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IT Simplified: Cloud Orchestration and its Use Cases

What is Cloud Orchestration?

Cloud orchestration refers to the centralized management of automated tasks across different cloud systems. It involves controlling automated jobs from various cloud tools through a unified platform. By consolidating control through an orchestration layer, organizations can establish interconnected workflows. Often, IT processes are developed reactively, leading to isolated automated tasks and fragmented solutions. However, this approach is inefficient and costly. To address these challenges, IT operations decision-makers, in collaboration with cloud architects, are adopting orchestration to connect siloed jobs into cohesive workflows that encompass the entire IT operations environment.

Benefits of Cloud orchestration:

  1. Enhanced creativity in IT operations: A fully orchestrated hybrid IT system allows for a more innovative approach to problem-solving and efficient IT operations.
  2. Comprehensive control: Organizations gain a holistic view of their IT landscape, eliminating concerns about partial visibility and providing a single pane of glass view.
  3. Guaranteed compliance: Orchestrating the entire system ensures built-in checks and balances, leading to consistent compliance across the organization.
  4. Powerful API management: Orchestrated workflows can leverage APIs as tools to perform specific tasks triggered by events, resulting in seamless coordination and synchronicity.
  5. Cost control: Cloud-based systems require an automation-first approach to effectively manage resources, optimize costs, and potentially reduce overall expenses.
  6. Future-proofing: It allows IT operations teams to have peace of mind regarding the future of their IT environments, as orchestration enables adaptability and proactive management.
  7. Single point of control: The right tool can serve as a centralized control point for the entire system, ensuring superior performance and consistency.

Cases :

  1. Automating tasks with cloud service providers: Modern workload automation solutions can orchestrate hybrid or multi-cloud environments, unifying the IT system and enabling seamless automation across different platforms and providers.
  2. Compliance and security updates across hybrid or multi-cloud: Orchestration simplifies the process of implementing compliance and security updates across diverse applications and cloud infrastructures, reducing manual effort and ensuring consistency.
  3. Hybrid cloud storage and file transfer: It streamlines the movement of data between public and private cloud platforms in a hybrid environment, ensuring fast, accurate, and secure data pipelines.

Given the prevalence of hybrid cloud environments today, cloud orchestration is vital for organizations to fully leverage the benefits of their hybrid landscapes. Proper orchestration acts as a single point of cloud management, ensuring seamless inter-connectivity between systems. When combined with workload automation, cloud orchestration also minimizes errors by reusing automated tasks as building blocks.

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security servers Service software

IT Simplified: DMARC

DMARC

What is DMARC?

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) is an open email authentication protocol that provides domain-level protection of the email channel. DMARC authentication detects and prevents email spoofing techniques used in phishing, business email compromise (BEC) and other email-based attacks.
DMARC, the sole widely adopted technology, enhances the trustworthiness of the “from” domain in email headers by leveraging existing standards.
The domain owner can establish a DMARC record in the DNS servers, specifying actions for unauthenticated emails.

To understand DMARC it is also important to know a few other mail authentication protocols  specifically SPF and DKIM. SPF Organizations can authorize senders within an SPF record published in the Domain Name System (DNS).
The record contains approved sender IP addresses, including those authorized to send emails on behalf of the organization. Publishing and checking SPF records provide a reliable defense against email threats that falsify “from” addresses and domains.
DKIM is an email authentication protocol enabling receivers to verify if an email was genuinely authorized by its owner. It allows an organization to take responsibility for transmitting a message by attaching a digital signature to it. Verification is done through cryptographic authentication using the signer’s public key published in the DNS. The signature ensures that parts of the email have not been modified since the time the digital signature was attached.

How DMARC works

How does DMARC Work?


To pass DMARC authentication, a message must successfully undergo SPF and SPF alignment checks or DKIM and DKIM alignment checks. If a message fails DMARC, senders can instruct receivers on what to do with that message via a DMARC policy. There are three DMARC policies the domain owner can enforce: none (the message is delivered to the recipient and the DMARC report is sent to the domain owner), quarantine (the message is moved to a quarantine folder) and reject (the message is not delivered at all).

The DMARC policy of “none” is a good first step. This way, the domain owner can ensure that all legitimate email is authenticating properly. The domain owner receives DMARC reports to help them make sure that all legitimate email is identified and passes authentication. Once the domain owner is confident they have identified all legitimate senders and have fixed authentication issues, they can move to a policy of “reject” and block phishing, business email compromise, and other email fraud attacks. As an email receiver, an organization can ensure that its secure email gateway enforces the DMARC policy implemented to the domain owner.

What is DMARC in Marketing Cloud?

DMARC can be used by email service providers and domain owners to set policies that limit the usage of their domain. One such policy is restricting the domain’s usage in “from” addresses, which effectively prohibits anyone from using the domain in the “from” field except when using the provider’s webmail interface. any email service provider or domain owner can publish this type of restrictive DMARC policy can be published by Having a powerful CLOUD SERVICES is very important as will protect employees against inbound email threats.

Points to note while authenticating DMARC:

  • Due to the volume of DMARC reports that an email sender can receive and the lack of clarity provided within DMARC reports, fully implementing DMARC authentication can be difficult.
  • DMARC parsing tools can help organizations make sense of the information included within DMARC reports.
  • Additional data and insights beyond what’s included within DMARC reports help organizations to identify email senders faster and more accurately. This helps speed up the process of implementing DMARC authentication and reduces the risk of blocking legitimate email.
  • Organizations can create a DMARC record in minutes and start gaining visibility through DMARC reports by enforcing a DMARC policy of “none.”
  • By properly identifying all legitimate email senders – including third-party email service providers—and fixing any authentication issues, organizations should reach a high confidence level before enforcing a DMARC policy of “reject”.

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servers Service software Storage

IT Simplified: Software Defined Data Center (SDDC)

SDDC

What is an SDDC?

An SDDC is a traditional data center facility where organizational data, applications, networks, and infrastructure are centrally housed and accessed. It is the hub for IT operations and physical infrastructure equipment, including servers, storage devices, network equipment, and security devices.

In contrast, a software-defined data center is an IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) platform that services an organization’s software, infrastructure, or platform needs. An SDDC can be housed on-premise, at an MSP, and in private, public, or hosted clouds. (For our purposes, we will discuss the benefits of hosting an SDDC in the cloud.) Like traditional data centers, SDDCs also host servers, storage devices, network equipment, and security devices.

Here’s where the differences come in.

Unlike traditional data centers, an SDDC uses a virtualized environment to deliver a programmatic approach to the functions of a traditional data center. SDDCs rely heavily on virtualization technologies to abstract, pool, manage, and deploy data center functions. Like server virtualization concepts used for years, SDDCs abstract, pool, and virtualize all data center services and resources in order to:

  1. Reduce IT resource usage
  2. Provide automated deployment and management
  3. Increased flexibility
  4. Business agility

Key SDDC Architectural Components include:

  • Compute virtualization, where virtual machines (VMs)—including their operating systems, CPUs, memory, and software—reside on cloud servers. Compute virtualization allows users to create software implementations of computers that can be spun up or spun down as needed, decreasing provisioning time.
  • Network virtualization, where the network infrastructure servicing your VMs can be provisioned without worrying about the underlying hardware. Network infrastructure needs—telecommunications, firewalls, subnets, routing, administration, DNS, etc.—are configured inside your cloud SDDC on the vendor’s abstracted hardware. No network hardware assembly is required.
  • Storage virtualization, where disk storage is provisioned from the SDDC vendor’s storage pool. You get to choose your storage types, based on your needs and costs. You can quickly add storage to a VM when needed.
  • Management and automation software. SDDCs use management and automation software to keep business critical functions working around the clock, reducing the need for IT manpower. Remote management and automation is delivered via a software platform accessible from any suitable location, via APIs or Web browser access.

What is the difference between SDDC and cloud?

A software-defined data center differs from a private cloud, since a private cloud only has to offer virtual-machine self-service, beneath which it could use traditional provisioning and management. Instead, SDDC concepts imagine a data center that can encompass private, public, and hybrid clouds.

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cloud computing servers Storage

IT Simplified: Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is a combination of servers and storage into a distributed infrastructure platform with intelligent software to create flexible building blocks that replace legacy infrastructure consisting of separate servers, storage networks, and storage arrays.Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is a paradigm shift in data center technologies that aims to:

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security servers Storage Tech. Trends

IT Simplified: Network Firewall

A firewall is a network security device, either hardware or software-based, which monitors all incoming and outgoing traffic and based on a defined set of security rules it accepts, rejects or drops that specific traffic.A firewall establishes a barrier between secured internal networks and outside untrusted network, such as the Internet.

History and Need for Firewall

Before Firewalls, network security was performed by Access Control Lists (ACLs) residing on routers. ACLs are rules that determine whether network access should be granted or denied to specific IP address.But ACLs cannot determine the nature of the packet it is blocking. Also, ACL alone does not have the capacity to keep threats out of the network. Hence, the Firewall was introduced.

How Firewall Works

Firewall match the network traffic against the rule set defined in its table. Once the rule is matched, associate action is applied to the network traffic. For example, Rules are defined as any employee from HR department cannot access the data from code server and at the same time another rule is defined like system administrator can access the data from both HR and technical department. Rules can be defined on the firewall based on the necessity and security policies of the organization.

From the perspective of a cooperate business, network traffic can be either outgoing or incoming. Firewall maintains a distinct set of rules for both the cases. Mostly the outgoing traffic, originated from the server itself, allowed to pass. Still, setting a rule on outgoing traffic is always better in order to achieve more security and prevent unwanted communication.

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servers software Storage

IT Simplified: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

A business continuity and disaster recovery plan is a broad guide designed to keep a business running, even in the event of a disaster. This plan focuses on the business as a whole, but drills down to specific scenarios that might create operational risks. With business continuity planning, the aim is to keep critical operations functioning, so that your business can continue to conduct regular business activities even under unusual circumstances.

When followed correctly, a business continuity plan should be able to continue to provide services to internal and external stakeholders, with minimal disruption, either during or immediately after a disaster. A comprehensive plan should also address the needs of business partners and vendors.

A disaster or data recovery plan is a more focused, specific part of the wider business continuity plan. The scope of a disaster recovery plan is sometimes narrowed to focus on the data and information systems of a business. In the simplest of terms, a disaster recovery plan is designed to save data with the sole purpose of being able to recover it quickly in the event of a disaster. With this aim in mind, disaster recovery plans are usually developed to address the specific requirements of the IT department to get back up and running—which ultimately affects the business as a whole.

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computing security servers

IT Simplified: Data Analytics

Data Analytics deals with leveraging data to derive meaningful information. The process of Data Analytics primarily involves collecting and organizing Big Data to extract valuable insights, thereby increasing the overall efficiency of business processes.

Data Analysts work with various tools and frameworks to draw lucrative insights.An analyst will focus on how you collect, process, and organize data in order to create actionable results.A data analyst will also find the most appropriate way to present the data in a clear and understandable way. With Data Analysis, organizations are able to take initiatives to respond quickly to emerging market trends; as a result, increase revenue.

Why Data Analytics is Important?

Implementing Data Analytics in various industries can optimize efficiency and workflow. The financial sector is one of the earliest sectors to adopt Data Analytics in banking and finance. For example, Data Analytics is used in calculating the credit score of a person because it takes many factors into consideration for determining the lending risks.Moreover, it helps to predict the market trends and assess risks.

Data Analytics is not limited to focusing on more profits and ROI. It can also be used in the healthcare industry, crime prevention, etc. It uses statistics and advanced analytical techniques to generate valuable insights from the data and help businesses in making better data-driven decisions. Data analytics looks more at statistics and the kinds of data analysis used to connect diverse data sources and trying to find connections between the results.

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