Elastic App Search Ready for On-Premise Deployment
July 29, 2019
One of the most successful enterprise search companies, Elastic, is bringing its cloud-based App Search platform down to Earth. The company announces this development in its blog post, “Elastic App Search: Now Available as a Self-Managed Download.” Their director of product marketing, Diane Tetrault, writes:
“Empowered with valuable feedback from the community over the last few months’ beta program, the team has worked hard to bring the simplicity and power of the Elastic App Search Service to any infrastructure. It’s now available to download and deploy at scale, alongside the default distribution of Elastic Stack 7.2 (or later), anywhere.
We noted:
“While Elastic App Search has been around for over a year as a cloud-based solution, this release represents an important milestone. It highlights our commitment to offer the greatest flexibility in how and where developers deploy next-generation search experiences. Whether it be an online store, a geolocal directory, a vast music collection, or a SaaS application, Elastic App Search is the quickest way to build fluid and engaging search experiences. … “It is no secret that Elasticsearch is a powerhouse for search use cases of all kinds. That said, with great power comes great configurability. Our team worked relentlessly to channel the limitless potential of Elasticsearch into a streamlined package, purpose-built for application search use cases. In other words, you can now bring the relevance, scale, and speed of Elasticsearch to any application you’re building.”
App Search is free to use alongside the default distribution of the Elastic Stack. Naturally, the platform includes features Elastic users have come to rely on, like schema-free indexing, language-specific text analysis, pre-configured algorithms, relevance tuning, astute analytics, and impressive APIs and UI frameworks. In addition, they are introducing new user-management features that allow for easy-to-use role-based access controls or the built-in user management. Interested readers can check out the free trial.
Elastic began as Elasticsearch Inc. in 2012, simplified its name in 2015, and went public in 2018. The company is based in Mountain View, California, and maintains offices around the world. It also happens to hiring for quite a few positions at the time of this writing, in case any readers are interested.
Cynthia Murrell, July 29, 2019
Sockpuppet Image Source
July 23, 2019
I read “Turn Selfies into Classical Portraits with the AI That Fuels Deepfakes.” I gave the system a spin. I uploaded a picture from this week’s DarkCyber. The system generated a wonderful image usable by anyone with access to a source of images; for example, Bing Images or Facebook. Here’s the result:
Working well. Cloud centric or a laptop? I loved the explanation: “Huge traffic.” Back to those scaling lectures.
Stephen E Arnold, July 23, 2019
Amazonia, July 22, 2019
July 22, 2019
About that JEDI contract? The big news is that President Trump is going to check out the $10 billion deal for the Department of Defense’s cloud computing initiative. The driver of the Bezos bulldozer owns the Washington Post. Allegedly Mr. Trump refers to the prestigious “real news” outfit as “Amazon’s Washington Post.” A good sign? Who knows. Other Amazon items the DarkCyber team processed this week were less interesting. Here’s a few which seemed intriguing.
Amazon-SUE-ticals
Amazon wants patient data. (Note: With the patient data comes useful information about the prescription itself. Doctors in Florida, are you paying attention?) CNBC, which continues to surprise as a source of useful information, published “Amazon Threatens to Sue Major Pharmacy Player If It Prevents PillPack from Accessing Patient Drug Data.” We noted this statement in the write up:
PillPack was informed this week that it will soon be cut off from accessing that data via a third-party entity, ReMy Health — a move that could seriously complicate its business. Amazon is considering legal action against Surescripts to halt those efforts, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential. One person told CNBC that PillPack has already sent a cease-and-desist letter to Surescripts.
Several observations:
- Executives are fearful of Amazon. For a reason, read “Amazon Brand Control” below
- These data feed into other Amazon “areas of interest”. DarkCyber speculates that delivery information, compliance data, and policeware services may benefit
- Amazon doesn’t have a direct deal with Surescripts.
DarkCyber believes that Amazon’s “customers” may provide a bit of shadow power to make “sure” the information is provided. And if Surescripts decides to sue Amazon in an expensive, lengthy court battle? A deal may result. Worth monitoring this pharma-SUE-tical matter? Yep.
The Pesky EU and Amazon
“Antitrust: Commission Opens Investigation into Possible Anti-Competitive Conduct of Amazon” makes clear that the European Commission has a new project for some of its lawyers, INSEAD graduates, and accountants: Amazon. Here’s the problem:
Amazon has a dual role as a platform: (i) it sells products on its website as a retailer; and (ii) it provides a marketplace where independent sellers can sell products directly to consumers.
Is Amazon a monopoly? Judge for yourself by reading “Amazon Brand Control.”
Amazon Brand Control
The Rupert Murdoch “real news” outfit published “Amazon Seeks More Brand Control.” DarkCyber thought the story left an important point unstated; for example, monopolies exercise their power directly and by fiat. The “real news” outfit reported:
The program — which allows brand rights to be bought for a fixed price on 60 days’; notice—… is part of a push by Amazon to obtain a stable of exclusive brands for the platform.
What happens if a “brand” does not want to play ball? Well, there’s eBay, driving for Uber, or an Amazon warehouse job. You can read the write up for free if you can find the dead tree version of the Murdoch property for Friday, July 19, 2019, B-1. If not, you can click here but you may have to pay. “Cutting out the middleman” is a nice way of saying, “My way or the highway.” A rose by any other name is still a — Prime day rose?
Bloomberg Identifies Amazon’s Most Serious Research Project
Bloomberg’s judgment can be measured against its reports of spy chips on motherboards. Now the company has turned its attention to Amazon’s research projects. Forget the policeware and intelware activities. The rubber hits the door mat with Amazon’s retail store experiments. You can get the Bloomberg analysis of Amazon’s “most ambitious research project” in this July 18, 2019, essay/analysis. Note that you may have to pay for this insight. The write up states:
Will all this work be worth it? Some Go stores seem almost deserted except for the lunchtime rush. Employees familiar with Amazon’s internal projections say the outlets in Chicago, in particular, are falling short of expectations, and the company has had to resort to raffles and giveaways of tote bags and other branded goodies. Yet, as the turbulent history of the project suggests, the Go store isn’t so much the culmination of the company’s efforts but something closer to an ongoing experiment.
Plus, there’s a picture:
DarkCyber heard that in one Go store, humans were added because theft was an issue.
Amazon Police Map
“Here’s The Most Complete Map So Far Of Amazon’s Ring Camera Surveillance Partnerships With Local Police” looks like this:
Is Amazon in the policeware business? You judge for yourself by checking out this mostly ignored item. Also, how many of these “installations” are trials, freebies, and demonstrations? Some trial are ending; for example, Orlando’s.
For more on this topic, DarkCyber offers a for fee webinar on this topic. Write us at darkcyber333 at yandex dot com.
Prime Day Data
DarkCyber has no way of knowing if the data in “Amazon Just Announced Prime Day Data, and the Staggering Numbers Beat Black Friday and Cyber Monday Combined” are accurate. But the numbers do seem to be beefier than those reported by Nordstrom and other outfits of that ilk.
So how big? Well…
- 175 million items sold
- 175 million Prime members
- Each Prime member bought 1.75 items
Do these numbers look similar? Sophisticated analysis for sure.
First Transnational Bank of Amazon
The FTBA does not exist yet, but some think it may arrive. “Can Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon Transform Banking? Yes, and They’re Closer Than You Think” states:
Amazon’s competitive advantage is its ability to build cloud-banking much more securely than banks. It’s leading in the cloud, so this means your banking would no longer need to be local, it can be global. One account for all currencies.
The write up even suggests that one obtain a consultant’s research report to make the case for FTBA. Objective? Sure. DarkCyber believes everything its team reads on the Internet, including ITPortal’s analyses.
Amazon Fee Triggers
Amazon published in April 2019 a paper called “AWS Reliability Primer.” The idea is that one must consider how much of each of these “values” an AWS developer requires:
- Operational excellence
- Security
- Reliability
- Performance efficiency
- Cost optimization.
From a technical or architectural point of view, the write up provides useful information about the linkage between what Amazon can deliver and what one’s budget can tolerate.
DarkCyber thinks that this list of five factors explained in 62 pages of text highlights where costs can skyrocket if the AWS “customer” makes bad decisions.
Best practices or we warned you? You decide.
Amazon Stock Value
Seeking Alpha knows that fear, uncertainty, and doubt are good for some businesses. “Amazon’s Slowing Growth May Sink The Stock Following Results” opines:
AMZN is seeing a deceleration of growth in many of its business units. It could result in the stock pulling back following the results to around $1,800 based on an analysis of the chart.
Disaster looms, but one can tap Seeking Alpha for financial advice.
Amazon Satellites
Is this a $100 billion per year business? Motley Fool (“fool” in shorthand) states:
Amazon confirmed its plans, saying, “Project Kuiper is a new initiative to launch a constellation of low Earth orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world,” according to an Amazon spokesperson.
Satellites may be more reliable than floating Loon balloons.
Amazon Sales Reorg
Seeking Alpha published “AWS Reorganizes Sales Leader.” The site reported:
Web Services shuffled its sales team’s senior leadership earlier this year to clarify roles and eliminate confusion of multiple pitches to the same customer.
Criticism of AWS Firecracker?
Tech Republic’s “The Clearest Sign of AWS’ Open Source Success Wasn’t Built by Amazon” seems to be critical of the Bezos bulldozer. The write up states:
AWS Firecracker is great open source technology, but the best indication of its open source success is what Weaveworks built on top of it.
We think this means that Amazon provided a foundation, and another company used that foundation to create a successful solution.
The write up is a bit convoluted, and it preserves Tech Republic’s ability to keep the doors open to content sponsors.
Partners and Integrators
Datadog is now competent in AWS migration. Source: MarketWatch
Northern Virginia Community College will train US Marines to use AWS. Amazon seems to have some confidence in its winning the JEDI competition. Or, this could just be another “train people to use Amazon” play. Source: World Socialist Web Site (real news all the time we assume)
SnapLogic offers a quick start for those wanting to put a data lake on AWS. It appears that SnapLogic will work with Agilisium. Source: Help Net Security
ZenDesk moves to make customer data more actionable. We are not sure what “actionable” means, but with an expanded AWS service, DarkCyber has high hopes for understanding the concept. Source: Yahoo
Stephen E Arnold, July 22, 2019
NSO: More PR Excitement, Facts, or Bloomberg Style Reporting?
July 20, 2019
I read the Financial Times’ write up about NSO Group. The title is a show stopper: “Israeli Group’s Spyware Offers Keys to Big Tech’s Cloud.” (Note: You may have to pay money to view the orange newspaper’s online “real” news write up.
There’s a diagram:
There’s a reminder that NSO is owned by an outfit called “Q Cyber.” There’s information contained in a “pitch document.” There’s a quote from Citizen Lab, a watchdog outfit on cyber intelligence firms and other interesting topics.
What’s missing?
- Information from a Q Cyber or NSO professional. A quote or two would be good.
- Statements from an entity which has used the method and obtained the desired results; for example, high value intel, a person of interest neutralized, the interruption of an industrialized crime operation, or something similar
- Scanned images of documents similar to the Palantir Gotham how to recently exposed by Vice, a zippy new news outfit.
Think about the PR problem the revelations create: NSO gets another whack on the nose.
Think about the upside: Visibility and in the Financial Times no less. (Does NSO need more visibility and semantic connections to Amazon, Apple, or any other “in the barrel” high tech outfit?)
Outfits engaged in cyber intelligence follow some unwritten rules of the road:
First, these outfits are not chatty people. Even at a classified conference where almost everyone knows everyone else, there’s not much in the way of sales tactics associated with used car dealers.
Second, documentation, particularly PowerPoints or PDFs of presentations, are not handed out like chocolate drops for booth attendees who looked semi alert during a run through of a feature or service. Why not whip out a mobile device with a camera and snap some of the slides from the presentation materials or marketing collateral? The graphic is redrawn and quite unlike the diagrams used by NSO type cyber intel outfits. Most trained intelligence professionals are not into “nifty graphics.”
Third, cyber intel companies are not into the media. There are conference organizers who snap at people who once worked as a journalist and made the mistake of telling someone that “before I joined company X, I worked at the ABC newspaper.” Hot stuff New York Times’ stringers are stopped by security guards or police before getting near the actual conference venue. Don’t believe me. Well, try to gate crash the upcoming geo spatial conference in Washington, DC, and let me know how this works out for you.
Fourth, why is NSO acting in a manner so different from the other Israel-influenced cyber intelligence firms? Is Voyager Labs leaking details of its analytic and workflow technology? What about Sixgill’s system for Dark Web content analysis? What’s Webhose.io doing with its content and expanding software suite? What’s Verint, a public company, rolling out next quarter? NSO is behaving differently, and that is an item of interest, worthy of some research, investigation, and analysis.
For the established cyber intel firms like NSO, assertions are not exactly what sells licenses or make BAE Systems, IBM, or Raytheon fear that their licensees will terminate their contracts. How many “customers” for NSO type systems are there? (If you said a couple of hundred, you are getting close to the bull’s eye.) Does publicity sell law enforcement, security, and intelligence systems? Search engine optimization specialists are loco if they think cyber intel firms want to be on the first page of a Google results page.
Consider this series of bound phrases:
Cat’s paw. Bloomberg methods. Buzzfeed and Vice envy. A desire to sell papers. Loss of experienced editors. Journalists who confuse marketing with functioning software?
These are the ideas the DarkCyber team suggested as topics an investigator could explore. Will anyone do this? Unlikely. Too arcane. Too different from what problems multiple systems operating on a global scale present for one method to work. Five Eyes’ partners struggle with WhatsApp and Telegram messages. “Everything” in Amazon or Apple? Really?
Net net: Great assertion. How about something more?
Stephen E Arnold, July 20, 2019
Google Is a Curious Outfit: Who, How, Why, Where, Buy, and Build?
July 16, 2019
Ah, the familiar Silicon Valley question: Buy or build?
Reuters, a “real news” outfit, published “Google Accused of Ripping Off Digital Ad Technology in U.S. Lawsuit.” DarkCyber has no idea if the alleged lawsuit is valid or if Google “ripped off” a company called Impact Engine.
According to the “real news” story:
Impact Engine Inc filed the complaint in federal court in San Diego, California, alleging various Google online advertising platforms, including Google Ads and Google AdSense, infringed on six patents.
DarkCyber believes that Impact Engine is convinced that Googlers took technology developed by the smaller firm. Google’s present senior management is probably unaware of the actions of young at heart Googlers.
Based on DarkCyber’s experience interacting with large, successful corporations, Google-type outfits ask a lot of questions. But these are predictable and probably should not be answered without prior thought. Scripting answers is a reasonable way to prepare for a lunch with a predator.
Now what about the basic questions. Here are a few I have experienced:
- Who are you?
- Who developed the innovation?
- Why was it developed?
- Why is it better than existing innovations?
- When did you develop the innovation?
- Did you patent the innovation and receive a patent?
- Where can this innovation be implemented?
- How much of a revenue boost does the innovation represent?
- How much did you spend in cash to create the innovation?
- How long did it take to create the innovation?
- How many people worked on the innovation in [a] its preliminary phase, [b] its testing phase, and [c] its commercialization phase?
- What is the programming language used?
- Does the innovation run from the cloud or on premises?
- What are the next series of enhancements you plan to add to your innovation?
- How long will those take?
- How much money do you need to implement the enhancements in half your time estimate?
- Who are your competitors?
- What are the gotchas in your innovation?
- Who is your nightmare competitor?
- What do you worry about relative to this innovation when you go to bed at night?
- If you had a magic wand, what changes would you make in the innovation as it exists at this time?
- Would you rough out a block diagram of the major components of the innovation?
- Would you walk us through your basic slide deck?
There are other questions, of course.
Now a company talking with a Google-type firm is likely to be darned excited to be in proximity to a deep pocket power center. Consequently the visitors are probably going to say too much, be too specific, and reveal more than the visiting team thought was possible.
Yep, well, there’s the fact that power and potential money loosens lips.
What happens when the small outfit leaves with booth leftovers in hand, a reasonable vegan lunch, and worshipful praise from the big company’s “team players”?
Let me boil down the gist of the debriefs in which I have participated:
- Is this innovation any good?
- Can we duplicate it quickly and easily? (Build?)
- If not, how much do you think the innovation is worth?
- Can we just license the innovation? (Semi-buy?)
- Should we forget this outfit and go to the competitors named in the meeting?
- Don’t we already have this functionality?
- Does anybody remember meeting with this company or anyone who works there before?
- Should we buy this outfit?
There are other considerations, of course.
In short, when big Google type outfits meet with small innovative outfits, the expectations of the small company are likely to be different from those at the big company.
Therefore, the legal dust up. Worth monitoring this particular action. But the matter of patents, prior art, and the patents which the big company may have tucked in their cloud storage device are likely to have some bearing on the matter.
One thing is certain: The lawyers involved will get paid a lot of money. And the money people? Sure. Money people.
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2019
Amazonia for July 15, 2019
July 15, 2019
The Amazon displacement effect appears to be gaining momentum. Here’s a selection of Bezos bulldozer actions for the past week. DarkCyber has included a handful of items that took place outside this review window, but holidays can perturb in unexpected ways.
Amazon: Disinformation or Dissing the Competition?
A quite interesting article appeared in the Brisbane Times. The title caught my attention: “Former Amazon Scientist Pokes Holes in Data Collection at Brisbane Summit.” DarkCyber noted these quotes and statements in the write up:
- …People in poorer economic areas may not drive, so might not see potholes as a problem, or they were less likely to be connected online, so were less likely to report them. DarkCyber note: This means that the data will mis-report potholes. In short, the data leads to uninformed decisions.
- …Organizations should be transparent about how they used private data, and that citizens should be able to see their own data within the organization…The “right to inspect the refinery”, he said, was another right – that any person must be able to see and observe how organizations were using their data.” DarkCyber note: Amazon seems to preserve and use Alexa data, but that information is not revealed to customers of the Alexa devices.
Note that the speaker is a “former” Amazon scientist.
Employment Developments: Efficiency and Beyond
A report which appeared on July 8, 2019, suggested that Amazon workers will strike on Prime Day. That is a Monday, the same day this Amazonia news run down appears. Alas, we can’t update before this goes live on Prime Day. The origin of this story appears to be Engadget which pegs the action in Minnesota. If false, Amazon has dodged a problem. If it is true, disgruntled Amazon low tier workers may become more bold. What happened in the Middle Ages when those lower down the Great Chain of Being were unhappy? I don’t remember. Perhaps Amazon will have a book about these historical antecedents.
“Amazon Finds an Alternative Workforce Through Northwest Center, a Seattle Nonprofit Helping People with Disabilities” explains another Amazon management approach to staffing. The title explains the tactic.
Another tactic is the use of home workers for customer service roles. These employees receive some benefits. For details see “Amazon Is Hiring 3,000 Work-from-Home Employees with Full Benefits.”
Amazon will retrain its workers. Automation is coming and with it, many jobs will be crushed under the Bezos bulldozer. The New York Times explains the $700 million “retraining” effort but does not reference similar initiatives in Stalinist soviets.
ZDNet contributes the notion of a protest about upskilling. ZDNet reported:
Amazon’s announcement comes amid an Amazon Web Services conference in New York where CTO Werner Vogels was interrupted by protesters. Chants, which revolved around AWS providing technology to the US government, repeatedly picked up as Vogels talked early in his keynote. Vogels, flustered a smidge but rolling with it, said: “I’m more than willing to have a conversation, but maybe they should let me finish first.” AWS’ New York Summit had a similar issue last year, but the 2019 version was more persistent. On AWS’ live stream the protester audio was muted. “We’ll all get our voices heard,” said Vogels.
Does the Bezos bulldozer listen to humans directly or just through Alexa devices? DarkCyber does not know the answer.
Business Insider reveals that Amazon employees want the online bookstore to take a stand against the US government’s enforcement of immigration law. These individuals may not realize that Amazon facial recognition technology may be able to identify them.
Build a Serverless Architecture with AWS
A how to, diagrams, and step by step instructions. Navigate to Hypertrack and learn how “awesome” serverless is. The write up includes suggestions for specific AWS functions to include.
AWS Control Tower Available
I bet you didn’t know that Amazon AWS had a control tower. DarkCyber did not. Satellites, yes. Control towers? Sure, but these are a service automating “the process of setting up a new baseline multi account AWS environment.” InfoQ explains:
With Control Tower, a cloud administrator has a tool, which automates various tasks involving the initial setup of a new AWS environment such as identity and access management, centralized logging, and security audits across accounts. Furthermore, the service consists of several components, including:
- A Landing Zone – the multi-account AWS environment the tool sets up
- Blueprints – design patterns used to establish the Landing Zone
- A set of default policy controls known as Guardrails
- The Environment – an AWS account with all of the attendant resources set up to run an application.
Amazon QLDB
Jerry Hargrove published a useful diagram. Yes, we know it is small, but you can get a larger one and more from the link:
A link to the QLDB is included in the source.
Amazon Offers Centralized and Decentralized Blockchain Services
Most of the people with whom DarkCyber speaks are not aware of Amazon’s digital currency and blockchain services. We noted that Forbes, the capitalist tool, has noticed some blockchain capabilities available from Amazon. We noted:
AWS announced the preview for both of these models, centralized and decentralized, in late November of 2018, according to a press release. At the time of the July 3, 2019 interview with me, Pathak noted, “Quantum Ledger Database, QLDB, is still in preview,” while “Amazon Managed Blockchain went into General Availability at the end of April.” While in preview, customers can gain free access to these projects by filling out a form and signing up, an AWS representative clarified via email. When released for General Availability, anyone can use them.
Timely coverage.
Amazon Emotion Detection
Detecting a person’s emotions can be useful. Examples range from an insurance company’s identifying an insured driver evidencing signs of impending “rage” behavior to an Amazon DeepLens camera identifying an individual becoming increasingly problematic in a restaurant, night club, or sporting event. “Amazon May be Developing a Wearable That Detects Human Emotions” discusses this innovation. DarkCyber wonders if the technology has already been implemented in other Amazon devices; for example, the Alexa home gizmos. Could security and government authorities find this type of data-generating technology useful? DarkCyber thinks this is an interesting question.
DeepLens Now Available in Europe
DarkCyber covers the imaging devices in its Dark Web Version 2 lecture. We want to note The Register’s article “AWS’s Upgraded DeepLens AI Camera Zooms in on Europe” states:
The product is the result of work between AWS and Intel. DeepLens’s hardware consists of a mini PC running Ubuntu 16.4 LTS (Long Term Servicing) upon which is mounted an HD camera.
We noted:
The advantage of DeepLens is that it is ready to go, presuming you want to use AWS for your ML project. The pre-installed software includes AWS IoT Greengrass, which does local processing of IoT data such as the stream of images from your DeepLens camera.
This comment warranted a checkmark:
AWS has its own forthcoming Inferentia project, custom hardware for processing all the common ML frameworks, but currently it seems Google Cloud Platform has an advantage for TensorFlow.
Amazon Neighborhood Watch
A viewer of the DarkCyber Video news program questioned our assertion that Amazon was monitoring with humans, not just DeepLens and other zippy technology. Here’s a no cost source of information: “Amazon’s Neighborhood Watch App Raises Discrimination, Privacy Fears.” The problem is, of course, is that people cannot track Amazon’s activities nor do most professionals want to exert that effort. Hey, those meetings are important and there’s yoga and the off site. The write up points out:
Advocates and experts are worried that an Amazon-owned mobile app, used by owners of its Ring security cameras to upload videos for neighbors to see, could entrench racial discrimination and violate people’s privacy.
Why it matters: The app, called Neighbors, is striking deals to partner with police departments across the country.
Driving the news: Last week, journalists on Twitter noticed Ring was hiring an editor — prompting concerns that Amazon was stoking community fears to sell security systems. (Amazon bought the company last year.)
How it works: People with and without Ring cameras can download the Neighbors app. It features a feed where users can post videos and photos from their cameras, file reports of activity they think is suspicious and read crime reports from the app’s “News Team.”
Poke around online and other bits and pieces of information will surface. If you are lucky, you may get to meet Teresa Carlson, a former Microsoftie who is now Amazon’s VP of the Worldwide Public Sector. (This means government work.)
Amazon Brands
Trust Amazon?
Nope. “There’s No Reason to Trust Amazon’s Choice.” The idea is that Amazon recommends its own products. Do consumers know which products are really Amazon’s? No. The write up states:
Amazon’s typical statement on the matter is this: “Amazon’s Choice is just our recommendation, and customers can always ask for specific brands or products if they choose.” But Amazon’s recommendation doesn’t mean much if the recommendation engine is getting fooled.
Typical? Nope, standard operating procedure.
Furthermore, the article “These Are All the Businesses You Never Knew Were Owned by Amazon” was a heroic effort by a shopaholic. Among the gems in the list were these five brands with names DarkCyber found suggestive:
- 206 Collective (Was a variant of this in use in Stalinist stores?)
- Coastal Blue (Similar to the code name for the first stealth aircraft, “Have Blue”)
- Core 10 (a phrase similar to those in use in the nuclear industry)
- The Fix (slang for a rigged event or a drug injection)
- Mint Lilac (a code name similar to those used by SAS operatives).
Amazon Acquisitions
Business Insider (which may or may not beg for your email or demand cash to view the article) compiled from open sources of information a list of Amazon acquisitions. These lists are usually incomplete because the researchers typically exclude partial investments, stakes held by individuals who employed by Amazon, and clever deals in which services are exchanged for stock. The real excitement is often in these secondary holdings. In the case of this article, the coverage of the list is superficial. Contact your local Wall Street purveyor of investor research for a more thorough run down.
Amazon’s Impact on Truck Drivers
Business Insider ran this story: “Truckers Say Amazon’s New Logistics Empire Is Being Underpinned by Low, Ridiculous Rates — and Some Are Refusing to Work with Them.” Amazon’s investments in self driving are not included in the lists of Amazon’s acquisitions. But Amazon is focused on efficiency. Robots are efficient. Humans require benefits, retirement plans, and other “soft” and “squishy” things which add escalating and variable costs. Nope, not in Amazon’s future.
How to Put Amazon in Your Business?
Answer: Just use Amazon. Plus, CTO Vision ran a “real” news story called “Amazon on How Businesses Can Implement AI.” The write up is a pointer to an Amazon movie “How AWS Is Changing Businesses Using Artificial Intelligence.” The video runs about four minutes, too short for popcorn, long enough to get the message across, “Embrace Amazon.” Admission is free even if one does not have a Prime membership. More Amazon PR is included in “At Re:MARS, Amazon Sells Itself As an AI Innovator.” Unlike Facebook and Google, Amazon is taking note of America Online’s disc campaign and refined it. Instead of CD ROMs, Amazon is using digital reminders, flashy technology, and glitzy conferences to make clear that it is the Bezos way or one will be sitting on the side of the Amazon toll way.
Amazon Revenue
According to GeekWire, Amazon’s sale of products make up less than half of Amazon’s revenue. Where’s the other revenue come from? Amazon Web Services, advertising, and “other” revenue streams. Is this important? Facebook, Google, and Microsoft may care. Regulators? Tough to say.
We noted a question posed by the Motley Fool, a rock solid financial advisory service: Is Amazon spending too much cash on Lord of the Rings? You can read the MBAistic discussion at this link. The answer is that the streaming world is a competitive place. Deep pockets are needed for this game. Even Google is working to fix up its YouTube service. If Amazon doesn’t get with the seeing stone, Apple, Disney, Netflix, or another outfit with cash will. Netflix has lost “Friends” and that’s the new world of streaming video. Losing friends.
Amazon: Asking Permission
“Amazon Asks to Join Broadband Space Race with Elon Musk’s SpaceX” signals a new spirit at Amazon. The write up reports:
Amazon.com asked for U.S. permission to launch 3,236 communications satellites, joining a new space race to offer internet service from low orbits and challenge the fleet planned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Yes, asking permission.
Amazon’s satellite initiative is designed to help people get Internet access. Those without Internet access can use Amazon for shopping, videos, and computer services. But the permission angle is noteworthy.
Amazon Faces Challenges
There has been an uptick in “Amazon faces challenges” news. The Telegraph published “As Amazon Turns 25, What Are the Biggest Challenges Facing the World’s Most Powerful Company?” The Week, another UK publishing outfit, chimed in with “Amazon at 25: Where Next for the Online Giant?” These “analyses” recycle truisms. But after a decade of inattention, the rush to criticize is amusing.
More interesting were these items about Amazon’s new world:
Deliveroo Stalled
CNN reported:
UK regulators have ordered Amazon to pause its investment in UK food delivery startup Deliveroo while they consider whether the deal amounts to a takeover.
UK Investigates Amazon
The Associated Press, an outfit which frightens us, emitted a write up called “UK Investigation of Amazon Investment Shows Tougher Approach.” The AP story appeared in SFGate. We won’t quote from the story. What’s up is that government authorities are going to scrutinize Amazon. Amazon has been in business for more than 20 years. What’s the rush? Possible revenue from fines and taxes. These are potent forces in some nation states.
French Push Back
SFGate reported that Amazon faced some environmental pushback in Paris, France. We learned:
Protesters also disrupted Amazon sites in the southern city of Toulouse and northern city of Lille, hoping to inspire similar action in other countries.
C’est dommage.
Adding fuel to the environmental dumpster fire was a report that the online bookstore will not reveal how much carbon is pumped into the atmosphere by its Australian server operations. The Register said:
It’s one rule for Jeff Bezos’ online empire, and another for everyone else.
Security Issue
A new exploit has appeared. The code is Magecart and it attacks misconfigured AWS S3 instances. The method used is called “skimming.” The basic idea is to siphon off credit card data.
One unique feature of the S3 attacks is that the group is using a “spray and pray” technique as opposed to previous attacks that were highly targeted. In this case, the Magecart group is installing the skimmer code on any open S3 instances it can find in the hope that some of them may be linked to sites that have e-commerce functions.
Financial fraud is a new core competency of some bad actors and industrialized crime cartels. You can read more in Silicon Angle.
Selected Partner / Integrator News
- The Chengdu Hi-tech Zone has teamed up with the Chinese non governmental organization to create a joint innovation zone. The idea is that Amazon and its partner will have an accelerator, incubator, international maker space and talent base. Source: Yahoo
- Datadog has achieved AWS Microsoft workloads competency status. Source: Business Wire
- Dobler Consulting has achieved Select Partner status as part of the Amazon Partner Network (APN). Source: Business Insider
- Saviynt announced support for the newly launched Amazon EventBridge, from Amazon Web Services (AWS). (Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that connects applications using events.) Source: Digital Journal
- Iron Mountain now supports AWS. The announcement included this remarkable phrase: ‘’Iron Mountain announced it has joined the AWS Partner Network (APN) as a Select Technology Partner, enabling customers to accelerate their digital transformation journey with AWS.” Source: Yahoo
- The Spanish vendor Media Interactiva Media Interactiva offers system developers and engineers the chance to prepare for certification in Amazon Web Services (AWS). Source: Business Insider (may be paywall protected or free. It’s sort of hit and miss with this media and “real” news giant.)
- SentryOne has also achieved Advanced Tier status in the Amazon Web Partner Services Network (APN) as well as Amazon Web Services (AWS) Microsoft Workloads Competency status. Source: Yahoo
- SIOS Technology Corp. achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Microsoft Workloads Competency status within the AWS Partner Network (APN). Source: Yahoo
- Trend Micro will deliver transparent, inline network security with Amazon Web Services Transit Gateway. Source: MarketWatch
- Turbonomic has achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Microsoft Workloads Competency status as an inaugural global launch AWS Partner Network (APN) Partner. Source: Yahoo
- Unissant has joined the AWS consulting partner network. Source: Globe News Wire
- Oooh rah. The US Marines and Amazon have teamed up for AWS training. Source: Education Drive
Stephen E Arnold, July 15, 2019
Factualities for July 10, 2019
July 10, 2019
Ah, those numbers. Quite a range of mostly unsubstantiated, unverified, and marketing confections. Here’s a post holiday selection.
Forever. The amount of time Amazon retains Alexa data. Source: TechShout
2. Number of Apple iCloud outages in 2019. Source: The Verge
5. The percentage of revenue participating publishers receive from Apple News Plus. Source: Mac Rumors
8. Number of correct matches between persons of interest and surveillance and mug shot photos. How many suspects did the automated system suggest? 42. Engadget says that the error rate is only 81 percent. Sources: The Register and Engadget
8. Number of Hong Kong protestors arrested. How many potential arrestees were there? A couple of million. Source: Security Week
10. Number of years D-Link will be subject to US government audits. Source: The Verge
11. Number of hours Facebook and some of its services were not online on July 3, 2019. Source: The Verge
25 percent. Percentage of people in a sample of 10,000 who want the government to be responsible for cyber security. Source: Info Security Magazine
27. Number of months a bad actor will spend for launching denial of service attacks on online game services. Source: ZDNet
50 percent. Percentage of enterprises which believe security cannot keep up with cloud adoption. Source: Symantec
80. Number of app takedown requests for 770 Apple app store applications. in the second half of 2018. Source: Engdget
84 percent. Percentage of “respondents” in an NPR IBM survey who are more angry today than one generation ago. Love those IBM Watson outputs. Source: A Tweet
200. Multiply the dose of radiation that would kill a humanoid by this number. Mold survives. Man doesn’t. Source: Sciencemag.org
219. Years a UCLA professor will spend in jail for selling China US secrets. Source: Newsweek
2,176. Number of miles a “young Arctic fox” walked from Norway’s Svalbard Islands to northern Canada. Source: BBC
8,500. Number of patents Intel is auctioning off after stepping away from its 5G modem business. Source: Biz Journals (This is a begging for dollars site.)
25,000. Number of engineers Microsoft has working on github. Source: Jeff Wilcox Blog
550,000. The number of faults at the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport. Source: BBC
$1 billion. TikTok’s advertising spend in 2018. Source: Wall Street Journal (pay wall in place)
2 billion. The number of “records” exposed in a smart home breach. Source: SEC Alerts
Stephen E Arnold, July 10, 2019
Amazonia for July 8, 2019
July 8, 2019
Even though many Amazonians celebrated the Fourth of July with their Amazon-ordered grills, spatulas, aprons, and Whole Foods’ goodies — the company’s Bezos bulldozer pulverized some small shrubs and a big tree or two. Here’s a selection of Amazon’s harvest from the previous week.
A Glimpse of the Future of Government IT Procurement
JEDI has not been awarded. Australia, however, has decided upon a country wide Amazon AWS deal. Australia will use the Amazon platform for its government IT. If the deal holds and the system works, traditional procurement approaches will be kicked to the side of the Information Highway. The idea is standardization, lower costs, and efficiency. The fact that these benefits may be difficult to quantify and deliver is beside the point. For details, navigate to “Australia-Wide AWS Deal Could Signal the End for Legacy IT Procurement.” DarkCyber wants to remind you, gentle reader, that the country is a member of the Five Eyes group. Most of the members behave in surprisingly similar ways. Amazon could land IT deals in Canada, the UK, New Zealand, and the United States. JEDI is important to big outfits like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and the companies in these firms’ orbits.
Amazon’s Delete Does Not Delete
I know. Delete means gone, disappeared, vaporized into the ether. Well, not at Amazon. Amazon allegedly retains Alexa recordings even if an authorized user deletes them. There are many different reports about this Amazon approach to deletion. These come from IAfrican to Silicon Republic. Devices can listen. Amazon sells its own line of surveillance devices. Now these devices are migrating to other countries; for example, the UK. Will delete mean retain in other countries too?
What Happens When an Amazon Third Party Seller Fools You?
That’s a good question. I received a pair of hiking pants allegedly with a 36 inch waist. My leg would not fit through the pants leg. I sent the pants back and asked for a replacement pair. I got the replacement with a label stating 36 inch waist. Same problem, my leg would not fit. Never got to the waist. I gave up.
No more. I just gave up.
“Amazon Can Be Held Liable for third Party Sales, Court Rules” suggests a different path. DarkCyber learned:
Wednesday’s ruling by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia reversed a lower court decision, and has the potential to expose Amazon to numerous lawsuits related to defective or counterfeit products sold by third-party sellers on its site, Reuters reported. Up to now, such lawsuits have been batted away by Amazon, but this may no longer be the case going forward.
DarkCyber buys hiking pants at a local retail store. That outfit has a dressing room, not a court judgment, a procedure, and merchants who can be surprisingly clever humanoids.
Amazon’s Approach to Smarter Work
The Verge reported about Amazon’s semi-secret conference called re:MARS. At the conference Amazon revealed smart software and smarter robots. According to the write up:
re:MARS is the first public version of Amazon’s secretive MARS (machine learning, automation, robotics, and space) conference. MARS is usually a private event where a few hundred scientists, creatives, and business types are hosted by Jeff Bezos. They eat canapés, attend group meditations, and discuss technologies that will make or break the future. The chat is pretty much the same here in Vegas. But instead of 200 select attendees, there are 3,000 of us shuffling around in lanyards, backpacks, and comfy shoes. And instead of luxury workshops on blacksmithing and sausage making, there are seminars on how to build better robots, smarter AI, and maybe even colonize the Solar System.
Amazon seems to be more “public”. In addition to getting publicity, the Verge quotes one attendee as saying:
“It seems like they’re trying to get the smartest people in the same building and get them to talk to one another,” said Michael Bell, a PhD candidate and research fellow at Harvard’s School of Engineering who was demoing the university’s latest work with soft robotic grippers. “People have come by and asked me whether they can use these things to clean up the oceans. You don’t really get that at other conferences.”
Amazon, therefore, is innovating in conferences as well as drone surveillance within a geo-fenced area. (See the Tuesday, July 9, 2019, DarkCyber for more about this five year old Amazon innovation.)
The conference was interrupted by a pro-animal protester. The author of the write up suggested he felt like a package on a conveyor belt. Plus robots are in the Amazon future.
Chug, chug, chug goes the Bezos bulldozer.
Cat Flap with DeepLens
Digital Trends revealed that an Amazon employee connected the smart DeepLens video camera to an automatic pet door. The link up work. The feline can no longer bring dead animals into the Amazon worker’s home. The Rekognition image recognition system seems to work well for dead birds, deceased squirrels, and terminated rats. People? DarkCyber can only point to the next story in this week’s Amazonia.
Amazon Facial Analysis: Some Blind Spots?
An online information service called Jezebel published “Amazon’s Facial Analysis Program Is Building a Dystopic Future for Trans and Nonbinary People.” DarkCyber has a hunch that this means that Amazon’s facial recognition is [a] inaccurate and [b] biased. You will have to judge for yourself. DarkCyber noted this passage:
Rekognition, in particular, has some prodigious—and highly concerning—blind spots, especially around gender identity. A Jezebel investigation has found that Rekognition frequently misgenders trans, queer and nonbinary individuals. Furthermore, in a set of photos of explicitly nonbinary individuals Rekognition misgendered all of them—a mistake that’s baked into the program’s design, since it measures gender as a binary. In itself, that’s a problem: it erases the existence of an already marginalized group of people, and, in doing so, creates a system that mirrors the myriad ways that nonbinary people are left out of basic societal structures. What’s more, as Rekognition becomes more widely used, among government agencies, police departments, researchers and tech companies, that oversight has the potential to spread.
As Amazon becomes less secret and marginally more open, criticism of Amazon has increased. DarkCyber is not convinced that facial recognition systems vary much from developer to developer. Nevertheless, Amazon image technology is being sold and applied in interesting new ways.
Amazon and Automation: Job Losses? Yep.
“Amazon’s Future Vision of AI, Warehouse Bots and Alexa” is an exclusive look at Amazon’s artificial intelligence and automation work and how it may impact jobs.” In a nutshell, humans will have a tough time getting hired after Amazon’s vision is implemented. The write up points out:
Amazon executives say they don’t see gloom and doom in AI and automation, noting that they continue to hire thousands more people to work alongside their warehouse bots and to create the latest machine-learning code.
By the way, code camps may not provide the ticket to future employment. One can give Amazon’s training programs a try. Universities are embracing the Amazon way. Student loans? Not an Amazon problem.
Amazon to Add Jobs in the UK
Forbes reports that Amazon will add 2,000 jobs in the Brexit-challenged country. If those hires take place, Amazon will employ 29,500 people across its more than 17 locations. Forbes suggests that these will be low wage jobs in the Amazon “fulfillment network.” That euphemism translates to warehouses for the DarkCyber team.
Amazon Prime Twitches
DarkCyber has noted that Twitch has out delivered on the Hong Kong riots as YouTube sat back and mostly ignored them. Many of the people with whom Amazon talks after our lectures about Dark Web Version 2 are not clued in about Twitch. Learning about Twitch might be a good idea. Who knows you, gentle reader, might become a streamer.
Amazon wants to be more Twitchy if the information in “Twitch Will Join Amazon Prime Day with Giveaways, Events and QVC Style Live Show” is accurate. QVC is a 24 hour a day live shopping cable TV show. Twitchers stream 24 hours a day, right? Probably a coincidence. DarkCyber highlighted this passage from the write up:
Given its push for more live video, it only makes sense that Twitch would get involved with Prime Day in this way, too. Beyond Twitch’s plans for live video, the streaming site is also offering a number of giveaways and hosting live events.
Perhaps this time Amazon live shopping will deliver the bucks that company needs to pay its taxes, innovate, and support charities. Perhaps?
AWS Security
Cloud computing offers benefits and drawbacks. On the drawback side of the teeter totter is security. “AWS CISO Talks Risk Reduction, Development, Recruitment” reports that:
To mitigate this risk [from insider threats], Schmidt launched an initiative within AWS to radically reduce employees’ access to data by 80%. This was a large number, he noted, and one he partly chose to raise eyebrows – and partly because of its effectiveness. Reducing data access by 10 or 20 percent wouldn’t have had the same effect; an 80% cut forced investment in security tools.
Amazon AWS itself figures in some security issues; for example, data left exposed on AWS systems can be discovered and compromised by bad actors. To cite one example: Navigate to this TechRadar report. Data from Fortune 100 companies were exposed online. The write up, however, does not address that real time, here and now risk. Insider threats are a problem, but are they more significant than the security methods in place for AWS customers? Taken together, is it possible that Amazon has more security issues than some perceive?
Amazon Goes North to Alaska
Amazon’s delivery service has expanded to Alaska. According to Business Insider (pay wall may apply):
Amazon Air is adding another gateway to its network of airports: Anchorage, Alaska. Amazon’s in-house air cargo fleet, which will total 70 planes by 2021, is key to the e-commerce behemoth’s plan to achieve one-day shipping for its Prime members this year.
Alaska is closer to some of Amazon’s providers. FedEx and UPS are likely to dismiss Amazon’s ambitions, but DarkCyber believes that Amazon can disrupt because it may have a slight advantage: Lower wages due to some of its policies.
Amazon: South to Buenos Aires
The New York Times (gentle reader, you may have to pay to access the source article,” reports that AWS will set up a data center in Argentina. This is the seventh data center Amazon has set up in an area which contains the actual organic, green Amazon.
Partner and Integrators
Last week was a quiet one for Amazon’s partner / reseller category.
eLogic Learning is now partners with AWS. Training courses will be parked in the Amazon cloud. Source: MarketWatch
Velocity Technology Solutions is now a strategic collaborator with Amazon. DarkCyber does not know what a strategic collaborator is, but it appears to have something to do with moving to the Amazon cloud. Source: MarketWatch
Amazon: A TV News Focal Point
Love Amazon? Want to know how it changed your life. ABC has the answer. View the video at this link.
Google: Instructional Hacking Policy Is Nothing New
July 6, 2019
I read “YouTube Says Its Policy on Instructional Hacking Videos Isn’t New.” The subtitle for the article is:
But a specific ban against instructional hacking could have negative consequences.
Maybe bad publicity?
The write up states:
This week Kody Kinzie, co-founder of the ethical hacker group Hacker Interchange, reported that its YouTube channel had received a strike for breaking one of its rules. Which rule? A ban against “Instructional hacking and phishing: Showing users how to bypass secure computer systems.” Fellow information security professionals and others — including some Google employees — came out in support of the Null Byte channel and its Cyber Weapons Lab series, while YouTube retracted the strike and reinstated the removed videos.
Yes, information is bad, no good. Plus, flip flops are part of a busy, bright Googler’s day.
The article includes a list of bad things one must not do on the Google. Examples include eating disorders and instructional theft. What is “instructional theft”? Stealing Sony Vegas 15? I noted this statement in what appears to be an official Google statement of policy:
Please note this is not a complete list.
DarkCyber has come across information designed to meet the needs of individuals with an unusual interest in the behaviors of young children, data about hacking commercial software, videos supporting the for fee activities of “talent” who collect money via “donations”, and similar topics. Example? Sure, how about this:
Several observations:
- Policies are a bit like those implemented by parents who say, “Because I said so.”
- Google generates situational decisions because its policy appears to be “react”, handwave, and move on
- Responsibility for what Apple’s Tim Cook calls chaos is an uncomfortable burden and best left for others to shoulder. Interns? New hires? People who cannot catch on with a hot project team? Castoffs from Dodgeball, Orkut, WebAccelerator, etc.?
Fascinating stuff, particularly the “Please note this is not a complete list.” Perhaps there is no list, just whatever whatever is needed to douse a brush fire and generate clouds of smoke to season red herrings?
Stephen E Arnold, July 6, 2019
Amazonia for July 1, 2019: The Firecracker Edition
July 1, 2019
Quite a flurry of partner, integrator, and consultant news in the last seven days. DarkCyber was unfamiliar with some of these outfits. If you take the known partner names, circle the wild and weird ones, one or two on your list will be generating significant sums as the Bezos bulldozer grinds forward. Not much speed, but the bulldozer has torque. Lots of torque.
Amazon Visual Search
Few people pay much attention to the number of people running queries on Google for products. In 2002, Google commanded about 90 percent of the search traffic as other Web search system collapsed. Numbers like the rock solid estimates in DarkCyber’s weekly Factualities write up are hard to obtain and validate. Chatter suggests that Amazon now dominates product search. That’s bad, bad news for the Google. The early “Froogle” fizzled. Amazon is now the search engine millions of people rely upon for basic product information. There are reviews, and many are bogus. But there are often numerous reviews and a careful reader can figure out what a product’s attributes are. Plus there are pictures. Yeah, about those pictures. Forbes, the capitalist tool and “real news” outfit published “Why Amazon’s Visual Search Could Eliminate Keywords For Online Retail.” The article suggests that the Google may be behind the curve in visual search. Perhaps the Google should buy Pinterest? DarkCyber learned:
Earlier this month, Amazon announced its sizable investment in visual search, which gives users the ability to search by picture. Through this new feature called “StyleSnap” on the Alexa app, users can replicate their favorite fashion simply by uploading a photo and letting artificial intelligence technology deliver the most relevant products to their search.
We noted this statement:
This news follows a trend that has been a long time in the making. And of course, Pinterest which rolled out its visual search feature back in 2015, has been capitalizing on this computer-vision technology for some time by attracting users and providing an excellent user experience.
The Google is tallying a number of high profile challenges. Forbes seems to have added visual search to the list. Google was the leader in search. Amazon may be poised to capture the traffic and the advertising dollars.
Amazon AW SAI
DarkCyber thinks this sequence of letters may be pronounced “aw, see.” The explanation of the enhanced smart software appears in “AWS Enhances Deep Learning AMI, AI Services SageMaker Ground Truth, and Rekognition.” These are important gears in the Amazon “policeware” machine. We noted this competitive statement in the write up:
The other major cloud players have services similar to Rekognition. Microsoft Azure’s Computer Vision service offers a comparable set of features. Like Rekognition, it is not available in every region. Google’s Vision API is available globally, but only works images, not on full video.
But neither Google nor Microsoft can match the addition of dozens of cyber security services. Maybe the Department of Defense will notice the absence of these functions from the Microsoft Azure offering?
Therefore, “aw see” Amazon is differentiating itself from some of its competition. That may be ground truth which only some procurement officers “Rekognize.”
AWS Management Tools for Corporate Customers
One of the hassles of the Amazon AWS system is that it is lacking in the management tools behavioral deportment category on an enterprise system report card. Not exactly an F, but a D, maybe a C minus. There are signals that AWS is trying to grow up—at least a little bit.
“Amazon Web Services Rolls Out Control Tower and Security Hub, Courting Big Business Customers” says:
Amazon Web Services on Monday night announced the general availability of AWS Control Tower and AWS Security Hub, aiming to make it easier for corporate customers to set up, secure and monitor cloud environments.
Instead of getting whacked with a telephone-style quota exceeded penalty, AWS will provide a tools so customers can plan. Maybe not long term, but at least avoid a threshold sticker shock. You can get additional details from the Amazon blog in a post written by a person with an absolutely marvelous name, Rodney Bozo.
AWS Security Services Push: Why?
If you want to know about Amazon’s security services, you can dive into “AWS Security Hub Aggregates Security Alerts and Conducts Continuous Compliance Checks.” A reasonable question is, “Why are numerous vendors using AWS to deliver difficult-to –differentiate cyber services?” It is not a US only push. We learned:
AWS Security Hub is available … in US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), US West (N. California), US West (Oregon), Canada (Central), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), Europe (London), Europe (Paris), and South America (Sao Paulo), with additional regions coming soon.
This week’s partner run down features a number of security related announcements. That’s interesting, but the announcements must be viewed in the context of this story: “AWS S3 Server Leaks Data from Fortune 100 Companies: Ford, Netflix, TD Bank.”
What’s the story about Amazon AWS security? DarkCyber has a webinar which answers this question in part. For more information, write us at darkcyber333 at yandex dot com.
AWS Internet of Things Services
CloudTweaks published a pro-AWS write up about the bulldozer’s AWS solutions. We learned:
The most secure and best way to ensure all data is processed and stored is to redirect all device topics data to an SNS which is designed to handle data flood processing, ensuring that incoming-data is reliably maintained, processed and delivered to the proper channel. To make it more scalable, multiple SNS topics, SQS queue, Lambda for a different/group of AWS device topics can be used. One should consider storing the data in safe-storage like a Queue, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon S3, and Amazon Redshift before processing. This practice ensures no data loss due to message floods, un-wanted exception code or deployment issues.
Now you know why Amazon is working with educational institutions like George Mason University not too far from a three letter agency to teach the lingo of Amazon. Otherwise, much of the jargon is incomprehensible, which is great news for consultants, advisors, and mid tier consulting firms looking to make a buck.
Plus, there are some equally incomprehensible diagrams. Amazon has arrived in the big time it seems.
A Sampling of AWS Partner, Integrator, and Reseller Announcements
The DarkCyber team is unfamiliar with many of these firms. It seems obvious that the Amazon “bus” is picking up passengers as it follows behind the Bezos bulldozer. Quite a few of the ride alongs are wearing “cyber security” logos.
- Blue Hexagon unveils native deep learning-powered threat protection platform For Amazon Web Services. Source: Digital Journal
- Coupa Expands its service line up on Amazon. The idea appears to be designed to provide more control over the costs of Amazon services, a business which Amazon appears to find attractive. Source: Business Insider (sometimes free, sometimes paywalled. Go figure.)
- Fortinet has readjusted so that its WAF-as-a-Service is available via Amazon Web Services. Source: Yahoo
- Gigamon has announced the GigaVUE Cloud Suite with Amazon virtual private cloud traffic mirroring service. Source Finanzen
- JASK delivers enhanced cloud workload traffic security visibility with Amazon Web Services or ECWTSV. Very catchy. Source: Digital Journal
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4356408#ixzz5s5wJw75q - McAfee (the security outfit, not the person avoiding certain government authorities) has announced a compliance service called MVision Cloud. This is available on AWS. Source: Register Herald
- Nubeva Prisms TLS (SSL) decrypt solution supports Amazon virtual private cloud traffic mirroring. Enterprises using Amazon Web Services can now acquire keys and decrypt mirrored traffic. Source: Globe News Wire
- NeuVector has announced a run-time container security service for AWS Cloud. The service integrates with apps on AWS EKS, AWS ECS and AWS App Mesh. Love those acronyms. So clear and easily differentiateable. Source: MarketWatch
- Rapid 7 Insight now integrates with the AWS Security Hub. Source: MarketWatch
- Rite Aid becomes a pick up partner. Order online. Go to a brick and mortar store to get the Amazon goodies. No drone needed. Source: GeekWire
- Riverbed brings cloud and enterprise network traffic analysis to AWS. Source: Digital Journal
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4356419#ixzz5s5y1xpGD - Sumo Logic has launched a global threat benchmarking service for AWS. Source: Business Insider
- Vectra has introduced the first network threat detection and response solution in Amazon Web Services. Source: Finanzen
- VoiceFoundry – and I quote from the Business Insider “real news” story: “VoiceFoundry, an SDP-accredited Amazon Connect consulting partner and reseller and provider of enterprise cloud-based contact center solutions with a unique focus on customer engagement, today announced with Service Management Group (SMG), a global customer experience management firm, the release of VoiceFoundry Post-Call Survey powered by SMG AgentTrack for Amazon Connect.” The full write up can be found at this link.
- Wallarm states that it has achieved advanced technology partner status in Amazon Web Services. If you are not familiar with this firm, the company Wallarm focuses on automated protection of Web sites, micro services, and APIs running on public and private clouds. Source: Virtual Strategy
Stephen E Arnold, July 1, 2019
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