Anti-Ransomware: All About Architecture

As I read the “we solve ransomware” emails in my inbox and saw comments on Twitter and Slack, I started to think about how to solve ransomware once and for all. It sounds like a difficult task, but I think it is all about an architecture: an architecture that uses modern ideas. A solution needs to combine …

Educate, Upgrade, Patch, or Else..

I had a debate with a fellow technologist at Dell EMC World this year about whether the cloud is more secure than any given data center not used by a cloud provider. The argument put forth was that cloud service providers often have better security controls in place, they can auto-patch systems, etc. All in …

Software-Defined Storage for Containers Ignores Storage

Software-defined storage (SDS) within the container realm often ignores storage itself. In essence, the SDS platform assumes some chunk of storage is mapped to a container host. Then, it takes over from there. SDS for containers is the orchestration through which persistent storage is mapped to a container. This gives it a unique ability to …

Docker, Modernizing Traditional Applications

DockerCon 2017 was about modernizing traditional applications, or MTA. MTA is the lifting and shifting of traditional Microsoft Windows base applications into Docker containers. Its approach is reminiscent of 2009. For Docker to grow into brownfield data centers, this is a must. However, could it be doing more? If so, what is it doing that could …

Things That Go Bump in the Wire

When we think about networking, we think about things that go bump in the wire—things that place bumps in the wire. Such things could be switches, load balancers, firewalls, routers, gateways, etc. The list is not all that long, thankfully. Things that put bumps in the wire are at odds with software-defined networking (SDN). SDN …