Blog by Mike Small

Blog
Cloud Codes of Conduct Get the EU Green Light, but More Is Still Needed
by Mike Small
Green Light On May 20 th , 2021 it was announced that the EU Cloud Code of Conduct had received official approval by the Belgian Data Protection Authority, following the positive opinion issued by the European Data Protection Board.  At the same time, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) comprised of all the European Data Protection Authorities (DPA) provided a favourable opinion that the CISPE Data Protection Code of Conduct complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This has been a long journey – in 2017 we published a Leadership...
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Business Continuity and the Cloud
by Mike Small
On Wednesday March 10 th at 1am in the morning a fire started that destroyed a major data centre that provides cloud services from OVHcloud . Thankfully no one was injured but this should be a wake up call for cloud service users to check that they have factored the use of cloud services into their business continuity plans. Digital Transformation must include Business Continuity Planning As organizations go through digital transformation, they increasingly turn to using cloud services.  These allow them to develop new applications and create new ways of doing business...
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Does Microsoft Double Key Encryption Help with Schrems II?
by Mike Small
On July 16 th , 2020 the European Court of Justice issued its decision on the adequacy of the protection provided by the EU-US Data Protection Shield for the transfer of personal data for commercial purposes by an economic operator established in an EU Member State to another economic operator established in a third country.  The use of cloud services is now commonplace and has been increased due to the need for working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic.  In addition, unstructured files like documents, spreadsheets and slide decks that are stored in these services often...
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AWS – A new Vision for Hybrid IT?
by Mike Small
Attending AWS re:Invent is always an exceptional experience and, despite it being virtual, this year was no different. As usual, there were the expected announcements of bigger better and faster services and components. AWS always shows a remarkable level of innovation with many more announcements than it is practical to cover comprehensively. Therefore, in this blog, I will focus on what I think are some of the highlights in the areas of hybrid IT, edge computing, machine learning as well as security and compliance. There is an old adage – “Keep it Simple Stupid” and...
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GCP Trust, Security and Compliance
by Mike Small
In their race towards digital transformation, organizations are using cloud services to accelerate the development of new apps and improve efficiency. They allow new applications to be rapidly developed, existing applications to be modernized and deployed without additional capital spend. This provides important business benefits but also increases the challenges for the cloud customer to ensure cyber-security and regulatory compliance. It is in this light that the recent announcements from GCP (Google Cloud Platform) need to be understood. Trust but Verify Initially, cloud...
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IBM Cloud for Financial Services
by Mike Small
On July 22 nd , 2020 IBM announced their IBM Cloud for Financial Services – what is this, why have IBM taken this step, and what does this announcement mean? Financial Services Compliance Challenges One recurring challenge for all organizations is complying with the ever-increasing number of laws and regulations. When IT services are delivered on-premises organizations often believe that this ensures the oversight, control and visibility needed to ensure and prove compliance. This is not the case with cloud-delivered services where there is a shared responsibility model and...
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Cloud Security Posture Management Tools – What They Are and Why You Need One
by Mike Small
Many security product vendors are now offering CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management) as part of their portfolio - so what is CSPM and why might you need it?  In their race towards digital transformation, organizations are using cloud services to accelerate the development of new apps and improve efficiency. This provides many important business benefits but also increases the challenges of ensuring cyber-security and regulatory compliance. CSPM solutions are intended to provide a way to identify and control some of these risks.  They supplement CASBs (Cloud Access...
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Will Azure Arc Help Hybrid IT Customers to Find the Pot of Gold?
by Mike Small
At Ignite in November 2019 Microsoft announced Azure Arc which is now in public preview. Azure Arc extends Azure Resource Manager capabilities to cover Linux and Windows servers, as well as Kubernetes clusters on any infrastructure across on-premises, and multi-cloud. In French “L’arc-en-ciel” is the word for rainbow so will Azure Arc help customers to find a much-needed solution to their hybrid multi-cloud management challenges? The Hybrid Management Challenge As well as on-premises IT services, most organizations are now using cloud services from multiple...
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IBM Cloud Satellite Announcements
by Mike Small
The idea behind cloud computing used to be simple – let the cloud service provider provide and manage the IT services and infrastructure while you get on with your business. However, reality got in the way and cloud computing has become yet another dimension in the complex web of IT service delivery. It is against this backdrop that the announcement of IBM Cloud Satellite at this year’s THINK conference needs to be judged. Public Cloud meets the real world The public cloud provides great flexibility for developers - allowing them to obtain the computing resources they...
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COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Privacy Is not the only Challenge
by Mike Small
In the UK there are plans to use a mobile ‘phone app to trace people who have been in contact with someone who has COVID-19 to warn them to go into quarantine in order to slow the spread of the virus. This approach is reported to have been successful in other countries, but it has raised concerns over individual privacy and how the government might use the data. However, while data analytics and other techniques can help with the pandemic privacy is not the only challenge. Quarantine Works Plagues are not new, and history has taught us that the most effective response to a...
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