Kevin Jackson

(This post first appeared in IBM's Point B and Beyond) The definition of DevOps emphasizes collaboration and communication between software developers and other IT professionals while automating the software delivery and infrastructure change process. While agile software development and the use of automated infrastructure configuration tools stand proudly in the DevOps spotlight, little has been said about the actual infrastructure that modern tools such as Puppet and Chef automate. DevOps in Hybrid IT Environments Much has been written about Chaos Monkey, a tool that ensures individual software components work independently by randomly killing instances and services within Netflix's Amazon Web Service (AWS) infrastructure. This process clearly stresses AWS infrastructure operations as automation scripts reconfigure infrastructure components on the fly. Without takin... (more)

Are Electronic Medical Records Worth It? By @Kevin_Jackson | @CloudExpo #Cloud

The use of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) by medical professionals has increased dramatically. According to HealthIT.gov, 2015 statistics show that 56 percent of all U.S. office-based physicians (MD/DO) have demonstrated meaningful use of electronic health records. The downside of these statistics is that when HIPAA was enacted in 1996, privacy was not a major focus and it actually took HHS eight years to publish the initial HIPAA Privacy Rule. It then took the agency several more years to publish initial security rules which directed "covered entities" (e.g., providers, hospit... (more)

What Has NIST Done for Me Lately? By @Kevin_Jackson | @CloudExpo #Cloud

According to a study, 82 percent of federal IT professional respondents reported that they were using the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) cybersecurity framework to improve their security stance. The survey also demonstrated that the document is being used as a stepping stone to a more secure government. When I first read this, my immediate reaction was a resounding, "So what!" These results tell me that US Federal Government agencies are using US Government guidance to do their US Government job. Isn't that what you would expect? Making an impression on me ... (more)

Cloud Computing + Things By @Kevin_Jackson | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M

Cloud Computing + Things = ‘Information Excellence,’ Not IoT The Internet of Things (IoT) has quickly become the next "be all to end all" in information technology. Touted as how cloud computing will connect everyday things together, it is also feared as the real- life instantiation of The Terminator's Skynet, where sentient robot team with an omnipresent and all-knowing entity that uses technology to control, and ultimately destroy, all of humanity. Not there yet Lucky for the humans among us, the technical capabilities of both cloud computing and IoT are way behind these Orwel... (more)

Endpoint Device Management By @Kevin_Jackson | @CloudExpo #Cloud

Mobility and cloud computing have combined to obliterate any so-called network security perimeter. Corporate data has now been let loose to roam in a world of cyber thieves, manipulators and untrusted infrastructure. What is a security professional to do? According to Bill Odell, the Dell Vice President of Marketing for Endpoint Device Management, you need to protect the enterprise front door. Since devices are the network's gateways, endpoint device management is now the key to protecting your enterprise data. That is why I was truly excited to speak with Bill at Dell Peak Perf... (more)