REDMOND, WA, JUNE 22, 2022 ─ Excelerate Systems and ArmorPoint are pleased to announce their newly-formed
strategic partnership that combines Excelerate Systems’s industry-leading cybersecurity services with ArmorPoint’s best-
in-class managed cybersecurity solution.

With the cyberthreat landscape only becoming more complex with each passing day, organizations are seeking security
solutions that will protect their business-critical assets from malicious actors; however, many struggle to keep up with the
operational challenges that come with ongoing threat management. The Excelerate Systems-ArmorPoint partnership
brings together deep skills in technology strategy, product ideation, and operations to support businesses’ most complex
security needs.

“The Excelerate Systems-ArmorPoint partnership is a powerful combination. Excelerate Systems’s extensive expertise
compliments ArmorPoint’s mission to simplify cybersecurity management once and for all,” says David Trapp, CEO of
ArmorPoint parent company, Trapp Technology. “Together with Excelerate Systems, ArmorPoint provides security-
conscious organizations with the people, processes, and technology needed to reduce the risks of doing business in
today’s high-stakes threat climate.”

Recently, ArmorPoint has been recognized as Publisher’s Choice Endpoint Security, Best Solution Managed Security
Service Provider, and Next Gen SOC-as-a-Service at the Global InfoSec Awards for 2022. “One of the basic principles of
our mission is to offer high-quality solutions and products, and this is possible because we always look to partner with the
best technologies to deliver the solutions that organizations and the market demand. ArmorPoint fulfills this and we are
confident that our alliance will generate excellent results”, said Excelerate Systems CEO, David Bennett.

“We know and have worked with many IT security solutions and, without a doubt, ArmorPoint will occupy an important
place in our global portfolio, thanks to its ease of implementation and use, its features, and, above all, its people that
make synergy with the resources we have in different regions, so together we can offer an experienced team in which
companies can trust for their cybersecurity initiatives”, added Victor Pichardo, VP & Head of Sales for Latin America at
Excelerate Systems.

Excelerate Systems’ expertise and knowledge help IT solutions like ArmorPoint to expand their presence in new markets,
as well as enhance their global brand positioning strategy.

Through the ArmorPoint Partner Program, IT providers like Excelerate Systems are equipped with the tools and resources
they need to offer managed cybersecurity services. With attractive margins for resellers and available side-by-side lead
generation support, MSPs that join the ArmorPoint Partner Program can uncover new revenue opportunities and deliver
greater value to new and existing clients alike.

About Excelerate Systems

Excelerate Systems is a leading IT company with HQ in Redmond, WA, and with presence in North America, Latin America, and
Europe, that offers cybersecurity, IT operations, and Business Analytics solutions to public and private organizations. With more
than 13 years of experience, Excelerate Systems have supported over 250 clients with its digital transformation. To learn more
about Excelerate Systems, please visit exceleratesystems.com

About ArmorPoint

ArmorPoint is a managed cybersecurity solution that combines the three pillars of a robust cybersecurity program — people,
processes, and technology – into a single solution. Designed by cybersecurity experts, ArmorPoint’s cloud-hosted SIEM
technology and extended detection and response capabilities enables businesses implement a highly-effective, scalable
cybersecurity program. With customizable pricing available, every ArmorPoint plan offers a dynamic level of managed security
services that support the risk management initiatives of all companies, regardless of available budget, talent, or time. ArmorPoint
is developed and powered by Trapp Technology, a Phoenix-based IT managed services provider. To learn more about
ArmorPoint, please visit armorpoint.com.

REDMOND, WA, 22 DE JUNIO DE 2022 ─ Excelerate Systems y ArmorPoint se complacen en anunciar que recientemente firmaron una alianza estratégica que combina los servicios de ciberseguridad líderes en la industria que ofrece Excelerate Systems con la mejor solución de ciberseguridad administrada de ArmorPoint.

Dado que el panorama de las ciberamenazas se vuelve cada vez más complejo, las organizaciones están buscando soluciones de seguridad que protejan sus activos críticos para el negocio contra actores malintencionados; sin embargo, muchas luchan por mantenerse al día con los retos operativos que conllevan la gestión continua de amenazas. La alianza de Excelerate Systems y ArmorPoint reúne fuertes habilidades en estrategia tecnológica, ideación de productos, y operaciones para respaldar las más complejas necesidades de ciberseguridad de las empresas.

“La alianza de Excelerate Systems y ArmorPoint es una combinación poderosa. La amplia experiencia de Excelerate Systems complementa la misión de ArmorPoint de simplificar la gestión de la ciberseguridad de una vez por todas”, dijo David Trapp, Director Ejecutivo de Trapp Technology, la compañía matriz de ArmorPoint.

“Junto con Excelerate Systems, ArmorPoint brinda las personas, los procesos y la tecnología necesarios para ayudar a las empresas que se preocupan por la seguridad a reducir los riesgos de hacer negocios en el actual panorama de amenazas de alto riesgo”.

Recientemente, ArmorPoint fue reconocida en los Global InfoSec Awards 2022 como la Elección del Editor para Seguridad de Endpoint, el Proveedor de la Mejor Solución de Servicios Administrados de Seguridad, y el SOC-as-a-Service de Siguiente Generación.

“Uno de los principios básicos de nuestra misión es ofrecer soluciones y productos de alta calidad, y esto es posible gracias a que siempre buscamos asociarnos con las mejores tecnologías para entregar las soluciones que demandan tanto las organizaciones como el mercado. ArmorPoint cumple con todo esto y por eso tenemos plena confianza en que nuestra alianza generará excelentes resultados”, dijo el CEO de Excelerate Systems, David Bennett.

“Conocemos y hemos trabajado con varias soluciones de seguridad TI y, sin lugar a dudas, ArmorPoint ocupará un lugar importante en nuestro portafolio global gracias a su facilidad de implementación y uso, sus características, y sobretodo, su gente que hace sinergia con nuestros recursos en diferentes regiones, para que juntos formemos un equipo experimentado en el que las organizaciones puedan confiar para sus iniciativas de ciberseguridad”, agregó Víctor Pichardo, VP y Director de Ventas para Latinoamérica en Excelerate Systems.

La experiencia y el conocimiento de Excelerate Systems ayudan a soluciones de TI como ArmorPoint a expandir su presencia en nuevos mercados, así como a mejorar su estrategia global de posicionamiento de marca. A través del Programa de Socios de ArmorPoint, los proveedores de TI como Excelerate Systems están equipados con las herramientas y recursos necesarios para ofrecer servicios administrados de ciberseguridad. Con atractivos márgenes para los resellers y apoyo para la generación de leads, los MSPs que se unen a este programa pueden descubrir nuevas oportunidades de ingresos y entregar un valor mayor tanto a sus clientes nuevos como a los existentes.

Acerca de Excelerate Systems

Excelerate Systems es una compañía líder en TI con sede en Redmond, WA, y con presencia en Norteamérica, Latinoamérica
y Europa, que ofrece soluciones de ciberseguridad, operaciones TI y business analytics. Con más de 13 años de experiencia,
Excelerate Systems ha apoyado a más de 250 clientes en su transformación digital alrededor del mundo. Para obtener más
información sobre Excelerate Systems, por favor visite exceleratesystems.com

Acerca de ArmorPoint

ArmorPoint es una solución de ciberseguridad administrada que combina los tres pilares de un sólido programa de
ciberseguridad: personas, procesos y tecnología, en una única solución. Diseñada por expertos en ciberseguridad, la tecnología
SIEM alojada en la nube de ArmorPoint y sus capacidades extendidas de detección y respuesta permiten a las empresas
implementar un programa de ciberseguridad altamente efectivo y escalable. Con precios personalizables disponibles, cada plan
de ArmorPoint ofrece un nivel dinámico de servicios administrados de seguridad que respaldan las iniciativas de gestión de
riesgos de todas las empresas, independientemente del presupuesto, el talento o el tiempo disponibles. ArmorPoint está
desarrollada y potenciada por Trapp Technology, un proveedor de servicios gestionados de TI con sede en Phoenix. Para
obtener más información sobre ArmorPoint, por favor visite armorpoint.com.

 

Docker – ready for prime time or not? It’s a question that has been asked (and answered) hundreds if not thousands of times already. So – rather than repeat that long and somewhat tired conversation I want to focus on one piece of the debate – Security.

There’s three issues that I see with Docker and Security

1. Because Docker is opensource it has been widely adopted and is almost certainly already deployed, whether you like it or not, inside your organization. This makes for all sorts of security nightmares that the CISO’s and their teams are unable to control. What if an employee introduces uncontrolled code to a mission critical stack? What does that do for Compliance, internal audit and Corporate governance issues not to mention liability problems.
    
2. Many others have covered the point about large attack surface. Thousands of containers vs hundreds of apps, VMs etc. The larger the attack surface the more vulnerable your organization is to internal and external breaches.
    
3. The very flexibility that Docker and containerization in general provide gives it a massive security hole. What if a rogue employee or external intruder plants a container that launches and East-West attack? Good luck finding that single container in the thousands you have already deployed.
    

There is plenty of advice out there on how to implement Docker security effectively – this article from Amir Jerbi co-founder and CTO of Aqua Security, is a good basis.

In my discussions with customers about Docker it’s clear that, at the Enterprise level, they are just not comfortable yet in adopting Docker. Typical responses include ‘Maybe next year,’ ‘let’s wait and see’, ‘who else is using Docker across their infrastructure?’ All good points with limited answers. Look at the list of Docker customers at docker.com. Are these all in production? Let’s hope so.

When customers ask me about Docker security I always tell them ‘Be careful, move forward in a considered way and you might just end up where you expect to be. If you let it get out of control you will spend a lot of time and money getting Docker under control.’ Full disclosure – we offer Docker/Containerization as a service from Alauda. We do this because Containerization as a service is intrinsically more secure running on AWS or Azure than letting Docker loose in your Datacenter.

What do you think? Is Docker ready for Prime time?

If you read my post last week we discussed how Big Data and Hadoop is no longer running on commodity hardware. This is a good thing, provided you are prepared to accept the higher Hardware cost, because it lays the groundwork for the next big move in Big Data – off the shelf, high value applications.

If you are at all involved in Big Data you know several things :-

1. It’s moving very fast, new Apache Projects / new Cloudera Labs projects and significant upgrades in real-time/streaming/analytics capabilities.
2. Right now, Big Data is a bunch of tools – infrastructure tools, ingestion tools, analytic tools, go to any Big Data conference and what you see is a lot of customer specific use cases and a lot of talk about the latest ‘tools’.
3. Make any kind of search for ‘Big Data Applications’ or Hadoop Applications’ or even ‘Cloudera Applications’ and you come up empty. What you will find is a lot of SaaS Analytics offerings that leverage a Big Data infrastructure. To me, these are not new Big Data Apps, but simply BI/Analytics apps using additional data sources. Here’s an example  http://www.cio.com/article/2917433/startups/can-a-startup-democratize-big-data-apps.html Looks interesting but it’s not a Big Data app.

I believe there is a second Big Data wave coming soon that will be just as important as the ERP and CRM and Mobile / online waves were. That is – Big Data Apps that move beyond just analytics and start offering services to customers based on real time, streaming data ingestion matched up with geo-location and customer preference information. This is not new and it’s certainly not an original idea. What’s new is that Big Data and the Hadoop ecosystem in particular can now deliver what businesses and governments have aimed for – customer/client/citizen segmentation that delivers individual services/offers/capabilities to to specific individual people.

Very simple example – multi channel business (bricks and mortar, online, etc) targets a micro segment of couples under 30, no kids living in the top 50 income neighborhoods in the US. Every time one of those customers or potential customers passes by a multi -channel outlet (either physically or online) they receive a co-ordinated marketing campaign just for them (promotional offer, 2 for 1 offer, groupon offer or whatever the analytics part of the Big Data process has defined as the right offer. There are many other Apps that we will discuss in later posts.

When I review the use cases that we have developed for customers, in the beginning it was simple batch oriented analytics for customer analysis, maybe telco infrastructure analysis. Then maybe 2 years ago the discussion moved to real time analytics. What I see now is a definite move to discussing not jut analytics but new services to customers (B2C, B2B, G2C etc) that can only be developed using Big Data paradigms.

Critical in this (and in current Big Data projects) is security and we will dsicuss that next week.

What do you think? Are we still in the era of Big Data tools? Or are we entering the next phase of Big Data Apps?

I recently read a survey report from Typesafe of 2,136 respondents who were asked about Spark vs Hadoop. You can see the report here for yourself (registration required) https://info.typesafe.com/COLL-20XX-Spark-Survey-Report_LP.html?lst=RW&lsd=COLL-20XX-Spark-Survey-Trends-Adoption-Report

The most interesting part of the report for me was that 78% of respondents were using Spark for fast processing of BATCH data sets! Think about that. Spark can work with HDFS as the persistent data store but Spark is really good at processing streaming, transactional data – but – most respondents are just using it to make batch go faster.

This is our experience too – when we talk to customers they want to consider Spark, they know they have to think about future use cases which will almost certainly involve streaming data, transactional data sets and – most importantly – real time analytics and machine learning. But – for now, even ten years after Doug Cutting and Mike Cafarella invented Hadoop – we are still seeing the vast majority of use case focused on batch processing. It really is – back to the 80’s!

So – in my view – Spark is not replacing Hadoop but is simply complementing what is already out there. What do you think?

This Aptuz blog also summarizes neatly the Spark vs Hadoop discussion http://aptuz.com/blog/is-apache-spark-going-to-replace-hadoop/

We saw in the last week that Teradata has updated their Big Data Appliance it can now ship with Cloudera and has had Hortonworks available for some time. http://ht.ly/PFrgV Although Appliances are appealing for simplicity, ease of management, lots of testing done by the vendor(s) and should work more or less out of the box, I am not convinced.

First – why limit yourself to the configuration that the appliance comes in? The TD box is a hefty machine and prices for Hadoop appliances typically start at $500k plus.

Second – be sure that what the Hardware vendor is shipping is actually the latest release. We have had experience of appliances that are behind the Apache versions that are already out there. This creates a lot of support headaches.

Third – look very carefully at all the proprietary stuff that is loaded on the Appliance. This is classic Enterprise Software lock-in. Don’t want to get locked in? Don’t buy proprietary software, or at least buy solutions where you can escape. As the saying goes ‘ Make sure your data is your data, not your suppliers’.

What do you think, are appliances the way to go?

We are seeing increasing interest from a number of clients in IoT. While it’s still more of a hype phrase than reality there are a number of Organizations that can point to real success with IoT and Big Data. One of them is Transport for London who use heir thousands of sensors in their transport network to build actionable insights. Lauren Sager Weinstein of TfL explains more here https://tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/big-data-customer-experience.pdf

To me it seems that Public sector and particularly State and Local Government are the leading adopters of IoT and Big Data – interesting idea – local government as technology leaders. In particular we see this trend in Europe rather than the USA. In multiple regional and EU projects where government is trying to leverage their massive array of sensors to improve delivery of services to citizens.

The area where there is a lot of discussion but not a lot of real use cases is in the Enterprise. This week I was at a very large retailer who is a client of ours. Clearly Retailing is the next obvious sector for IoT. Lots of locations, lots of customers, lots of channels, lots of assets producing data. David Dorf at Oracle put out a good list of possible use cases in January – you can read it here  http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2015/01/09/how-the-internet-of-things-will-shake-up-retail-in-2015/

So – what next? It’s clear IoT is going to change Big Data Architectures again, just as we get used to Spark possibly replacing MapReduce, the massive increase in data volumes and types from IoT, is, for sure, going to lead to another architecture pivot.

What are your thoughts? Do you see IoT use cases in the Enterprise happening to-day or is it just talk. What about Public sector – are they the leaders in IoT?

I have spent the last week and will be spending this week in México, meeting with clients, press and partners. It’s been a great experience with a lot of learning opportunities. During these discussions I have been struck by the perception that Hadoop runs on ‘commodity hardware’. Clearly this was the case around 2 years ago with cheap servers building a high performance, fault tolerant, scalable cluster. But, as I mentioned previously, this was OK for clusters that were delivering batch processed, overnight jobs for actionable insights or reports. With the continuing development of the Hadoop ecosystem and Cloudera in particular this has changed completely, here’s why :-

1. Spark requires much greater memory, 32 or 64GB machines cannot perform on Spark. 128, 256 or even greater amounts of memory are really the standard now for Spark, as Spark replaces MapReduce this requirement will only grow.
    
2. The transition from Batch to real-time, in particular the heavy adoption of NoSQL databases like HBase and others mean HBase Regions need 128GB minimum, 256Gb standard or 512GB for performance in memory. Join HBase with Spark and you need some very high end machines.
    
3. The increasing requirement for streaming and/or transactional data using Kafka and other tools means the servers that ingest the data and then serve up the analysis in real time have much greater memory requirements.
    
4. With the move to realtime analytics and services, most new systems really benefit from SSD storage. While the cost of SSD storage is declining it’s still an expensive option.
    
5. Take all of the above into account and quad core systems are the absolute minimum required now.
    

So – when thinking about Big Data and Hadoop/Cloudera in particular – probably a good idea to reset your expectations on Hardware costs as they are going up and will continue to go up. The good news is that as the Hadoop ecosystem grows in capability organizations will be able to deliver a much broader spread of use cases (see my post next week for a use case discussion) covering not just BI/Analytics but actual services to consumers/users.

What do you think? Is Hadoop moving beyond commodity hardware to be more expensive? Will this slow down Hadoop adoption?

When we talk to clients about Big Data it’s often assumed that there is a strong security infrastructure in place to secure all that data either at rest or in motion. While that assumption is starting to be true it’s important to understand where the Hadoop Eco-system is strong in security and where there is additional work to do.

1. Go back 2 years and the the answer to the ‘Security?’ question was very simple – Kerberos. While that sounds a little silly now, it really was that basic. Any requirements for Role Based Access control, encryption, audit trails / governance / compliance, intrusion detection and all the other requirements of Enterprise security were handled in a single somewhat evasive response ‘Those aspects are covered by the operating systems and / or the networking systems.’ What this actually meant was that Big Data implementations had gaping holes in security.
    
2. We worked with one client whose Internal Audit team worked out this lack of security and kept a large Big Data project on hold for a full 12 months before they would allow the Hadoop cluster to be joined in any way to the Enterprise Infrastructure.
    
3. If we look at where Security in Hadoop stands today then customers can implement
    
   1. Authentication using LDAP or AD. (this is the Kerberos stuff)
   2. Encryption at rest or in motion inside the cluster.
   3. Role Based Access control (for example using Apache Sentry)

    

   4. Data redaction (thus avoiding the problem of admins having access to all data). This is critical when using Hadoop clusters to PCI use cases so that PII (Personally Identifiable information) can be redacted.
       
   5. Data Governance that provides Auditing, data lineage, data life-cycle management.
       
   6. Key management to manage encryption keys, certificates etc.
       

These are all significant advances that have been implemented in various Apache projects such as Sentry. However, it’s also clear in our discussions with clients that most CIO’s and CISO’s still don’t feel 100% comfortable with Big Data Security. This is particularly true in Europe as a recent survey by Forrester showed. http://eandt.theiet.org/news/2015/apr/big-data-privacy.cfm
So – when we talk to clients about their Big Data strategy and how they should design and architect what, for many of them, is totally new, we now ask a set of simple questions :-

1. Is the CISO part of the Big Data strategy team, if not why not?
    
2. As part of the Discovery process, we need to make sure the client has the rights to use all the data they plan to use.
    
3. Will the client implement data redaction?
    
4. Is the client willing to encrypt everything?
    
5. Who owns the cluster security profile?.
    

This is not meant to be a complete list but it simply makes the client consider Security as an issue at the design phase not as an afterthought.
What do you think? Is Security in Big Data a big problem? Do you think the progress in the last 2 years has allowed Hadoop implementations to catch up with more traditional designs?

It’s almost 9 months since Hortonworks went public and Cloudera continue to provide some insight into their growth. Along with MapR, IBM and Pivotal (EMC), Amazon’s Hadoop offerings and straight Apache Hadoop, we can get a pretty clear picture of how each distribution is doing. Of course this is Open Source (mostly), so each Distribution Vendor gets their work recycled into Apache as well as making it into their own version.

If we add up the numbers, Hortonworks expects to do something like $110m – $115m http://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/hortonworks-reports-financial-results-for-second-quarter-2015-20150805-01151. Cloudera will probably top $200m http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/04/cloudera-could-be-worth-almost-5b-with-199m-in-revenue-this-year-analysts-say/. Take these two dominant players, add in some guesses about IBM and Amazon and we are probably looking at a software subscription market (ie no services, no hardware) of less then $1bn. Enterprise customers love to know this type of data so they can be sure to back the ‘winner’. My point is – in the world of open source and big data there can be no ‘winner’.

When we talk to clients and they ask us ‘Which Distribution do you recommend’?’ we give one of two answers :-

1. If they have nothing deployed or, (more typically) failed in-house deployments, we always recommend Cloudera. This is because it has the most enterprise ready ecosystem, security and governance capabilities and is easy to scale quickly.
    
2. If they already have something deployed, (usually Hortonworks but sometimes Pivotal or Amazon), we tell them to keep using it and we will help them achieve a quicker time to value and /or get a return on an already existing investment.
    

The reason we do this is because, in my view, the Distribution that customers choose is a really insignificant part of the success or failure of their project (s). Want to use Cloudera? Go right ahead. Prefer to use Hortonworks because it’s cheaper and, maybe you have bought into the whole Open Data Platform idea ?(http://www.cmswire.com/cms/big-data/hey-cloudera-mapr-open-data-platform-is-the-real-deal-028787.php) – sounds good too.

In our experience working with clients in Telco, Retail, Finance, Government and other sectors there are 5 real factors to consider when implementing a Big Data project or trying to rescue a failed one :-

1. Are you buying the right hardware? I have covered in previous posts how the Hardware landscape for Big Data is changing but – with the ecosystem changing so rapidly make sure you are buying hardware that will meet the current and future needs.
    
2. Is your Big Data strategy driven by the business side of the company? Big Data projects driven by IT get stuck in all sorts of pointless discussions about – for example….  which Distribution to use!
    
3. Are your use cases clearly defined?
    
4. Does the partner you are working with have real, referenced projects and customers? I can’t tell you how many times we have worked clients with failed projects who – in reality – had been paying their consulting provider for on the job training in Big Data without knowing it.
    
5. Get ready to scale – once a Big Data infrastructure is in place the business usually demands a rapid adoption of new use cases.
    

As you can see, with these 5 factors, choice of the Hadoop distribution can be an afterthought. so sure, we can all get excited about ODP, or Vora from SAP http://fortune.com/2015/09/01/sap-to-bridge-big-data-gap/ or many other technology issues but – the most important factors in our experience are those above and the technology is secondary.

What do you think? Are Hadoop Distributions not that important? What do you think about ODP – hype or important.?