in an OPEX cloud model so let you spin down virtual machines and shrink capacities when demand fades in order to save money. Nutanix Clustering does one better than that, however. Not only can you hibernate VMs and their supporting resources, you can even hibernate the bare metal instances that support the cluster itself, saving you bare metal compute costs as well. Then simply resume these instances when they are needed again down the road. In other words, you aren’t just right-sizing your VM capacity, you’re also right-sizing your cluster infrastructure in real time as well. This is especially beneficial for , say for DevOps or seasonal-based businesses.

Watch how to hibernate VMs in this 2-minute demo from Nutanix

• Nutanix cloud-based clusters take redundancy to the next level as well as you can leverage public clouds for high availability and even if your primary workloads reside on-premises. Your disaster ready infrastructure can reside in faraway geographic reasons to ensure ultimate redundancy.

Cloud Like, But Not Cloud Only

The Nutanix HCI stack is available on AWS and Azure bare metal instances, fully extending the power of existing on-premises Nutanix HCI clusters into the cloud. But that doesn’t mean it is a cloud only solution. It also doesn’t mean that you are reliant on any third parties as is the usual case with cloud-based services. Nor are you locked into any particular cloud infrastructure. Using the Prism Central management interface, internal IT remains in complete control of their own environment, calling the shots as they see fit. Admins can now manage any Nutanix node, VM or application within their ecosphere from a single pane of glass. This not only simplifies administration but also allows you to maximize your resources to your mission critical workloads rather than management tasks. All of this allows for seamless integration on a number of levels. Here are three to consider:

1. It redefines the concept of “lift and shift” for applications. While lift and shift migrations might not involve a forklift, it often requires rearchitecting your applications in order to transition them to the cloud. By decoupling applications from their underlying platform, Nutanix gives you the ability to migrate on-premises applications to the cloud with minimal changes, thus saving you time and money.
2. Those applications that must be hosted by your on-premises Nutanix cluster can be modernized in cloud like fashion by allotting them direct access to native cloud services such as AI-based analytics and other advanced digital initiatives.
3. Not only are your applications completely portable now, so are your licenses. Current Nutanix customers can utilize existing Nutanix Capacity Based Licenses (CBL) and apply them to the cloud. Simply reduce or retire your existing on-premises clusters and apply them to the cloud. New customers hosting environments that have consistent workloads may want a commitment-based subscription plan while others may be better off with a pay-as-you-go structure.

A True Hybrid Cloud

There was a time when a network was comprised of a single data center. There was a time when an enterprise utilized a single cloud. Those days are long gone as businesses have evolved with the times, and so has Nutanix. HCI is no longer about on-premises hardware environments. Nutanix clusters are about incorporating all aspects of your hybrid cloud whether it be public or private clouds. Nutanix clusters operate in a borderless vacuum so that you can operate your applications and services in a hybrid estate that is void of confining perimeters. In the same way that the first Nutanix cluster solutions began busting up silos within the traditional data center, they’re now doing the same for multi-cloud environments as well. Nutanix clusters offer you the freedom of the cloud in terms of performance and portability. Exciting, right? Maximize your today by clustering everything into one extended platform.

NEXT STEPS: We’ve helped countless enterprise IT teams transform their business with Nutanix. Leverage our team’s extensive knowledge by with us. Whether you’re consider adopting Nutanix, or if you want to know how to get more value from your Nutanix environment, we’re here to help. .

Where are you in your journey to software defined infrastructure?

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