DNC Hacks
Outages were not the only issue in 2016 . The Democratic National Committee suffered some hacked and leaked e-mail that may have helped change minds in the last presidential election . Politics aside , it is clear that the DNC had to deal with some embarrassing bits of information that put them quickly on the defensive , much like a business with emails that it would rather not been made public .
The DNC failed to anticipate these issues in advance . Consequently , we have learned that a coordinated and targeted cyber-attack can greatly influence the outcome of an election if systems are left vulnerable . Historically , election-rigging was something that only happened in third world countries . The involvement of state-sanctioned Russian hackers opened a lot of eyes to the vulnerability of our systems . While there is nothing that is 100 percent effective when it comes to protecting email servers , or any server for that matter , you can bet that any vulnerability will be found and exploited if the hacker has enough incentive .
Brexit ( Border Laws )
Events such as Brexit forced global IT departments to reconsider border laws , as related to movement of information across state lines . While things did change , IT was able to keep up with the changes in legal issues they knew would be forthcoming . The lessons learned from Brexit are that compliance is something that is ever-changing , thus should reside in its own domain .
First Generation Cloud Implementations
Finally , and more to the cloud computing side of things , we have seen the Global 2000 deploy their first generation of cloud applications . By far , the large majority involved migrations from traditional systems , with a few net-new applications and some data stores mixed in .
In terms of the viability of the cloud , these were often proof-of-concepts . They provided enterprises will real experiences as to what it involves in resources and expertise to move the workloads into the cloud . These applications also proved the cost viability of cloud computing , since they provided real metrics for cost savings .
Enterprises discovered that although they came to the cloud for cost savings , they stayed in the cloud for time-to-market and agility advantages . No longer would IT have to wait months to have Procurement purchase servers for needed applications . Changes could , and can be made to hardware footprints with just the use of a public cloud console .
Actions to be Taken - 2017
So , what is next in 2017 ? A few events or planned events come to mind :
• The New Trump Administration
• Security Becomes a Priority
• The Move from Planning to Implementation
The New Trump Administration
There is all manner of speculation about how the new president will deal with IT issues and technology , but the most likely path will be to see more of the same . IT will still have to deal with government regulations that come from a bureaucracy that presidents typically can ’ t change in four years .
But this still leaves questions about policy changes . The largest issue is Net Neutrality , which is a concern for all providers , including and especially cloud providers , who deliver technology over the Internet . No provider wants to have their packets placed at the back of the line , over others who pay more .
Security Becomes a Priority
As we can see from the security-related events of 2016 , there is much to consider . With the impact of hacks , most of which made the national news , the Global 2000 needs to be diligent around what their vulnerabilities really are , and how to proactively defend themselves .
This applies more to people and policies than it does technology . As we move these systems into the cloud , the technology is available as a service to encrypt data at rest , and in flight . Thus data in the cloud is protected even if accessed . This was certainly an option back in 2016 with on premises systems , but few IT shops leveraged encryption for on premises systems , even for high risk data . That needs to change this year , cloud or no-cloud .
8 | THE DOPPLER | WINTER 2017