Last week I had the pleasure of attending AWS re:Invent, Amazon Web Services’ global customer and partner conference in Las Vegas. Overall the conference was characterized by a very entrepreneurial spirit, full of inventive individuals. With nearly 20,000 cloud fans in Vegas, it was bound to be a good time.
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As someone who has attended a fair share of trade shows, it was refreshing to see attendees express a genuine interest in the conference. I was encouraged to see so many attendees seek out Vormetric specifically to learn about Vormetric Transparent Encryption for Amazon Web Services.
Even though what happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas, here are my top three takeaways from the conference:
1 - Public Cloud Is Possible
The reality of the public cloud as a viable alternative to traditional data centers is here. Taking advantage of the flexibility and cost advantages of public cloud environments (like AWS) with confidence, several major companies, such as General Electric and Capital One, officially endorsed AWS during the conference. The federal government was represented as well with an informative keynote from Sue Gordon of the National Geospatial Agency. This is further proof that public cloud adoption has gone mainstream.
2 - AWS + IoT = A-OK
Of the many announcements to come out of AWS re:Invent, I was very interested to learn that Amazon has launched its AWS IoT platform, a managed cloud platform that will facilitate communication between internet-connected devices and cloud applications. According to Amazon, “AWS IoT can support billions of devices and trillions of messages, and can process and route those messages to AWS endpoints and to other devices reliably and securely.” It’s great to see AWS continue to expand and evolve with these emerging technologies.
3 - Security Is King
In addition to AWS IoT, Amazon also announced a new service called Amazon Inspector. The service performs a comprehensive review of a user’s Amazon cloud and identifies security and compliance issues. According to the 2015 Vormetric Insider Threat Report, 40% of IT decision makers polled said they perceived cloud environments as the top location at risk for the loss of sensitive data. Many decision makers are understandably reluctant to have their organizations introduce another potential set of risks by relying on critical infrastructure outside their perimeter. With services such as Amazon Inspector in place, security is a top priority for AWS and its customers.
Conclusion
This year, it was clear that organizations are gaining a better understanding of the potential of the public cloud. By moving to AWS, you can offload significant IT resource and cost burdens. However, you can’t offload your responsibility for security, privacy and data compliance.
By implementing a layered approach that includes encryption, key management, strong access controls and security intelligence, organizations can improve their security posture to protect data in the cloud and provide the requisite level of security. With these measures in place, companies and the government, can continue to drink the public cloud Kool-Aid and still rest assured that their data is protected.
What were your takeaways from the conference? Do you have questions about Vormetric Transparent Encryption for AWS? Reply in the comments section below, or feel free to tweet me @Wayne42675