When we think of remote working technology, the role cloud computing has played is central. On-premise applications are becoming a less common sight in most companies’ topological maps, and that reality has significant implications for cyber security professionals. If the traditional perimeter is now much less in evidence than it was, how can individuals and their organisations be best protected from the seemingly unstoppable cybercriminal gangs that prey on internet users?

The emerging answer appears to be a zero trust approach to cyber security. This framework begins with the simple edict that no person, system, or machine may be granted access by default to any part of the organisation’s assets. Therefore, authorisation is required at every touchpoint where access is required throughout the working day. Furthermore, the degree of access is controlled too–the simplest example is whether a user must write (or execute) access to a file or just needs read-only access.

“Six plus years ago when I first joined Zscaler, a zero trust conversation was almost unheard of here in Asia Pacific. You know, the term itself had not really been coined.” So said Scott Robertson, the Singapore-based SVP of Zscaler, the world’s leading provider of zero trust cyber security and secure access solutions. “The concept of moving your perimeter from around your network to around the internet was not something that many organisations have necessarily contemplated or committed to. As we see, [over] these last six years, that narrative of a zero trust posture, or zero trust network architecture has accelerated. And of course, it’s only accelerated even faster in these last 18 or 24 months.”

The challenge facing any organisation is adapting to the new patterns of data movements caused by cloud computing and remote working. Spearheading this in most organisations is the trusty stalwart of Microsoft Office, Scott told us. “What really triggered this change over the last few years, in my opinion, is the rapid adoption of Office 365. So, I moved my traditional Exchange Server from an on-prem environment where maybe 40% of my internal email would be going through my internal network. Now every single email wants to go out through perimeter to the internet, and back again.”

There’s also been a change in the way we use the internet, too, relying on it so much more for the services we use every day, both in our private lives and at work. As a result, Scott — ever the cyber security professional — states “All of my traffic is now going through a network which I don’t own, I don’t control, and I can’t secure. […] If you build a zero trust network architecture framework into your organisation, then you’re creating a direct to internet experience for every user whenever they want to access those services.”

Despite the prevalence of XaaS (just about everything as a [cloud] service), there is still room for traditional perimeter and endpoint protection. In fact, these technologies remain integral parts of the overall cyber security toolbox, Scott says.

“[Zscaler] is not expecting to do everything. We have to work with an ecosystem, and the strength of working with an ecosystem of partners is that the winner is the customer: they get the best possible protection and the best possible technology.” To that end, an integrative approach is essential to being more secure from attacks, both externally and internally. “So, we work with many different vendors, whether it be in the firewall space, or wherever. Obviously [we are] working with protocols to have firewalls direct their traffic from the corporate network to Zscaler, whether GRE or an IPsec tunnel, for example. […] We work with many endpoint [protection suppliers for] virus protection and controls that are placed on a mobile phone or computer, [also] orchestration and automation vendors who are providing SD-WAN.”

One of the obvious side benefits of systems that give organisations oversight of the entirety of data movements right across a distributed network, is the access to large amounts of learning data, which is perfect for machine learning applications. So, is there a realistic role for artificial intelligence in cyber security, we wondered?

“Perhaps AI can start to make better policy suggestions for our customers to say: hey look, yesterday ‘Joe’ was doing X and it created a vulnerability incident. You may not be able to visibly see this because you’re managing a network of 50,000 employees! We would recommend that you change the policy or update the policy to do this, this and this, because that would address [the issue].”

Artificial intelligence’s role in cyber security is in its infancy, so the overall shape of how the tech will be deployed remains unclear. Predicting the future is pretty much impossible, especially in technology. But Scott was able to point to what he sees as an emerging area of concern in cyber security practice that relates back to the growing, borderline exponential ramp-up in cloud technology’s use:

“The next frontier that we will see is business to business connectivity of those applications in the cloud […] What happens when we want to have business-to-business integrations enabled in a cloud world where we don’t necessarily manage the infrastructure that our instances are hosted on? And how do we create that business-to-business connectivity securely between customer A and customer B, to be able to make those transactions successfully [and safely]?”

Cloud providers and SaaS vendors do ensure the security of their provision, of course, but it’s security for the discrete infrastructure of the instance, be that hardware, virtual hardware, or application. Outside of those strict definitions, there’s no default protection for data to and from the cloud provider, and as Scott says, in the future’s cloud-to-cloud traffic.

That’s why companies committing to remote services need to examine the nature of their cyber security provisions and ensure that these too have evolved in line with the changes to the technology stack. A zero trust cyber security model is now a critical component of an overall strategy to stay safe. And Zscaler is pre-eminent in supplying these systems to organisations in the APAC (and across the world).

To support your journey to a cloud-first IT infrastructure, reach out to a representative from Zscaler near you today to request a hands-on demo.

The post Zero Trust Security for a Cloudy Future appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

The AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region has officially been launched in Indonesia. The new region is expected to enable developers, be it startups or enterprises, as well as government and other public sectors to run their applications and serve end-users from data centers located in Indonesia leveraging advanced AWS technologies to drive innovation.

An estimated US$5 billion will be invested by AWS in Indonesia over the next 15 years through the new AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region. This includes capital expenditures on the construction of data centers, operational expenses related to ongoing utilities and facility costs, and purchases of goods and services from regional businesses. The investment is also estimated to sustain an average of 24,700 direct and indirect jobs annually during this time.

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These jobs will be part of the AWS supply chain in Indonesia, including construction, facility maintenance, engineering, telecommunications, and jobs within the broader Indonesian economy. The construction and operation of AWS infrastructure in Indonesia are also estimated to add over $10 billion (IDR$155 trillion) to Indonesia’s GDP over the next 15 years.

According to Prasad Kalyanaraman, Vice President of Infrastructure Services at AWS, the new region in the Asia Pacific can help Indonesian institutions, innovative startups, and world-leading companies deliver cloud-powered applications to fuel economic development across the country. He added that organizations across industries in Indonesia can now also take advantage of the AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region to lower costs, increase agility, and drive innovation.

“The cloud provides organizations of all types and sizes—from businesses to educational institutions to government agencies—opportunities to transform their operations and reinvent experiences for their customers and end-users,” said Prasad.

For Perry Warjiyo, Governor of Bank Indonesia, the nation’s central bank, AWS’s cloud technology will help them achieve their vision and goals outlined in the Indonesia Payment Systems 2045 blueprint, fully digitalizing the nation’s payment systems and integrating a multitude of stakeholders and economic activities under the guiding principles of security and data protection.

With the launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region, AWS has 84 Availability Zones across 26 geographic regions globally, with announced plans to launch 24 more Availability Zones and eight more AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, India, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates.

AWS Regions are composed of Availability Zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations. Availability Zones are located far enough from each other to support customers’ business continuity but near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications that use multiple Availability Zones. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security and is connected through redundant, ultra-low-latency networks.

Big tech in Indonesia

Apart from AWS, Indonesia is also home to several big tech companies that have made significant investment announcements in recent times. These include the launching of new data centers in the country by companies like Google, Tencent, and Alibaba. Facebook and Google also announced plans to have new undersea internet cables connecting Southeast Asia to North America with the project aiming to supply faster internet to the country.

Earlier this year, Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced plans to move the capital to Kalimantan, a move that has created opportunities for more investments in the country.  The country’s digital economy was reported to still grow in double digits, as cited by the Bain e-conomy SEA report.

AWS Indonesia announcement delights customers

As expected, the biggest winner from this major announcement is the customers. Some of the organizations across Indonesia that have moved their mission-critical workloads to the cloud include Adskom, ASEAN Foundation, Bank Commonwealth Indonesia, Dinas Komunikasi dan Informatika Jawa Barat, Happyfresh, Hara Token, Halodoc, Jawa Pos, Kompas, Lion Air, , Tokopedia, Traveloka XL Axiata and many more.

One of the customers is also PT Pos Indonesia, provider of the nation’s postal services, which worked with AWS as part of its digitalization journey. Dr. Faizal Rochmad Djoemadi, CEO of PT Pos Indonesia said, “the digitization and automation of traditional processes, along with business expansion enabled by digital applications, will play a huge role in PT Pos Indonesia’s future strategy. PT Pos Indonesia plans to move its critical and core workloads including digital money transfer to AWS in the AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region.”

This aerial picture shows the residential areas surrounding the city center in Jakarta on December 2, 2021. (Photo by BAY ISMOYO / AFP)

Another customer, Ruparupa.com is one of the leading online shopping sites in Indonesia with over 700,000 customers in the country. The site combines online and conventional shopping experiences with STOPS (Store Pick Up Service), allowing customers to shop online and collect orders at selected stores throughout Indonesia.

“Our e-commerce platform is growing rapidly as the COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged more consumers to shop online, and with the scalability of AWS, we can easily handle this rising demand,” said Ronny Winoto, CTO of Ruparupa.com. “We’re already running the majority of our infrastructure on the world’s leading cloud, and by tapping into the AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region, we can further improve our customer experience with innovative e-commerce services.”

For Tokopedia, an Indonesian technology company and a leading online marketplace with over 100 million monthly active users and 11 million merchant partners, entrusting its mission-critical workloads to AWS was the right choice.

“Indonesia is seeing a surge in digital adoption and accelerated growth in e-commerce. Cloud services, such as AWS, reduce the heavy lifting needed to manage infrastructure and enable us to focus on our customers’ needs. The AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region will allow us to continue to focus on building and strengthening our business capabilities while using the best technology in terms of core computing and technology infrastructure to serve the needs of our business and customers,” said Herman Widjaja, CTO of Tokopedia.

The new AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region is the latest in AWS’s ongoing investments in Indonesia. In 2018, AWS opened an office in Jakarta to support its rapidly growing customer base across the country with new jobs including technical experts, solutions architects, technical account managers (TAMs), partner managers, systems engineers, and professional services providers.

In April 2020, AWS launched AWS Outposts, which offers Indonesian customers and partners access to the same AWS infrastructure, AWS services, application programming interfaces (APIs), and tools in virtually any data center, colocation space, or on-premises facility for a truly consistent hybrid experience. In March 2021, AWS launched its first Amazon CloudFront edge location in Indonesia, offering customers in Indonesia up to 30% lower latency. Amazon CloudFront is a highly secure and programmable content delivery network (CDN) that accelerates the delivery of data, videos, applications, and APIs to users worldwide with low latency and high transfer speeds.

The post AWS launches Region in Indonesia appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

About two months ago, Alibaba Cloud unveiled a new server chip that’s based on advanced 5-nanometer technology. It was dubbed as China’s most advanced chip, a milestone in the country’s pursuit of semiconductor self-sufficiency. The tech giant did not stop there. Adding on to its in-house chip collection, Alibaba apparently has just developed the world’s first, DRAM-based 3D chip that merges logic and memory.

According to Chinese news outlet Pandaily, through a now-deleted post on Chinese social networking site Weibo, Alibaba through its DAMO (Discovery, Adventure, Momentum, and Outlook) Academy has successfully developed a 3D stacked in-memory computing (IMC) chip that can help overcome the von Neumann bottleneck, a limitation in chip speed resulting from the CPU needing to wait for data to be delivered from memory.

The new chip apparently also meets the needs of artificial intelligence (AI) and other scenarios for large bandwidth, high capacity memory, and extreme computing power. In one specific AI test,  the chip improved regular performance by over 10 times.

Clarifying on the chip since the post was deleted shortly after it was posted on Weibo, Alibaba told The Register that the breakthrough chip exists but they declined to provide additional details.

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For context, computers have been designed according to the von Neumann architecture for the past 70 years. Through this architecture, programs and data are held in a memory unit, while the CPU works as a separate unit. Because the memory and processor are separated, data needs to be moved back and forth between the two, making latency unavoidable.

Now,  given the development of advanced processors that can operate much faster than data can be fed to them, the von Neumann model can get quite challenging. At this point, the computing power of processors is increasing at a rate of about 3.1 times every two years. Memory performance however is only rising at a rate of about 1.4 times during the same period.

Reports indicated Alibaba Cloud believes that IMC is the best way to solve these problems. In fact, Alibaba believes this new architecture could be used in virtual/augmented reality, astronomical data calculation, unmanned driving, remote sensing data analysis, and other scenarios in the future.

Alibaba has been part of a growing cohort of technology companies in China venturing further into semiconductors, partly spurred by President Xi Jinping’s goal of achieving self-sufficiency in high-tech sectors. 

To recall, search-engine operator Baidu in August announced it has begun mass production of its artificial intelligence chips, while handset maker Xiaomi is pushing into similar ventures. In the West, tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Tesla are all shunning established chip firms and bringing certain aspects of chip development in-house, based on company announcements and media reports.

The post The newest chip by Alibaba is the world’s first – here’s why appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

“The fundamental underlying assumption is the internet would be the next corporate network. This is important to us as we are convinced that there will be more applications on the internet than retained applications that are still living in our private networks,” said Frederik Janssen, VP of global IT infrastructure portfolio at Siemens, which began its transformation journey in 2018. “If more and more applications are moved to the cloud [and] residing on the internet, this is not a network we own. So how do we secure a network we don’t own?”

Cloud security leader Zscaler was brought in as a strategic partner to enable the Siemens Digitalisation Network initiative. Zscaler was founded in 2007 to make the cloud a safer place to do business. From 2011 onwards, it has been named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with the highest completeness of vision and best ability to execute. That’s a jaw-dropping achievement to have won ten years in a row.

In 2020, Gartner recognized Zscaler as the only leader in the SWG category, a testament to the company’s continued vision and innovation.

Siemens has secured all the traffic of its 350,000 users across more than 180 countries through the Zscaler gateways, driving its security costs down by around 70 percent. Last month, the two companies announced that they are working together to deliver an integrated zero trust security solution for Siemens’ operational technology (OT) system, enabling users to access and manage the entire, unified OT/IT network from anywhere, securely.

Zscaler is 100 percent cloud-delivered. Its SASE-based Zero Trust Exchange security platform puts a company’s defences and controls where the connections occur—the internet—and at the edge, hence services are close to users for a fast experience. Zero trust means it doesn’t allow anyone or anything to communicate on the internet without first being identified and permitted to do so. The Zero Trust Exchange is like a centralised intelligent switchboard in the cloud, where the inspection is done based on three tenets:

1-    Zero network access: connect users to apps, not corporate networks, to prevent over-privileged access and the risk of lateral movement

2-    Zero attack surface: make apps invisible so they can’t be attacked

3-    Zero passthrough connections: use a proxy architecture for complete inspection that quarantines files to prevent threats and data loss

[ From the report “Securing your digital transformation. Corporate IR presentation, September 2021. https://ir.zscaler.com/  ]

Zscaler is the world’s largest inline cloud security platform, with more than 150 data centers across the globe. It secures users in 185 countries, processing more than 160 billion transactions per day, while blocking seven billion threats and policy violations. According to Zacks Equity Research, Zscaler exited fiscal 2021 with over 5,600 customers, noting its Zero Trust Exchange as the key catalyst. It also fulfills another necessity pushed into the limelight by the pandemic: speed.

Because of Zscaler, the Los Angeles Information Technology Agency (ITA) had mere days to execute its business continuity plan to observe the city’s shelter-in-place mandate. That means it had to safely enable 50,000 municipal employees across 44 departments to keep mission-critical services running in the second-largest city in the United States. As a result, Its strategic plan to build a next-generation IT infrastructure was accelerated, including implementing Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) and Zscaler Private Access (ZPA), to allow its staff to work remotely, securely, and efficiently.

“In less than two weeks, we were able to deploy a work-from-anywhere platform that enabled our employees to access all their applications and data from the safety of their homes. Moreover, we did this while keeping critical city services running, such as emergency and health services, trash collection, infrastructure repairs, payment processing, and contact tracing,” said Ted Ross, general manager and CIO at the City of Los Angeles.

The City is just one of over 100 U.S. government agencies and federal integrators that Zscaler counts as clients. The California-based company was also selected by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to participate in a pilot program driving the adoption of zero-trust architectures, following the Biden administration’s executive order on cybersecurity.

The Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange is elegant, effective, quick to implement, and scalable—but it doesn’t stop there. The platform is integrating active defense capabilities to proactively hunt for emerging attack tactics with its acquisition of Smokescreen Technologies, announced in May.

“Today’s most sophisticated cyber threats, like the recent Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, require immediate, high-confidence detections to drive effective response,” said Jay Chaudhry, CEO, chairman, and founder of Zscaler.

“Zscaler is proud to be the industry’s first security vendor to extend a zero-trust architecture with integrated active defense and deception capabilities. With the addition of Smokescreen to our Zero Trust Exchange, our customers will be able to change the economics of cyberattacks by making them far more costly, complex, and difficult for the adversary, both before and during their attempted intrusions.”

The Zero Trust Exchange platform offers a range of unified services, including Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA); Zscaler Private Access (ZPA); Zscaler Business to Business; Zscaler Cloud Protection; and Zscaler Digital Experience. Customers can pick all or choose the services that best suit their requirements and priorities.

There is no company better positioned to help you through your secure digital transformation than the pioneer in cloud security and the leader in zero trust, Zscaler. Click through to learn more.

The post Building on Zero Trust: Every Connection Secured appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Most cloud service providers will advise businesses to have a strategic plan prior to embarking on their cloud adoption journey. This includes understanding cloud technology, the differences in options, and which aspects of the business will benefit from it.

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However, many businesses are still struggling with choosing an appropriate cloud service provider — even if they possess a proper plan. Be it a hybrid, private, or public cloud adoption, the complexities associated with choosing the right cloud service provider may even impede productivity.

In Singapore, cloud adoption has been at its highest since the pandemic started. With remote working still commonplace, enterprises rely heavily on cloud service providers to ensure business goes on.

However, issues with cloud adoption are slowing them down, especially when it comes to data access, managing compliance, and securing the security of their employees and their devices.

Tech Wire Asia spoke to Ho Chye Soon, Singapore Country Manager for Nutanix, who will discuss how ASEAN businesses can navigate the complexities of cloud adoption and find the best cloud service provider to support their cloud strategies.

How are Singaporean businesses handling the complexities of cloud adoption?

Firstly, there is the issue of vendor lock-in. As the world of commerce grows increasingly complex and uncertain, agility and scalability remain top-of-mind considerations for business leaders to pivot their operations as necessary.

Organizations are applying this approach with their technology stacks as well — seeking to avoid being bound to one vendor once all IT environments and systems have been migrated to the cloud.

Ho Chye Soon, Singapore Country Manager, Nutanix

To mitigate this, enterprises can look to integrate a hybrid multi-cloud solution, which grants businesses the flexibility to switch between multiple service providers and customize the offering of each to best suit their unique business needs.

Security is another consideration.

The cyber threat landscape is getting increasingly saturated, with new threats on the horizon each day. As such, businesses must build stringent security protocols into their operations, to safeguard sensitive business data during the cloud migration process. Otherwise, they risk exposing or losing critical data to malicious cyberattacks.

However, complex security systems may also fall short if workers are not equipped with the technical skills and know-how to navigate these processes. To address these pitfalls, businesses need to seek solutions from reliable cloud service providers.

Ideally, they’d offer simplified management consoles that are easy to navigate, which can be pivotal to helping businesses deploy their enterprise workloads safely and securely, with minimal difficulty.

As Singaporean enterprises grow their operations across borders, the issue of data compliance must also be navigated.  This is because regulations vary vastly across industries and nations. As a result, observing data sovereignty laws will require the use of multiple, geographically dispersed cloud environments.

Businesses can overcome this by leveraging hybrid multi-cloud solutions that offer them the flexibility to store massive amounts of non-sensitive data on public clouds while keeping private user data safe and secure on private clouds or on-premise infrastructure.

So is the hybrid multi-cloud the best option?

Though every industry may leverage the cloud for various means, the core desired outcome remains the same across the board — to optimize business operations for efficiency and increase their agility to adapt to the evolving needs of the enterprise.

Hybrid multi-cloud has proven itself to be the best option in addressing these two needs. A flexible hybrid multi-cloud solution enables businesses to select the cloud architecture and solution from multiple cloud service providers that best fit their needs — regardless if it’s a public or private cloud.

In fact, our Enterprise Cloud Index indicates that over 88% of Singaporean businesses find this to be the ideal cloud architecture for their business, because of the simplicity, scalability, and flexibility it offers, regardless of the industry.

Furthermore, being able to select from a subscription-based consumption model that delivers resources as needed enables businesses to scale with their demands, whilst eliminating resource wastage in the process.

All in all, hybrid multi-cloud also provides the smartest economics for businesses, enabling organizations to reduce their total cost of ownership by leveraging existing investments, processes, and skillsets accordingly — thereby eliminating the need for organizations to overhaul their entire operations at once.

How can businesses choose the right cloud service provider then? 

The volatility of the pandemic has meant that remote work will continue to be the default for Singaporean businesses in the near term. Regardless of whether this arrangement will persist in the long run, businesses must prepare for a future in which hybrid work becomes a  hallmark of the new normal.

Enterprises will thus need to rapidly deploy their workers to access high-performance workloads and applications anytime, and from anywhere. As a result, we expect to see a greater momentum of workloads being migrated to the cloud, to deliver the “on-demand” office experience.

Specifically, the pandemic has shone a spotlight on virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) as reliable, scalable technologies that support a sustained transition to a remote workforce.

Choosing the right cloud service provider should meet your business’ core needs — and not just to support remote working activities such as virtual meetings.

Major companies, like leading Japanese automaker Toyota, have fast realized this — and are leveraging solutions such as our hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) to build VDI-driven environments that can run their 3D CAD Design Software remotely, delivering new ways of working for its Engineering Design Group.

Ideal cloud service providers will offer customers flexibility, which can come in how services are priced, such as through a subscription-based pricing model. This will help businesses deploy hybrid multi-cloud solutions in a straightforward way.

Customers should also be able to have the flexibility and freedom to decide what their ideal cloud environment will look like, how and when they can pay for their cloud infrastructure, and how to map the best hardware to their software.

The post Choosing the right cloud service provider shouldn’t be a chore appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Yitian 710 will be used in new servers, named Panjiu, and is designed to further boost its cloud computing business. This would in turn allow Alibaba to compete against US cloud rivals like Amazon, Microsoft, and others.

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With cloud adoption gaining traction, the cloud company now plans to expand its footprint in the Asia Pacific region by setting up data centers in South Korea and Thailand in 2022. The data centers will serve as intelligence backbones to support the nations’ digital economies, and businesses on their journey to transform and innovate.

Alibaba Cloud currently has 24 regional data centers globally, including China North, China South, China East, US West, US East, Europe, United Kingdom, Middle East, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, India, and Indonesia. In July, Alibaba Cloud announced the launch of its first data center in the Philippines by the end of this year. The objective is to extend the reach of its services including elastic compute, databases, security, machine learning, and data analytics.

In South Korea, Alibaba Cloud is expected to enable local businesses of all sizes to deploy mission-critical workloads while enjoying more reliable and secure cloud services with lower latencies. Meanwhile, for Thailand, the data center will offer products and solutions that are in line with Thailand 4.0, the Thai government’s 20-year strategy to promote digital innovation and the development of sustainable technologies.

(Photo by GREG BAKER / AFP)

Enabling the Alibaba Cloud ecosystem

Apart from the opening of new data centers, Alibaba Cloud has also unveiled technologies, products, and solutions to make the public cloud more accessible to enterprises and developers by enhancing its security, availability and improving its adaptability in both cloud-native and on-premise environments.

This includes its fourth generation of ApsaraCompute Shenlong Architecture that carries leading capabilities in terms of container elasticity, storage, Input/output (IO) performance, latency, and chip-level security hardening features.

The self-developed Shenlong architecture is upgraded to support data-intensive applications. Its storage Input/output Operations Per Second (IOPS) increased by 300% to three million IOPS, whereas its network Packets Per Second (PPS) increased by more than 100% to 50 million PPS, while at the same time, the storage and network IO latencies are decreased to as low as 30 and 16 microseconds respectively.

Alibaba Cloud also unveiled the industry’s only large-scale Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) networking capability with a latency as low as 5 microseconds to further accelerate data-intensive applications on the cloud. For example, the updated Shenlong architecture with RDMA can increase the computing performance in data-intensive AI and big data spark scenarios by 30% compared to the mainstream performance of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) network on the cloud.

For enterprises using the hybrid cloud, a new database platform called DBStack (based on Kubernetes) can bring cloud-native database systems to enterprises’ on-premise environments. With DBStack, businesses that are not ready to migrate fully onto the public cloud can still enjoy the benefits of public cloud securely and conveniently in their on-premise environment, bolstering the digitalization process for finance, transportation, and telco industries.

PolarDB, Alibaba’s commercial cloud-based relational database product has also been upgraded to showcase the leading cloud-native database that marks three levels of separation, with further decoupling of memory and CPU cores. The three independent layers can be scaled up or down independently with increased elasticity and better availability and scalability.

The rise of data centers in Asia Pacific

This move by Alibaba Cloud is expected to see more growth in data centers by large cloud providers in the APAC region.

Recently, AWS announced plans to open an infrastructure region in New Zealand in 2024. The new AWS Asia Pacific (Auckland) Region will consist of three Availability Zones (AZs) and join the existing 81 Availability Zones across 25 geographic AWS Regions at launch. The Region will be owned and operated by a local AWS entity in New Zealand. Globally, AWS has announced plans for 24 more Availability Zones and eight more AWS Regions in Australia, India, Indonesia, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, and the new AWS Region in New Zealand.

To recall, Google Cloud Platform in Jakarta opened last year. With lower latency access to data and applications, companies doing business in Indonesia can accelerate their digital transformation through the new data center. It will also help customers meet specific regulatory and compliance requirements and provide more disaster recovery options for customers across APAC. The region has three Cloud zones from the start, enabling high availability workloads. With this region, Google Cloud now offers 24 regions and 73 zones across 17 countries worldwide.

Other cloud providers and tech companies have also continued to invest heavily in data centers in APAC to ensure they can provide customers with the best solutions. While there are concerns about the amount of energy being used by these data centers, most vendors have opted to use more green energy when designing the new centers.

In fact, some vendors are looking towards green data centers. A green data center primarily operates on solar, wind, or hydropower, and the components are designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimal carbon footprint. Some of the typically used components include energy-conserving power supply, centralized humidification, efficient servers, routers, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), and light-emitting diode (LED) systems.

For businesses hoping to reduce their carbon footprint, Alibaba Cloud’s new energy-saving solution offers tools to help customers track carbon emissions, analyze energy consumption, predict electricity generation from new energy sources, and receive recommendations for carbon emission reduction plans and related trading mechanisms.

The post Alibaba Cloud is bringing more data centers to Thailand and Korea by 2022 appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Legacy backup systems rely heavily on hardware storage which requires the IT team to access and recover files manually. While some processes and logs can be automated to speed up the time, it’s still a lengthy process that can cause businesses a huge amount of losses.

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To ensure faster recovery and also better backup, cloud backup is now becoming highly sought after by organizations. Cloud backup is basically having a copy of your backup available on the cloud for your recovery purposes should there be any incidences.

According to IMARC Group’s latest report, titled Cloud Backup Market Report: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2021-2026, the global cloud backup market reached a value of US$3.2 billion in 2020. The cloud backup market is expected to grow by 24.4% by 2026.

Organizations of course should still ensure they practice the age-old 3-2-1 backup rule. Cloud backup provides them with the desired capabilities they need. To understand more about cloud backup and how it differs from legacy backup models, Tech Wire Asia spoke to Dave Russell, Vice President of Enterprise Strategy at Veeam Software.

Is cloud backup is the best option for businesses today?

Dave Russell, Vice President of Enterprise Strategy, Veeam.

The ongoing pandemic has put many organizations in a bind with underperforming business revenue and increasing budget constraints. As a result, many have not been able to update and modernize their backup recovery infrastructures.

Cloud backup models offer these organizations an option to backup on-premises hardware and software with reduced capital expenses. Organizations unwilling to compromise on their data security and recovery measures would find this the best and most affordable option for improving their backup practice.

At Veeam, we believe each organization must have a solid data protection strategy that is unique to each business and feel that the optimal approach does not entail a one-size-fits-all solution. The best approach depends on the organization’s vertical, company size, as well as the type of workload being protected.

For instance, organizations using on-premises applications such as a Microsoft SQL Server can choose to store them at a cloud target instead of writing that data to on-premises storage. On the other hand, organizations with born-in-the-cloud workloads can also choose to protect them in a native environment.

While we do not always prescribe or advocate that cloud backup is the best option, we do recognize that it is a highly attractive option for many businesses today.

So, how does it differ from traditional or legacy backup models?

Legacy backup models are very valid models that capture data at midnight and back them up on on-premises applications. However, we see many organizations these days being increasingly interested in ensuring that they have saved copies of data in geographically dispersed areas for enhanced security.

And they want to back up mission-critical applications more frequently, perhaps using more modern technologies, such as storage array integration or continuous data protection (CDP). This is to avoid data loss during the various types of man-made and natural disasters such as hurricanes and fires.

What makes cloud backup different from traditional legacy backup models is that data can be backed up in multiple locations that could be geographically dispersed. Some organizations may have already implemented the best practice of the 3-2-1 rule, in which they can have 3 or more copies of data, 2 or more of different kinds of media, and 1 data copy being geographically dispersed. Veeam goes one step further to add a new step to that rule for guaranteed data recovery, stating that one of these copies should be immutable. This means that the data cannot be changed, deleted, or encrypted. Additionally, Veeam pioneered a fairly unique capability where we provide automated backup verification to ensure that there are 0 errors in the backup process.

In essence, cloud backup models are much more compatible with the 3-2-1-1-0 rule than legacy backup models.

Is cloud backup vulnerable to cyberattacks as well? 

We have not seen the same level of attack frequency on cloud backup as on-premises, to date. Veeam has found that the most common entry point for cyber risk attacks is from remote desktop deployment or employee phishing attacks. The greatest entry points from a cyber risk perspective and from a cloud backup perspective are not nearly as vulnerable when employees leak data by accident or insider threats, as organizations that back up their data in the cloud are much less vulnerable.

Having said that, insider threats are a genuine concern even with cloud backup. However, it becomes easier to cordon off the cloud backup solutions from the rest of the production data center. This means that organizations can spread the data protection responsibilities by having different administrators with various credentials, such as usernames and passwords. It is also recommended that organizations use multi-factor authentication to provide additional layers of security.

How can businesses protect their cloud backup?

Practicing good digital hygiene is crucial. Digital hygiene refers to ensuring organizations have a proper delineation of responsibilities in terms of proper, strong passwords, as well as having unique passwords for each implementation of the workload that they are protecting.

Organizations deploying cloud through a managed service provider (MSP) have an advantage as MSPs have dealt with such security concerns for decades.

Even before ransomware and cyber threats became a critical issue, service providers had to ensure they could overcome concerns about data leakage, multi-tenancy requirements, or bad actors. Due to this, service providers have been ahead in terms of ensuring that they have the proper safeguards in place.

It is without a doubt that cyberattacks will continue to evolve and increase in sophistication over time. Overall, it comes down to following best practices, ensuring that you have proper safeguards, and verifying the safety of your software and configurations.

Can highly regulated industries opt for cloud backup and cloud storage, given that they deal with valuable data?

Yes, they can, but they may need to ensure that they comply with local regulations. There are specific cloud solutions that are hardened to meet the criteria specified by national governments, which comes with extra protection and credential verifications. An example of tightened solutions includes increased security perimeters, administrator background checks, and equipment in separate cages on separate networks.

Examples of highly regulated industries that use cloud backup include financial services, healthcare, and government sectors. In such cases, it is paramount for organizations to evaluate the provider’s plans to ensure overall security, data retention remains, and how the provider can prevent data leakage. As mentioned in my response, organizations need to conduct multi-verification checks and practice due diligence to understand the capabilities and practices of their partners.

The post Cloud backup ensures better cyberattack recovery appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

It’s worth noting that most cloud providers only effectively ringfence their own infrastructure for protection. The applications and services, and the data they process, remain the security concern of their clients — a situation epitomized by so-called serverless applications, where the infrastructure is deliberately abstracted away from commissioning IT professionals.

Older security approaches such as installing active agents on every asset remain viable in theory, but a single instance of hardware running a couple of hundred VMs means that organizations will be losing massive resources replicating protections across every virtual device — and then having to manually craft alert rules so one incident doesn’t raise dozens of discrete flags, all of which reference the same issue with slight differences details.

Containerized applications that are automatically deployed at scale as demand spikes, for instance, have the potential to replicate security flaws. And like the cloud providers’ attitude, the nature of container repos is such that the responsibility for overall security belongs to the end user.

Whether it’s a zero-day found in an OS, an outdated library compiled into an application, or an oversight on the part of deployment engineers pulling a container image, dropping anti-malware agents liberally across an ever-changing infrastructure doesn’t make for a secure environment.

Cybersecurity platforms designed with modern use cases in mind are at an advantage — instead of trying to fit 2011 cybersecurity methods into a 2021 infrastructure, today’s platforms take a pragmatic approach. Auto-discovery of services on a remote cloud means that security configuration is always fit for purpose, and any change to what’s running will cause a realignment of security policy automatically. In this way, even 2021’s version of “shadow IT” — services being bootstrapped on remote clouds under the IT department’s radar — is covered off. Scalable security resources that automatically adjust help security teams who no longer need to be in a constant state of auditing: the platform does that.

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges for cybersec is hybrid topologies. Hosts running remotely or on-premise get the same protection from VM host-based agents, where a single VSM will protect multiple images. Regardless of whether machines are on bare metal, abstracted, in a cloud of whichever color, rogue elements won’t trigger hundreds of alerts, plus a unified dashboard pulls in real-time stats from everywhere.

Even where agentless operation is not viable, the key is to use lightweight agents where necessary that parse results through a single point to remove reporting duplication. In this way, the type of endpoint and its physical location is irrelevant. Centralized operation also means unified reporting, a single point of control for push updates and logfile analysis, and a security asset distribution center that reacts autonomously. Whether it’s an emerging threat, new infrastructure becoming apparent, or older assets being retired the trick is to stop IT needing to play catch-up with changes in what they’re tasked to protect. Instead of relying on project maintainers to keep individual libraries, containers, or components up to date, autonomous systems cope with people moving on and application libraries (or core components) being deprecated.

Until machines write code, human fallibility will always play a big role in the inherent safeness of online applications and services — in the same way fallible human nature creates the threats against which we need to protect. Using intelligent, autonomous tooling will help cybersecurity teams much more than older technologies being adapted to the new ways that enterprises use information technology.

This article is written in conjunction with Kaspersky. To find out more about how the Kaspersky Hybrid Cloud Security platform can help security teams in fluid and dynamic IT environments, get in touch with experts closest to you.

The post Cloud-first or changing hybrid? The cybersecurity platform that adapts appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

The reality is though, most organizations often only have basic security solutions and leave the cloud security network not as protected as it should be. Unsurprisingly, this leads to an increase in cyberattacks as well, especially with more employees now working remotely and accessing most data and workloads on secured connections.

HOW PREPARED ARE SINGAPOREAN SMES TO DEAL WITH CYBER ATTACKS?

Aaron Raj | 30 September, 2021

According to McAfee Enterprises’ Advanced Threat Research Report: October 2021, financial services were targeted most among reported cloud incidents, followed by healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and professional services.

The report examined cybercriminal activity related to ransomware and cloud threats in the second quarter of 2021. Financial services were targeted in 50% of the top 10 cloud incidents, including incidents in the United States, Singapore, China, France, Canada, and Australia.

The report also showed that 73% of ransomware detections in Q2 2021 were related to the REvil/Sodinokibi family while DarkSide Q2 ransomware attacks extended beyond the oil, gas, and chemical sector to legal services, wholesale, and manufacturing.

“Ransomware has evolved far beyond its origins, and cybercriminals have become smarter and quicker to pivot their tactics alongside a whole host of new bad-actor schemes,” said Raj Samani, McAfee Enterprise fellow, and chief scientist.

“Names such as REvil, Ryuk, Babuk, and DarkSide have permeated into public consciousness, linked to disruptions of critical services worldwide. And with good measure, since the cybercriminals behind these groups, as well as others, have been successful at extorting millions of dollars for their personal gain.”

Remote working continues to increase cloud threats

As Singapore moves back to remote working due to the pandemic, one of the concerns that arise from this is the increase in cloud threats. The report showed that in the second quarter of 2021, there were challenges of shifting cloud security to accommodate a more flexible pandemic workforce and an increased workload, which presented cybercriminals with more potential exploits and targets.

For Jonathan Tan, Managing Director of Asia at McAfee Enterprise, businesses need to ensure they are setting up the right cybersecurity infrastructure to stay resilient against the ever-growing number of supply chain risks and backchannel threats targeting a scattered workforce.

“Adopting a zero-trust approach and educating employees on common cyber threats are critical as cloud technology becomes more and more commonly used,” said Jonathan.

Hence, the cloud security network among businesses needs to be taken more seriously. As more financial services rely on the cloud today, they need to ensure their workloads and apps are well protected on the cloud. More importantly, they need to have visibility on who exactly is accessing the services, which is why a zero-trust approach works best in the industry today.

But the financial services are not the only ones under constant threats. Ransomware continues to target government, telecom, and energy sectors through malware and spam techniques.

Globally, McAfee Enterprise also tracked a 64% increase in publicly reported cyber incidents targeting the public sector during the second quarter of 2021, followed by the entertainment sector with a 60% increase.

The post Increasing cyberattacks targeting the cloud security network in Singapore appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Regulated industries want to leverage the cloud’s flexibility but they need to ensure they can meet all regulatory requirements before moving workloads to the cloud. Other industries may find it less complex but still, need to have a proper framework at hand when moving to the cloud.

CAN A TELCO COMPANY PUSH CLOUD ADOPTION IN MALAYSIA?

Aaron Raj | 8 September, 2021

VMWare Cloud (VMC) on AWS is a hybrid cloud solution that allows businesses to extend their on-premises virtual machine environments to the AWS Cloud. A recent IDC whitepaper found that customers adopting VMC on AWS realized annual revenue gains of USD9.6 million per organization on average. These gains resulted from increasing staff productivity, operational resilience, and business agility.

For David Lim, APJ Head of VMWare Cloud on AWS, the best way to make use of these savings is to re-invest them into upskilling the workforce, enabling data center employees to have a smooth transition into the cloud. Employees previously tasked with managing virtual machines on-premises should be upskilled with cloud skills to allow them to focus on driving business innovation instead.

And this is what managed services provider (MSP) Cloud Kinetics has done with multiple enterprises, FSIs, and educational companies in the region. Tech Wire Asia caught up with Ted Aravinthan, CRO, and Ng Wen Chi, CTO of Cloud Kinetics as well as David to understand more about how businesses can benefit from VMC on AWS.

David, Ted, and Wen Chi explain why picking the right cloud infrastructure is a prerogative for businesses looking to move to the cloud.

Why should organizations opt for VMC on AWS?

David – Businesses are looking to move from on-premises to the cloud. VMware allows them to have these additional conversations on their cloud journey. Previously, customers had to transform their entire business. VMC allows them to move to the cloud without having to rearchitect their business strategy. It gives them the option to move quickly onto the AWS cloud.

A recent example of this is the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, which is responsible for the qualifications of thousands of students in New Zealand. They need to move to the cloud quickly as their data center was closing. And they have to move applications to the cloud but maintain only support for examinations as well.

Through the AWS partnership with VMware, they could leverage the hybrid cloud extension on VMware to remotely move 10 applications into VMC. The entire process was completed over a weekend and didn’t disrupt any users.

As such, using VMC on AWS, they can support more business demands and spend less time worrying about hardware. They could even take a day out of a week from server maintenance and focus more on app modernization. VMC allowed them to do the entire process remotely and quickly during the pandemic.

There are also several non-public reference companies like banks and financial services. Despite being highly regulated, they are under a lot of pressure to innovate. They leverage VMC to move legacy applications and hardware to the cloud. Over time, they will be able to transform and modernize more services.

What are the challenges organizations have when moving to the cloud?

Ted – I think the biggest challenge industries face is that no one size fits all. One of the common things we see is businesses not knowing what they don’t know, especially when it comes to their cloud infrastructure. And this relates to the skillsets required. Companies hire skilled resources and move for sake of moving, without knowing the vision. The lack of vision is where we come in and help them derive this. Some customers want to do things tactically in their cloud journey, and we help tactically as well.

In Southeast Asia, most of the larger customers are used to the on-premises world. They want immediate returns without considering the fact of moving workloads at first and seeing which ones work pragmatically. No big bang approach to the cloud makes sense. It takes a multi-layered approach to the cloud.

They need to look at two to three years and put a plan or run a few workloads and make a decision if they want to go full-blown. They can be experimental or strategic. It’s a path that businesses need to take and an outcome that they need to look into.

Can businesses be experimental on the cloud?

Ted – Yes, they can. They’re already used to a VMware environment. They’re already used to a VMware environment. Now, all they need to do is move a couple of workloads to the cloud and it’s the fastest way to do it.

When you look at VMS on AWS, it’s leveraging existing VMware assets or skillsets on demand. Customers can move workloads to the cloud, take network and security operations and enhance it with cloud security and network, and upskill them. If they don’t like it, they can just move it back.

This works best for regulated industries. Banks and finance need this due to compliance. VMC allows them to be experimental, especially when it comes to moving workloads and testing. It only takes about 90 minutes to set up and the entire process can be done in two hours. It is much faster than any other way.

David – This is also a perfect opportunity for non-regulated industries. VMC cloud is an extension of their software-defined data center running on AWS infrastructure. They can do it quickly.

How does picking the right cloud infrastructure help deal with skills shortages?

Wen Chi – There is definitely a talent shortage and MSP helps them expedite the process. We have a few hundred migrations and our customers have had a smooth experience moving to the cloud.

Ted – MSP is important but the whole VMC proposition on cloud on AWS is important as well. The customer is already using VMware. They have people that know how to use this on-premises. They are used to the tools. With VMC, it doesn’t matter what’s under the hood, be it cloud or both. They just need to use the skillsets and move.

If you’re doing it without VMC, you need to start from scratch. With VMC, it is all about agility. For folks that are not regulated, if you are VMware customers with the right skills, this is an ideal opportunity for them with the minimal amount of additional skillset and risks involved plus the fastest pace of migration to do this.

But the same also applies to regulated customers. For banks, they only need to see if they can use the cloud and run workloads, as the rest of the tool stacks are VMware. As long you tick the right boxes on the cloud, and this is the most tested and validated way of doing it.

Wen chi – This is why VMC is the perfect solution to mitigate the issue. Customers can use their existing talents and skillset to move to the cloud and slowly build new cloud-native skillsets as well.

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