Microsoft Azure Cloud

Microsoft Azure is a growing collection of integrated cloud services that developers and IT professionals use to build, deploy, and manage applications through global network of datacenters, using the tools, applications, and frameworks of your choice.

Microsoft Build Developer Event 2016 – Azure Makes IoT Even Easier for Businesses

Shantha Kumari

Build 2016

Adds Azure IoT Gateway SDK and Device Management to Azure IoT Hub

Microsoft held their annual developer conference called Build out in San Francisco. The three-day event from March 31 to April 1, had various Microsoft executives detailing and demonstrating the vision for computing. There were hundreds of mini-seminars on Windows development detailing what is new.

At Build 2016, Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the Cloud and Enterprise Group, and Qi Lu, executive vice president of the Applications and Services Group, demonstrated how Microsoft Azure services and the Office platform can empower developers to easily leverage advanced analytics, machine learning, emerging cloud development models and the Internet of Things (IoT) to build their intelligent apps.

Azure Internet of Things (IoT) gets a boost

Two new offerings were announced that make it significantly easier for customers to manage their IoT deployments: Azure IoT Hub device management and the Azure IoT Gateway SDK. The preview of these powerful new capabilities, shows Microsoft’s support for providing developers, IT managers and OT operators with tools to make managing their IoT deployments easier than ever.

Drop by Sysfore Technologies, to get the latest information on the Azure IoT Hub device management and the Azure IoT Gateway SDK.

The diverse Internet of Things (IoT) environment is mixed with many types of devices with different software, firmware, connectivity and security capabilities dispersed geographically . For many businesses, it’s a challenge to keep the software, firmware and configuration of new devices up to date.

They also need to connect to older or legacy devices to communicate directly with the cloud. The new offerings address these challenges and continues to simplify IoT, so customers can focus on development instead of the logistics.

Azure IoT Hub device management

The device management feature in Azure IoT Hub allows enterprises to remotely maintain, interact with, and manage IoT devices at scale from the cloud using accepted open source standards. Administrators can enroll, view status and health, organize, control access, and update the software, firmware and configurations of millions of geographically dispersed IoT devices.

Customers can now realize significant time and resource savings by removing the burden of developing and maintaining custom device management solutions.

Azure IoT Hub scales to manage millions of devices supporting the LWM2M protocol, the leading standard from the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) for IoT device management. The IoT Hub device management enables a simplified cloud programming model for IoT solutions through new service side APIs:

  • Device Registry Manager API:Provides a first-class device object for working with IoT devices in your cloud solution. Through this device object, your cloud solution can interact with device and service properties, which is used by the device for configuration or to inform the IoT solution of device state (e.g. firmware version, OEM name), service properties, such as tags etc.
  • Device Groups API:Work with your fleet of devices in groups and control access in a way that maps to your solution topology.
  • Device Queries API:Find devices in your IoT solution based on tags, device, or service properties.
  • Device Models API:Define the information model for the devices and entities in your IoT solution.
  • Device Jobs API:Run and monitor simultaneous device orchestrations on your global fleet of devices across a heterogeneous device population.

Azure IoT Gateway SDK

The Azure IoT Gateway SDK enables businesses to connect legacy devices and sensors to the Azure cloud without having to replace existing infrastructure. And for developers, the SDK helps to easily build and deploy “edge intelligence” modules that optimize and process data before it’s sent to the cloud, allowing your business to benefit from minimized latency, reduced bandwidth costs, and more effective enforcement of security and privacy constraints.

The Azure IoT Gateway SDK achieves this by providing source code that takes care of much of the necessary busy work required for the development of a gateway application, including dynamic module loading, configuration, and data pipelining.

Get the latest information on the Azure IoT Hub device management and the Azure IoT Gateway SDK from our IoT specialists. Mail us at info@sysfore.com or call us at +91-80-4110-5555 to leverage the new updates using Sysfore’s IOT Suite.

 

5 Big Cloud Security Features for Enterprise Use

Shantha Kumari

The cloud computing is still an emerging technology with people discovering its true potential. One important feature which draws attention is Cloud Security.

Cloud computing can help businesses cut costs in any number of ways, but the information that cloud systems handle is varied, confidential with high security measures in place.

Talk to Sysfore’s Cloud Specialists and we’ll ensure your Cloud Security is top grade. Book an appointment now.

Here are some of the biggest actual security features that cloud providers use to protect client data, and make systems effectively secure against hacking and unauthorized access.

Cloud security

Multi-Factor Authentication

It’s a major source of user security for cloud systems, which often get deployed across many different business locations and individual access points. Essentially, multi-factor authentication just means authenticating users in a combination of ways. Using multiple authentication strategies or factors creates better security for digital systems.

In general, multi-factor authentication involves combining different categories of security inputs. One category is the password, which is an intangible concept that someone creates and uses for access. Another category is a physical possession, such as a traditional key, a key card or even someone’s mobile device.

A third category of security is called biometrics. This focuses on things that are inherent to an individual body. Unlike the above two categories, biometrics security components cannot be lost or misplaced. Biometrics uses things like fingerprint scanning, voice recognition and facial imaging.

Multi-factor authentication requires two or more of these different security components to work together, which makes systems much more secure.

Identity and Access Management

This category of security is closely related to authentication, but it works a bit differently. Here businesses have a way to assign access and privileges to individual identities that will be authenticated within the system. If multi-factor authentication is the method of access, then identity and access management is the assignment of clearances or the “permission vehicle” for letting people into the system.

Cloud services should incorporate this design, so that managers can think carefully about what information people need access to, and assign access based on those considerations. It’s important that people who are doing the work can get into the system to do their jobs, but the system must also keep a lid on sensitive data and ensure that it’s distributed to as few people as possible.

Encryption Standards and Key Handling Tools

Encryption is a core component of cloud security. In various ways, cloud providers encrypt data so that it can’t be stolen or leaked as it makes its way to and around the cloud. Each cloud company will have its own security encryption standard, where better encryption generally means better security.

Encryption standard along with key handling should be the focus of the enterprises. Encryption systems typically use sets of encryption keys that allow for authorized use of the data. Businesses can now opt for Amazon Web Services or Azure which offers a set of key management tools. Some cloud providers also offer key management services of their own that not only encrypt data, but also preserve the right kinds of access.

Cloud Encryption Gateways

It’s also important to figure out how and when data is encrypted and when it is decrypted, because again, without decryption, valuable data can become useless to those who need to handle it.

A cloud encryption gateway is very much like a virtual private network or VPN system. It provides a secure tunnel for data from one specific point to another. In VPN systems, data is often encrypted as it leaves a private network and makes its way through the public Internet. It’s decrypted on the other side, which is why people refer to it as a “security tunnel” for data.

A cloud encryption gateway acts the same way. It provides a consistent means and method of encrypting data as it leaves the private network and enters the cloud. It’s going to serve as both an effective means of security, and maintaining compliance if regulators start looking into how a company handles its data.

Mobile Platform Security

Cloud security also needs to address the rapidly growing area of IT that so many of us are now using to do all kinds of computing and perform all kinds of transactions: mobile. The mobile arena is becoming more and more a part of our lives, and cloud services need to anticipate the challenges of keeping data safe while it’s going to and from mobile endpoints.

Cloud mobile strategy needs to look at effective encryption, any vulnerabilities inherent in mobile operating systems or commonly used mobile applications. They should be able to explain to clients in a way that doesn’t make their heads spin.

You can contact us at  info@sysfore.com or call us at +91-80-4110-5555 to better understand the requirements of the Cloud Security for your Enterprise use.

10 Things You Need to Know About Hybrid IT Strategies

Shantha Kumari

The Hybrid IT Infrastructure – bringing together on-premises and cloud capabilities—is a strategy many enterprises are embracing in order to maximize the flexibility and performance they need from their IT operations. Sysfore offers the requisite cloud expertise in handling your Hybrid cloud infrastructure, on both Amazon and Azure Cloud.

Find the Right Hybrid Cloud Balance – Call us or mail our Hybrid IT Specialists to know more!

Here are ten things to think about as you consider a hybrid strategy for your organization.

1. Hybrid Cloud—The Time is Now:

Hybrid cloud

By 2017, the research firm Gartner predicts that half of mainstream enterprises will have a hybrid infrastructure. Businesses are adopting the hybrid approach, to maximize the benefits that both the cloud and physical infrastructure have to offer: the control and easy access of an on premises/private cloud solution with the convenience, scalability, performance, cost, mobility, and collaboration benefits of a solution managed by a public, multi tenant cloud provider such as Azure or Amazon.

2. Taking ‘Shadow IT’ Out of the Shadows:

Today, more and more enterprises are seeing their employees supplementing their traditional reliance on internal IT resources by taking advantage of public cloud services. Enterprise IT departments typically see this as a troubling trend that raises important issues of security and control. But it’s also a chance for the IT to position itself as an internal service provider.

3. Right Resource for the Right Workload:

A hybrid approach gives you the option of scaling resources for each workload and choosing the best application for the job. Applications can run on whichever platform is best suited for that workload: a highly dynamic app with unknown spikes may be best supported in the public cloud while a performance-intensive application may be better off in a private cloud. Data can be located where regulatory or security requirements dictate.

4. Varying Levels of Hybrid Sophistication:

A hybrid approach can have different levels of sophistication: deep integration between cloud and private/ on-premise environments or more simplistic, static, point-to-point connections designed to serve a particular functional need.

5. ROI and Agility:

Any enterprise that has virtualized IT components within its four walls has essentially created its own internal private cloud and has achieved significant reductions in capital and operational expenses. A hybrid cloud extends this strategy with the appropriate investment in metrics, self-service software, automation features and other capabilities. It is a way to achieve significant advances in enterprise agility.

6. Start Small:

Gartner recommends starting a hybrid project with a small pilot, getting comfortable with the ins and outs of the hybrid model, then rolling it out further across the organization. Keep scalability in mind right from the start. While the pilot project may be small in scope, the infrastructure deployed should be ready for growth and capable of delivering an ROI within a defined time frame.

7. Test and Run:

A popular use case for a hybrid strategy involves developing and testing new applications in the cloud and then moving them back into the on-premises or private production environment. You can leverage the cloud environment for fast, on-demand prototype of the new applications and services which are then rapidly deployed and measured for success. Once the applications are ready, the cloud-based development environment can be ratcheted back.

8. Management:

The success of any hybrid approach is going to rest to a great degree on the infrastructure management that is put in place: control of both the public cloud and private assets from a single administrative console using a unified set of security, user, and application policies.

9. Look at Your Network:

A hybrid strategy requires a close look at your enterprise network for bandwidth and scalability. With a hybrid strategy, companies will be relying on their network to ship large amounts of data back and forth, putting far more demand on the network than previously.

10. Culture shift:

Some of the biggest challenges in moving to a hybrid infrastructure are less about the technology and more about management. Most IT departments have a culture centered around control and technical expertise and now have to accommodate a more collaborative, service-oriented approach for the provision of automated, self-service IT capabilities via the cloud.

Sysfore can help you build, secure, and seamlessly scale in the Hybrid Cloud Environment. You contact us at  info@sysfore.com or call us at +91-80-4110-5555 to understand the hybrid IT cloud better.